Making the Most Of Your (iOS) Dev Conference Experience

Next weekend 360iDev starts, and last weekend was the first CocoaConf of the fall 2014 season. I’ve seen on twitter at least one request for advice from a first-time attendee. I had more to say than I could fit into a tweet, so I thought I’d respond here.

Core Theme: It’s All About the People

There’s a lot going on at conferences, but the most important thing to remember is that you have access to people at conferences that exists no other place. Making the most of your experience (and time and money) is all about making the most of your contact with the people around you.

 8 min read

Just Because There Was a Bubble Doesn't Mean App Store Developers Are Doomed

Let’s just call it what it was, shall we? We had an App Store Bubble.

It’s deflating now, although (at least with games) there are still remnants.

Take a deep breath. It’s all going to be okay.

When I started working on mobile apps back in 2005 on Palm devices, we had horrible distribution by today’s standards. There were no integrated payments, no integrated stores. People had to buy your app, download it to their PC, and then copy it to their PDA via a serial cable. And yet, even back then, people made a living at it (although, I never managed to do so).

I don’t make my living from my own apps now, either. I’m not an iOS indie, I’m a consultant/freelancer. I’ve tried being an indie, and I’m not good at it (and I’m one of those weird people that actually likes consulting). But it is possible to make a living from iOS app revenue, because many people I know from my consulting practice have and do.

But let’s think for a minute about where we are before we call the App Store a disaster.

 3 min read

"App Accomplished" Nearing Accomplishment

It’s been a long time since I’ve done much (really any) blogging, but hopefully that drought will be coming to an end soon. I’ve just turned in my 13th (of 14) chapters of my upcoming book, App Accomplished. It’s been a lot of work. I knew it was going to be a huge time commitment, and I wasn’t wrong. There were many times I wondered if I would ever be done, but now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it feels really good.

 1 min read

I Am Now Officially Writing a Book

I’ve been working on writing a book for some time now. It’s been through many stages, conversations, outlines, contracts, etc., etc. But for some reason, it never felt real, until now. Oddly enough, the thing that made it feel real was that I found out the book has been issued an ISBN number. I’m not exactly sure why that made such a difference - maybe it’s all the years I’ve spent writing applications for which the unique ID in the database was the de-facto proof of existence.

 2 min read

Migrated from SquareSpace to Octopress

I’ve moved my blog from Squarespace to OctoPress. I’ve gotten more and more frustrated with SquareSpace over the last couple of years. They moved to their new version 6 product, but it has no API access. This is a real annoyance for me, but SquareSpace doesn’t seem to care. So my only options for adding content there are their buggy web interface, their even buggier iPad app, or stay on their old version 5, which is very buggy, and not getting any development resources.

 1 min read

Finding relevant WWDC videos

As I’ve said before, I find the WWDC videos to be invaluable and I try watch all of them eventually. But there are a lot of them, and it can be hard to find what’s relevant. And a lot of them I go back and watch again when I start working with a different part of a project. So I’ve developed a trick, and I thought I’d share it with you all.

 2 min read

New Work In Progress - Million Words: Multiplayer Crossword Game for Parents and Kids that Grades on a Curve

Although I do iOS Contracting to pay my bills (at least to date), I hope one day to earn a living from my own apps, and, although it’s not ready for release, the time has come to unveil my new project.

GamePlay ExampleMillion Words is a turn-based crossword game where you’re scored not by what letters you managed to get into your word, but by the grade level of your word, relative to your age. This way my six-year-old daughter could play “HELLO” and I could play “HELICOPTER” and we would get the same number of points (more or less).

 5 min read

My Top 5 factors for iOS Contracting Success

About a year ago now, I was contemplating leaving my day job and becoming an indie* iOS developer. My last day working in a cube farm was June 30th, 2011. Now, as I pack to leave for WWDC in the morning, it occurs to me how much my life has changed since I made that decision.

When examining my finances in preparation for this trip, I determined that in my first year as an indie I’ve made within $1000 of the amount of money I made in salary my last year as an employee, while spending more time with my family and enjoying my work so much more. Personally, I consider that to be a success.

Looking back, I can think of 5 things that I did that I think contributed most to that success, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share them with you all.

 4 min read