insignificant.org

Progressive pricing strategy for iOS apps

Tue, 17 May 2011 16:45:15 +0100

I’m working on an iOS app which, while very immature, has caused me to think about app pricing. I have these constraints:

I believe in the “release early, release often” maxim, and that software is never finished
I believe that rewarding early-adopters, and settings realistic expectations from the start, would be a good strategy for getting early positive reviews
I believe that an application has a natural price-point
I believe that most applications in the app store are under-priced
I believe that app development is an iterative process, and the deployment of the app should be iterative too

On the pricing front, I have these concerns:

I may price to high initially, gain no users (or worse, gain users who complain about the price and rate the app poorly)
If I price the app aggressively for a while, as an introductory offer, I’ll get a lot of customers paying very little, sales would likely drop off when the price is increased
I dislike ads and vowed to not use in-app advertising

So here’s a proposal which may address these constraints:

When the app has bare functionality, set realistic expectations about the limited functionality in the release notes. Release the app at no cost. That way, users are unlikely to complain about its lack of features
Include this pricing policy in the release notes, so purchasers know what to expect in the future
Add more features, release updates
At some point, when I think that I would pay a minimal amount for the app, start charging for it. (£0.59 or $0.99)
Gradually (carefully) increase the price as more features are added
Updates are always free to existing users

I’d be interested to hear any comments or thoughts!

Selectively running tests with IUSpec in iOS

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:37:55 +0100

UISpec is a great tool for unit-testing the UI of your iOS app, but (unless you use something like Frank) you’ll be running all tests every time, and watching your console for failures.

Frank allows you to selectively run tests, but it’s driven from outside the app using Cucumber, and I needed something which runs from inside (so I can set expectations on mocks).

Announcing RVUITests, which runs UISpec tests from your device or simulator, in a UI similar to GHUnit:

RVUITests at GitHub.

Dynamic window titles for GNU Screen with Bash

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:42:00 +0000

This is my method of enhancing the GNU Screen window titles… it relies on my interactive shell being /bin/bash.

These scripts will:

show a plain $ or # when just the shell (or root shell) is running in that window
show the name of a running command (so if you run “nice top -d 10” it will show “top”)
prepend the title with # if the user is root, or the command is running with “sudo”
show, for selected commands, a filename in braces instead of the command. So running “sudo vi /etc/fstab” would show a title “#{fstab}

I’m sure there will be bugs, and I’d be happy to receive patches ;-)

Edit: this script is now hosted at GitHub :-)

Start by downloading the preexec tweak and stash it somewhere. (Written by Glyph Lefkowitz. See Glyph’s original post.) Now dump the following into another file - I called mine “screen-preexec.sh”. Neither file needs to be executable.

#!/bin/bash

# screen-preexec.sh   Matthew Flint (m@tthew.org)

# this uses the "preexec" bash script by "Glyph" here:
# http://www.twistedmatrix.com/users/glyph/preexec.bash.txt

# it makes it more useful (for me) when using screen, by showing either
# the currently-running command (such as "top") or a filename (when
# editing or viewing a file)

# when a command is running as superuser (either by root, or via sudo)
# then it is prefixed with #


preexec() {
    # commandstring starts as the whole string, but we
    # chop it up...
    local commandstring=$1;

    # start by stripping all the switches which start with
    # a hyphen
    commandstring=`echo $commandstring | sed -e 's/\( -[^ ]*\)//g'` ;

    # this is a superuser command if the user is
    # root - so a # will be shown in the title
    local root="";
    if [[ $EUID -eq 0 ]]; then
        root="#";
    fi

    # find the first word in the commandstring, which is the
    # command being executed
    local command=`echo $commandstring | cut -d ' ' -f1`;

    # strip any other unwanted stuff from the start of the command.
    # These generally modify the behaviour or environment of another
    # command
    local removedcommand="no";
    until [[ $removedcommand = "" ]]; do
        removedcommand="";
        case "$command" in
            watch|nice|nohup|time|trickle)
                removedcommand="yes";
                commandstring=`echo $commandstring | cut -d ' ' -f2-`;
                command=`echo $commandstring | cut -d ' ' -f1`;
            ;;
            sudo)
                root="#";

                removedcommand="yes";
                commandstring=`echo $commandstring | cut -d ' ' -f2-`;
                command=`echo $commandstring | cut -d ' ' -f1`;
            ;;
        esac
    done

    # this is the result which will be shown
    local result;

    # now check for a set of predefined long-running
    # commands which operate on a file. Instead of showing
    # the command name, we'll show the filename surrounded
    # by braces.

