I attended Apple's iPhone tech talk in Austin, TX earlier this month, the conference was aimed to developers who are interested in developing iPhone applications but don't know yet a whole lot about the iPhone platform or how the whole process work from designing an application to uploading it to iTunes.
I have to say, I expected this forum to be a little more in-depth regarding XCode, and the rest of the tools, still I've got a lot of good information and tips from the speakers. in the first hour, they shared with us a few examples of real applications that have had great success in iTunes as well as some information regarding what they (Apple) think will work and what doesn't. For example, according to Apple, if you have an iPhone application that seems to be ready to be released, before you do so, look at iTunes and find out what your competitors are doing, find an application that is similar and try to put some extra time in the design, feel and look of the application, that will help you to differentiate your application from the competitor's and thus increase the number of downloads for your application. It looks like most people downloading and paying for iPhone applications are focusing in applications that function and 'look' good.
After I went to this conference, I opened xCode and started to make changes to my application which has not been released yet. The main changes I have been doing to this application for the past two weeks have been to the interface, yes, I want to make sure my application is easy to use and also, I want to make sure it is appealing to the masses, it has to be elegant and distinctive from other similar applications out there. I am following Apple's advice, you all have to agree that when it comes to UI design Apple knows what is talking about.
Lastly, I would like to mention that the only compliant I have about this conference is the bad lunch they served and the size of the t-shirts they gave away. Everybody got a little excited when the Apple speaker told us that everybody was getting a free t-shirt, the problem is that all t-shirts were one size fit all (or as I call it, one size fit none) and as you might have already guessed it... they were very small, I am a short guy and that t-shirt is too small for me and I can assure that the shirt didn't fit to probably 99% of the audience at that conference. Free t-shirts are very important to developers and the like, Apple better get this straight next time they offer a developer conference.