iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [144]
In order to do this, you have to put your device in Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode. Here are the steps to do that:
1. Open iTunes and connect your device.
2. Press and hold down the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time.
3. After 5 to 10 seconds, release the Sleep/Wake button. Continue holding down the Home button until iTunes displays a message telling you it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. Note that your screen should remain blank during this process—if you see the Apple logo or a Restore screen, try again.
4. Right-click the Restore button in iTunes, and you should be able to select any firmware version to load.
Exploring App Store Concepts
Being a developer and working with the App Store is a bit like being a manufacturer and working with Wal-Mart. You are not the one in power in this relationship and there are certain ways of going about things that you have to learn before you can be successful in this marketplace.
Supply and demand
If you have taken any basic economic classes, you are familiar with the concept of supply and demand. Why are people willing to pay more for diamonds than for water, when they need water to survive? It is because diamonds are scarcer than water. If you changed the supply of either water or diamonds enough, you could be sure to change which one people would be willing to pay more for.
Supply and demand applies to the App Store as well. Let's say your application has been getting 10 sales a day, at $4.99 per sale. This works out to about $50.00 per day of revenue for this application. What would happen if you offered a special where you lowered the price to $0.99? If you were to get 100 sales a day at $0.99 per sale, you would be making about $100 per day in revenue. In other words, for no real extra work or cost, you would double your income simply by lowering your price. This is a win-win situation for both you and your users. Notice that by reducing the price of your product you were able to increase the demand for your product.
This can work in reverse as well. Suppose you were selling another application on the App Store for $0.99 and you were getting as many as 100 sales a day. Now you decide to raise the price to $9.99, and find out you lose a majority of your sales, but you still get around 20 sales a day. In this case you went from making around $100 a day to making close to $200 a day on this one application. This time you saw that by increasing the price of your product you were able to better capture the full monetary demand for your product. Your sales/trend reports can help you better find your application's profit-maximizing price point. It is always easier to get more sales simply by lowering the price. But if you want to maximize your application's profit, you need to experiment and use a little trial and error to find your application's profit “sweet spot.”
Promo codes
Apple allows developers to request promotional codes that will give users free downloads of applications. You can generate a promo code for any of your applications by going to https://itunesconnectapplecom and choosing Request Promotional Codes. The request promotional code Web page has a View History feature (Figure 10.17), which allows you to view your requested promo code history for the last 60 days.
Note
You are given 50 promotional codes for each version of an application. They will expire after four weeks, and they can only be used in the U.S. iTunes Store.
Why would you want to give away any of your applications for free? What if you wanted to have a contest for one of your