Haha, I thought you meant he just paid someone else to do it... No, so much worse. He didn't even -try-.
His app could have had a working version on the store in 2 weeks, if he'd really tried. It would benefit from further work, but would have proved his point.
Instead, he got dazzled by how much work the -best- apps take and gave up. It's like looking at a guitar and realizing how much work it takes to become a rockstar, and just giving up before you've even picked the thing up.
Most people aren't rockstars, and most apps don't hit #1 on -any- list.
25% to develop the app for the MEDL incubator? Is the other 75% for just coming up with the idea, or also for launching, getting users, promoting, etc?
EDIT: Apparently they handle everything and you get 25% just for the idea. Not bad.
The prices he quotes are WAY outsized. Low to Mid 5 figures will do a huge proportion of apps that "People have an idea about" using US or Canadian programmers. Some will go into 6 figures, but millions? Really? Not for most ideas.
(This is what I do for a living, 3rd party app development).
Thanks for all the comments everyone. I was the editor who commissioned the piece. To give some context the writer had about 12 days to write the article. An impartial observer (not me obviously) might get the impression that the people offering up advice here might need to take themselves a little less seriously. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading and commenting.
To give some context, most of the people on this site are professional software developers. i.e., my full-time job is writing iPhone apps, so I've been thinking about that process for the last 2-3 years.
For me personally, 75% of my working hours is spent talking to people who have an app idea and don't have the funds to execute, and trying to separate those from paying clients. If I could cut that number in half, I would literally be twice as productive. It would be like adding 3 hours to every workday, or producing an additional ten apps a year.
On the contrary, we love the article. I'm not an iOS developer, but to me the obvious steps are to start from "figure out the development environment". Apparently to an outsider, finding a consultant to do it is about the only option, and he doesn't even have the resources or background to communicate effectively with developers. I guess I'm used to working with people who, though they may never have written a line of code in their life, are familiar with the process at a high level.
Should it (programming, creating an app, executing an idea) be this hard? Or would that only lead to more fart apps and more disappointment later in the process when the app doesn't hit it big?
Programming is hard, because it requires a mode of thinking and a level of mental discipline that most people just simply don't possess. Humans think in abstracts; computers deal in specifics.
As long as this is true, programming will be "hard", because until I can program a computer like the Holodeck by speaking to it and having it infer my intent, I will have to be specific about what I want to do, and this is not something that people are used to doing. It takes training to learn to think like a computer, and that will be fully necessary until computers learn to think like us.
I doubt it ever will become easy; the goalposts will keep moving.
For example, if, 20 or even 10 years ago, years ago, you built a webpage with nothing but a textarea and a 'save' button that allows people to save a single text per URL, you have a CMS that could have made you real money. Nowadays, wikis must be more advanced than that.
Having said that, it is possible to lower the barriers. I think it would be extremely cool and useful to have something HyperCard-like on iPad. I do not think everyone's five minutes of work should be on the app store, though.
Sure, everything should be easy. The problem is, software development is difficult by nature. It's not the kind of thing you can pick up in a week or two and make an app with, and it probably never will be.
There are things like App Inventor that try to make it dead simple, but they all fail in that you can't make something reasonably complex with it.
It would be great if this was easy, but hundreds of people have tried and failed to make it dead simple and I think there's a reason for that.
I think a lot of people who have ideas for Apps never move beyond the "vague elevator pitch" idea of what it should actually do. It takes more work than people realize just to specify an App's behavior, completely independently of writing any code.
I think the author went about it the totally wrong way for a startup. (Although, maybe typical).
Instead of picking up a mockup tool, or using HTML/CSS to create a simple mobile web version (or a native app using PhoneGap), he goes asking other people to do it for him. (Probably for "sweat equity" ;) )
The article started out with promise: yes, kids can write iPhone apps. But those kids wrote those iPhone apps not by talking with consultants who charge $$$ for app development. You know how those kids developed their apps? By sitting down, learning about how to program for the iOS, and writing f#$$@ code. Not by talking to developers to do it for them. That's how.