    # I'd rather see
    #   "{file 1}" "{file 2}" "{file 3}"
    # than
    #   "vi" "vi" "vi"
    case "$command" in
        vi|view|less|more|tail|head|man)
            # remove the command name (vi, less, etc) from the string. This
            # should just leave any filenames, plus pipes and redirects. We append
            # " " to the commandstring to make sure that there's at least one
            # field delimiter, othewise "cut" won't chop off the command
            local filepathsandpipes=`echo $commandstring " " | cut -d ' ' -f2-`;

            # now remove any pipes or redirects
            local filepaths=`echo $filepathsandpipes | sed -e 's/[|>].*//g'` ;

            # how many filepaths?
            local filenamecount=`echo $filepaths | awk '{ print NF }'`;
            if [[ $filenamecount -eq 0 ]]; then
                # no filenames - just show the command
                result=$root$command;
            elif [[ $filenamecount -eq 1 ]]; then
                # one filename - show it
                local filename=`basename $filepaths`;
                result=$root"{"$filename"}";
            else
                # more than one filename - show the command
                # and a wildcard indicator to indicate multiple
                # files
                result=$root$command*;
            fi
            ;;
        *) 
            # just show the basename of the command
            command=`basename $command`;
            result=$root$command;
            ;;
    esac

    preexec_screen_title "$result";
}

precmd() {
    if [[ $EUID -eq 0 ]]; then
        preexec_screen_title "#";
    else
        preexec_screen_title "$";
    fi
}

Finally, edit your “.bashrc” and add this at the end:

# setup preexec and precmd functions
. /home/user/path/to/preexec.bash

# load the screen preexec stuff
. /home/user/path/to/screen-preexec.sh

preexec_install

Migrated from Wordpress to Tumblr

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:31:06 +0000

Hope this is more reliable.

"Never trust a test you haven’t seen fail"

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

“Never trust a test you haven’t seen fail”

- Martin Fowler, 10th November 2010

Useful bookmarklets for iPhone

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks, I’ve come across a few useful bookmarklets which work great in Mobile Safari on the iPhone. I can’t take any credit for writing these, but hope to be helpful by listing them in one place.

How to install

Open this page with mobile Safari and tap-and-hold on the bookmarklet hyperlinks below. Select “Copy” when the menu appears. Then bookmark a page (any page will do), giving it a name like “Scroll to bottom”. After storing the bookmark, edit it - the URL will now be editable where it wasn’t previously. Delete the original URL and paste in the bookmarklet code. Finally, remove the “http://” from the front. Save!

Scroll to bottom

How many times have you been reading a long webpage and accidentally hit the top bar in mobile Safari? Yes, it takes you to the top, but there’s no “go to bottom” shortcut. This will do just that. Copy me

Find in page

This provides a “find text in this webpage” feature. Copy me

View source

Yeah baby! Copy me

A simple UI for ‘vpnc’

Wed, 20 May 2009 09:00:00 +0100

I’ve been using the Nortel branch of vpnc for a while with great success, but it’s a command-line tool, and a drag to use now that Ubuntu 9.04 is so swish. So here’s a 30-minute Python/Tkinter UI hack which wraps the vpnc and vpnc-disconnect tools. Notes:

you’ll need to edit the CONNECT and DISCONNECT command paths at the top of the file
this assumes that you, like me, use a private PIN and a SecurID password
it also assumes that your /etc/vpnc/default.conf file is configured with everything except your password
it’s probably best run with gksudo
I’m no Python guru, so don’t take this code as being ‘best practice’ ;-)

