Building My First iPhone App: Things I Wish I Knew

I am on the cusp of launching my first iPhone/iPod App, Jack the Rabbit, so I thought I would reflect a bit while I wait on Apple to let it loose on the App Store. Let me begin with a bit of a story; I promise that it is relevant.

Back in January, I was having dinner with some colleagues of mine in Florida. Less so me, but we are all nerds and the entire dinner conversation centered on tech.  Most of these guys I hang out with when in Florida are hard-core UNIX geeks that take immense pleasure in their mastery of obscure technologies. The boys around the table are what I call alpha nerds; not  alpha males in the physical sense as they fit many of the stereotypes you might hold when picturing a nerd: balding, chubby with a terrible sense of fashion. They’ve manage to adapt in spite of their physical shortcomings pretty well by developing their minds to acquire power and social status through knowing how to operate technology most people can’t understand. They have a secret vocabulary only few can even keep up with in conversation, so in their element, they rule the roost. You plunk them down outside of that element and they are like fish out of water.

When it comes to their equipment, they choose to run Linux as the only OS on their machines. They see “smart phones” as unhackable evils of necessity and the industrial design of their devices are their lowest priority–its all about power and upgradability. Carrying around a thick 17 inch laptop with a whining fan is a badge of honor because they can bring down the power grid during a reboot if they want. They prefer command line computer programs and know how to avoid a mouse every step of the way. They are antiestablishment types who rail against Microsoft for just being Microsoft and think Apple is for wimps.

During dinner, we started on a discussion on Apple’s SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone. I attempted to get them to appreciate the pure beauty of its simplicity and touted the benefits of Objective-C as a programming language. They weren’t easily convinced and still considered Apple’s technologies as soft, consumer toys. One of the guys at the table offered a ridiculous idea for an iPhone App: a game that made it appear the player was “jerking off.” The only thing funnier than a fart is making fun of a poor chap for pulling it. The idea of the game was actually stupidly brilliant–after all the Sound Grenade was pulling down $150,000.00 per month and all it did was make a nauseating high-pitched sound, but it was a fun gag for some demented individuals. Well, a jerk-off game might have some legs.

I said, “Lets make this stupid game and see what happens.” and they agreed.

So, a few alpha nerd UNIX geeks and myself started to look into what we needed to do. The first few hurdles almost stopped us dead at the dinner table.  You see, we didn’t know everything about the Apple iPhone SDK before we got all riled up about making big money from a jerk-off game. Here is what you actually need to even get started:

A Macintosh. Not an old one, you need an Intel Mac running OS X 10.5 or higher. I was the only one in the group that had a Mac. The idea of having to buy one sent the UNIX boys in a tailspin.  But they managed to find a friend that had one they could use. Buying one would mean admonishment from the really fast, unstable and extremely ugly computer club.

A developer account. That is easy enough.. oh wait… that required an iTunes account  and $99.00 to get in? Hummmm. Fine.  I was able to get one via Sprawl3 for all of us.

An iPhone or iPod Touch for each of us. That seems fairly obvious, but they UNIX crew didn’t like being indoctrinated in the COS (Church of Steve [Jobs]). “You can’t use an iPod on Ubuntu, right?”  Well, we are developing and iPhone App, so drink the cool-aid and like it, damn it! Well, only one actually ended up buying a device. I supplied the others.

Learn Objective-C and the OS X: Should be easy enough. OS X is based on UNIX after all, right?  Well, I think the boys just enjoyed talking smack, because I heard an ear full about how screwy this Mac thing is the whole time. But, they managed to suck it up and get down to business.

We are off and running. I stitched up the requirements–and a buddy of mine did the graphics and animation and the developers figured out how to program in O-C. Now, how do we get this app up on the App Store? This is a bit of a process and one that went smoothly.  It was entirely business, but if I had someone to give me pointers, it would have been a bit less daunting.  So here is what I learned:

When you sign up, you need an active Apple (or iTunes) account. But you can start the application process to be an iPhone developer before you pay any money. Fill out all the information exactly as instructed.

Make sure you have all your paperwork handy.  If you are a company, have a few forms of ID (Articles of Incorporation, Statement of Information, Fictitious Business Name Form, et al) and your EIN (Employer Identification Number). If you are not a business, you need the typical identity information.

Have access to a fax machine. Apple will only take faxed documents for the application. (weird, huh?) You will get notified via email at least two times before you are prompted to pay for your right to build iPhone Apps. The wait time is anywhere between 2 to 4 weeks to be approved to access the iPhone Developer Portal.

Once you are approved, you are allowed into the iPhone Developer Portal. (This is an insider’s resource for you and your development team.) It is not the instant access you might think to upload apps, it just gives you tools you need to generate the credentials you need to install apps on your test iPhone and to give your developers access to those credentials so they can do the same.

So, now you have your App done and you’re ready to upload it and sit back and get rich, right? Not so fast… you have more steps to do. I suggest getting these following steps done as soon as possible. I opted to wait until “we were ready to upload.” Wrong move, trust me.

Now you need to set up an iTunes Connect account. If you plan to sell your app, you will need to have your bank account information and your EIN handy. This takes time to get approval, so do it early.

Sheesh! Well, you’re finally ready to load your program on the App store. You get it up, figure out that you rounded the corners on your icon and have to redo it. You got the certificates and signing of your application worked out for the hundredth time and finally the upload is accepted.  Now, blast off, right? Nope…

Read the fine print.  It takes on average of 7 to 10 business days for Apple to approve your app for the App Store.  So, bake in that time and a little simple app can actually take you over a month to get done and up on the store.

Well, Jack the Rabbit is ready to go, I sit here reloading the iTunes connect window, waiting for my status to change from “In Review” to “Ready to Sell” while I write this.  Its been three days and I hear some people get approved in a single day. I must have the wrong contacts in Cupertino. Oh well.

Lessons learned.. too many to mention, but I have to tell you, the process was fun and definitely less difficult than developing for other mobile platforms. Apple did a good job with setting up the whole iPhone Portal; I assume this portal is pure cash flow for them.

As for the UNIX geeks, they are back to Ubuntu and Redhat and their 20 pound Toshiba Satellites while we all wait to see our adolescent idea make us all rich. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes. Oh, and by the way, Linux users can use an iPod. Mozilla released SongBird, an open source take on iTunes.  It even lets you load music to your iPod. So, there Ubuntu boy:-)~

~DK

P.S. Jack the Rabbit was suppose to come out today. April fools on me, I guess.