First Day Results

Touchmines was only released yesterday at 3pm, but the response has been amazing! I've already had over 4000 downloads on the first day alone! One thing that struck me was the lack of downloads from the foreign markets relative to the english speaking countries like the US, Canada, and Great Britain.

If you're an iPhone developer, you really need to keep in mind the global audience you're releasing to. My next major step is to localize the product descriptions into as many languages as possible, as well as either localize the app or eliminate the text entirely. I'd rather just use icons for the whole interface, as it reduces the amount of work required for localization and is hopefully more elegant for everyone.

Now I just need to find people willing to translate a few paragraphs into their native language for a beer or two, and maybe ask some experienced developers about their own localization processes. I'm most afraid of using symbols or colours that would be seen as distasteful or unlucky in a foreign culture, since I'm a fairly sheltered north american!

TouchMines is available for download!

Over at my SpaghettiForge site, I've made some updates and included information on how to play the game (if you've never played minesweeper before). Here's a direct link to the iTunes App Store page.

No looking back...

Well, I've done it. I've submitted my first iPhone application to Apple. At first I didn't realize I'd need to come up with a company name and create a website for said company. Now, witness the birth of SpaghettiForge! The name is a little self-deprecating humour about every coder's ability to sometimes turn perfectly good ideas into a tangled plate of bad compartmentalization.

The app I've submitted is called TouchMines. It's a minesweeper clone that's completely free, while the other 3 available minesweeper apps cost $0.99. The other developers shouldn't be too worried about my undercutting their prices, because my 1.0 release is very feature-bare and really can only compete for free. When I release future updates, there may have to be come friendly competition and innovation going on (let's hope!).

I also hope this is the just the first of many free, relatively useful apps that I'll release over the coming year.

Vintage Commercial

Sometimes Apple commercials just blow me away in their bluntness. Of course there are many things you can only do with deep and powerful configuration of your system, the reason i have windows and linux up and running on my laptop. What got me is the idea that there will ALWAYS be a market for the simple devices. Some people will always pay a premium for something whose simplicity blows away any lack of functionality. The day every consumer becomes a coder I'll eat my words with a fair helping of glee.

Do I need an intervention?

As I previously mentioned, Monday was WWDC keynote day, and I worked all day in a place with no internet. How to keep up with the most important news EVER?

Well, I own a prepaid brick of a cellphone with no internet, so no-go there. But wait, I have unlimited free incoming SMS messages? Hmmmm.

My carrier (like most) has a special email address based on my phone number, which truncates emails to 160 characters and forwards them to my phone as an SMS message. Imagine an automator script that takes the unread rss articles from Mail.app and copies each to a new mail message which is sent to the SMS bridge address? 160 characters is sure limiting, but the headlines all come through at least. Then you just use launchd to have this script send the new articles every 30 mins, and you have "push rss" for free. Albeit kinda clunky and annoying that you only get to read the headlines.

Just a little bit of work to get my Apple news?

The big decision

I can't say I'm surprised that Apple didn't release anything completely revolutionary today. The iPhone hardware couldn't have changed much without alienating the old EDGE iPhones (which were supposed to be firmware 2.0 compatible). The Macbook Pro non-update also isn't surprising, since until this morning the LAST update was still being advertised on the Apple home page as the "new Macbook Pro".

The big question that remains is: to iPhone or not? I'd be missing out on: built-in camera, mobile internet, GPS, VOIP. Those are pretty compelling, especially considering the new $199 price point. The problem is that, in Canada, Rogers will be requiring a 3-year contract to purchase an iPhone (presumably there is no option to go without the contract). What also scares me is the lack of any plan pricing announcements... If we're signing a 3-year contract at $80 a month, Rogers is now nearly $3000 richer at my expense. As a starving student, that chunk of change is huge... that's over a third of my tuition, or 8 months rent! Or a new 30-inch cinema display and a Mac Mini server.

If any wireless provider could actually screw up the launch of one of the best mobile platforms ever, it's Rogers.

Apple Store is down in Canada! FINALLY!

So I guess this just about wraps up the waiting for the canadian iPhone. About time! This link should hold at least one interesting thing sometime this afternoon. Who knows, maybe there'll be a new Macbook Pro too! Luckily I've had this one for less than 14 days... 8800gt? 500gb? Higher rez? Sweet macbook-air-inspired case? Only time will tell, and since I work 12:30 - 9 I'll be late to the party for sure.

And another thing...