#!/usr/bin/env python
# (c) 2009 m@tthew.org
# http://insignificant.org/

# Feel free to use and abuse this code, but please remember:
# - it comes with no warranty
# - if you make enhancements, please share them with me :)

from Tkinter import *
import threading
import subprocess

# Edit these paths!
CONNECT="/path/to/vpnc"
DISCONNECT="/path/to/vpnc-disconnect"

STATE_DISCONNECTED=0;
STATE_CONNECTED=1;
STATE_DISCONNECTING=2;


class ConnectThread(threading.Thread):
 def __init__(self, app):
 threading.Thread.__init__(self)
 self.app=app

 def run(self):
 app.setState(STATE_CONNECTED)
 proc = subprocess.Popen([CONNECT, "--no-detach"], stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
 proc.communicate(app.entryPIN.get() + app.entryPassword.get());
 proc.wait()
 app.setState(STATE_DISCONNECTED)
 app.entryPassword.delete(0, END)
 app.entryPassword.focus_set()

class DisconnectThread(threading.Thread):
 def __init__(self, app):
 threading.Thread.__init__(self)
 self.app=app

 def run(self):
 app.setState(STATE_DISCONNECTING)
 subprocess.call([DISCONNECT])

class VPNCApplication(Frame):
 def setState(self, state):
 self.state = state

 self.btnConnect['state']=NORMAL if self.state==STATE_DISCONNECTED else DISABLED
 self.btnDisconnect['state']=NORMAL if self.state==STATE_CONNECTED else DISABLED
 self.entryPIN['state']=NORMAL if self.state==STATE_DISCONNECTED else DISABLED
 self.entryPassword['state']=NORMAL if self.state==STATE_DISCONNECTED else DISABLED

 def connect(self):
 ConnectThread(self).start()

 def disconnect(self):
 DisconnectThread(self).start()

 def createWidgets(self):
 self.lblPIN = Label(self, text="PIN: ")
 self.lblPassword = Label(self, text="Password: ")
 self.entryPIN = Entry(self, show="*", width="4")
 self.entryPassword = Entry(self, width="6")
 self.btnConnect = Button(self,text="Connect",command=self.connect)
 self.btnDisconnect = Button(self,text="Disconnect",command=self.disconnect)

 self.lblPIN.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky=W)
 self.lblPassword.grid(row=1, column=0, sticky=W)
 self.entryPIN.grid(row=0, column=1, sticky=W)
 self.entryPassword.grid(row=1, column=1, sticky=W)
 self.btnConnect.grid(row=2, column=0)
 self.btnDisconnect.grid(row=2, column=1)

 self.setState(STATE_DISCONNECTED)
 self.entryPIN.focus_set()

 def __init__(self, master=None):
 Frame.__init__(self, master)
 master.title("VPNC")
 self.pack()
 self.createWidgets()

root = Tk()
app = VPNCApplication(master=root)
app.mainloop()
root.destroy

Fortnightly cron jobs

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0000

I’m doing regular nightly backups to rsync.net, and recently made changes to the way that backups are done. I now keep the last seven daily snapshots (labelled “d-1″ to “d-7″) and another snapshot every fortnight. But that fortnightly snapshot needed a fortnightly cron job.

Here’s the entry in my crontab:

 #Mins   Hours   Days    Months  Day of the week

 30      02      *       *       0       expr `date +\%W` \% 2 > /dev/null || /home/matthew/scripts/fortnightly.sh

This was inspired by this post on the interweb, with a slight necessary modification: the two percent signs need to be escaped for the job to run properly with Vixie cron, Ubuntu Gutsy’s default cron.

The original Wordpress post had one comment:

Vin Says:
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm

This is OK until you need to say, run something every 1st & 3rd Monday of the month.
However hows about this..
You cron your script to run every day, then your script’s logic determins when stuff happens.
Such as..

echo $(echo $(cal|cut -c 4-5)|cut -dM -f2)|read first second third forth
if (( $(echo $(date +%e)) == $first || $(echo $(date +%e)) == $third ))
then
do some stuff
fi

The first line gets the day of the month for all Mondays in the current month from cal and assigns them to four variables $first $second $third and $forth.
Then the if statement only does stuff if today’s “day of the month” matches the values of $first or $third.

Enjoy.