9 Holes - Golf and Cards in Perfect Harmony

And we're back.

It has been a very eventful and busy past few months for us here at CloudApp IT, LLC.  The best business news to come out of the past 3 months is our newest app, 9 Holes, is now available on the App Store!  It replaces a card game that my wife and her family were addicted to.  They'd wear out decks of cards all the time playing an 8 card golf game.  Now they are addicted to the app!  It has already paid for itself because there is no more purchasing and repurchasing of decks of cards.  Here are some features of the app:

2 - 4 players
Play against the computer or other people
Customized graphics to take advantage of iPhone 4/4S retina displays
Optimized for iOS 5.0+
Keeps a history of 20 high scores
Intuitive drag and drop controls
And more...

My wife and I made a little tutorial video and posted it on youtube.

We're really excited about this app.  We love to play it and we hope you will love to play it too!  Click the link below to check it out on the App Store.

Bigger and Better

It's been a little while since my last post because it has been a very busy past few weeks.  ScoreApp has limped along to very mediocre sales, but it was a great learning experience.  I've had some very high-level discussions with the board of directors (which consists of me and my wife) about the direction of CloudApp IT, LLC.  We laid out goals and a business plan that will help us achieve those goals.  Despite our dud on the first app, we're going to continue to focus on the App Store and it's potential.  Our ultimate goal is to make this business sustain itself and be able to adequately support my family.  We've got a long way to go before we get there, but here is one of the things we're going to do to start.

Our Next App

We're obviously not going to be able to buy a value meal let alone support ourselves with ScoreApp.  But we are going to identify some things that we did wrong as well as things we did right with ScoreApp and go to our next endeavor.  Here are some key areas that we want to improve:

• Genre - When you program an app, you spend a lot of time with it.  When you market it, you have to spend even more time with it and really be excited about the content of it.  ScoreApp was a good, fun little utility.  However, it was not something that I wanted to spend all of my free time on and tell all my friends about.  It was simply a learning experience.  To make our next app succeed we're hoping to pick a genre and idea that will be a lot more exciting for us.  We've decided to take a stab at a slightly new, slightly re-invented social networking idea that I personally think will be pretty neat.
• Artwork - Of all the pointers that people gave us about our last app, artwork was by far the most universal negative point.  Everyone who looked at our app had design pointers.  And to be honest, I designed everything from a programmers point of view instead of a users point of view.  I took cool little graphics which I ripped off and stuck them in my app with no thought of how they meshed with the rest of the app.  I updated the app graphics a little bit with version 1.1.  It gave the app a completely different look, but it still isn't going to be winning any awards.  Our next app will feature some more well-thought layouts and graphics.  They will probably be subtle graphics and nothing amazing, but I'll spend a little more time in UI quality assurance before releasing the next app.
• Pre-Launch - The most important days of an app are probably the days right after launch.  When you're a lowly app developer trying to break on to the scene, these first days are when your app has the most visibility on the App Store.  You'll be featured in the new section of your chosen genres.  You'll likely get a few looks from customers that you wouldn't get on keywords alone.  So, if you generated a little bit of monmentum for you app prior to that launch day, you'll give yourself an even better chance to succeed and stay featured on the store.  Before launching, we're going to have the entire infrastructure in place.  Facebook page, support materials, website, contact info, etc.  We hope to have all of this up and try to get at least a little bit of traffic there prior to launch.  We've also made friends with a few reviewers out there and we'll try to get them on board with our app launch and see if we can leverage those relationships as well.
• Updates - As mentioned a little above, a lot of time goes into making an app.  You have to love the app if you really hope to do it right.  I'm excited for this app and have a road map of where it will go in the future.  I'm excited enough about the app that I will probably update the app even if the user base never comes.  I want to do it just to prove that I can and so I can use it for my own entertainment.  Updates put subconcious thoughts into people's minds that the app is alive and evolving.  They respond to that.  They share those apps with their friends.  If nothing else, they see your icon to remind them about your app when the go to perform updates.
• Pricing - pricing models are a mystery to many people.  The way you price your app could mean success or failure.  I'm going to have to look at this aspect a little more thoroughly before releasing the next big thing to make sure I get it right.

Well, those are a few points that I am going to consider and improve on for our next app adventure.  Stay tuned for more as we begin development on our next big thing.  Until then, reach for the clouds!

