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Secret iPad
- dhosek 7y agoI love these behind the scenes accounts of stuff.
- li4ick 7y agoIf you like this kind of behind the scenes, i highly recommend Ken Kocienda's book "Creative Selection" about the development of some parts of the first iPhone.
- lathiat 7y agoIt was a great read!
- i_am_ralpht 7y agoTotally agree; it's really fun to hear how things like autocorrect evolved over the development of the iPhone, and really how the designers and engineers thought about their work at the time. It's also nuts to think that so much of the iPhone software and experience was done inside of 18 months.
- NietTim 7y agoThanks for reminding me, this is the perfect time to finally read that book.
- snazz 7y agoI’m surprised they weren’t told about it at all in advance. Is that standard for Apple nowadays?
- _bxg1 7y agoEven now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! (magical, even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been reduced to nothing but feeds to scroll through, clients for online services, and crappy games. What in the world happened? Edit: Some people are mentioning the quality productivity apps available, particularly on the iPad Pro. I didn't mean to suggest there aren't quality apps, I meant to suggest there aren't interesting apps that turn these devices into wondrous multi-tools. Apps that use the sensors in novel ways to interface with the real world; that make your phone or tablet more of a device and less of a screen. I also want to say I didn't mean to imply that there are no quality games on mobile; it's just hard for them to survive (Apple Arcade is an interesting workaround for this), and also games in general just usually don't have the kind of novelty I'm talking about here.
- xxpor 7y agoThere's no money to be made in the app store, for the most part. OTOH, there's plenty to be made in monthly service revenue (and 30% of it isn't taken by apple in most cases).
- alasdair_ 7y agoThe money thing is more a power law thing. There is DEFINITELY money to be made in the app store (I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it) but it’s almost all going to the winners in a specific category.
- jklm 7y agoCan you share the space your app was in out of curiosity?
- alasdair_ 7y agoPokemon GO, it’s a game.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago>>> I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it uh? Can you indicate what? How many other apps have similar penetration?
- sdrothrock 7y agoHe's mentioned working on Pokemon Go before, so I'd guess that.
- xxpor 7y agoYeah, that's a much better way of putting it.
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- jedberg 7y agoI wasn't there but I heard from the folks at Netflix who were there that they had a very similar experience getting Netflix to work on a pre-release iPad. Secret dark rooms, bulky cases so you couldn't tell the exact dimensions, cagey Apple reps with NDAs, very little time with the device, etc.
- XCSme 7y agoNice read, interesting how you can have apps already be successful before you even release them.
- connordg 7y agoHere’s another post about a similar situation with an app which was on the first iPad’s sent to reporters: https://home.theodoregray.com/blog/2014/7/31/how-the-elements-came-to-be Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22775624
- jbverschoor 7y agoSo I guess the term on the NDA is 10 years?
- nmstoker 7y agoThe author writes well. Slightly off-topic compared to the iPad piece but the story about his time in a glider in the Yorkshire dales is a cracking read: https://thinkfractional.blog/a-day-to-remember/ https://thinkfractional.blog/a-day-to-remember/
- snake42 7y agoThanks for mentioning this. What a fantastic read.
- jes5199 7y agoI still use GuitarTookit! Skeuomorphic design has fallen out of favor but I’m glad they haven’t changed it
- lynguist 7y agoThank you for sharing it. It made for a captivating read.
- rekabis 7y agoNow _that_ was a fun read. Very well written!