No one knows better than we do the frustration of getting your shiny new iPhone 5, taking it out of the box while savoring that new iPhone smell, only to find out that your favorite flashlight/gesture based app/safe cracking simulator is only optimized for puny 3.5 inch screens.

With that in mind, we’ve just updated The Heist to support 4 inch displays, finally giving you that extra half inch of pure awesome.

So take this opportunity to be puzzled, flummoxed and bewildered by the crazy locks on this vault, while taking full advantage of your hardware capabilities.

Oh and watch out for Sophia, I hear she’s pretty untrustworthy.

http://theheistapp.com

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Today we’ve launched Camera+ 3.8 (1.3 for iPad) and it’s got a lot more culture now. We sent the app back to school to learn a bunch of different languages and the end result is that it now speaks the following, in addition to its native English…

• German
• Spanish
• Italian
• French
• Japanese
• Korean
• Simplified Chinese
• Traditional Chinese

The process

If you’re curious about how it all went down behind the scenes, I’ll detail a bit of the process for you. As with everything we do, we wanted the translations to be of the highest quality so we searched for a good, solid localization house. After looking over a bunch of good candidates, we decided on wordcrafts. If you develop apps and plan to do any localizing, I recommend them as they were great to work with.

Initially, we planned to translate Camera+ into around 20 languages. And that we did. But at the 11th hour, we made the tough decision to drop around half the planned languages. We threw out a lot of work since the translations were all done but we realized that the whole localization process goes far beyond just the translations.

No doubt, we anticipated that localizing an app as big as Camera+ would be a huge effort, but we still underestimated the reality of it. And moving forward, we’ll now always need to translate any new features we add.

We did a lot of work to automate as much as we can but there’s still a ton of other things that need to be done for each language. So to start, we decided to scale things back and go with a handful of the more popular languages. Depending on how things go, we’ll possibly add back some of the stripped languages in the future.

And speaking of how things go, I’ll likely post about the results down the line. We’re really curious to see if the efforts were all worth it and I’m sure there are plenty of developers out there who’d love to know, too.

Camera+ 3.9 and beyond

Some of you may recall that when we released Camera+ 3.7, I mentioned that the next release would have a bunch of nifty things in it. Welllll… that release got shifted from 3.8 to 3.9. The good news is that 3.9 (among other big upcoming releases) has been in simultaneous development along with this release, so we’re not very far off from launching it.

To make up for this slighting, here’s a little preview of what’s coming up in it…

3.9 is part of the convergence between the the iPhone and iPad versions and we’ll be introducing a nice UI in it so that you can do effects layering. When you combine two or more effects in Camera+, you can get some really cool results.

There’s still a lot more to do to have complete convergence between the two platforms and we’ll be continuing along those lines beyond 3.9. And then we have Camera+ 4, which we’ve literally been working on in parallel for the past two years. Just wait…

http://campl.us

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We’ve just hit a pretty big Camera+ sales milestone… 10 million paid copies of the app sold! It’s pretty hard to believe that there are that many copies out there being used by all of you. Thanks very much for your support!

But enough about that. I’m a combination of both jazzed and chuffed to show you what we have coming-up for Camera+ 4…

An exclusive Camera+ 4 preview

For the first three major versions of Camera+, we tried to put a lot of emphasis on both design and functionality. But studies have shown that this isn’t the direction that the mobile industry is going. What’s now in vogue are much more primitive, “flatter” designs and a general scaling back of useful features. It’s become Clear that these flat designs that lack logical features are on the Rise and the more detailed designs with desired features are becoming as rare as Solar eclipses.

So following in the footsteps of all these trendy, new apps, we’ve removed all the rich Corinthian leather from Camera+ and whittled photography down to its barest essentials… shooting, gloating, limericking.

Shake to shoot

The first thing you’ll notice is that we’ve killed-off the viewfinder. The viewfinder is an antiquated concept and we’re trying to get with the times here.

