Bittersweet Candy Bowl iPhone app

From Candypedia

The Bittersweet Candy Bowl iPhone app is a mobile app associated with the comic, though these days “was” is the more accurate word. Officially called the “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Comic Reader”, it was the free Bittersweet Candy Bowl reading app for iPhone and iPod touch, launched in July 2013[1] and rebuilt the year after.[2] By January 2022 the site was calling it “now-defunct”, but its exclusive interactive comic, Picture Perfect, survives in the Bittersweet Club International members’ library.[3]

Features

The home screen in the original 2013 release.

The app was pitched as “easier to navigate than the website”, with “cute little animations, new drawings and easter eggs” tucked into the interface.[1] It ran on the iPhone and iPod touch. As advertised on the BCB store page, the app offered:[4]

  • “Super-clever” read-through tracking and thumbnail previews billed as better than the website’s.
  • Optional reminders whenever a new page went up.[1]
  • Exclusive wallpaper art, drawn by Veronica and artist friends.
  • Full access to Candybooru and, in the original release, the BCI members’ comics.

The app itself was free. A single in-app purchase unlocked the comic’s older chapters, along with the second half of Picture Perfect.[1]

Picture Perfect

Share artwork from Picture Perfect, the app’s interactive bonus comic.

Picture Perfect was the app’s big exclusive. The interactive side-story used, in the launch post’s words, “every silly gimmick we could think of, so you’ll be shaking, blowing and shooting to make your way through”.[1] Some of those gimmicks were rather touchy in practice. For the segment that asks readers to hold the phone perfectly still, Oliver suggested treating it “like a real camera” and setting it on a table, apologizing that the accelerometer “varies a lot between iPhones”.[5] In January 2022, with the app itself defunct, the comic was reformatted and added to the Bittersweet Club International library, making it available on the website for the first time.[3]

History

The original chapter list (left) and the version 2.0 comic reader (right).

The app launched on the App Store on July 8, 2013, “after six months of hard work”.[1] Thousands of people downloaded it within the first few weeks, and version 1.02 followed on July 31 to squash “a few small (crashy) bugs”.[6]

By August 2014, the site was calling the app “ageing” and asking readers to beta-test “the long overdue iOS 7-themed update”.[7] On November 15, 2014, Oliver announced version 2.0 as the “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Comic Reader”, with a redesign to match the new iOS look. He wrote that he’d “worked with our developer on it on-and-off all year”. They kept the thumbnails, preloading and read-through tracking, and added a section for reading through the entire Ask Roseville High archive. Oliver also acknowledged “one fewer feature: we had to take out BCI comics at Apple’s request.”[2]

The year 2016 was less kind. In March, after an interruption of service, the site cheered “THE APP IS BACK. Just in time for the iPhone SE to make 4 inches cool again”.[8] That October, Oliver reported the app had stopped working with iOS 10, and that fixing it would take “a bunch of time and money”.[9] The app was still listed on the site’s store page as of March 2016, but the listing was gone by May 2017.[10][11] By January 2022, the site called it “the now-defunct BCB iPhone app”.[3]

No Android version

Readers asked about an Android version again and again, and the answer was always no. Oliver preferred to “stick to the tasteful OS for the app, and provide a good mobile website for everybody else”, pointing to the time and money that maintaining even one platform demanded.[9] Veronica backed him up on that count, recalling that Oliver had bought a range of phones and tablets for testing and even had another person helping him.[12]

Trivia

  • The loading animation, in which Lucy rolls her eyes because she’s “sick of waiting for this garbage to download”, was a collaboration between Veronica and fan artist snooths.[13]
  • In April 2015, a bug let some users unlock the paid archive for free. Oliver decided he was fine with it, calling the app “kind of a labour of love with a pretty weak hook to get you to pay anything for it” and inviting anyone clever enough to find the workaround to enjoy it.[14]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 “BCB newspost: “The new BCB app, and Veronica at ConnectiCon 2013!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2013-07-08. Archived from the original on 2013-07-13.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “BCB newspost: “Announcing the BCB App, version 2.0!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2014-11-15. Archived from the original on 2014-11-15.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 “BCB newspost: “Week TWO of the BCI updates: TWO never-before-uploaded comics from our archives!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2022-01-24.
  4. ↑ “BCB store page (archived)”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2013-09-13.
  5. ↑ Oliver (2015-04-13). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
  6. ↑ “BCB newspost: “New members-only comics and the BCB app 1.02!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2013-07-31.
  7. ↑ “BCB newspost: “BCB @ Otakon, our new Tumblr blog & BCB app updates!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2014-08-04.
  8. ↑ “BCB newspost: “Convention mania!””. bittersweetcandybowl.com. 2016-03-24.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Oliver (2016-10-16). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
  10. ↑ “BCB store page (archived)”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2016-03-26.
  11. ↑ “BCB store page (archived)”. bittersweetcandybowl.com. Archived from the original on 2017-05-14.
  12. ↑ Veronica (2016-10-03). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
  13. ↑ Oliver (2015-06-13). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
  14. ↑ Oliver (2015-04-26). “Bittersweet Candy Bowl Tumblr post”. Tumblr.
Retrieved from “https://wiki.bittersweetcandybowl.com/index.php?title=Bittersweet_Candy_Bowl_iPhone_app&oldid=6128”