How the App Store updates, plus, Scrabble!

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A few days ago I asked an iPhone dev how he and his ilk would send out updates/upgrades to their customers. He either didn’t know or couldn’t say due to the recently lifted NDA, but his answer at the time was ‘no idea‘.

But now we know that when an app is updated, the developer raises a flag when updating on iTunes. The App Store then notifies the customer in both mediums, both iTunes and the iPhone/Touch. A quick and easy reinstall of the app then occurs, making it easy to get patches or feature updates.

In a related vein, IGN indicated that the makers of Scrabble were about to release a patch to make it multi-player, but the article blurb indicated that it ‘may or may not be a free upgrade’. A note to iPhone devs: if you release a patch three days after your app is released, it damned well better be a free upgrade. Also, EA, while you are listening: how about dumping that ludicrous 25 second splash screen? We KNOW what app we’re about to play - after all, we just launched it, huh?

Below are some screenshots of an iPhone app update in progress. As a special bonus is my Scrabble stat screen which shows I am mostly smarter than a machine.

Enjoy!