BlackBerry® World™ Development

[cwong15]

I don't think you managed to upload that screenshot correctly, but I think I understand what you mean. I have managed to reproduce the problem myself, and one of my customers was kind enough to send me a screenshot himself.

The thing that concerns me is the time frame. The last App World release was version 1.1, out last July. It has been many months since then, and certainly some months since this thread pointed out that Try&Buy was still broken.  I don't know what worries me more: that RIM would let such a serious set of bugs sit for months, wrecking the Try&Buy licensing model, or that it is taking so long to release any new version of App World. The software industry would typically rush out a hotfix in such a situation. I just wish RIM would at least keep us informed and provide workarounds, even if they can't deliver a fix yet.

[eaoliver]

The image works for me in Firefox, but not Safari.  Here's the image loaded from my own server (blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/eaoliver/error.jpg)

RIM should be ashamed of how long this problem has persisted.  When was the last time that you heard from them?  Ryan used to be quite responsive.  I cannot believe that nobody is working on this issue...

Earl

[cwong15]

Alas, I've not heard from Ryan in a while. I have not seen any sort of status update since Ryan's last post on this thread last October.

[eaoliver]

Thanks.  I sent a fresh email to vendorsupport.  Hopefully they'll get this issue fixed....

Earl

[rhearty]

Hi all,

I sincerly apologize to the lack of response here but I can assure you we are working on this problem.

I've been trying to respond as quickly as possible to the emails everyone has been sending to appworldvendorsupport@blackberry.com, but wanted to post as update here as well that we are still working on the problem.

I understand the frustration of anyone who is using Try & Buy and seeing undesired behaviour.  We have made Try & Buy available as a selectable Lincense Model, and for that simple reason we should be able to direct Vendors to using it with confidence.

Again, I apologize that I don't have any further updates regarding this, but I am pushing as hard as possible internally to have this resolved and make Try & Buy the most viable and successful License Model within App World.

[cwong15]

Well, I'm glad to see Ryan posting an update here, but we still have no fix and no ETA for a fix. In the meantime, we're on our own. Let's talk about a possible workaround. The forums have made some mention of resetting App World using Alt-RST. That is, you go to the My World screen, hold down the Alt key and type the letters R S T. For Storm, you would hold down num-lock to get the numbers, then type 3 4 (.

 Earl, I tried installing the free trial of your Brio Screen Recorder app on my Curve 8900 (OS 4.6.1.231) with App World 1.1.0.24. Sure enough, when I got back to the My World screen the Purchase button had disappeared. This is a familiar problem with Try&Buy apps: you install a trial, then find no way to actually buy it. I applied the Alt-RST trick, and when I got back into the My World screen again I found the Purchase button available again for your app. I don't really know much else about this Alt-RST command, except that it also clears some old entries from the My World screen. Would you like to give this a try? My own Try&Buy apps are KBLauncher, TimeForTea and MissingLight. If this works, maybe we can include this instruction in our product descriptions.

Another common problem is when people try to buy an app and get delivered the free trial. I think I see a possible contributor to the problem. One of my apps had a limited device compatibility list. As RIM adds new devices, they were added automatically as  either compatible or incompatible. Thing is, in this case the trial and paid versions' compatibility list somehow got out of sync. There were some devices listed as compatible with the free trial but not with the paid version. That might have caused some problems when trying to upgrade to the paid version that was not listed as compatible. For such apps, it's important to make sure the device compatibility lists are in sync. This is not the sole cause, I am sure, because most of my apps are listed as compatible with "all devices".

[boyanov]

We've been trying to resolve those issues like everyone else here and I think we've managed to resolve some of them. I'm sharing our experience about 2 common problems.

• Basically, you should always use incremental version, i.e. the version of your full version (ex 1.0.5) should be greater that the version of your trial (ex: 1.0.4). Also, it's always better to start with new product and not change a free product to a paid one - that could cause problems later with providing the correct builds to the end user. I posted more details on my blog, here: http://boyanov.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/how-to-setup-trynbuy-product-at-rimblackberry-app-world/.
• The other thing is the upgrades. People can see that there's new version (the full version) but there's no a button to download it. There are variations of that problem. This is what I did on my personal device for our own product: Removed the application from App World; Removed the App World itself; Reinstalled the App World; Logged into the App World through PayPal; Reinstalled our application. It also involves rebooting your BlackBerry 4 times - not convenient, but helped. I put the details with some screenshots here: http://blog.interlecta.com/?p=466.

Please share your experience trying the above, either here, on my or on our company blog.

[cwong15]

Given the problems we've had with Try&Buy, it's almost comical to see what RIM officially has to say about it. At least the intention is good, which hopefully means they will fix it eventually. Right, Ryan?

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/features/227/Tips-for-making-your-mobile-app-a-success

Try & Buy models are working well on the App World. RIM technical specialist Ryan Hearty told developers in one session that a single app using a try and buy model may work better than two separate versions – a paid and a lite. “Right now, Try & Buy is probably the best way to do it without littering the store with multiple copies of your app,” he said. “You're disconnecting them – users are not necessarily using your free app and then going back to find your paid version.” 

(Emphasis mine)

[William-08]

I hope RIM can solve the try&buy problem soon. It has affected a lot on sales.

I posted EasyDialer v2.7 to replace v2.3 in middle last november. But 3 months passed, I still see 70-80% downloads are 2.3. occationally, the very old v1.5 is even downloaded.

Back to last June, when I posted v2.3 to replace v1.5, it was quite smooth.

[mlamagra]

I've just abandoned trials completely, so have others.  If we submit them separately, they often won't be approved together, so when updates happen the trial will be out of sync with the full version, or else have to be delisted until the update's approved.  That's a problem even with Try & Buy isn't it, you can't tie the trial and full version together, but have to submit them separately.  If one's approved before the other, now all the trial and full downloads are non-matching.

So I'll propose a solution:  Have two sets of cod's for every build in the "manage applications" page -- the trial cod's, and the full cod's.  Then the corresponding trial and full version will always be together, and there will be no more having to have a different version number for the trial and full version.