Noël

Noël is a remake of Triangle with a Christmas theme. I wanted to do Triangle as a Christmas app since I came up with triangle lines idea over a year ago. Last Christmas I was late, so it was released this Christmas season. Unfortunately, Apple was bitchy about Application Name in iTunesConnect not matching the name displayed on the iPhone (Application name in Info.plist) and rejected the app just for this reason two days into review on Dec. 10. So the app was late and approved on Dec. 17th when Apple being overwhelmed approved pretty much everything. By Christmas week it was buried under a pile of crap-ware not getting any sales like the rest of applications approved after the week of Dec. 10.

Fourteen

Fourteen is a re-release of Magiecom's 14 Puzzle under US label. It went into review the same day update to HexLines went in, i.e. Dec 8th. Reviewing brand new application took a bit longer then reviewing an update. Still Fourteen review took just 9 days (as opposed to 45+ days from Canadian side).

iSpell Inizio

By December App Store review process was overwhelmed prompting Apple to take itunesconnect down for Christmas week. Once November's "blanket rejections" didn't help Apple switched to approving apps left and right without much reviewing. iSpell Inizio in app-purchases were not tested, but the app was in review for just 8 days from Dec. 8th to Dec. 16th. By Christmas the app was buried behind crap-ware yielding worst initial two weeks sales ever.
Clearly, App Store is broken for both updates and new releases.

14 Puzzle FREE

Since iPhone applications were not selling past initial two weeks I decided to test different route - release apps for FREE, bug users with advertisement and provide in-app purchase to turn advertisement off. This is how 14 Puzzle FREE came about and was submitted on Dec. 08, 2009. At that time Apple was clearing up backlog and approving applications in hundreds after just a week in review, so on Wed Dec 16, 2009 14 Puzzle FREE went live.

Surprisingly enough, people do click on the ads and the first week 14 Puzzle FREE averaged about 10 clicks and $0.6 a day in ad sales on AdMob and 5 clicks and $0.4 a day in ad sales on Quattro, or $1 a day overall give or take. Around Christmas clicky picked up and in two weeks 14 Puzzle FREE sold $33 worth of ads clearing 600 and 1833 downloads. Out of those 2435 downloads, 4 people made in app activation by year end, making it 0.16% "click-thru" or way worse then 5+% CTR on AdMob.

That's all folks

As iSpell Casa came back from review I submitted updates adding in-app purchases to the rest iSpell House applications (but the most successful Russian) on Dec 8th. By December Apple have been approving apps without much testing (no in-app purchase receipts were logged on the server), so those three made thru review in exactly a week.

Also on Dec 8th I pretty much gave up and released all iCards Animals that I could release (with exception of English that got wrong bundle id). I am pretty much fed up with Apple. Until Apple makes releasing updates rewarding this is it, regardless that I have 5 language apps in the pipeline and updates for couple dozen apps already released. Ain't worth my time.

Welcome Android.

HexLines

Since setting "Version Number" in itunesconnect to 1.0 didn't work out I tried setting it to "1.0 gs" and released and update to HexLines that also fixed game saves.

Again releasing from US label was a breeze - update went in Dec. 08 and appeared on the App Store on Dec. 13. Unfortunately, release date didn't stick and update never made front page.

Münzwurf with in-app purchases

On Dec. 2 Münzwurf got two in-app purchases - Ancient and Historic coins. Nobody cared at least until the end of the year.