Are any of you iOS developers?

[RayB]

Please share your experiences with developing and selling apps.

[Dartful Dodger]

It's incredibly frustrating to get started.
Once you have all the right files and the right signing keys and provisions, you can start programming your app.
It's incredibly frustrating to program apps.
Once you're almost finish programming your app, Apple will release another update to their OS(think about how often your iPhone/iTouch needs to be updated). When this happens you will need to go through all the getting started steps over again.
Once you finish installing and resigning everything your project files won't be compatible. The programming will be compatible and your source files will be compatible, but the project itself won't be. You'll need to copy and paste everything out of the old project into a new project, one file at a time.
Once you finally publish out your app you submit your app to iTunes. Dealing with iTunes is a whole new level of frustration.

I've only done free apps that were for corporations. Considering how painful it is to get a free app approved, I can't imagine trying to deal with a paid one.

All that being said, developing iOS is a breeze compared to developing for Blackberry. If you are just thinking about getting started with app development start with Android. It's crazy simple and painless.


I have to program in xCode, but every once in a while I get a simple app with lots of animations and I do it in Adobe CS5.5. If you can get away with just using Flash, use it.

[Pinball Wizard]

I've touched on it some. It is kind of frustrating but once you get the hang of it, it isn't too bad. Android is easier to start off with. Well, it is all in preference.... Could I ask why? Thinking about getting involved yourself?

Personally, I love having access to the beta versions, if nothing else to brag to friends.

[RayB]

Yes, though I am late to the bandwagon, and making money from games is a big crapshoot, it's what attracts me the most in terms of "what do I do with my career next". I'm at a crossroads where I either learn new skills and stay self-employed or I go and get a 9 to 5'er as a producer/project manager at some web agency or similar industry.

There's plenty of work if I learned PHP and HTML5, but games and apps are more attractive and I could leverage my existing history/experience in Flash games and advertising media. I'm considering learning Unity as an option too (way better performance than Flash) but then that skill wouldn't transfer to very much beyond games.

Each option has pros and cons and the bar on iOS games is incredibly high.

[Dartful Dodger]

It's funny because it's true.

Every programmer I know is making a game app in their spare time, hoping they'll have the next Angry Birds.

They're all wrong, because I'm programming the next million dollar app game.

[drventure]

I've spent the past year off and on working on an app idea for Windows Phone 7.

I haven't worked with iOS, android or the others, but I can say the WP7 platform seems pretty dang sweet. An only mildly stripped down .net framework, Silverlight (takes some getting used to, but it's incredibly capable once you're there), and VS for a dev env.

Now, I'll post back once I get through the MarketPlace publishing maze. 

[RayB]

Yeah I'm not deluding myself into thinking I will make the next Angry Birds or even a fraction of that. I've been around the block too many times, especially when it comes to online and gaming trends. The plan would be volume so that there would be a cumulative revenue, supported by web versions, and then having that library of completed apps makes it an easier sell to clients to do apps/games for them (where you get paid and if the app tanks, too bad.)

[menace]

One of you guys needs to make a (good) clone wars game for my kids--they are huge into the clone wars right now and the app selection on that genre sucks big time.  And no worries, I bet lucasfilms is waaay easier to get approvals from than apple 

[RayB]

Do any of you have a game genre or play mechanic you wish was made for your mobile or ipad?

[RayB]

A touchpad version of the Playthings DVDs might be kinda fun.

Is that a porno?

[shmokes]

Do any of you have a game genre or play mechanic you wish was made for your mobile or ipad?

Tower defense.  Seriously. Tower defense games are so good on touchscreen devices. And there aren't nearly enough good ones. There's Fieldrunners, PvZ, and Anomaly Warzone, and that's pretty much it.

Please don't make anything that requires the constant use of an onscreen gamepad.  I don't care how good it is, how customizable the size and placement of the buttons are. It sucks. It's not fun. Whatever you do, make sure it's something that works better with a touch-interface than it would with a gamepad. No matter how good your game is, if it would be improved with a gamepad please abandon the idea.

In particular, I love the multiplayer maps in Fieldrunners. My wife and I played the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of those. There weren't nearly enough.

[RayB]

Yeah I don't get on-screen gamepads either. I downloaded one of the Ghosts n Goblins games and it's classic GnG fun, but my thumbs cover up a third of the screen and even obscure seeing my character and enemies. What's the point?!

[Dartful Dodger]

Please share your experiences with developing and selling apps.

So I just build this app for a client. After weeks of working on it, it's finally in the app store. I was the first to download the app. I did a quick test to make sure it didn't get corrupted, saw that it works, gave it 5 starts and told the client it was up.

The client calls me after testing the app and tells me he noticed a typo(which was in the version of the app we sent them weeks ago to check before we uploaded it to the store).
 
No problem, it's a small typo, so small and insignificant that no one was able to see it during testing. We’ll upload a new one and no one will ever know the difference.

I went to the app in the app store to check that the typo wasn't in the description for the app. I see that the app has been downloaded twice and has a 2.5 rating. I asked the client about the rating and he said that he didn’t want it to have 5 stars because it wasn't finished.

He's already paid me, so I'm correcting the typo for free. This app means nothing to me, but to him this is an app that's going to be used and seen by people working with his company and he gave it 1 star.

[Dartful Dodger]

xCode sucks, Eclipse is good for Android and Blackberry, but it's not for iOS and its language is, well it's Java.

I want an easier program to use to develop for both iOS and Android(Blackberry is now irrelevant).

A co-worker opened up Angry Birds and found in the code that it was created with Corona.

I played around with Corona SDK and it looks like a great program to use for games and animation apps, but it lacks a camera feature.

It got me thinking, that if Corona existed without me knowing about it, there might be more/better programs out there too.

What are the rest of you using to program mobile devices?

[AtomSmasher]

I've been hearing about a lot of mobile developers switching over to Unity, which seems to be really good for 3d applications.

[Howard_Casto]

Since someone mentioned Android, I was wondering what it's like in regards to sell your stuff on the marketplace and actually getting it accepted. 

I was thinking of doing a couple FE-centric apps for android seeing as how it has the most market saturation.  Nothing super complex, just a text/image viewer that can be changed remotely via the fe of your choice.  I was thinking of maybe charging a buck or two if it becomes a big pain in the butt to code... you know, just so I feel that it's worth my time.

[Dartful Dodger]

The general Android Market has very little restrictions. Upload an app, 5-20 seconds later it's in the market. I think if people complain about your app because of porn or copyright issues they'll take it down.

Amazon has its own Market Place for Android and that one is a little stricter, I don’t know anything about it. A client asked about it and then told us not to worry about it before we had a chance to do any research.