The post shipping, app store review blues
Real programmers ship. I did, ten days ago, into the App Store review process. And now I have the postnatal shipping blues. The blues come from two sources, shipping and waiting. shipping blues The first version of an application always ships, if you do it right, with the critical core features working, one or two bells and whistles to make it fun and nothing else. Do any more, and you’ll never ship.
The price of Sights to See
Choosing a price for your software is hard. Choosing the right price is even harder. For Sights to See, I will release it at $9.99. Let the wailing begin! Customer value proposition From a customer’s perspective the value proposition is easy to figure out. If the customer buys a paper guide book, it costs about $20.00 from Amazon. The paper guide book is limited to only the places in it, weighs a lot, is hard to navigate and to navigate with, and is usually out of date.
How to deal with an iPhone crash report, a better way
There is an easier way to deal with an iPhone crash report than in my previous article How to deal with an iPhone crash report. And here it is. Before you release the app Run a Build and Archive in Xcode, making sure that the version you are building is the one you are sending out (beta release or final release, properly code signed). Xcode builds the app, the places the app, its dSYM file, a plist and the ipa file in ~/Library/Mobiledevice/Archived Applications/<UUID>/ where it can be found and managed by Organizer and by spotlight.
Hanging out my shingle
I have freed up enough of my time to be able to offer my skills as technology strategist, systems architect, software designer, consultant, public speaker, programmer and super software sage for hire. I have 21 years of experience, started out as a programmer, grew into a complex project manager, and landed up as Chief Technology Officer (and number one programming guru) at two successful and very complex hedge funds. 21 years of experience makes me a great programmer, accomplished systems architect and seasoned manager.
Beta testing is hard, but oh so worth it
So you’ve built the next killer app, and it looks and feels and works exactly how you dreamed, designed, planned and sweated to make it. Even the non-programming stuff is as brilliant as you can make it, the web site, the artwork, the documentation and the press goodies. As far as you are concerned, it’s ready to ship - and real developers ship after all. Not so fast, bucakaroo! Best to beta test first.
Testing the new Web Design
I decided to revamp the noverse.com website before it became too complex. The original site had too many pages, and tons of html was being repeated. Every change had to be made in too many places, and as a developer, that violates the rules. So, I switched from HTML/CSS to PHP-HTML/CSS. Easy. The only PHP I am using is to include common blocks of code, like the navigation bar, sidebar and footer.
One Two Four Eight - The Indie Developer's Life
Instructions: For timespan, insert day, week, month, year, eon or parsec. Use the same timespan for each section. Build Version 1.0 Core features only, focus on the primary need One timespan to write the core feature and prove the application. Two timespans to add the minimum and absolutely necessary features to give the application Version 1.0 functionality and no more. Four timespans to get it stable, fast and mostly bug free.
App Sales, free vs 99c
I ran a test while on vacation. For the 3.5 weeks I was away, I changed the price of Emergency List from free to 99c to see how this would affect sales. It did. A lot. Before the price change, I had daily sales in the tens of units. After the price change, I had three sales in 3.5 weeks. Zero sales every other day. So I set the price back to zero two days ago, just to see what would happen.
iPad Update - after almost a month traveling with it
I have now had the iPad for five weeks, three and a half of which were spent traveling through Eastern Europe with it as my only companion device (other than the iPhone 3GS). Short version, it’s brilliant. Long version, still brilliant. On the trip: The wifi issues that plagued me at home were never seen. When there was wifi available, that is. Most hotels had some kind of wifi available, but they charged an arm and a leg for it.
It's been one week since you looked at me
After a week with the iPad… I have read a few books on it. In fact, that’s where I have spent most of my time on it. The text is easy to read about three notches from smallest, but I need to dim the screen at night as it gets too bright. No eyestrain so far. I have made a few of my own documents into ePubs and it works great.