This weekend, May 14-16, you can pick up Clean My Screen with a 50% discount!
Tell your friends & family or gift Clean My Screen in the iTunes AppStore.

The vastly improved updates of Clean My Screen and Clean My Screen Lite are now available via iTunes.

New in this version:

• Photo Library containing 30 beautiful photos for users of devices without cameras
• Photo Browser to view all photos you take with the camera (it also includes all the photos you took to date)
• Save photos taken in Clean My Screen to your Photo Library to sync with your computer
• Improved Clean-O-Gram sending and receiving
• Improved Reveal mode
• Vastly improved performance and stability
• Numerous bug fixes
• Adjustments for iPad
• And more…

You might notice that they’re something missing in this list: no new cleaners.
True. We first wanted to fix the numerous bugs that plagued Clean My Screen and the features that outright broke when Apple issued the 3.1 iPhone OS update. Some of those bugs were very hard to fix and required a lot of rewriting of the core code. Hard work, long hours, lots of caffeinated drinks. It’s done now and this is by far the best version of Clean My Screen to date.

Now we finally have time to process the videos of new cleaners that are waiting on the shelf and shoot some more. Those new cleaners will be incorporated in the next update. An update that won’t take several months.

Also on our list is a dedicated iPad version. There are a lot of changes to the video code that are available on the iPad but not yet on the iPhone. We expect them to become available when Apple releases iPhone OS 4.0, later this year. We can vastly improve the synchronization in Clean My Screen with those changes.

We also are going to publish a sister app to Clean My Screen, with different content. More about that soon.

As I told in my previous post we took the 5 hour trek from Montreal, Canada to Syracuse, New York this weekend and lined up at the Apple Store to get our hands on an iPad as soon as possible.

We were a bit worried since Clean My Screen didn’t work at all in the iPad Simulator Apple provided to developers to test their apps. But the moment I started the app (with sweaty fingers) and then had Pepper clean the shiny glass all our worries were gone. It worked great and it looks gorgeous.

Here’s a sneak peak I posted on YouTube:

I will add a few minor tweaks to Clean My Screen so it looks better on an iPad, and then we’re sending the update for review to Apple. We certainly plan to make a “real” iPad version of Clean My Screen, but the iPhone version works pretty well in “2 x” iPhone mode.

Expect a much improved version very, very soon.

I just reserved an iPad.

As a developer I need one so I can test future versions of my apps on an actual device. And as an early adopter I crave one because I want to play with it before everyone around me has one.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t sell the iPad in Canada yet and I do want to get mine as soon as possible. As a Canadian I can’t just order one at Apple’s US website since you need a US credit card linked to a US address to shop in the US online Apple Store.

But as a Canadian (and any other nationality) you can reserve an iPad and that’s what I did. I’ll pick it up (or have a family member pick it up) on April 3rd in a brick and mortar Apple Store that is located near the Canadian border. (Coincidentally April 3rd is very close to my birthday on April Fools Day, so I have yet another good excuse to get an iPad now.)

One only needs a US iTunes account to reserve an iPad, and that is easy to obtain, even without a credit card.

Here’s how you can reserve an iPad, in 23 easy steps:

1. Start iTunes
2. Go to the iTunes Store
3. Log out of your regular account if you see your email address on the top right by clicking it and clicking the “Sign Out”- button
4. Click on the flag icon on the bottom right
5. Change to the US store by selecting the US flag in the next screen
6. Now search for a free app
7. Buy the free app
8. iTunes will ask you to sign in: Press the “Create New Account”-button
9. Navigate to the next few screens by filling in the necessary details.
10. Make sure you enter a valid email address, and your real birthday in case you forget the password. In case you have no email address that’s not already linked to the Apple store you could use an email alias at MailExpire.com
11. When you reach the screen where you have to enter your address (with the credit card pictograms) make sure you select “None” as the payment method.
12. Enter an address in the US; this can be a real address but if you don’t have one that’s not really necessary. If you need a zip code use 94111, San Francisco and the state of California, a phone number could be 650 555-8211.
13. Now click the button and check your email! You should have received an email with subject “iTunes Store Account Verification”
14. Confirm your account by clicking the link in the email
15. Now, back in iTunes, enter your email address and password you entered in step 10
16. Okay, now it’s time to reserve you iPad: start by going to the iPad reservation site
17. Click the big blue button and on the next page select (or locate) an Apple Store that is either near a friend or family member that can pick up (and pay) your iPad at April 3rd or that is at a convenient location for you to pick it up yourself.
18. On the next page select which model of iPad you want to reserve
19. Press Next and enter the email address and password of the account you just created
20. Continue the reservation process by confirming your reservation
21. Now when you check your email again and everything went right you have received an email with the subject “Your iPad has been reserved.”
22. Print the email and take it to the Apple Store on April 3rd, or forward it to your friend or family member so she can use it to pick up your iPad. Update: it might be a good idea to also print the account details you entered in iTunes for the unlikely event they ask that. You can get this info in iTunes under the account link at the top right under ‘Quick Links’. You can’t print it directly, but you can take a screenshot and print that.
23. That’s all! Enjoy your iPad!

