any word yet on when this is going to hit the app store??? I cant wait! LOL

Anytime from now ;-) Will keep everyone posted when it is there. Again if you are interested to get your hand on the ad-hoc built you can request one at the Tapatalk Forum

my pants are getting tight waiting for this thing to be released on the app store! LOL

LOL I check the app store every day.

im checking every day even though i know it will probably be 2 weeks minimum before its out. i can't wait to have my iphone users add this. haha

We under-estimated the time it takes to get the app on itunes, lengthly approval process. We really hope it gets out the door really soon.

Meanwhile we have started the Private Message function where forum members can check their latest PM as easy as checking emails on their iphone.

that's awesome. I like the SMS mod that was created which sends us an e-mail about the PM but we can't reply unless we browse to the page. I've been subscribed and run here every time I get an e-mail that the thread has a new reply.

I don't understand that. I know other apps and developers that say the turn around is a week or so.

We have been waiting months now..??
:confused:

We are as frustrated as you. The app approval is about 7-12 days but to get the contract approved (for the first time) it takes 2-3 months and I heard the worst is 4 months.

Here is one example:
http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/bu...-how-long.html

We are looking into other venue to speed this up but it won't appear in next week or two.

Meanwhile we are taking this time to add features we think is important.

For those guy can't really wait I suggest you check out http://www.tapatalk.com/ to get a sense of the service and how this works. If you are really interested you can go ahead to subscribe this and/or request an ad-hoc version from there.

How about coding Blackberry sister product in the interim ?

We have started coding on Google Android, will look into Blackberry as soon as we have got enough bandwidth to take care. :cool:

great stuff!
w8ing for apple approval! ;)

Thanks

I can help beta test the android app if you would like. Myself and my brother both have G1's. If you need help, we can surely offer any.

Sorry, but LOL.... :rolleyes:

I am a forum owner. Last year some people asked me to integrate a mobile phone support for my board. I installed a mod, which detects mobile phone users and automatically sends them to a different style. Then I installed a a free mobile phone style. Done. Took me 10 minutes, costs me nothing. Everything works even albums, groups and of course posting!

Why in the world should I pay for your service? :p

However, good luck...

yeah, how dare he develop an app for us to give us more choice. and how dare he put a lot of work into it and so decide to charge people for it IF they, of their own free will, decide to buy it. what a ++++er, huh?

LOL. It's clear that you don't have any idea about iphone and the app store. Try it before you post again here and you'll understand the benefits of a standalone application.

We have released another round of update last night with new features include display of "Subscribed Topics" as a seperate tab, also added "quote" support and few others.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1242575754 https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1242575754

and of course create and reply posts that has been released since middle of last month :):

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1242575754

I have some concerns.

$80 per year for forum owners is pretty pricey especially since I may not have that many iPhone users compared to the majority of regular users. I love this mod but I'm not sure the % of iPhone users makes it worth $80 per year.

Most iPhone users I know purchase quite a few apps from the store so I thought this was going to be a purchased app at whatever price you set and all the forum owner had to do was install the mod.

If you want the forum owner to foot the bill I think a better model would be to pay a one time fee for the mod on the forum side and charge a couple bucks for the app on the member side. I'd be willing to do that. I own three fairly busy forums but I don't think I'll get much ROI for $240 per year.

I use my iPhone all the time on my sites and even do some admin stuff, it's really not that difficult to navigate and use the forum with the regular iPhone browser.

What's the up side for the forum owners here?

I may give it a try on one of my forums but I don't know guys. I'm pretty apprehensive with the price and the over all model they are using.

what is the appz name on App Store?

Yikes - I didn't realize it was being planned for $80 per year... that makes it a harder decision on whether or not to get this when it's released. I was willing to pay $20-$30 but $80 is pretty steep for 10-20 users to have the ability to view it on their iphone when we already have fully compatible iPhone styles and the auto phone detection mod that we can get for free. Granted, it's no iphone app but it still works flawlessly. Will have to wait and see on this one.

Yep, you are way better off the sell the app and give away the server plugin. I'll do it in that case, but not at $80 a year.

80 a yr is overkill imo.

A better business model would be to allow the download of the server side plugin, and charge a one time fee for the user to use the app.

Like most setups are.

Much better response. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying, your price no matter how great a product is going to deter many people.

Question. Couldn't you sell the server software and have the ipod's app have a destination url for the server it uses for the indexing and such? I ask this so that in case a webmaster wants to run his own stuff, he could rely on his own server and you don't have to pay for bandwidth and worry about uptime for that client.

agreed.

My members are techies and probably would pay $2-$3 for a native iPhone app, particularly if they are members of multiple forums.

If you give away the server app you get more forum owners on board actively promoting the product. Once that happens they are marketing the iPhone app to a much wider audience who then buy it. If I pay $80 and get unlimited users you get $80. If I get it for free and promote it and get 100 of my 3500 members to use it you make $200-$300.

It becomes a simple marketing strategy - give away one part to get a larger return on the second part. The trouble you have now is you've got it backwards.

I manage an Anime Forum (Spanish), I check the Categories, and the only category that applies is on the International Sites. Not so good to promo my forum I'll be on a generic category. :(

My mobile users are about the 0.02% of the forum traffic, is pretty low. The app, looks great, and maybe I could get a trial when Apple approves the app.

Is a hard decision:

App. only for iPhone ($80/year) vs a skin for all mobile browsers ($200/unique + 10 per upgrade). :confused:

I'll watch the app evolution and of course the site. :D

i posted this same response to dk on Tapatalk's support forums





i got a question for the peeps that are so against paying a yearly fee. do you think our precious vbulletin forums would be as advanced as they are if they didn't charge a yearly fee? this app is a baby and it will grow and mature to an app that is basically a full fledged vb app. they have plans to add modertor functions, pic upload from your iphone, check out some of the things we have asked for in the wish list thread winter has stated he plans to have these added in the future. man this app will be the shiat.

ok u pay the yearly fee for the iphone. but months down the line we will have android and bb. thats more users with the ability to access your forum via an app.

one thing i think peeps are not seeing is this app may bring new members to your site because your forum is listed in the directory.

yawl need to head on over to their support forum and witness how great their support is for the app and how open they are to our ideas and suggestions.

also there is a 15 day no risk trial fee. u get 15 days to try it and if u dont like it no harm no foul.

vbreal - the question is not of whether there should be a fee it is who should bear it. I'm firmly in the camp of a low-cost user app and no cost server app. I think they'll make more $$ that way since there would be more end users than forum admins purchasing something.

These are great feedback folks and exactly the team need in working out a sustainable solution to all.

I try not to talk about the commerical in great length here as I don't think our vb.org moderators will like it. But I can share with you here that the business model is from the pilot forums owner input - that they want the app is free so their members can access to increase user stickiness to the forum, they see this is a add-on to keep the user royal.

Please continue the commerical discussion at http://www.tapatalk.com/forum and I hope we can leave this thread as merge vb specific technical discussion

i know many iphone users and most of them hate paying for apps. most forum owners receive donations, use ads, or do subscriptions. 80 bucks isn't much to pay out of that pot of money. peeps flock to free apps, while alot of these same peeps shy away from paid apps. i think having he app free will help increase membership for our forums.

aye have you joined the support forum?

I shy away from $5 apps but 0.99 or 1.99 for a decent app I'd be willing to pay for. I wouldn't mind if it was a $20 yearly fee on the server side and then $1.99 for the app on the app store.

Just what I thought on page one..... using all of the members here to help develop this app so he can try and take advantage of the site owners with 80 per year lmao vb itself is not that expensive WTF are you thinking? lol

this is a big FAIL! until it's free for the server app and 2 bucks or less for the iphone app, that is if it ever get's approved...... they are only approving 3.0 version moving forward, so I hope you did your homework and made this work on 3.0? otherwise you have wasted your time as they will not approve it.

Told ya so........... lmao I knew I smelled something stinky.... lol

100% agree,

Disagree. I honestly think to make this a sustainable service (that's the key word here), an $80 yearly fee is not absurd at all.

Before you go and hit the quick reply button, hear me out. Let's say this see's some serious adoption by vB forum owners and YellowCoder/Winter has to add more servers to keep the service up and running smoothly. That's an expense that has to come out of the fee's for the software and we haven't even talked about hosting/bandwidth expenses (assuming a co-lo setup).

Also, when you talk about an iPhone app, keep in mind that Apple takes their cut off the top too! Those 100 installs at $2.99 doesn't exactly translate into $299 profit. More like $200. (apple takes 30%, + $100 a year for developers)

That's also assuming your top 2.8% of your 3500 members, 1) have an iPhone, 2) would by a $3 app for your site.

That's a big IF.

I'm a serious vB forum owner. I own several forums with around 14,000 total members and I take them all very serious. This is not a hobby for me.

I won't pay $80 a year each for my sites. The server side needs to be free or most vb owners won't get on board.

In order for this to be successful, its implementation on the server side needs to be wide spread throughout the vb community. With a yearly fee it won’t be. Doesn’t matter if the app is free, if there’s limited sites that participate on the server side the app is useless. I realize it’s early in the game but none of the sites I regularly visit are in the list and I doubt they will be anytime soon.. maybe never, so therefore the app is useless to me. If the server side was free you would have way more forum owners jumping on board and promoting it to their users which translates into app sales.

I've got to disagree with that thought process. In order to create a sustainable service, you have to have a business model that is built on continuous growth. The list of sites that will use this service will top out pretty quickly (esp at $80/year). However, the number of users on these sites will continue to grow exponentially.

I've got probably 500 users on my site who would purchase this app immediately for $2. That's over 12 years worth of $80 fees for me to use the software.

Think it through.

Take it to the next level. I too have a % of members who would for sure buy the app for two bucks. But as a forum owner I’m not going to pay for the service so no one on my sites most likely are going to buy the app nor am I going to market the app to my users.

The chances are pretty high that none of the other forums my members go to including myself are going to ever be on the list. Most forum members don’t randomly surf community sites. They are members of specific sites and only those sites. The chances of those sites being on the list are slim to none given the vast number of forums large and small that are out there. Thus the app is totally worthless.

If it’s free for the forum owners, you have many more that will jump on-board and in fact market it as a feature of the site. Again, if it’s free for the forum owner they will add it as a cool new feature and promote it to their members translating into not only more app sales but most assuredly a broader range of forums available.

I’m a regular member of probably twenty sites but I’d be willing to bet not one of them will pay for the service if I requested it. If it was free I’d be willing to bet most would gladly provide it for their members which again translates into more app sales.

There is no way this program will ever succeed unless it has wide spread application in the vb community and most forum owners simply won’t pay for it. Thus it renders the application almost useless unless the specific forums you visit are on the list which is unlikey.

You can put me down as another forum owner who is not interested in paying $80 a year for this. I hope the developer reconsiders otherwise a lot of hard work will be for nothing IMO. Besides, wouldn't it be better to charge for the app? I would happily pay $5-10 for this app on the app store. Registered forum users would outnumber actually forums quite substantially I would think?