iOS Development Highlights: December 2010

Despite the holidays, December has been a busy month in the iOS and Cocoa blogosphere. Here is a list of the posts I found most interesting this last month:

Programming

Design

The App Store and the Freelance Market

  • App Store promo codes are now valid worldwide. Overdue.
  • The Mac App Store opens on January 6, 2011.
  • John Gruber on The iOS and Android App Economies given the similar market share of Android and iOS (at least in the US), the difference in developer adoption of the platforms is striking: iOS’s best apps could exist for Android but don’t. Android’s best apps couldn’t exist for iPhone. If you actually wish to sell apps, the Android Market does not seem the place to be. And the fact that even the developers of a top-selling game like Angry Birds (on iOS) say that Free is the way to go with Android might ensure it remains that way. John Gruber: The economy for Android apps may well trend toward resembling the economy of the web.
  • Tim Bray, developer advocate for Android at Google, published his Year-End View of the Mobile Market, which is a look ahead to 2011 rather than a review of 2010. Interesting read.
  • Brian Stormont writes about the results of switching his free app to paid. It seems to have gone very well for him.
  • The market for freelance app developers is a ongoing topic. Jeff LaMarche wrote a long piece with tips for both sides (Non-Deterministic Problems aka Finding Talent) how to find interesting work as a developer, how to find good developers as a client. Lucius Kwok tries to set clients’ expectations straight regarding how much the development of an app will cost.

Happy new year to all of you! Thanks for reading my blog.