What do Britney Spears and Yummy, my iPhone Delicious.com client, have in common? If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said nothing but I’d have been wrong. No, they both have had to grow up in public.
For a version 1.0 product, Yummy seemed solid to me. It was fast, coped will all my bookmarks and had the ability to add, edit and delete entries. I didn’t think that this would remain as a unique feature for as long as it has, but hey, that’s a bonus.
My iPhone application, Yummy, has been on sale in iTunes for a couple of months now and, as a number of other developers have noted, after the initial launch sales figures take a significant nose dive very quickly. I’ve been trying to think of ways to increase visibility without taking too much time away from actually making enhancements to the software.
As luck would have it, I got a “free trial” of Google AdWords and thought I would give that a try. Results have been… well, not exactly what I was expecting.
It’s been over five years since I last told you about my favourite computer and programming related books (don’t believe the date on that article. It’s been edited lightly a couple of times since I first posted it).
Having said that, some things have not changed. The vast majority of books on the shelves of your local retailer are very specific. Publishers seem to eschew broad, generally useful texts in preference for yet another beginners guide to Microsoft Word or C++ (or, more likely, Visual C++ 2005 Special Easter Edition SP2). I do not understand this. Sure, there’s a genuine need for “how to” books for specific technologies but is it not more useful to learn how to solve problems in general rather than how to solve a particular problem with a particular product?
As many readers know by now I am in the late stages of developing and releasing an iPhone application. This is the first time I’ve ever really been involved in the launch of a consumer product and while there’s nothing here that is likely to surprise any marketing guru’s, I’m finding it an interesting process.
I talked about pricing previously, but today I want to talk about the competition.
I downloaded the SDK1 shortly after the original announcement. The first version was fairly primitive, with little to no support for the drag-and-drop style of development used for parts of Mac OS X programs. I played around a bit, compiled a few demo applications but didn’t really get very far. Too hard, I though.
This originally started as a question on Apple’s support boards:
With the current AppStore model (which seems to be a money machine for developers) I do not understand why anyone would give away their applications. At least charge $0.99 and get something back for your hard work.
So, why do you give away your apps?
With the caveat that I have not actually submitted anything yet…
My motivation in writing an application was entirely for the pleasure of doing it. If I never do anything with it once it’s “finished” my goals have been achieved. So my only objective in pushing it to the AppStore is for other people to get some benefit from using it too. There is little incremental cost in doing so and zero cost means that it gets the widest possible distribution.
I’ve not done much programming in the last few years. When I first started working my job was mainly to “cut code” but I’ve done less and less as time has gone by. I now tend to concentrate on high level modelling and writing small utility scripts. I have not been doing much at home either, just minor tweaks to pre-existing software to “scratch an itch” or programs to automate tedious tasks.
When they first announced the App Store and the iPhone SDK I thought that a blogging tool might be something worth downloading. On the first day TypePad had their application but we had to wait until this week for the WordPress equivalent. On the plus side, WordPress for iPhone is both free and Open Source.
First impressions: it’s nice. Setting up a new blog is simple. Writing a new post is straightforward too, just press the “new” button, fill in the fields much as you would in the web interface and get typing. You can also add photos — either directly from the camera or from your photo library — but only to the end of your post.
The problem with trying to sell a lacklustre product to a disinterested audience is that even the best marketing that money can buy can’t help. Fortunately Microsoft had the wisdom not to throw good money after bad and decided to push Vista with their “The Wow Starts Now” campaign, one that neatly matched the quality of the initial operating system release. Very clever.
But recently Microsoft have decided that things have improved and that it’s worth marketing their flagship product with a little more gusto. I decided that I would help and try to think of a few new tag lines.
Earlier today daringfireball pointed me to Byline by Phantom Fish, a Google Reader client-side application for the iPhone.
Since I recently abandoned Safari’s built-in RSS reader for Google, this is just the kind of application that I have been looking for. Unlike a lot of programs I’ve found on the AppStore, Byline seems to be very well put together. The author appears to have included a thoughtful set of features. Not everything, just those elements you use every day; either a good starting point for later versions or an Apple-like approach depending on your perspective.
A common refrain is that computers are too complicated for ordinary people to use. Yet mostly when I see people sat with a notebook on their lap I don’t see frustration. The confusion tends to come when something doesn’t work as expected. Naturally bad design plays a big part in this but the biggest stumbling block comes when a dialog box like this pops up:
