In-app purchase vs. paid

A couple of months ago I published some stats about the PhotoMeta in-app purchase. 

In the mean time I changed my strategy. 8 weeks ago PhotoMeta became a paid app instead of a free app with an in-app purchase. The price of the app ($2.99) is the same as the price of the former in-app purchase. So how did this work out so far?

As you can see the number of paid downloads are significantly lower than the number of in-app purchases in the last 8 weeks before the change. However, I'm going to stick with the paid app for the following reasons:

• No more 1-star reviews from users who downloaded a free app and feel mislead because an in-app purchase is required for the "full" version
• PhotoMeta is targeted at advanced amateur and professional photographers spending hundreds/thousands of dollars on gear every year. Paying $2.99 for a useful app shouldn't be a problem.
• The in-app figures are slightly distorted because they include the Christmas period

Media transfer between iOS devices with Scotty

Scotty got a second significant upgrade in a couple of weeks. For almost 3 years Scotty was all about transferring photos and videos from an iPhone/iPad to a Mac over Wi-Fi. The latest Scotty version extends this with iOS to iOS media transfers over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. 

On top of that it's super easy to do a transfer. Start Scotty on both devices and they will auto detect each other. Initiate the transfer from the sending device by selecting the photos and videos you want to beam over and there you go. 

In case the wireless connection stops working properly during transfer for whatever reason, the transfer is paused and resumes as soon as the connection is working properly again. 

Sending photos and videos from an iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) to another iOS device or to a Mac has never been easier.

GeoLogTag is dead. Long live GeoTagr.

When I started developing for the App Store 3.5 years ago, my initial idea was to make a photo geotagging app for my own since I couldn't find such an app in the App Store. The app I made was at the same time a geologger and a geotagger so GeoLogTag seemed a good app name.

Years have gone by and I've learned that GeoLogTag wasn't such a good choice. Users and even bloggers misspelled the name frequently. A couple of weeks ago I asked my beta testers what they thought about the name and about 90% of them disliked the name. One of the answers was "It sounds like a button on a scientific calculator". In other words, time for a name change.

I had a lot of ideas and my beta testers came up with some great suggestions, but most of them were already in use in the App Store. In the end, the list was reduced to 2 names and the winner is GeoTagr. It's a short, to-the-point name that captures the main functionality of the app. I like it a lot, I hope you like it too.

Visage for Facebook

Fed up with the tedious task of tagging faces on your Facebook photos? Time to discover my brand new Visage for Facebook app. It's available in the App Store now!

The app focuses on getting the job done with a minimal amount of user interaction. Visage scans your photos and automatically detects faces. As soon as you start entering a name you get a smart list of suggestions. Names of Facebook friends, but also iOS contacts are used to reduce typing to the bare minimum.

Go to the next photo with a swipe, zoom in on a photo with a pinch. That's it. Job done.

Universal Scotty

With the release of Scotty 3.1, the app is now also available as a native iPad app. At the same time the UI got a facelift and a much-asked feature sees the light of day: drilling down into Mac folders.

With a few taps any folder on your Mac is now an eligible candidate to receive photos and videos from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

The next Scotty version is already in the makings and will be available in a couple of weeks. The most prominent new feature will be transfer of photos and videos between iOS devices.