The second thing you’ll notice is that the shutter button has also been retired. It just doesn’t get any simpler. But how do you actually take photos? Our innovative shake to shoot system is the answer to that. We’re still tweaking this as pics are coming out a bit blurry, but that’s a minor detail compared to the elegance of the feature.

Swipe to hear John Gruber gloat

Gruber was right. The skeuomorphism is wrong.

Gruber was also right about flat design. With the advent of retina displays, because of the higher pixel density and quality of the displays, there’s absolutely no more need to attempt to make designs look good anymore. The display does it all for you.

But don’t just take our word for it. Look for yourselves…

When I saw this, I literally wet myself. If your knickers are dry right now, you obviously don’t get it and you’re not worthy of that iPhone 5 you’re holding.

And if you ignore the little detail that you don’t actually interact with elements on a newspaper as you do with software, you can easily see why Gruber’s idea that the evolution of software design parallels the evolution of print design is pure genius. The man knows his stuff.

Pinch to limerick

It may seem like we’ve scaled things back a bit too far feature-wise, but once you try our innovative pinch to limerick feature, you’ll quickly change that tune.

Camera hardware advances

Using private APIs (shhhhh!), we’ve cleverly managed to find a way to overheat the camera circuitry in your iPhone. The result… TRUE ANALOG FILTERING!! Now every single photo you take will automatically have that decomposed Polaroid photo look that’s all the rage with the tweens these days.

What the hell did Einstein ever do that makes him such an authority? Did he ever make an app? Not as far as I know. With Camera+ 4, we’ve taken simplicity to an unprecedented level.

What’s taken us so long to jump on this bandwagon? We like to be a step or two behind the leading edge. The leading edge is scary… not scary like Lady Gaga, but still pretty scary, nonetheless.

Still not convinced? Stop being a hater! The vocal minority hath spoketh, and we’ve listeneth. We’re positive that once you try Camera+ 4, you’re going to love it it’ll change photography for you forever!

http://campl.us

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Camera+ 3.7 is hot off the presses. Here’s what you have to look forward to…

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We’ve just released Camera+ 3.6.2 (and 1.1.2 for iPad). Here are the release notes detailing what’s got us all stoked…

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Here are the release notes for 3.6.1 (1.1.1 iPad)…

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We’ve just released big, new versions of Camera+ for both iPhone and iPad. Here are the release notes with all the details…

I’ve been on a bit of a “hiatus” with Camera+ for the past several months, but starting with this update, I’m now back in the driver’s seat for both the iPhone and iPad versions of the apps. And the development team we now have in place is stronger and more driven than ever. One of the things that we’re striving for is parity between both versions of the apps and we’ll be making a lot of progress toward that goal in the upcoming releases of Camera+.

http://campl.us

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Over two years ago we released Camera+ for iPhone. At that time we’d been working for a year in an effort to create the best camera app for iPhone. We wanted to make an app we’d love to use ourselves.

After an amazing reception and unbelievable support from all of you, Camera+ reached the incredible milestone of being #1 paid non-game app of the year in 2011, and as of today we’ve sold over 9 million copies. But there’s always been an empty iPad-shaped hole in our hearts.

On behalf of the team I’m thrilled to introduce Camera+ for iPad.

We’ve taken parts of Camera+ for iPhone, and completely reimagined, redesigned, and rebuilt others. We’ve created what we believe is the most intuitive, powerful, and beautiful editing experience on the iPad. We thought about everything that makes Camera+ great, and what we would change to have it shine on the iPad. We could have simply enlarged the existing editing interface, but people use their iPads differently. Camera+ on the iPhone is about getting great results, as quickly as possible. That’s still a part of the iPad version, but the large screen and advanced editing features allow you to focus and add detail to make your photos truly shine.