Applying for the iOS Developer Program

I’ve been reading many blogs and books about beginning iPhone and iPad development lately. I’ve found a plethora of information on the subject. There are many good blogs and forums where people exchange information on their experience as they got started in the App Store. Many of these resources that I’ve looked at lately suggest that you begin the process of applying for official membership in Apple’s iOS Developer Program. This process can be lengthy, especially for a business. There are a couple of different levels of membership in the developer programs at Apple. And there are a couple of different programs. There is an iOS Develper Program, Mac Developer Program, and Safari Developer Program. My main interest is the iOS program, and within that program there are 3 different membership “levels”. Well, 4 if you count the free version. Here is the basic breakdown between the 4 (these aren’t official names of the levels of membership, just descriptions according to what I can remember about them):

• Free - download released iOS SDK, Xcode and develop/test using iOS Simulator
• Paid Individual ($99) - same as free with access to pre-release SDK and software, test on your device, submit applications to the App Store.
• Paid Organization ($99) - same as individual plus ability to add a team of developers to the same account. You can set up teams and administrators of teams, but there is only one Agent who does all the submitting of apps to the App Store and agreeing to terms and contracts, etc. You can set up 100 devices for testing each year of your membership.
• Enterprise ($299) - same as organization except you can also develop and deploy production applications for internal use in your organization.

I opted to go for the Paid Organization level of membership. This process was a little more extensive than the individual process, but it will allow for growth in the future. Right now, I’m the only iOS developer for CloudApp IT, LLC. However, that can easily change in the future. I applied for the program about 2 weeks ago online. There was a little bit of basic demographic info that I submitted. Then a few days later, Apple requested that I fax over some legal documents for my organization. I faxed our Articles and played the waiting game again. A couple days later, Apple let me know that they had received my documents and were reviewing them. My enrollment remained in this state for about 5 days. Then, this morning, I got a call from a nice lady at Apple informing me that my documents looked good an I was approved. I logged on to the member center at developer.apple.com, purchased the program, waited about an hour for a confirmation email after my purchase, and I was in. Lots of posts on blogs that I’ve read have indicated that the process of getting started with all the code signing certificates, etc. could be complicated. I found that developer.apple.com had some really nice and easy to follow how-to videos. I just watched those videos for about 15 minutes and then boom, my first app was up and running on my actual iPhone device! I’m pretty excited to get started with posting my app on the store. I’ll keep you posted on my experience in the process of posting apps to the store. Look for the next post to be about more experiences as I learn to use the iOS SDK to get my first app together. Until then, reach for the clouds!

Beginning iPhone Development

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be talking alittle about my experience as I’ve started to learn the ropes of iOSdevelopment. After getting set up todevelop iPhone and iPad applications there was a lot to learn. When I opened my new Macbook Pro I starteddownloading the bare essentials to begin my development. First thing I did was download and installLion. This was a great move, as Imentioned in my last post. After that, Idownloaded and installed Xcode 4, which requires Lion. It too is awesome. Over the years, I have opened Xcode 3 on myiMac a couple of times. I tried to writea few console apps in Java, but always found my way back to the confortable confinesof Eclipse as my IDE of choice. Ofcourse, when it comes to iOS dev, Apple has really tried to level the playingfield for everyone and create a sense of consistency in everything they’vedone. Part of that is requiring us touse Xcode as our IDE. Xcode 4 is, atleast on the surface, a great leap forward for Apple’s IDE. It integrates the needed tools such asInterface Builder and a code editor into a single window. With the full screen mode in Lion, Xcode is avery capable IDE and very easy to use for new comers to iOS development. After getting everything installed, I wasrearing to have a go at my first app: Hello World iPhone edition.

I learn best by doing, not reading. I’ve always hated reading textbooks andenjoyed doing projects. As I began towonder where I was going to learn to tackle this new framework and learn thetricks of the trade, I naturally started looking for sample projects thatlooked interesting. In my search I cameacross a course that was offered at Rose-Hulman University. I found this course offered in the form of afree podcast listed in iTunes. I quicklylearned the basics of navigating Xcode (though the examples were from version3,they were easily converted to version 4). I learned the basics of Interface Builder and how to quickly attachinterface elements to my code. Thisprocess is even more intuitive and painless in version 4 of Xcode. I learned how to make my Hello Worldapplication work on both iPhone and iPad. The course was structured in a natural and easy way to help you progressslowly but surely to master the needed techniques to be able to develop prettycool apps. With this new-foundknowledge, I am excited to now go about developing my first app to list in theApp Store. I am not planning anythingtoo complicated for my first App Store app, just a simple Score Keeper likeapp. We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll tryto keep you updated as I continue to learn the ropes of the iOS and App Storebusiness. Until next time, reach for theClouds!