Show HN: Million Dollar App – Buy pixels on your iPhone, with a dark, sad twist
milliondollarapp.com
milliondollarapp.com
Whether it's novelty, morbid curiosity, or some mixture of the two, it's been well demonstrated that people will look at things if there's something newsworthy and scarce about them. The million dollar homepage certainly got people to visit the site.
No one's (successfully) tried to get it in an app format, and it wasn't easy getting it to pass Apple's requirements.
Apple is very up-front about not wanting just a webpage in the form of an app. Since the original homepage was just that, the app required use of features that could only come from the mobile device, which include in this app, camera and tilt/motion sensors, as a core part of the experience.
The app, like many, has to use Apple's in-app purchases (IAP) to allow pixels to be sold. You can buy pixels on the website or the app, but the app can't link to any path that allows a website-based purchase that skips Apple's 30% commission.
And of course, even though the content is moderated before it makes it on, I had to provide methods to flag and block individual pixels, in the event someone sneaks in an offensive image. So that's in there too.
Even all the above was still coming up short of their "this doesn't do enough" feeling, so an entire suite of built-in games is included, and it will expand as the pixel lineup expands. There are two so far. They're simple, but they use the graphics as a tileset.