Some of the new feature’s I’d like to highlight:

iCloud Lightbox Sync

We decided early on we wanted to sync your Lightbox between Camera+ on iPhone and iPad (or 5 iPhones, if that’s how you roll). We wanted to make it so you could shoot everywhere you go — then come home and sit down to a unified lightbox and edit till you collapse. It’s all automatic, you just flip a switch in the settings and we take care of the rest.

Advanced Adjustments

Perfect your images with advanced image adjustments, including white balance, exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness and red eye removal. With Camera+ for iPad it doesn’t need to be confusing, you’re just a slider away from tweaking your images to your hearts content. Need a tad bit more saturation, give it a nudge. Need more blur? You get the idea.

Brush on effects

On the iPad you can brush on (or off) each effect with your finger so you apply it only where you want. You can set the brush size, softness and intensity for ultimate control. So don’t apply your effects to the whole image like an amateur, show some restraint and let your fingers do the talking!

Layering effects

We’ve also added layering of effects. You can now layer two or more effects to create your own unique results. Adjust the intensity of each layer and drag and drop to change the order. Why not mix “So Emo” with “Tailfins”? You have great taste, now prove it!

Shoot like a pro

Up until now we’ve avoided the elephant in the room: “Won’t I look ridiculous if I use my iPad as a camera?” — I’d love to tell you that you’re wrong and it’s amazing, but you’re not and you will. But don’t let that stop you. Be strong. Be different. Camera+ on iPad allows you to shoot just like on the iPhone. We’ve brought over the focus and exposure controls we’re famous for, plus all the other things people love from shooting with Camera+ on the iPhone. So adopt the bold shooting technique of the iPadographer and go large!

Some iPhone love too!

We’ve also updated Camera+ for the iPhone to version 3.5. We’ve added in iCloud Lightbox Syncing and also now take advantage of the full height of the iPhone 5’s amazing screen. We’ve also squashed some iOS 6 bugs and made this the speediest release of Camera+ ever.

We are confident you’ll love Camera+ for iPad. It’s on sale now at an introductory price of $0.99 for a really limited time.

Grab it on the App Store

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As some of you are aware, many tap tap tap people also work on projects for our other company, MacHeist. And after over three years have elapsed since the last full season of MacHeist, we’ve just launched MacHeist 4.

The last time we did this, for MacHeist 3, the App Store was in its infancy, only being open for less than a year. At that time we were much smaller, so tap tap tap essentially went on hiatus for the time that it took to plan and execute MacHeist 3.

But this time around, we’ve grown quite a bit and we have a lot more people working on things concurrently. So instead of this post being about me saying how we’re going on break for a while, I’m here to tell you about the MacHeist 4 launch and to also let you know that we have some big things coming-up here at tap tap tap very shortly.

In fact, we’ve just submitted something HUGE to the App Store and we’re expecting it to be approved and ready for launch either this week or next week at worst. I guarantee that this will be very exciting to many of you.

And down the pipe, we have many, many cool things coming-up. One of these things is what I consider to be our most coolest app yet. I can hardly wait for this one to be launched.

So if you’re into solving puzzles and mysteries, come down at MacHeist.com and join the 1.5 million or so awesome members who are having a ball socializing in our forums, playing the MacHeist missions, and collecting free copies of some sweet Mac apps. If you enjoyed our iPhone game, The Heist, you’ll surely love playing along since The Heist has its roots deep in the MacHeist 3 missions. We’ve just launched nanoMission 1, so here’s your chance to jump-in on the ground floor.

If you’re not into games and such, hang-out here and watch for our upcoming iOS offerings. I’m hoping that you’ll do both. In any case, there’s a lot coming down the multiple pipes to be enjoyed by all…

MacHeist.com

Last summer, we introduced our new spin on MacHeist’s crazy missions, puzzles solving and software freebies to the iPhone… we called it The Heist.

One year later, we’re proud to announce that over a million of you have taken up the challenge of cracking our safe! That’s a lot of heisting, and a lot of Sophia phone calls!

