Maintenance Mode

After nearly 16 months of writing my own iOS apps, I have decided
to move them to 'maintenance mode'*; by this I mean that I will no longer enhance my apps, even if asked to do so by the most polite of my customers.

Financially, as is evidenced by my prior postings, my apps have been decidedly unremarkable, having only reached 'ramen profitability' after 14 months, and this with nearly 20 income apps in the App Store (I won't even mention the Google Market, that quiet haven of cheerful freeloading).

Coupled with the occasionally dispiriting negative review, motivation has been increasingly harder to generate; just this morning, I had an undiscovered polyglot claim that the words I was using in French Gender (Free) were not indeed French, but rather Spanish or Italian; this one star review will stain my honest app until the end of time (no, asking Apple to remove it won't work - I've tried; in fact, sometimes I've been tempted to write a deeply heinous review on the app of another, just for the pleasure of having it removed).

Why has my success been so modest? Is the market for focused, educational apps so small? Do you really need to spend a fortune to stand out? Do my apps suck? Maybe - certainly a couple could be fairly accused; however, some do attract positive response (French Numbers is probably my best regarded). For my part, my best app is Residoo (but wait for 1.42) as being the most sophisticated, with the best user interface; granted the logo needs a lot of work.

The other justification for my apps - that of providing a convincing portfolio to attract commissions - has already been accomplished as much as it will be; my skill, such as it is, is accurately reflected in my published apps. In this age of increasingly hyperbolic claims from developers as to the level of their competence, a portfolio is important. Typically, when I wanted to learn an aspect of the SDK, I would write an app, as with the woefully misunderstood Teletouch, and XMPP.

As any developer knows, software is never finished, and there's a lingering part of me that will always hear the tantalizing siren of some feature, the development of which will have to be calmly but authoritatively suppressed by the more practical part.

If I was pressed to find a silver lining- not a mean feat given the mid-February weather that presently oppresses - at the very least I've added a solid tool to my tool box; mobile client development isn't going to be saturated anytime soon - just look at how few sites have been reformatted for such devices; and, in general, my ability to make usable user interfaces has improved.

There's a semi-obsessed part of me that would have attempted to succeed to the point of an obligatory strait-jacket fitting, but for the health of the rest of me, I cannot allow that.

If anyone wants to give me their theory for the failure of my own apps, I would sincerely be all ears; and if your advice results in a visible increase in sales, you will be justly compensated. At bottom, the most compelling spell in all of this business is the idea of earning income from products, little streams of revenue pouring in from the four corner of this our cold earth, 24 X 7.

Maybe I'll figure it all out one day, but in the meantime:

I hereby resign my position as hapless App Busker.

* By 'maintenance mode', I do not take the more extreme meaning from the Unix world.

One Year In

Today is something of an anniversary: One year since I submitted my first app to Apple.

It was the client for the now-defunct Mock Exchange; if I remember rightly, I received my iPhone on October 10th, and immediately dove into the early books of the still recommended Apress series; as I likely mentioned elsewhere, I chose this particular app as the server was already available and t(m)x was still meaningful to me (I have since admitted to myself that my kid is ugly).

It betrays my early optimism that it was a 'free' version; the paid version never materialized; when the iPad came out, I even thought to make a full 'HD' version; I never did; this app was the only one for which I never received either a review nor a direct email, even via the website.

The sole message from the cloud of unknowing was a single star ranking in the USA Store.

Once noticed, I immediately yanked it with a ruthless pleasure, figuring this was doing nothing for my portfolio; for that is how I see my apps: In the absence of anything higher than touchingly modest sales, it can only serve as a portfolio, 'proof' of my present abilities as a developer for that platform.

And indeed over the past year, I've had several commissions; I'm still getting the hang if it but it might indeed become a sustainable way of making money - far south of wealth, but comfortable north of ramen noodles.

Although I'm swimming in a crowded pool, my background with writing servers seems to

thin the crowd, at least for the present.

One part of the 'business' that continues to confound me concerns those who approach me with a product idea, ever caution to not say too much, lest I steal their concept like the denim swashbuckler that I must appear to be; sometimes they insist on NDAs and even NCs, but I usually refuse and we part ways, as if from a speed dating circuit; recently, I've considered hiring the occasional hour of a lawyer to help me understand such consequences.

Open question to the world, lawyers included: Why would I agree not to compete, when I don't even know the nature of the app? And why would I volunteer limit the opportunities for earning my livelihood for the mere consideration of being chosen to build the app?

In any case, this anniversary has triggered a change in my attitude to this business, yielding the following resolutions, in no particular order:

I'll continue updating my only apps, but only if it will very likely raise sales; only if the requestor writes a largely positive reviews, for these do matter; if such an update, or even a brand new app, will teach me something and thus enrich my portfolio in general.

