Sareebrol Musings

With lots of developers weighing in on the iPad, I thought I’d add my own2 cents.  Some of what people are calling limitations may actually be good things in the context of the device of how it’ll be used.  Focusing on a single task has gotten harder and harder in a modern desktop environment.  Witness applications like Concentrate for the Mac.  In any case, I think the iPad will somewhat “reboot” the notion of how we use computers.  Subtle on the surface, but actually quite important.

Here at Sareebrol, our initial offerings have been for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Our assumption is that we’ll eventually create versions of some titles for the Mac (as well as Windows in some cases).  When factoring this into our planning schedule, however, it hit me just how important the App Store could become to software distribution.  The whole setup makes it a lot easier on a micro ISV, especially if you’re not a web developer.  Building a good web store isn’t a small effort, and then you have to do your own financial reporting on top of that.  Maybe it is just me, but I’ll trade 30% of the revenue for a scenario where I can just upload an app and be done.  Time is at a premium here and building a web store will cut into that.

I’d like to see Apple extend the app store to the Mac.  I’ve heard various micro ISV owners say that they get a lot of sales from Apple’s download page already.  I think it makes sense and fits with the Apple vision. It might even help with piracy.  I could be wrong, but I think we’re looking at the future of software distribution with the App Store.

After having spent a little time with the iPhone SDK, I think I am starting to like it.  There’s no question that the iPhone can provide a nice user experience, and Apple makes some things very easy for the developer.  On the other hand, a platform as new as this has its share of issues.  Programming a little closer to the hardware kind of takes me back a few years, and it is definitely a fun challenge.  

Now that Creative Juice has been released, it is time to focus on some of the more challenging app ideas we have.  More on that soon…

Things are slowly coming together…website, source control, project management.  Now we just need to write some software.