To celebrate this huge milestone, we’re going to drop the price of entry and see just how many more people we can convince to join our life of pretend crime! So as of today, The Heist is now free on the App Store. If you thought the game was a steal before… we thought it’d be cool to go a step further and divide the price by zero.

We know what you’re thinking, and you would be correct. This is indeed the perfect moment to consider a career change into a life of crime or start a virtual crime syndicate with your friends and family.

Just don’t get too comfortable waiting around to prepare for your ‘final score’. The free sale is definitely temporary, and will officially end when something big starts this year.

That’s all for now. And as always, happy heisting, agents!

It was two years ago today that we launched Camera+ 1.0. Coincidentally, we’ve sold our 8 millionth copy of Camera+ as of today.

Past, present, and future

The past two years have been been a pretty wild ride with plenty of ups and downs, both internally and externally. Through thick and thin, we’ve managed to grow the development team to 17 people now and we have several “sub-teams” focusing on particular areas of the app.

Some of these areas are pretty substantial and you’ll all be seeing the results of one sub-team’s work in the next few weeks. I’m not going to spoil the surprise but I’ll just say that the next major release of Camera+ has been in the works for a very long time and it’s going to make many of you very happy.

In addition to this upcoming release, which we’ve code-named “Darkroom”, we currently have four other major areas that the various sub-teams are focusing on. In the coming months, you’ll be seeing some pretty awesome things that we’ve all been slaving over.

Funny money

In the past two years, we’ve been approached by several companies that’ve wanted to acquire us. It started with Adobe, then went to Zynga (for The Heist, not really for Camera+), then Google. And most recently, Twitter.

In addition, we were very close to closing our first round of funding recently. We ultimately didn’t like the direction the investors were trying to push us in so we decided to not do it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… fuck the VCs!

We greatly value our independence and in all cases, we’ve fended the suitors off and chosen to remain independent. Fiercely independent. We have a ton of things we want to accomplish here and working for some conglomerate or having bean-counting investors breathing down our necks simply isn’t the way for us to achieve them.

The proposed Facebook acquisition of Instagram fueled a lot of ridiculousness in the industry and the the number of zeroes that’ve come-up in these negotiations has been insane. These offers have been tempting… extremely tempting in some particular cases. Now I know how that old-timey chap felt with the snake and the apple or whatever.

Will the failure of the Facebook IPO change the climate here going forward? Possibly. But it doesn’t matter… we didn’t build this company with the intention to flip it. We’re in it for the long-haul and we’re committed to building a real business that makes great apps, not on selling-out. We’re doing more than fine on our own and we’ll continue to do do so on our own. Again, fiercely independent.

So that’s where we’re at. I want to assure you that we’re 100% dedicated to trying to make Camera+ the best and coolest app on the planet for you.

Now grab a glass of champagne and join us in celebrating two truly wonderful years of Camera+. And here’s to many, many more!

http://campl.us

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Last year, we released The Heist for iPhone. The reaction was awesome.

We’ve since been thinking a lot about what worked. Running through the list:

• Heist theme, story and setting
• 4th wall-busting light ARG elements
• Fiendish puzzles to solve
• Crack the MacHeist vault
• Awesome production value
• Free software, with Eets as a freebie to loot at the end

It’s a fine list, and it’s tempting to pat ourselves on the back for successfully porting the essence of the MacHeist experience to iOS.

But we started thinking about what didn’t work, or what might be missing, and then it hit us. We had somehow managed to forget the very thing we’re famous for – a bundle of awesome, discounted software, and delivering insane, bordering unbelievable value for our customers.

So we made it a bundle.

New in The Heist 1.1, crack the safe and loot up to $25 of awesome games for Mac and PC… PLUS, we’re also lowering the ticket price to just 99¢:

*World of Goo limited to the first 25,000 who make it to 100% completion

Yes, it’s an absurd, impossibly good value proposition. We figured if we ran the numbers, they wouldn’t work out. So we forgot to run the numbers.

