iOS7 marks the best time to get started in app development | Hacker News Reader

iOS7 marks the best time to get started in app development

codefellows.org

16 pointsmikeyanderson14 comments

I would assert this is the worst time in history to get started in app development. I have been building apps since 2008, and things have been going downhill for indie developers. Back in 2008, many large companies didn't understand the space, and indie devs were able to carve out very lucrative niches. Now, with the abundance of simple toolsets, tutorials and classes, there is an app for seemingly everything. Worse still is the price for apps has been pushed down to effectively $0. Without creative marketing or a sizable marketing budget, creating an app in today's market is brutally challenging. Sure, you can hack up a quick utility now, but the chance it pays your rent for a month is approaching zero, quickly.

If you're experienced I'll bet you could get a great job at a dozen companies.

Worth noting that Letterpress is not implemented in UIKit, it's pure OpenGL (http://www.imore.com/loren-brichter-talks-opengl-tweetie-let...).

Will this make easier to make games like Letterpress?

It sounds like UIKit Dynamics will make things like flicking tiles around a lot easier to implement, without creating a physics engine from scratch... And UIKit is generally more friendly to flat designs... And the whole game engine thing is built in now.

But the real value of the best games comes from game-play dynamics, and not just how well the app simulates physics. Hopefully these changes in iOS will allow game-builders to focus more on the things that really matter, rather than redoing the work every game needs to do.

Who on earth puts the body text in 25px?!?!

I've been noticing a lot of blog fonts getting annoyingly bigger, where I keep having to zoom-out a couple of times in my browser for good legibility, but this is just flat-out INSANE.

I find it refreshing to have text styled for readability. Narrow columns with large fonts really help me sit back a little and enjoy the read.

What size monitor do you have? I've written about big type on blogs here: http://mikeyanderson.com/optimal_characters_per_line

Here's a data point for you:

For me, the text on that article felt way too big when viewed in a full screen browser on a 1280x800 display. Frankly, it's about as bad as if the font-size were 12px or 13px.

Resizing the browser window to only take half of the screen width makes it better on my eyes (it appears to be 17px). Still, after that, I felt the need to go to developer console and change line-height to 1.4.

I chuckled a bit when, after these adjustments, I arrived at the sentence:

> The fact you’ve read to this paragraph is proof that there is something to my argument.

I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, and lying on a couch, so my viewing distance may be a bit closer than if I were sitting on a desk. I'm 33 years old, with relatively ok eyesight (no glasses), and totally buy your other arguments (I'm a fan of Bringhurst myself).

It's just that anything more than 18px on a laptop display just feels too big.

Any other reasons you can add?

i think there might be a small case for the more aesthetically inclined people being in the market for replacement apps that are more in-line with the new IOS design language.

this MIGHT lead to opportunities for a very well written new app in a currently well populated niche to gain an advantage over existing entrants. Provided the competitors don't release a newer re-designed version post-haste.

probably true on the development side. but on the business side, there are just so many apps popping out left and right for every niche market you can think of.

...which means everyone agrees it's a good time to be making apps?

iOS 7 SDK stuff is still under developer preview NDA, shouldn't be discussed in the light i think....

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