Your US iTunes account can also be used to buy free apps (Apple’s own iBook reader?) and free music from the iTunes Store that are not available in your country. It’s a bit speculative but when Apple’s iBook Store opens you might be able to get free ebooks for your iPad when they become available. For instance Amazon doesn’t sell free books on its international Kindle stores, they’re only available on the US Kindle store. Apple might do the same, and for now, there won’t even be international iBook stores.

It can be very useful to have a US iTunes account, even when you don’t reserve an iPad now.

Update 4 April:

It turned out there were no issues at all to buy an iPad as a Canadian, they asked for my Zip Code but when I said I was Canadian the Apple sales clerk -Oh sorry, the Specialist- just entered 00000 in their iPhone Credit Card POS app. The iPad is pretty cool and Clean My Screen on it, even as an iPhone app in double-pixel mode, is pretty amazing. It instantly made me decide to make an iPad version.

But you do need your US iTunes account to buy iPad apps, so you better put some money on it when you’re at it. I bought a couple of iTunes gift cards when I bought my iPad and that works fine. Don’t worry, iPhone apps that you bought in your own country sync just fine with iTunes.

The iPad can only connect to the US iTunes Store. But Apple doesn’t check your physical location (unlike sites like Hulu and Comedy Central) so you can log in fine, even when you are not on US soil.

Hi, just a quick update from the Clean My Screen headquarters. We’re working hard on the next version of Clean My Screen and Clean My Screen Lite.

Expect bug fixes (the Clean-O-Gram and reveal cleaning mode that broke in the latest iPhone OS update), some new and improved features and some new cleaners. We expect to submit the updates in a few weeks to Apple, and soon thereafter they will be available to you, for free as usual.

Stay tuned…

It’s been a busy time here in the Clean My Screen headquarters. Unfortunately we weren’t busy with Clean My Screen, but with other projects.

But now we have a little more time to devote to our licking friends. So expect some updates soon.

In the mean time, I’d gently ask you to write a review of the Clean My Screen applications in the iTunes App Store. More reviews means higher ranks, means more sales, means we can devote more time to development.

Reviews don’t have to be long so it won’t take you very long to write one. Just click here and iTunes will open automagically on the right page. Under the screenshots you will find the blue “Write a Review >” link. Click it, write a short review and you’re done!

Thanks a lot!

The wait is over!

The latest versions of Clean My Screen and Clean My Screen Lite are now available in the iTunes App Store.

Enjoy! And please let us know in the comments what you think about the new features and the new cleaners.

Note: Because we added two new cleaners to Clean My Screen the app is now a hefty 16 MB and only download-able when you use a Wifi connection and not when you use the cellular phone network. We might find a way around that for the next version.

Tonight I got an email from Apple:

“Your application, Clean My Screen – 1.5, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.”

This can mean all kinds of things, but sometimes it means really long delays. Let’s hope this isn’t the case since we really want to show you all the new features.

Anyway, the update to Clean My Screen, and the brand new Clean My Screen Lite won’t be in the iTunes App Store .

If you want to complain about this delay, please complain to Apple, that sometimes helps to speed things up. The email to send your complaint to is iTunesStoreSupport@apple.com. Tell them that you are a user of Clean My Screen and you are anxiously awaiting the update, but that for some reason it hasn’t been available in the iTunes App Store yet.

In the mean time, you can watch videos of the new cleaners in action on YouTube: Chico and Roxy.

Thanks for your patience.

Some of you may be wondering: “Why are there no updates yet?”

Well, that has various reasons, but the main reason is that we had so many ideas for Clean My Screen that we didn’t know which of the new features we’d introduce first. So we put them all in at once, which was frankly not so smart because it was a lot of work, more than we had planned. But they’re in now, they work well, we’re exited about them and we’re sure you’ll like ‘em too.
I won’t spill them all but I can tell you about one new feature: Reveal Mode. If you select that mode in the Options screen the cleaner will lick, but instead of gradually licking the picture away, it will appear everywhere she has licked. A very nice effect.

On top of the new features, we also added two new cleaners: Chico the chihuahua, and Roxy, a boxer. Both very eager cleaners, each with a very distinct cleaning styles.

Okay, so when will this update be available? Soon. We submitted the update to Apple for review and we expect they will approve it soon. And then it will show up in iTunes and you can download it from the AppStore.

We also introduce Clean My Screen Lite, a free version of Clean My Screen. It sports less features and doesn’t have as many cleaners, but it’s a good way to try before you buy.

Sorry to everybody who still wants a free copy of Clean My Screen.

During the introductory promotion more than 40,000 people downloaded Clean My Screen! Of course they are all eligible to free updates in the near future.

Something that also will arrive in the near future is Clean My Screen Lite. Clean My Screen Lite will have fewer features than the full version but in return it will be absolutely free.

More about that soon.