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Show HN: My weekend project on the Mac App Store

itunes.apple.com

39 pointsrgbrgb27 comments

I made this after a night of writing music with perl scripts using the "say" command in OSX's terminal. The review process was surprisingly short, I submitted on Sunday!

Design is by my girlfriend, Monica Kogler (http://campsh.com/monica#) with some of the robots by my sister, Emi Sugihara (http://baggubag.com/).

projects made w/ love are the best

and w/ cute text-to-speech robots

Any thoughts / recommendations on pushing small projects to app store?

I have a few I was debating pushing but I don't know if the time/learning cost is worth it for fun projects vs a download link on a webpage

In my opinion, it isn't too hard to do if it's already written in obj-c with xcode. Pushing to the app store is actually quite a good motivator to make a decent icon and user interface.

To be honest though, I've only app stored one other project (http://kin.am/grid) and it's an iPhone app so I have no idea whether it pays off (Speaker was just published today). Grid (the iPhone app) doesn't make much per month but it's pretty passive income and nice to have a little extra beer money. After 1.5 years on the store, it has definitely payed decently for the time it took me to make. Moreover, the experience/resume boost it gives has been invaluable - developers who have pushed apps are in hot demand.

EDIT: I guess it being worth your time depends on how much you make. I'm a student, so taking time away from paying gigs isn't such a big deal for me yet.

I tried to push up one of my apps. It passes all validation and stuff and then uploads to Apple. Then Apple sends me an email telling me it was signed wrong. I follow instructions, repeat.

They're OK at support, giving me a lot of stuff to do building screenshots and junk, but it's slowed me down quite a bit. I'd still like to get my app up, though. It's very useful to me. :)

What's the app? Got a link?

Well, no. I should try to actually get it up there, though. My current userbase likes it, but it'd be fun to see what the store would do.

Whoa, your sister created Baggu? Crazy. I love their bags.

My sister says... "SUPER SMILEY FACE!"

The screenshot is nice, and I'm sure the program will make for some girlfriend-teasing fun. But that's not why I'm buying it. You, sir, are getting my $2.99 specifically for the Alvin Lucier quote.

That, and the more I think about it, the more I'm looking forward to testing out some of Steve Reich's vocal phases with this thing. But yes, Lucier is a hero.

Thanks mister, thanks, thanks. If you do any reich-esque recordings I'd LOVE to hear them!

I hope the private speech synth API on the iOS gets made public. I'm using it in my thesis project, but it would be great for apps.

Learn how to use it here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2010/02/iphone-voiceserv...

Fun little program, dude! Unfortunately I think supporting proprietary software is immoral and impedes the democratising force of computer technology.

Naaaw just kidding bro- fun creative project from a guy I know has great intentions.

But also I'll sabotage you until it's open sourced. Yes that's a threat.

The code minus design is all here: https://github.com/ptrsghr/SayBeat

Would this app be worth $2.99 if it was written for Linux or PC? Reason for asking, I can't compile and test software on Mac but have a lot of apps personal use type stuff. Being without a job selling this type of thing would make for great supplemental income. Any tips?

Where would you sell it? Personally, without some kind of app store, I probably wouldn't have bothered with redoing the design and making an icon and all that.

If there's some kind of app store or if you're willing to build your own storefront, I say go for it (but what do I know?). If you don't have a job anyway, what do you have to lose?

The "can't compile/test on Mac" issue can be solved with an OSX virtual machine if you have a good pc and don't want to spend money for a real mac.

"terminal-core" lol. now thats how you write a great copy. that just makes me envious. good work

Playing around with phrases that have overlapping wavelengths is great in this thing.

Yes! Phasing to the max!

I'll post back tomorrow with 1st day sales numbers.

Sold 15 which was surprisingly enough to get us to the top 10 in Music (#10).

Android version when?

Probably after the iOS version.

ya cool funfunfun

agreed!

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