Who try to clone who ?

This week-end I made something interesting : i activated my iPhone and updated my nexus to ics at the same time.
While discovering the new ics, i also discovered how they cloned iOs.
Every change made from 2.2 to 4.0 are only from iOs. It was a very bad discovery....

Finally, it's my turn to follow Apple law...

After many years trying to avoid Apple and every iThings, I finally had to move on the Apple train.
I'm very late but, after some interviews, I finally realized it costs me a lot to blacklist Apple.

I so followed last week a 5 days training on iOS development.
It was great because I met some great people but the iOS ecosystem is still, for me, anti-freedom.

Of course, I realized what people may like on iOS, how easy it is to navigate, to swipe, to tap, to scroll...
Of course, I confirmed an iPhone is easier to use than an Android phone.
But seriously, anything you want to do, even as a developper, has to be validated by Apple.
For exemple, even to distribute an app for review to your client, the guy who pay this app, you need to register your client's device to Apple.
And I won't talk about guidelines which change each version.
And how you can't develop for older versions (yeah sorry, 3GS users, your 400$ phone is now good for trash because noone could develop for it anymore)

He Apple, do you remember I PAID for an iThing, a MacBook, an entreprise license ... ?
so please, let me do what I want !

I also learnt how fast you could create a first version of your app using XCode and Interface Builder :
it's just 3 times faster than for Android.
It's more difficult to be professonial (no doc generation, fake MVC, just awfuly difficult to reuse custom UI components...) but you could create a prototype in few hours

Anyway, I already reached my first goal : I'm now able to write ANE for any platform which is a good thing !
I can't wait for the last part of the training, in 2 weeks (about iCloud, private appStore, core data, ...), to reach my second goal : be able to answer any iQuestion of my clients about iThings or, at least, to know where to ask or find the answers

92% of Market users can launch AIR apps

According to last Android Market Google Play stats, only 7.8% of the users are still using an Android OS version less than 2.2

It's a good news for AIR and its 2.2 requirement !

Generate your own PKCS12 certificate for AIR

I know... it's another one about certificate but perhaps you'll need this like I did.
If you follow this blog, you know I'm in need for a +30years certificate.

Problem
Flash Builder wizard generate 25 years certificate only

Solution
generate the certificate myself!

Again, thanks to keytool :

keytool.exe -genkey -keyalg RSA -storetype pkcs12 -alias <your_key_alias> -keystore <certificate_file>.p12 -validity 12000

Enter your password when requested only and fill the questions to complete

Note the -validity value is waiting for a number of days (not years!) so 12000 is about 32 years

Check the certificate of an APK

Following previous post, if you lost your certificate file, you have 2 problems
1/ you won't be able to update your APK on the market anymore
2/ you are unable to retrieve details about the certificate used

While there is NOTHING to do for the first problem, there is a way to retrieve the certificate information.

Coming with jdk, you should use jarsigner :

jarsigner.exe -verify -certs -verbose <app>.apk

For each file of the apk, it will give you something similar to

X.509, CN=WillNa, OU=, O=, C=FR
[certificate is valid from 19/12/10 08:38 to 19/12/35 08:38]

this is the certicate details available.

Retrieve information from your p12 certificate

Some days ago, one of my distributors asked me a package with a 30 years long certificate. I was pretty sure my current package was long enought but I didn't remember how much so I looked for a way to get it from this cryptic p12 file.


Be sure you have a jdk and not a jre installed else keytool won't be available.
The command to read information from a .p12 certificate is

keytool -list -keystore <certificate_file>.p12 -storetype pkcs12 -v

the magic option is -v
This way you could see the full informations

My p12 was 25 years long, it seems Google asks 30 years long now

Warning : it's not possible to update the certificate, the only way is to create a new one with the same informations and 30 years validity.
Sadly, doing this cancels the update system of Android.
Current users won't be able to update your app with the previous certificate, they have to delete and redownload it.

So backup and double backup your certificate !

Monetize 'cheap' apps

Interesting post on InMobi's blog

It tries to explain you how much you could win in releasing ads based apps vs paid apps.
Of course, you shouldn't forget it for CHEAP apps only !

The side note of this post is that you have 2 ways to monetize your apps : ads or update your sell price ;)

Another even more interesting thing of this post is the linked Excel sheet : it allows you to quickly find if you will earn more advertising your app.

I made a test myself:
* for apps will a small number of downloads, the answer is defintly "NO"
* for 1M+ downloads, the answer is "YES"
Like for money, the more download you have, the more download you'll get !