No promo codes for apps rated 17+

People are only now finding out what 17+ apps and rating systems entail; any application rated 17+ is refused the ability to have promotional codes generated, so you cannot send out review copies, etc.

TUAW writes:

Apple specifies that any application that may contain high levels of offensive language, violence, sexual content, or references to drugs or alcohol receive a rating of 17+. But, according to Apple, apps that feature an embedded web browser or provide access to 3rd party content also automatically require the 17+ rating, regardless of the application's content or intended audience.

Marco Arment provides a little more detail:

Assuming Apple applies their standards on what constitutes “unfiltered internet content” somewhat uniformly, this will affect, among others, any subsequent versions of:

Instapaper
Every Twitter and Tumblr client that can show others’ content
Every RSS reader
Every Flickr client
Every instant-messaging client (remember, text profanity counts)
Every social-networking client
Most ebook readers

However, it's worse than that.

If you set a rating for an application before you've finished it and uploaded to iTunes Connect, there is no way to change the rating afterwards. So say, for example, you edit the application to remove offensive content or, as mentioned above, remove an inbuilt browser, you cannot change the rating for your application back to sane levels, thus preventing you from generating promo codes for it!

Until recently it was even nastier: If you had even a single 17+ rated application entry on iTunes Connect, whether it had been uploaded/finished or not, you were forbidden from making any promo codes for any of your other apps, even if they were rated 4+. I fell into that trap by having my (unreleased) Doom port listed on iTunes Connect as 17+; for months I was unable to generate promo codes for my other apps until I contacted Apple with a 'WTF?'. Fortunately, you were able to modify the rating at the time, unlike now.

I really hope Apple sort out this mess soon, because when the App Store system works it works really well.

SameGame v2.0

Coming Soon…

Discussion Forum Now Open!

It's still a work-in-progress, but I've opened up a forum where you can go to ask about Stack/Chalk/Lights Off/Speed, read FAQs, chat, etc.

Browse over, register, and start asking questions or posting feedback!

Speech Synthesis on iPhone 3GS

Posted this on Twitter a week back, but maybe it's of some interest to blog readers; here's how to do simple voice synthesis on the iPhone 3GS (3GS-only, I'm afraid). It's a private API, but hopefully if we file enough Radars they'll make it a public one.

To enable the following code to work you'll need to link the VoiceServices.framework (from the PrivateFrameworks folder of the SDK) in your app.

NSObject *v = [[NSClassFromString(@"VSSpeechSynthesizer") alloc] init];
[v startSpeakingString:@"All your base are belong to us"];
[v release];

Apologies for my lazy 'NSObject' define above, but you get the idea :-)

With that, you have simple speech synthesis for your application (obviously you cannot include this when you submit to the App Store as it links to a private framework, but you can use it in your internal applications). It requires the 3GS because the Speech stuff just isn't in the firmware for the older devices.

Obligatory video below:

Quake 3 on iPhone 3GS

I posted these to Twitter, but I'll put them here too for posterity. Here are screenshots of my newly compiled version of Quake 3 running on the iPhone 3GS on max graphics settings. I made my own icon for it as I didn't like the original.

Do note that the frame rate generally dips by 10fps when I press the screenshot buttons, and it runs really smooth on device!

No special hacks used when building; I did turn on auto vectorization and NEON in the compiler settings.

Stack v3 Alpha 1 : Video Demo!

Here's a quick video of how (the unreleased) Stack v3 works. I think it's much improved - check it out:



Many thanks to all who've donated (and received their alpha version of Stack v3 in return) - I really appreciate it!

Stack v3.0…

Yes you read that right. In going back to make sure Stack v2.2 would work properly on 3.0, I had a horrid idea…

A couple hours later, and I'd got it working. And man is it awesome!

On a whim, I'd rewritten Stack to actually be an icon in SpringBoard. It can be moved anywhere, has all the same positioning and reordering abilities as any other icon, it doesn't interfere with other apps, and is generally the cleanest and best way I could ever implement Stacks (yes, with an 's', there can be more than one now!). It took an awful lot of hacking around and programming blind to pull it off, but I think it's gonna work really well.

I have no idea when I'll release it, but it will (likely) only be for iPhone 3.0 and above (running out of 2.x devices here to test against for compatibility!).

Also please note that I'm now taking donations as an incentive for me to continue working on Stack (as long as I can), so if you have anything spare to give I graciously accept any amount!

Here are various screenshots to just get you interested: