With over half a million Apps in the App store, it is no more the wild west where you can throw up any kind of app and succeed. The App store is now a mature place of business and your apps need to stand out from the sea of apps for it to be a success.

One way to make your apps stand out is to have a custom design. Having a well-designed app makes it look professional and buyers will choose to download it instead of your competitors’ apps. The feel of professionalism will make your buyer know you are in business and not just some hobby coder.

Two Roadblocks to Getting Great Design

At the end of this post, I will let you know how you can overcome these roadblocks but let’s examine two of them.

Up until now, there have been roadblocks to getting great iPhone App Design. As developers, let’s face it, we do not know how to design an app to save our lives. We may know what looks good but have no idea how to get it onto the screen. We end up spending hours and hours in Photoshop, tweaking and tweaking. Writing code is so much easier, isn’t it?

After long hours in Photoshop, we decide to hire a designer. We then hit another road block, great designers are expensive. Shelling out $2000 for app design is a brave thing to do as an independent developer. Especially when you have no idea of having a return on that investment.

How To Overcome The Roadblocks and Make Your App Stand Out

This is the reason why App Design Vault was setup. To help you overcome all these hurdles you encounter when you want to get designs for your apps.

Here is a sample of the designs you can download from App Design Vault.

Foody – Recipe App Design

PhotoPad – iPad Photobook App

PodRadio – Multimedia App Design

Social Boo – Social Networking App design

Saves You Time

You can download an app theme from the Vault’s gallery and you get an Xcode project with a sample app. This gives you a starting point where you can start tweaking the design for your app. You can say goodbye to the long hours spent in Photoshop.

Saves You Money

At the price of $70 per theme, your risk is greatly reduced because you don’t have to invest thousands of dollars in hiring a designer. Look out for the special bonus for iOSDeveloperTips readers at the end of this post.

Helps You Sell More Apps

As I said earlier, with a custom design, your potential buyers see you as professional contender and will want to download your apps. You can also give you users a unique experience so they can tell others about your app.

Special Bonus for iOS Developer Tips Readers.

Tope, the Vault Overseer has agreed to give you a special bonus. If you buy a theme from the Gallery, you will get a second theme as a free bonus. Basically, you get two themes worth $140 at the price of one, $70

To get your bonus, click the “Buy Now” button at this link, make your purchase through Paypal and then you will logged in to the site where you will be assigned 140 credits. You can then use those credits to download two themes of your choice at 70 credits each.

You have a lifetime guarantee on any purchases made at the Vault. You can try out the themes and if you don’t like them, there is no time limit on when you can ask for your money back.

This is a two day event and offers over 25 sessions across four tracks, covering a range of topics from social media to application ecosystems.

In addition, there is a free developer zone, including technical presentations from developers, handset operators and application stores.

Check out the Apps World website for more information.

Here’s your chance….a weekend opportunity to hone your iOS development skills and network with fellow developers and designers in Boston, Saturday and Sunday, November 12-13, at the Voices That Matter: iOS Developers Conference.

This is the fifth time Addison-Wesley has organized this conference. It is a well-regarded conference where you can get the education you are looking for to advance your skills and stay current with iOS application development. There is an impressive list of authors and speakers lined up, including: Aaron Hillegass, Erica Sadun, Jeff LaMarche, Chris Adamson, Graeme Devine, Mike Ash and many more.

With the introduction of the iOS 5 SDK, hundreds of new features have been added. Learn from the experts on how to integrate the latest iOS features in to your applications.

SPECIAL SAVINGS! As someone that reads this blog, you can save $100 off the conference fee by providing Priority Code BSTBLOG when registering. Register by September 30th and save a total of $200 as this $100 discount is combined with Early Bird pricing!

If you have any ideas, suggestions or other thoughts about how to make the most of Facebook for sharing iOS Developer tips and tricks, please post a comment here or on “The Wall”.

And of course, any and all are welcome to “Like” the Facebook page :)

The first iPhone/iPad DevCon conference was held in Sept. 2010 in San Diego – building upon the success of the inaugural event, this conference offers over 55 technical workshops and classes focusing on the iOS platform.

The first day at iPhone/iPad DevCon is filled with deep-dive full-day and half-day workshops. The next two days contain dozens of classes to choose from, offering you the opportunity to customize the conference to your needs. iPhone/iPad DevCon is 100% focused on helping you build and manage iOS applications.

Register by February 18th and save $400!

As with all previous Voices That Matters iPhone events, you will have an opportunity to learn from industry leaders who literally “Wrote the Books” on iOS Development. This two-day conference features a wide range of sessions, including:

* Multitasking
* Game design
* Accessibility
* Designing a killer user interface
* Augmented reality
* Unit testing
* Internationalization
* Many other timely and compelling discussions

Lead by industry experts and authors, this is a weekend packed with sessions and interactive discussions,

Enjoy a unique venue that offers an opportunity to network with other developers and mingle with experts including Mike Lee, Aaron Hillegass, Erica Sadun, Stephen Kochan, Rod Strougo, and Christian Hofstader, to name a few.

Register Early for the Best Prices!

Register before September 10th and the price is only $495. Provide priority code PHEM232 when registering to take an additional $100 off and attend for just $395!

iPhone DevCon has over 45 sessions to choose from, covering everything from design and development to marketing of iPhone and iPad applications.

Beyond the comprehensive selection of workshops and classes, you won’t want to miss the keynote presentations from two highly regarded Cocoa/iPhone developers: Aaron Hillegass, CEO of Big Nerd Ranch and author of the best-selling book Cocoa Programming, and Mike Lee, cofounder of Tapulous, creators of Tap Tap Revenge.

If you register by July 30th you can save $450 over the full price registration!

You’ll have a chance to learn from some of the best in the business, the scheduled speakers are (listed alphabetically):

* Kevin Avila
* Erik Buck
* Bob Clair
* Joe Conway
* Mike Daley
* Suzanne Ginsburg
* Aaron Hillegass
* Jonathan Rentzsch
* Erica Sadun
* Jeff Sinclair
* August Trometer

Voices That Matter is a two-day event and will offer many sessions covering the latest and most intriguing technology in application development for the iPhone and the iPad. A partial list of topics includes:

* Killer User Interfaces for iPhone OS Devices
* Core Animation
* iPhone OS Game Programming
* Audio and OpenAL
* Core Data for the iPhone OS
* Memory Management
* Xcode

Free Pass Giveaway

As we did for the conference in October of 2009, Voices That Matter and iPhone Developer Tips are giving away one free pass to the event in Seattle, quite an opportunity as the full admission price is $695 for the two-day event.

How the Contest Works

If you are interested to register for the drawing, all you need to do is click the Refer-A-Friend button below and fill in the popup form to refer one or more friends to this blog post. Make sure your email address is correct in the form, as that will be your ticket in the drawing. It’s that simple! I respect your privacy, your email will be used only for registration in the event.

We are no longer accepting entries for the drawing…

The Details

The deadline to register for the drawing is March 11th, 2010. The winner will be announced on March 12th, 2010. The drawing is for one free admission pass only, you will have to pay any additional travel or related expenses.

Good luck!

You can find any number of good forums/groups to ask iPhone developer questions. I created the [iPhone developer:tips] Google Group as there are more tips and tricks than I can keep up with, which is where this group comes in. Here’s your chance to share tips and tricks with other iPhone developers!

* Have something cool you discovered in Xcode?
* Got a snippet of code you found to be quite handy?
* Debugging tips and tricks?

I look forward to reading your tips!

John

Subscribe to [iPhone developer:tips];

Email:

Visit iPhone-Dev-Tips Group

Thought this would make for an interesting experiment to see if/how Friend Connect might be a useful addition to the blog. The Popular Posts gadget seems an interesting approach for helping to narrow in on interesting and popular content.

If you are up for it, register for Google Friend Connect and recommend a few posts…