Why haven't we got Spotlight for our iPhones and iPod touches yet? I realize typing isn't as responsive with the soft keyboard, but there's only a small amount of info to index: contacts, sms conversations, emails, web history... I'd like to think a "search" app with near-instant response could further differentiate the iPhone from other smartphones.

It would be so cool if I'm right

Does anyone remember, quite awhile ago, we were told Apple had patented cool new LCD displays with image sensors in between the pixels? This would essentially give you a user-facing webcam. Why has no one speculated on how stupid this is for a computer, and how ingenious it is for oh, say, a mobile phone? Imagine Steve Jobs introducing the new iPhone, with no front-facing camera spot anywhere on the face... disappointment will OOZE from the crowd, until he demos the new iChat Mobile with an "InvisiCam"! That would definitely be a jaw-dropping, Jobs keynote moment. I'm probably wrong, but I'd sure like to be right!

What's up with this whole internet thing?

So I was just watched this video about the internet and net neutrality, and it got me thinking. Where IS the internet going? It's like when you find a cool new place to hang out with like-minded people, but then it's ruined when it gets "popular" because everyone-and-his-dog shows up with different expectations. Expectations, and the money to influence and change the place you loved, to mold it into just another crowded public area with screaming babies and sterile smiles.

What does this mean? Is the internet just another medium that's being taken over by the masses? Will we always have to give up on our private clubs just when they start to get good? I don't know, but it seems like we'll always at least be the minority. The commercial web has already crowded us into a corner, but we're happy to occupy our own little space if we get to remain in charge. The problem is that in a internet that shifts away from neutrality, we're told to pay up, clean up, and follow their rules or else show ourselves out. We lose our ownership in the web: it becomes their network on their terms.

Maybe market forces WILL favour those ISPs and networks that stand up for net neutrality, when consumers vote with their wallets. I doubt it'll happen: a de-facto cartel of networks is more likely, since they all stand to gain if no one gives the consumer the neutral choice. And I have an inkling that advertising and media dollars far outweigh residential internet fees.

Maybe one of those new-fangled high-speed global networks will turn out? And someone will have the foresight to ban the commercialization and ugly behaviour we're seeing now? Sure, it means the network won't ever make it big and take over "the internet". Isn't that just what we'd like?

The last option, the one that seems coolest right now, but least likely to succeed due to the sheer infrastructure, is what I might call a "hyper-local network". Imagine a mesh network connecting all the houses in your neighbourhood, as far as the signal carries. Here and there would be portals to other networks, and obviously internet connections too for longer-distance communication. In today's world of contributing netizens, this could probably be set up tomorrow in many areas. The locally-oriented network would certainly change the dynamics of sharing and communication, but they would be ours and ours alone. Although I wasn't old enough to be using them at the time, this brings the image of a web 2.0 BBS to my head. And I find it quite exciting.

iPhone SDK

Well, the SDK is finally out! I can't say I haven't been waiting with bated breath, and it turned out to be mostly better than I expected.

Of course I love that everything is more or less Cocoa based, and the sheer number of APIs available to a developer wanting to take full advantage of the iPhone's hardware. What I really like though, is the distribution side of things.The apps distribution goes directly through the App Store, free apps will be completely free to consumer AND dev, and that Apple will charge a paltry ($99) fee for being able to post apps to the store. Some will complain about the fee, but even as a hobbyist student dev $99 is totally worth it. I like to think the entry fee will stem the flow of crapware to the platform, and it's needed to prevent the App Store from having hundreds of thousands of Hello World apps to wade through.

My biggest complaint is that it's mostly US only. Right now the "beta" for the full developer program is open to select developers in the United States, and nowhere else. This wouldn't be much of a problem, except that you cannot test your code on an iPhone or iPod touch without the paid beta program. While the NDA probably prevents me from disclosing exactly why the iPhone simulator isn't really a complete alternative for testing, let's just say I'm waiting for the program to be open in June. I hope that's a general enough statement that Apple lawyers won't be mad at me (although I'd need at least one certified reader before I could really get any complaints!).

I think it'll probably take me until June to fully absorb the general concepts and abilities of the iPhone SDK, so by the time I'm able to really get crackin I'll be up to the challenge. Until then, we'll see what other cool developments Apple has up it's sleeve.

Holiday Post

Holidays have been exciting, it's always nice to be home. Just thought I would post a link to the coolest thing I've seen in quite a while. It's not related to programming at all, but Nikon's Universcale gives you an animated, interactive comparative scale of common objects, from the apparent size of the universe down to the atom. Very cool!