3 ms·

Thanks for your response. Could you give me an idea of the principle missing price-defining parts?

mantas 14y ago
Few things off the top of my head: - How difficult is the appearance? Some people say simple black-on-white is ok, some want advanced dynamic stuff - How much of a design do you want? Custom colors, buttons, icons etc - How much content do you want to pack in it? Some huge relatively simple apps require significant optimisations to work smoothly - Who is responsible for the server side of the app? Some people assume iOS dev will take care of CMS as well - Non-iOS services compatibility. Syncing with on-iOS subscriptions, making sure content looks the same in web app or android or smth. - optional minor features that add up quite a lot of code/time. Feedback, analytics etc.
- gabemart 14y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to help me, those points will make it easier for me to put together a proposal when I start approaching developers. I realize your time is valuable so feel free to leave it at that if you like. Having said that: What kind of CMS backend is typical for newsstand apps? Are there any free or low cost solutions? Are there some standard libraries for covering subscriptions and payments for these kinds of apps, or is it typical for these to be scratch-built per app? Is this typically a major feature in terms of development time? After reading your questions, I'm confident my app will be on the simpler end of things--black on white, static text-only content with some limited hypertext, small content packages--but I recognize this doesn't necessarily mean a simple application. To be honest, all I really need is the ability to deliver simple PDFs, have them display nicely, and charge a subscription for it. From outside of the app development ecosystem, I naively anticipated this would be fairly simple, but as I learn more this seems less and less true.
  - mantas 14y ago
    Making a mockup (preview screens) helps to put all your thoughts together. Your future developer will appreciate that. Paper&pencil is good, mockups by Balsamiq/mockupbird/etc allows to add some interaction. Mockups will allow you to realise what exactly has to happen between the screens. Maybe you'll want more functionality after that, maybe you'll see that parts of it are not necessary. I saw a webapp targeted for mobile apps content delivery on HN some time ago. Google should find it. It may be faster/cheaper to build a custom solution for simple delivery. But extending it may cost a lot and reusing out-of-box solution may be cheaper in the long run. I'm not familiar with NewsStand API so I can't comment more in this front.
    - gabemart 14y ago
      Thanks again for your help.

Few things off the top of my head: - How difficult is the appearance? Some people say simple black-on-white is ok, some want advanced dynamic stuff - How much of a design do you want? Custom colors, buttons, icons etc - How much content do you want to pack in it? Some huge relatively simple apps require significant optimisations to work smoothly - Who is responsible for the server side of the app? Some people assume iOS dev will take care of CMS as well - Non-iOS services compatibility. Syncing with on-iOS subscriptions, making sure content looks the same in web app or android or smth. - optional minor features that add up quite a lot of code/time. Feedback, analytics etc.

gabemart 14y ago
Thanks for taking the time to help me, those points will make it easier for me to put together a proposal when I start approaching developers. I realize your time is valuable so feel free to leave it at that if you like. Having said that: What kind of CMS backend is typical for newsstand apps? Are there any free or low cost solutions? Are there some standard libraries for covering subscriptions and payments for these kinds of apps, or is it typical for these to be scratch-built per app? Is this typically a major feature in terms of development time? After reading your questions, I'm confident my app will be on the simpler end of things--black on white, static text-only content with some limited hypertext, small content packages--but I recognize this doesn't necessarily mean a simple application. To be honest, all I really need is the ability to deliver simple PDFs, have them display nicely, and charge a subscription for it. From outside of the app development ecosystem, I naively anticipated this would be fairly simple, but as I learn more this seems less and less true.
- mantas 14y ago
  Making a mockup (preview screens) helps to put all your thoughts together. Your future developer will appreciate that. Paper&pencil is good, mockups by Balsamiq/mockupbird/etc allows to add some interaction. Mockups will allow you to realise what exactly has to happen between the screens. Maybe you'll want more functionality after that, maybe you'll see that parts of it are not necessary. I saw a webapp targeted for mobile apps content delivery on HN some time ago. Google should find it. It may be faster/cheaper to build a custom solution for simple delivery. But extending it may cost a lot and reusing out-of-box solution may be cheaper in the long run. I'm not familiar with NewsStand API so I can't comment more in this front.
  - gabemart 14y ago
    Thanks again for your help.