In brief, if it leads to money, I'll likely do it.

Quiet Desperation at the App Store

'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” - Thoreau

I'm tempted to say the same of the silent bulk of those who develop for the Apple App Store. Then again, maybe it's merely a matter of my misery seeking company.

Misery is too strong a word, even for a weekend melodramatist like myself; however, I would like to share some candid glimpses of one such app developer that you don't see featured in the media - and for good reason.

I originally started such development when my primary skill - Java - was neither reliably paying the bills nor engaging my brain as once it did. At the time, a close friend - a fellow programmer - was starting to intrigue me with his enthusiasm. Being a closet competitive person, as well as wanting to have the entertainment of learning something along with someone else, I bought a 3Gs, enrolled myself in the Program, and ordered a stack of iPhone related books from Indigo (all from the first-rate Apress series as it happens).

This was in late October.

Since that point, I've independently designed and coded 8 apps, all of which have been accepted. You can see details on all of them at my iPhone self-promotional site (I know, it's a cheeky domain for a 'beginner' but it could be fairly said that we're all beginners where this remarkable device is concerned). I should say that I was not on paying contract during this time, so I could dedicate myself to this enterprise full time.

What was my motivation?

Foremost, it was intended as a curriculum with the important byproduct of a showcase of apps which would persuade future (and paying) clients that I indeed knew my stuff -- well, at least to the level evidenced by my apps; I'm not going to market myself as a game developer, for example. Of course, having done the 'graphic design' myself, all of the apps have a hopefully endearing amateur veneer(who am I kidding, I know very well that there are those who must simply walk past my homely kittens in the App Store, for this very reason; if you're a local and talented graphic artist with even a trace amount of mobile app experience, please do contact me).

In that regard, the experience has been successful: While I've yet to be paid to do this work, I've had regular enquiries, one of which even made reference to one of my apps - Residoo - which persuaded them that I was capable of doing a similar product.

Another motivation?

To have fun; Java's been good to me, as has been contracting (putting aside this tiresome recession); but it's hard to beat designing and developing one's own app as one sees fit - and quickly at that; a few of my apps (Blue Dot, Word Faucet, Erasmos Clock) took a day or less from first key touch to submission (I did design them on paper, beforehand, however). That's fun in my book.

But yes, as you'd expect, I did have dollar signs in my eyes as well; who's to say this humble solitaire wouldn't somehow produce something that would engage many thousands of paying downloaders. Or even non-paying ones, for that matter: It's a kick just to have an app like Residoo used by even a few people, in places far from my cozy apartment in Montréal.

Well, to be frank, that hasn't happened. As is often the case, when expectations exceed experience, expectation shrinks herself accordingly, but rarely without an audible fuss. I've reached the point where 4 sales of Reflexarium (at 2.99 a pop) on a single Saturday prompted a private yet spirited dance.

As of this morning's daily report check - using the highly recommended AppViz - I've reached $134 CDN. The next milestone - and it really is, for me and my 'compact' expectations - is $150 - the minimum required for Apple to send me the cash.

Depending on how you look at it, I'd still be far from profit: It cost $99 USD for the annual developer program fee; I spent $200-300 on books and that AppViz app; but let's not count the time spent as a missed opportunity cost, because frankly, there wasn't any; I do pay $100 a month for dedicated hosting and, as my iPhone projects take the lion share of that server, let's count that. So, I think that would make good next milestones - to make enough to pay off the initial investment, and then, to cover the monthly hosting fees.

I should say that there have been non-financial highlights; my first email giving largely positive feedback on Residoo; my first positive review (5 stars for Erasmos Clock), my first recommendation (on a app-themed blog). These have given me real pleasure.

But then there were the negative reviews; turns out that my wintered-hardened Canadian skin is thinner than I realized; I'm starting to get tougher about it, but the first ones hit hard. I'll give you an example received from a loveable specimen, formula53, regarding my Clock:

NO:Is the answer to your Q isn't it time for a new clock.

Not when it looks like that,!!!!! your only saving grace is you don't have the bare faced cheek to ask for money for it.

Well, shortly after, me and my bare faced cheeks did indeed start to charge for it -- a lavish 99 cents for an app that, while it could certainly be improved graphically, just might represent a novel way of representing time. I must admit, this review polluted the remainder of my day and I made a half-hearted attempt to get the email address for this valued customer.

I should have taken heart that my initial review of the same app, was a 5 star review.

A recent favourite, freshly baked by one 'TdawgT', hailing from gentle Australia, following his traumatizing brush with 'Memgellan':

Perfect... if your a complete basketcase: If there was a way to take stars I would do that. If you are bored to death and have way too much time on your hands, still, don't get this app. Booooo

I'm not sure what star-taker was expecting as I always provide what I think to be a candid description of the app, complete with usually 5 screen shots. I have the impression that he doesn't number among the mnemonic enthusiasts.

