What the iPad Really Means to Developers | Hacker News Reader

What the iPad Really Means to Developers

pragprog.com

82 pointsivey32 comments

You don't need a world-class art department to make something people will buy -- you need a clean, usable interface, an original idea that fills a need, and well written code. If you're a one-person shop, you're writing niche applications, anyway. You're not competing directly with Apple, and you most likely don't need any fancy photoshop skills, just the basics... if you're writing an app that requires stunning graphics, then you're either over your head in terms of your project's goals and you need to expand your team to 1+N, or you're already proficient.

edit - and it should go without saying, BUT: don't build another twitter app. Please.

One more edit: this is a good rebuttal to the "awesome design is necessary!!!" school of thought http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/21/iphone-apps-desig...

Overdesign is not good, either.

I live in perpetual design envy of most Web 2.0 apps and Mac shareware shops, but my very... unspectacular design has not succeeded in totally dooming me yet. I am agnostic on the truth of this, but I keep hearing everybody and their dog saying that the iPad is made for Real People. I sell to Real People. You don't need to win design awards to sell to Real People.

I don't buy it.

I already have way too many ideas for apps which aren't lush-graphics-heavy that are still very attractive and functional, as well as breaking new ground.

Besides, the graphics work doesn't have to be full-time on someone's part. Yes, good graphics work is expensive, but it's generally only part-time, compared to the developer's time, if the app is more than eye candy.

So there's plenty of room for the indie.

On the other hand, the $30 bar Apple has set for pro apps like iWork is pretty low ($10 each). I'm hoping that serious indie apps will be able to sell in the $10-15-25 range. But only time will tell.

At least we know it'll be a different equation from the iPhone market.

And, I think PG is fundamentally right: only people who spend time working on the iPad are going to spot the emerging opportunities. It's really a new platform where the possibilities are very hazy, if promising.

It's a good way to monetize a website.

Charging you $0.1 to read HN or the NYT or the BBC is hard, selling you a $10 app to read the site on your iWhatever is easier. The app is a trivial wrapper around an xml feed, it's a slightly better user experience than the browser - and I get $10

I don't know if this analogy is safe to draw, but compare the Mac price of iWork ($80) to Mac Office Home ($150). Both are quite successful. Maybe pro apps will be able to take off at $20 or more on the iPad.

On one hand, it is much less than the corresponding PC software titles, but at the same time many of the variable costs (especially testing & support) are reduced due to the cohesiveness of the platform.

I think that if I can learn to make nice graphics, anybody can. It's largely just a few Photoshop filters and techniques. My wife is a graphic design major and she is impressed by my UI graphics, even though I could never hope to draw a simple picture of some natural object.

Code still matters a lot when it comes to UIs, though. Motion and interactivity are just as important as the static images found in attractive UIs. For instance, Convert's magnifying-glass effect and Tweetie 2's (now widespread) pull-to-refresh idiom are neat tricks not possible with Photoshop skills alone.

Do you have any tips or tutorials that you used to become competent in this?

This was on HN a while back, and I thought it was a good summary. It doesn't hold your hand on how to actually achieve the effects but it gets you started:

http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user-...

Great. Thanks!

Over the past year, I've been studying up on drawing, typography and other graphic design stuff. If not to get to proficiency myself, at least to get conversant in the topics so I can properly communicate with people I hire or work with. This will definitely help. Thanks again!

How long did it take you to learn it? Did your wife help you at all?

Probably it can be learned - the question is, is it time effective?

Photoshop is to design as a text editor is to coding.

That's the tool you use to get it done, but it's says nothing about the talent you need to do a good job.

I don't agree that a talented indie developer can't build an immersive, beautiful iPad app. The problem is that it's not worth the risk of investing the time to build it only to get rejected by Apple. Mac apps do not have this problem.

Maybe the only way to mitigate the risk of the capricious app store gatekeepers is to build enough relationships with Apple to bypass them (like ngmoco seems to do). Maybe that requires being a big(ger) company.

Rejections (by which I mean - "we are not putting this on our store") are an imaginary issue. They are so few and far between that you'd be hard pressed to find a developer who had had an app rejected. Also in my experience the "app store gatekeepers" have been far from capricious and in fact rather sensible. And unlike less than a year ago, now Apple are proactive in communicating with developers - detailed information what issues they've found (including things like screenshots and even suggestions how the issue can be solved), follow up ID, contact information (including phone) of a person that can answer any further questions you might have, etc.

In short, if you are reasonable (e.g. not trying to sneak in a porn app or an app that obviously violates Apple's terms) you are practically guaranteed that you'll get your app in the store. And if you are not reasonable being big or close to Apple will likely not help you much.

(By the way, I cannot come up with a single case in which ngmoco might seem to have bypassed the approval process. Do they have a tits app in the store or something?)

