According to Apple, ChessClock 1.3 was just posted. It sometimes takes a little time to fully propagate through all Apple’s servers, but it should be available imminently. Let me know if you have any further issues with hard-to-press info or time set buttons.

If there are any iPhone App developers who are curious as to how to solve the unresponsive info button problem, since I spent one of my two Apple Developer Technical Support issues on it I thought I’d share to make it easier for others.

There were essentially three issues:

1. Overlapping views that aren’t in the same hierarchy can lead to glitchy buttons. The fact that the info (and with 1.2 time set) buttons were in the root hierarchy (as the default project that XCode sets up for you does) while the rest of the chess clock views were in the main hierarchy made their overlapping problematic. What’s worse is that the problem will tend to show up on the actual device but not on the simulator.
2. The standard size for the info button is 18x19. That’s not a very big hit area. However, Interface Builder doesn’t let you change it for the standard info button. Since I wanted to put my Info Button under a view I was creating programmatically anyway, the Interface Builder limitation didn’t affect me, but be aware that you’ll have to programmatically set the size of the button to get a better hit area.
3. Less transparency offers a bigger hit area. Buttons don’t click over completely transparent areas of the button’s image. My clock set button had a very large amount of transparency, and even the standard info button has a lot. I changed the graphics to be much more opaque. In order to do this for the info button I had to change its type to a custom button and create an info button-like graphic.

I hope this helps someone else having similar issues. I got a lot of bug reports about this, and someone mentioned that this isn’t the first app they’ve had with the problem.

I submitted version 1.3 to the App Store last night with the following changes:

• Time and Settings buttons are easier to press
• iPhone does not go to sleep while Chess Clock is running
• Digital clock counts down past zero

If you assume the standard week to get things posted, it should appear for download around 11-Sept.

I tried to include many localizations in this release. I used a combination of google’s translation, the various language wikipedias, and internet searches to come up with the localizations, since I don’t speak these languages and ChessClock isn’t making enough money to justify a translation service.

If you want to see the setting screen translated to another language that you know, let me know. Also, if you want to translate the App Store text into another language it would be much appreciated and I’ll credit you at the bottom of the description.

ChessClock 1.2 was just posted to the App Store.

Adjustable time delay. Many more localizations. Fix all known bugs.

Version 1.1 has been posted to the App Store.

John Casasanta of taptaptap published his sales data and discussed it on the taptaptap blog, and later his final monthly numbers. Well, I thought I’d share the results for a much more obscure app of substantially less volume. I did no advertising, and my app has a very specific appeal. But still, I also thought you might be curious what the sum total of information that Apple gives you about sales. I imported it into Google Apps and removed empty columns and ones identifying id #, and published the stats for the first week of ChessClock sales here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pHdAmu_7dr_Nkd7OUMcrLJw

I’d like to make a pretty stacked bar chart showing daily volume by country, but haven’t sufficiently figured out the charting function of Google Apps.

It’s worth noting that from 8/4/2008 through 8/12/2008 I was the only chess clock available on the iTunes Store. On 8/13/2008 a copycat developer posted their app for $0.99. It seems to have made a noticable impact but didn’t completely decimate my sales. I guess when you’re only talking about the amount of money it takes to buy a latte, folks are willing to try a couple of apps. (Seriously, folks, stop posting how a $1 or $3 app is “too expensive”! Go write it yourself if you’re going to complain about that.)

Version 1.1 with the changes listed in the last post, as well as not resetting time on analog/digital switch, has been submitted to Apple.

Changes in version 1.1 include:
• Optional sound effects
• Smoother graphics on the analog hands
• Bigger difference between active and inactive clocks on analog clock
• Presets for 5m/30m/1h/2h on setting screen
• Don’t reset current time on app quit
• Language localization
• Fix bug in Fischer time to add time at end of turn

If you have any other suggestions or comments post them here.

It’s getting harder to find the good apps among the hundreds being added to the iPhone App Store. Word of mouth, reviews, and sites like http://iphone.iusethis.com/ (Sort of a Digg for iphone apps) help users find the good stuff. To that end, if you like ChessClock, I’d appreciate it if you could vote for it on the I Use This site.

It’s up! I submitted it Friday afternoon and it was posted to the App Store Monday afternoon. One business day is much better than I expected after reading all the complaining online.

I’m pleased to say that version 1.0 of ChessClock was just submitted to the App Store. I’ll put a link on this site as soon as it’s published.

Feel free to ask questions or give me any complaints/compliments in the comments area of this post.