Mutility 1.1.1

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I really wish I had a transcription of a recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast , because Marco had an excellent quote that sums up what this release is all about - something to the effect of "All these little quality decisions really add up". This is a release that's almost exclusively about polishing and being fussy about getting everything pixel perfect. I'm really striving to make Mutility as beautiful, clean, and functional as possible, and I think i've made some strides in this release, even if they're mostly in the settings screen this time around. Here are the main updates:

  • Reworked and organized the Settings screen, adding a number of icons from the beautiful new Symbolicons Air icon set. Adjusted fonts, colors, and borders to be more in line with the standard iOS table format.
  • Fixed a number of layout and animation bugs and spent way too much time assuring things are laid out pixel perfect. 
  • Added the player names to the preview in the customization cell in the Settings screen. They update in real time and rotate with the selected orientation. Giggedy.
  • Fixed the jarring abrupt appearance of the UI when the app first opens
  • Although I like the look of an all-lowercase name for Mutility, it looks awkward in many places. From this release on, Mutility is now a proper, proper noun.

And good news from 1.1.0 - there are more active users than ever and there have been no more crashes! It still may be too early to call it, but I think I finally straightened it out.

 

Symbolicons Air

Jory Raphael of Symbolicons fame recently released this beautiful set of iOS 7 styled icons, and it was the perfect answer to cleaning up and organizing the Settings screen. I first heard about Jory's work from Dan Benjamin of 5by5, where he did all (most?) of the podcast artwork. This icon set is great and a steal at $29, considering the licensing agreement allows for royalty free usage in commercial products like this.

You can buy the Symbolicons Air set here. The licensing agreement is very simple and fair. 

 

Tapstream Analytics Updates

This version includes an updated version of the Tapstream SDK, 2.5.1. I now collect the device's Advertising Identifier to more accurately judge usage. Originally, I did not collect this to be sent to Tapstream because I didn't understand the privacy implications. Turns out there really are no privacy implications, since it's an anonymized number that Apple has designed specifically for advertisers. If the user has 'Limit advertising tracking' enabled, the following rules apply with regards to using this identifier:

If the user has limited ad tracking, use the advertising identifier only for the following purposes: frequency capping, conversion events, estimating the number of unique users, security and fraud detection, and debugging.

Tapstream will use this identifier exclusively for conversion events (in-app purchase logging) and estimating the number of unique users. Using this unique ID is particularly important for estimating the number of unique active users, and I'm very interested in keeping up to date on that.

You can sign up for Tapstream for your app here and help me out at the same time!