After 6 months of suggestions to one of my clients, they retroactively decided to flat out forbid 2 party phone call recording apps from the store.

He was flat out rejected. After being suggested to put in-app purchasing in his app.

I'd say "App store reviewers are tired, cranky, varied from one another, pissed off when people dump crap on them, and unwilling to go out on a limb when in doubt", and that accounts for 90% of all the rejections and behavior we see from them.

Phone call recording gets into dicey legal ground. I'm aware that 2 party covers most of the situations but it's mess they likely don't want to deal with.

So preventing the sell of a useful tool that might or might not be used legally while under the control of someone who is informed of the distinction and able to take that responsibility themselves.... how paternal of them.

And in what capacity is the app store legally responsibly for carrying apps that allow recording?

Phone call recording with notification is very legal. We could very easily call the second party on the call and play a message before combining the calls that clearly points out the call is being recorded

Either way, they're not liable in the slightest for it.

All of that aside, it doesn't really matter. If you don't want to get into a call recording app, you say that at the beginning when first shown a call recording app. After you've suggested a company do 10k worth of development, then make a policy rejection on something the app has done since day one, you've screwed up.

I hardly see it as a rarity. The majority of app developers I know (myself included) have had apps rejected. It isn't just porn these days - it is language that apple views as derogatory, things that apple views as solicitation, etc.

I do commercial iPhone (and now iPad) development for a living.

You can make immersive beautiful apps. But you have to go about it the right way.

Apple only approves working code. This means you have to get iterative in the correct way to 1> Lessen your chance of late rejection and 2> Ensure you have approval the entire way.

If you're making an app, make a simple version of it first. Submit it for approval, after approval or rejection, fix those problems it has, then resubmit. Iterate this. Only when you've got a pretty much done project, buy the art, add it in, then resubmit.

There are apple development liaisons who you can develop a relationship with, but honestly, they'll call you even if you don't have one when they think your app is in the "sweet spot" of "rejected by approvable with just a little tweak". The relationship is pretty much only useful to "get" their mindset faster, it doesn't really get more things approved.

Is there a risk they'll end up rejecting you wholesale? Yup. But it's pretty reasonable to get a feel for what areas are verboten, and which areas are largely in the clear. Stay in the latter, and you're usually far far from fearing rejection.

> Oh, there will be plenty of opportunities for iPad developers, in contracting, vertical markets, and corporate development.

The majority of iPhone developers I've personally met make their money from writing and maintaining apps for other companies. The company just needs to go through the iPhone developer application process and pay the annual $99 fee - and no one will ever know (win-win). Yes, they do have their own personal apps and some have done quite well.

Oh, and most of the developers I've met have spouses with a relatively stable full-time job (health insurance and financial risk mitigator)

Apple has a world-class art department to produce this stuff. The indie developer in the garage does not.

That's why it's stupid to try to compete with Apple for things where this matters. Much better to attack niche markets that aren't worth pursuing to players that have the resources to make lavish graphics.

The great thing about the Apple platform over the web is you can get away with creating fewer graphic resources. You can make a nice looking app using native controls. I'm hoping that Cappuccino and Aristo do the same for web apps.

Just FYI, next time someone tells you the thick client is dead, hopefully you'll have the good sense to call them a fool on the spot rather than waiting five years for their foolishness to be proven.

In reply to the "return of the thick client", I disagree with the notion that desktop apps are going to beat web apps. The reason why the original web API failed is because the hardware was too poor and WebKit was too immature. This is rapidly changing though.

I disagree... it's not about desktop vs. web, but rather native code vs. a teetering tower of questionably repurposed abstractions. No matter how fast WebKit becomes, it will still be a browser and will only offer a limited subset of what the hardware can really do. JIT compiling JavaScript engines and the various media specs in HTML 5 help, but there's still such a gulf.

http://www.w3.org/2009/05/DeviceAPICharter

Google said they will implement all that into WebKit for ChromeOS.

I do have to say, I was surprised how easy it was to make passable buttons once I bought fireworks (an Adobe PNG tool ostensibly geared towards web mockups). [I'm a professional iPhone/iPad/Android developer.

I wonder if Flash CS5 will extend the iPhone app compilation to iPads as well? Because all the stuff that he's saying is hard for developers to do (nice visual effects and animations) is dead easy in Flash.

Design on mobile platforms is more important than everyday little webapps. There are many mobile apps I'd like to make, but the time of getting it to look fancy is such an unknown that there's an implementation paralysis right from the start.

Anybody can write an article, but few people can can produce a full graphically designed issue of GQ alone.

Check out the the showcase of mobile apps at http://wellplacedpixels.com/ then honestly ask yourself if you can produce both the application and graphic design of that quality by yourself.

As the song goes: You got to work to feed the soul / But I can't do this all on my own / No, I know, I'm no Superman

Yet another device to support?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com