Hey hey Tanner. Long time no talk. I've seen some of the stuff you've been putting out lately, great stuff.
Apple has definitely made great tools in helping newbies learn. There's still room to improve, and iOS 8 tools are a huge help.
I agree with you. The iOS market is maturing. It's no longer a gold-rush of simple one-off apps. The quality needs to be there. So whether that means putting in years as an indie, or working in teams to build high-quality stuff faster, that's what it's going to require to be successful now.
Of course. No one's going to learn a thing by just showing up and listening to an instructor. Whether that's an iOS Dev Bootcamp or Physiology.
I put in hundreds of hours beyond regular class time. And yes, definitely working through struggles on StackOverflow and online tutorials.
I chose this because, for me, it's a lot easier to sit back and watch TV or play around without the financial, time, and personal commitment of signing up for a class. I had somewhere to be. My wife and kids knew I had somewhere to be. So it was a full family commitment that made it work.
Great review of Trevor's second year in the App Store.
>Last year I wrote a post about the first year but here's a quick summary since you're busy: I made a Spanish Bible app for $500. It did $1,500 in revenue the first month and has grown ever since.
Trevor's history is pretty well documented here on HN. This is another great segment for those looking at how a one-man-shop can put together a great business on the App Store, even without coding experience.
We decided that Wordpress sucked for us. Then we stepped into static blogging with Pelican. Then we realized that static blogging kinda sucks too. Setting it up and the dearth of themes are rough.
Can you give us some feedback? We're still working on this together, and would love to hear what you guys think.
I know people who run galleries and such things, who find Wordpress too complicated. Markdown is great because they can do rich formatting without needing to learn HTML, but with more control that WYSIWYG. Maybe you want to post a tutorial to add a CNAME to Dropbox. I don't think they really care that the urls would look like /u/xyz/file.html|jpg. What's missing is a markdown editor and light CMS, perhaps.
Great idea and presentation. A few immediate questions: What are the limits of what I can do with this? Can I add commenting, tags or search? How easy is it to edit the pages (what syntax do I use)? And why do I need to provide a host? Paying a little extra for included hosting seems a no brainer.
This is the kind of thing I think NearlyFreeSpeech.net[1] would be well suited for.
They appear to have tuned their servers and business model for static web sites - if they don't serve any of your files, you pay nothing. Otherwise, you pay only for what you use.
Disclaimer: I've never used their services, but I've checked them out from time to time.
>Apple didn’t release something out of style to which mindless sheep are flocking because it’s new. Apple released something in-style to which millions are flocking because it’s attractive.
I'm sure there are plenty in each camp. There are people flocking towards it because it's now. And there are people buying it because it's attractive.
Sometimes new is attractive. I know at least 3 people on my own Family Plan are getting silver or gold because they are 'tired of black'. No big deal.
I think a lot of people get too worked up over other people's personal opinions. And in the end, I'm not sure that anyone will really care about the color (gold, black, or whatever) in 2 weeks.
I think that there is a 'self definition' (whether right or wrong) that takes place with a device decision. When people choose an iPhone or Android phone, they start to identify with that brand. The same can be said of color.
Back in 2007 I remember listening to a student and his father shopping for a Mac. He refused to buy the lower cost white one because it was girly. He had to get the top of the MacBooks black model.
I think the self definition aspect of the purchase lasts much longer than a couple weeks.
That's a fair point. I remember buying 'up' on a road bike for the color I preferred. So you're right there.
Maybe I think it lasts a shorter time because I was almost entirely apathetic towards which color I got this time around. I ended up with black (space grey) because that's what the store had when I got there.
Just like my bright white Sony Ericsson that I purchased 6-7 years ago, I'm looking to buy the gold iPhone mostly because it is highly visible in low-light situations.
Waking up, going to sleep, stumbling around in the dark, the gold phone will be a lot easier to locate than my current black one.
Apple has definitely made great tools in helping newbies learn. There's still room to improve, and iOS 8 tools are a huge help.
I agree with you. The iOS market is maturing. It's no longer a gold-rush of simple one-off apps. The quality needs to be there. So whether that means putting in years as an indie, or working in teams to build high-quality stuff faster, that's what it's going to require to be successful now.