iPhone Project – 1 week in

15. Sep, 2008 Categories: iPhone project by Mike Linskey 2 Comments

It was all going so well up to Day 3, and then… …but that’s the whole point of this project, to find out the good, the bad, & the ugly of developing for iPhone, and after our brief honeymoon period, we’re starting to understand why it isn’t such plain sailing…

First up: the iPhone SDK! It was Matt’s task to review & report back, but this wasn’t as easy as it sounded. For a start, the SDK is only viewable on a Mac, and you have to register (i.e. “pay”) to become an iPhone developer to see it. I’d already jumped the gun and handed Mr Jobs the entrance fee, so armed with the details, Matt (reverting to type as Mr Techie Gadget Freak) decided to install Mac OSX on his laptop with a dual boot to Vista, but it didn’t quite work as planned and he’s still trying to get his laptop back in good working order (which involves a full re-install of Vista plus all the other apps he’s accumulated)

I was up for buying a Mac Mini on eBay; that might still be the easiest solution (you listening, Matt?!) LOL

I didn’t get away unscathed either: having been looking forward to getting to grips with iRise, I found that some of the features that would be essential to me weren’t available in the Professional Edition! Doh! Disappointingly, iRise PE doesn’t facilitate sharing of prototypes; how exactly are clients supposed to review stuff? Resigned to a slightly lower fidelity prototyping exercise using Axure which involved hacking out buttons etc. from a photoshop mockup of the iPhone’s UI, I fired off an email to iRise to register my dissatisfaction, but didn’t really expect much back.

So, I was really pleased to get a same-day phonecall from Bill Smith, iRise Senior Sales Rep, who had some very interesting things to discuss with me. We’ve scheduled in a web training session tomorrow afternoon, but the big news is that I might be getting my hands on iRise’s Enterprise Edition with all its fab collaberation features; this is the dog’s of visualisation tools! Whilst it pushes back our Prototyping milestone, it’s probably worth waiting for, especially now that I’ve got hold of that iPhone SimDK extension…

We’ve had a few let-downs on the resourcing front too. A supa-dupa developer from north-of-the-border that we’ve worked with in the past is sadly far too too busy to learn the skills necessary to dev for us (good for you, Ian!), but he did give us a couple of leads to follow up. Matt’s come to the conclusion that iPhone development is falling down the cracks between the Mac-based design community and the anything-but-a-Mac development community: “…that’s why App Store is so full of beautiful-looking crap”. Nice one, Matt, and for what its worth, I think he’s right! Techcrunch came to the same conclusion very early on, although they didn’t say it as eloquently as Matt. Do I get a link-back, Mr Arrington? Thought not…

So, we’re now looking at hiring a software house, but there aren’t many who truly support iPhone development (they say they do, but it’s nothing more than a sideshow in reality; we don’t want to be paying them to learn Cocoa Touch whilst building our baby!)

Our first-choice specialist icon/ wallpaper designer was also too busy to entertain our initial approach, having already picked up a few long-term iPhone design contracts that will keep him busy for ever! I’m gutted. The guy’s design work is superb, and it would have been great to work with him; maybe next time. Again, the rejection was gracious and accompanied by an alternative list of recommended designers for us to consider. Before we hit that list, Matt’s going to contact another star designer on my list of top-notch specialist iconistas, and make her an offer (keep it clean, fellah!) Fingers crossed that the Davies Magic works this time…

But it hasn’t all been bad news. I managed to find a suitably cow-oriented theme for our support website, and Media Temple, our illustrious web hosts, have a one-click Wordpress install which should make set-up a breeze. The requirements catalogue is looking very sexy, plenty of USPs, and so far there’s no real competition for our baby in the App Store. Time-wise, we’re not too far behind schedule, and I think Thursday & Friday of this week will see a lot of progress! Obtaining iRise Enterprise Edition is just a massive bonus to our business overall, not just The iPhone Project, and the interest this series of posts is starting to generate is just as welcome! Project Management via Basecamp and Harvest is effortless, and Matt & I are still behaving like 3 year olds with a new Lego set whenever we get together to discuss Moodoh & The Project! Except you wouldn’t buy your 3 year old THAT much beer…

In amongst all that I got a phone call from a Forrester sales guy inviting me to blow a grand and a half on their EMEA Financial Services Forum in November. Sorry, but we don’t want to talk about it; we’re DOING it, baby!

Watch out for an update on Friday; there might even be a teaser shot if I can get up to scratch with iRise by then…!