This one’s on the house. Enjoy!

• fixed a bug where Camera+ would launch very slowly if you previously had your shooting mode set to Burst (if you’re still experiencing slow launch times, please contact us with more details so we can help resolve any lingering issues)
• fixed a bug where some user’s photo libraries weren’t able to load after pressing the Magical + Button™
• fixed a bug where a mysterious white line would appear at the bottom of the Lightbox at seemingly random times (our first assumption was that it was some sort of paranormal thing, but after further inspection, it turned out to simply be us using too aggressive of an image optimization setting for the app graphics… science wins again!)
• fixed a bug where we somehow cut the wire that links the optimized quality setting in the menu to the actual function in the app… apologies to those of you who have limited space on your iPhone
• fixed a bug relating to missing date information in the photo EXIF data (apologies for the jargonriffic explanation for this one)
• NOT owned by Facebook

Oh, and speaking of Facebook, we have fixes for the issues that some of you’ve been experiencing with Facebook posting. We decided that it’d be best to hold them for the next release because we need to do much more extensive testing on them, though. But rest assured that we’re on it and you’ll see them in another update shortly.

http://campl.us

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A few weeks ago, we launched Camera+ 3.0 with a new app-integrating API with some amazing apps like WordPress, Foodspotting, and Tweetbot on board. We’re excited to announce a whole new bunch of amazing apps that have integrated Camera+ features into their own apps. It’s a situation where everyone wins, especially the users, which is the most important part!

Pair

Pair is a private shared timeline for couples which allows them to easily send SMS messages, photos, videos and locations. In Pair, you can access all the creative shooting and editing tools of Camera+ directly from the “+” button. Take a photo, edit it, and hit “use”. Your photo will pop up seamlessly on your Pair timeline.

“We didn’t have enough time to figure out how to do custom photo filters, so the integration API was a life saver. Thanks so much!”
— Jamie Murai, Pair

Forkly

Forkly helps people discover and share great food where ever they are. Now with Camera+ integration, users can make their food photos come to life using some of our best specialized features like photo flash light, the food scene mode, and a number of great fxs.

“It was easy to integrate the new Camera+ API into the Forkly app. Food photography is a challenge and Camera+ is helping Forkly users to transform a quick shot here and there to images so vibrant and delicious that you can practically taste them. It’s an exciting move forward for the full Forkly experience.”
— Brady Becker, Forkly

Roamz

Location-based social networking app, Roamz added integrated with Camera+ in their most recent version allowing their users to get more creative with their shared photos. Now, you can easily access Camera+ from the “Add Activity” panel.

“Integrating Camera+ into Roamz was a cinch for our developers, giving our users access to a world-class photo editing service. Now it’s even easier for them to share incredible images to within our community, which was something they were crying out for. We couldn’t be happier with how it fits into our service.”
— Heather Ann Snodgrass, Roamz

Scotty

Galarina’s Scotty app allows you to transfer all your Camera+ lightbox photos between iOS devices or from an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to a Mac.

Wrenchy

Wrenchy is virtual garage app that keeps you current on regularly scheduled maintenance needs for your car. Making your car look awesome is a snap with Camera+ integration. Go ahead, HDR your Porsche, we know you want to!

The Camera+ API was incredibly easy to use and makes an awesome addition to Wrenchy. Taking pictures of your auto maintenance receipts for your records is a central feature for Wrenchy. Camera+ makes our receipt management really amazing. Thanks a lot guys!
— Bryce, Wrenchy

Join the cool club!

All the juicy API details are on api.camerapl.us, along with the integration library, a sample app, and a support forum. If you would like to learn how Camera+ integration would be a great addition to your app, please check it out!

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One of our users, Ed Elliott created a detailed guide for Camera+ that is worth checking out. If you are looking for a little guidance on how the app works, this comprehensive guide goes into detail about the various shooting modes, editing tools, and sharing options available in Camera+.