But as I said, I'm getting used to it. I've even experienced a defiant pleasure in receiving the negative reviews, especially the mysteriously emotive ones. Perhaps the mere fact of receiving feedback from actual users is a novel treat for me, having spent years making software in relative obscurity, occasionally receiving customer 'feedback' diluted by layers of presumedly distorting relays.

This concludes my first entry on my App Store Experiences; all in all, I'm glad that I undertook it worts and all. I've ceased to make any news apps, preferring to use my limited time to promote the existing ones. Maybe I'll follow up with more entries, highlighting specific apps. Incidentally, I'd say my best work is Teletouch - the least offensive face and quite a nice 'back-end' if I do say so myself.

What is The (Mock) Exchange?

As mentioned earlier, I've long suffered the expensive habit of building my own apps, without much eye to (material) profit; my latest such venture is a stock exchange simulator / game called 'the mock exchange'. (I like to put the (mock) part in parentheses as a lo-fi wordmark).

My original aim was for t(m)x to be an ongoing showcase of my best work; such a showcase I still see as a good supplement (or maybe an antidote) to the usual game of 'how many years have you used X', as if the years of Bob could be compared to the years of Bill. When I'm asked what can I do, my fairest answer is: The (Mock) Exchange.

Given the billing of Erlang as super fit for high reliability and high concurrency, such a choice fell naturally; it turned out to be a good choice after all, as the server component happily ran on a 1/4 GB VM (since upgraded); I even took up the challenge of Joe Armstrong - in his highly recommended book from Pragmatic - of building my own webserver; I did so, and released it as Pranayama under the GPL. While I can't say that I'd recommend it for human consumption (yet), it might prove useful to a fellow student; t(m)x still runs on it.

When it came to building the web client, I set myself to read up on both JQuery (recommended by a friend) and Laszlo; in any case, I knew I wanted to have a richer client than I usually built;

in the end I opted for Laszlo, most likely because of sombre flashbacks of having wrestled with the cross-browser idiosyncrasies of javascript.

Having build the entire GUI twice, I'd say I have a a pretty good grasp of Laszlo (but,

is anyone paying anyone else to do this sort of dev?)

An administrative console is often the cobbler's child; once again I chose a tool that I wanted to learn, in this case Eclipse RCP; I built a Java client to the Erlang server's RESTful interface, using the new and fine features of Spring 3.0; I must admit that it was a hard hump to surmount to have Eclipse connect amicably to my client, but I made them see sense in the end.

After having deployed the 'official' release of t(m)x, I set myself some other assignments: to make a Facebook App and then, an iPhone app; the former proved to have a steeper curve than I expected, being largely ignorant of Facebook, even as an end user, not to mention being several years past my last exposure to PHP (I think it was some system I built for an Irish ISP);

after about a week, however, I cobbled together a 'slice' of the t(m)x functionality as an FB app which I rather liked; in fact, I liked the style much more than the main web client, which now looked decidedly uptight & downcast; but for the moment, I resist the still gentle urge to redo it. Software is never done, as we all well know.

As for the iPhone app, I'm still in reading mode; contrary to some of my fellow programmers, I still oblige myself to read at least one introductory book, doing nearly all the exercises like a lamb. In this case, the book is 'Beginning iPhone Development' from Apress; so far (midway across the river), it's been first rate. Once I've finished the book, I'll start with replicating the FB slice of functionality on the iPhone (well, a simulator, as I've haven't yet seen the sense of committing to an actual iPhone). But from the power I see in the iPhone, I could port the whole app there.

After this? Well, I'm presuming that I'll be too busy labouring lucratively solving the problems of other people but until then ...

The Usual Rhythm

It's soon evident to anyone reading my CV that I've had a checkered past; in that it continues, its fairer to call it a 'checkered present'; it's checkered not for any salacious reasons (more's the pity) but in that real jobs (for money) are interrupted by periods of indulgent and indefensible private projects.

I could say that they're periods of intense entrepreneurial efforts, brazenly undertaken in the full confidence of future rewards of riches and fame - but the real motivation is more modest.

They represent self-created opportunities that would be otherwise unavailable; often they involve tools that are not in currency (such as Erlang or Laszlo), or ways of working (such as TDD), but in general, its a slaking of the restlessness to be truly productive, to create something good and useful (and yes, cool).

More often than not they translate to real world benefits; for instance, much of what I played with in 2006 - during my attempt to build a dating site - resulted in a solid toolkit that later became ubiquitous, and which I had introduced to several development teams.

The concept is hardly new - its the 'day job' / 'night job' pattern; I've just rescheduled it. Perhaps someday I can blend the two modes, but for now, it works for me.