I was half expecting an article talking about the state of the art of entry level development: PhoneGap, or other drag and drop methods. MacRuby for getting on the Mac App store... whatever. Something maybe easier to laypeople than "here's this weird objective-C thing with []s everywhere".
Having said that, I do make my living as a freelance developer (Rails, iOS)...
TL;DR: This is the story of a lot of startups: "I have this great idea! Oh, it's going to cost $N,000 to develop a minimum viable product? This is hard". On the other hand, it may serve as a reality check for people with a new idea that think we (as developers) can program DOOM in a weekend, for free err 'exposure'."
[+] [-] zachrose|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
His app could have had a working version on the store in 2 weeks, if he'd really tried. It would benefit from further work, but would have proved his point.
Instead, he got dazzled by how much work the -best- apps take and gave up. It's like looking at a guitar and realizing how much work it takes to become a rockstar, and just giving up before you've even picked the thing up.
Most people aren't rockstars, and most apps don't hit #1 on -any- list.
[+] [-] ams6110|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/
[2] https://github.com/probablycorey/wax
[+] [-] dreamdu5t|14 years ago|reply
Today, people think they can strike riches by creating a mobile app.
Not much has changed.
[+] [-] StavrosK|14 years ago|reply
EDIT: Apparently they handle everything and you get 25% just for the idea. Not bad.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gte910h|14 years ago|reply
(This is what I do for a living, 3rd party app development).
[+] [-] DuncanKinney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewcrawford|14 years ago|reply
For me personally, 75% of my working hours is spent talking to people who have an app idea and don't have the funds to execute, and trying to separate those from paying clients. If I could cut that number in half, I would literally be twice as productive. It would be like adding 3 hours to every workday, or producing an additional ten apps a year.
[+] [-] kevinpet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carols10cents|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheald|14 years ago|reply
As long as this is true, programming will be "hard", because until I can program a computer like the Holodeck by speaking to it and having it infer my intent, I will have to be specific about what I want to do, and this is not something that people are used to doing. It takes training to learn to think like a computer, and that will be fully necessary until computers learn to think like us.
[+] [-] Someone|14 years ago|reply
For example, if, 20 or even 10 years ago, years ago, you built a webpage with nothing but a textarea and a 'save' button that allows people to save a single text per URL, you have a CMS that could have made you real money. Nowadays, wikis must be more advanced than that.
Having said that, it is possible to lower the barriers. I think it would be extremely cool and useful to have something HyperCard-like on iPad. I do not think everyone's five minutes of work should be on the app store, though.
[+] [-] mtogo|14 years ago|reply
There are things like App Inventor that try to make it dead simple, but they all fail in that you can't make something reasonably complex with it.
It would be great if this was easy, but hundreds of people have tried and failed to make it dead simple and I think there's a reason for that.
[+] [-] neutronicus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trustfundbaby|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpwilcox|14 years ago|reply
Instead of picking up a mockup tool, or using HTML/CSS to create a simple mobile web version (or a native app using PhoneGap), he goes asking other people to do it for him. (Probably for "sweat equity" ;) )
The article started out with promise: yes, kids can write iPhone apps. But those kids wrote those iPhone apps not by talking with consultants who charge $$$ for app development. You know how those kids developed their apps? By sitting down, learning about how to program for the iOS, and writing f#$$@ code. Not by talking to developers to do it for them. That's how.
I was half expecting an article talking about the state of the art of entry level development: PhoneGap, or other drag and drop methods. MacRuby for getting on the Mac App store... whatever. Something maybe easier to laypeople than "here's this weird objective-C thing with []s everywhere".
Having said that, I do make my living as a freelance developer (Rails, iOS)...
TL;DR: This is the story of a lot of startups: "I have this great idea! Oh, it's going to cost $N,000 to develop a minimum viable product? This is hard". On the other hand, it may serve as a reality check for people with a new idea that think we (as developers) can program DOOM in a weekend, for free err 'exposure'."
[+] [-] racketeer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DuncanKinney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]