Short Thoughts

Restless in Rhode Island

There is no emotion more frustrating than restlessness. It affects so profoundly, in fact, that I’m not sure I’d even call it an emotion — it’s more of a condition, really. Whether it afflicts your entire consciousness, or just a body part or two, it’s not pleasant, and alleviating its symptoms is usually a top priority.

I’ve been awfully restless lately. Fair warning: this is a highly self-indulgent post. Read on at your own risk. (more…)

App Power: The First Week

Note: this article is part of a series of articles on my real-world App Store experiment: App Power: An Experiment, App Power: The Submission, and App Power: The Reveal.

I woke up this morning to find an email from appFigures containing yesterday’s sales reports and figures; with that, I officially have data for my first full week of Bowtie for iPhone sales. And the numbers were… somewhat depressing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not really complaining: I don’t do this for the money, I do it because I love it. I had, however, hoped to use my App Store profits to visit a friend in Europe. While I may eventually earn the money to do that from the sales of my app, I’m fairly certain it won’t be in time (she’ll only be there for about three more months). Either way, it looks like there’s a little more to succeeding on the App Store than meets the eye. (more…)

App Power: The Reveal

Note: this article is part of a series of articles on my real-world App Store experiment. The first one was App Power: An Experiment, and the second was App Power: The Submission.

Just moments ago, I revealed to the world — at long last — just what this super-secret iPhone app I’ve been developing is. What is it, you ask? Why, it’s Bowtie for iPhone, of course! And it’s coming out in tandem with the final release of Bowtie 1.0 this Saturday.

The app, which will be available on the App Store for just 99¢, will allow users of Bowtie to control the iPod application on their iPhone or iPod touch (or iPad ) from their desktop. Windows user? We’re releasing an app called Bowtie Remote for Windows, which gives you the same level of control (without the themes).

Once the app goes live, all that’s left to do is wait. I’ll post a summary article here as soon as I have some sales numbers. ’til next time!

The No-Nil Trap

Just ran into an interesting issue while programming: my app decided it would randomly start crashing. Love when that happens. As it turns out, the cause had to do with a very nuanced characteristic of C (and Objective-C). I call it (perhaps incorrectly, but it works for me): the No-Nil Trap. (more…)