We (Gleam) had a conf call with a product guy at Apple that gave us a lot of product tips. He gave us insight on how to polish and embezel our app so it will hopefully be featured on the App Store!
Points of our call:
- One in five users have a eye sight disability;
- Focus on early supporting new iOS features;
- Take into account every device size (so your layout adapts);
- Use all the iOS frameworks you can use!
- Details matter a lot, thats where the magic is;
Most of the call was about details and how we could improve our app, so I'm just going to dump everything that we took note :)
Our appstore screenshots had a frame around them, he told us theres no need for it. The focus should be on the interface and not on the text around it. Users want to see what the app looks like and we should focus on that. Also he told us the preview videos brings more install to your app and it's really easy to make (so we should do one).
He had access to our ipa, so he could see the bundle and the stuff in it. We talked about how we were not using XCode assets and should use it because of the upcoming ipa shedding. We were using, but mixpanel was not, so the bundle got poluted with all mixpanel assets. He also asked if we were using Storyboards, because he was seeing a lot of xibs. He selled Storyboards has the next best thing and that we should be using them. I don't know if he uses XCode much, but using one storyboard for all the logic kills my macbook air and if two people work on the same storyboard, version control goes nuts.
We also talked about having specific layouts for iPad, giving more focus on the content by hiding the tabBar and navBar while the user scrolls, having bounciness in lists since it's what the user is expecting, having double click to like an image right in the list of looks because a user will likelly try to do that, having the icons stroke size uniform across the app (we had different icons with difference stroke sizes in different parts of the app).
And then we talked about new features we could add to the app, like having a different layout for the 6+ (since its bigger), having a widget in the notification drawer (to get people to return to our app), support multitasking, implement iOS9 expanded search capabilities (so we show up when the users searchs something), and create a watch extension.
So the big take away was use all the frameworks, support all the screensizes, polish your app a lot, and be an early adopter of new iOS features!