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Please don't take this the wrong way. I get inquiries like this every day "I have $1k, build me X." Where X is a moving-target project. The fact is, I don't

Please don't take this the wrong way. I get inquiries like this every day "I have $1k, build me X." Where X is a moving-target project. The fact is, I don't even look at a project where the budget is under $5k. Every project expands in scope as it goes along. Every change, feature request, "misunderstanding" adds to the time to put together an app. To a developer, somebody who's trying to put something together on a shoestring budget is sending off vibes of unreliability, of focusing on cost over quality, is going to nitpick and obsess about every little thing. I realize that's a little unfair, but that's how other developers are going to perceive your request. There's overhead too. I have to do an estimate; I have to research whether we can really use that control, how do we do this so that the numbskull apple reviewers will pass it, have to budget time to wrestle with the gnarly Apple bugs, have to walk you through signing up as a developer, getting the certificates, filling out the forms right, setting up codesign chains, helping you understand app submission... Doing a "hello world" app would probably have 10-15 hours just of overhead, and that's without researching anything complicated like how to do SOAP requests or whatever technology you're using. Also, what I have said, and what others have said: lots of people want iPhone apps, and there are a small number of developers. There's lots of reasons with for this: one is that (at the risk of starting a flame war) ObjC is harder than some more modern languages because there's a lot of crap you have to think about (memory management) that you don't in, say, Python or Ruby. I bet a third of my time is spent worrying about memory. Plus there's a lot of Apple hoops to jump through that forms a pretty high effective barrier for developers. And, when you think about it, all of the good people are working on their own apps. The only way to get anyone's attention is to pay them more money then (they think) they'll make spending equivalent time on their own app. Either that or pick a developer so incompetent they can't write their own apps, and obviously that's not what you want (but you'll find an awful lot of them below the $5k price point). If your budget is that small, do what others have suggested and pick up a mac and some books and do it yourself. It will take you a lot longer than someone who has 5+ apps in the app store, but at least you can do it right within your budget.

mistermann 17y ago
Hi Drew, I read your new post on your blog: http://sealedabstract.com/?p=515 http://sealedabstract.com/?p=515 And I must say, to anyone that is thinking of getting someone to develop an iPhone app, this is a must read!!!! So, regarding that post, I have a couple questions. First, for context, I should mention, I am a developer myself (.Net), I read tons of blogs, I have casually read a fairly large amount of iPhone development related articles (just as they come through places like HN, not because of research). So, a few questions if you don't mind, I have a feeling now that I am quite naive regarding the iPhone: * developing on the iPhone, memory management, the issue with unknown screen size, etc....this gives me the impression that iPhone development is really quite "archaic" low level stuff...ie: nothing is easy or can be taken for granted. I would have thought that despite being a low power platform, no garbage collection, C Language, etc that Apple would have to a great degree abstracted a lot of this away. For example, my take a photo and upload requirement....I would have thought that there would be some sort of a Camera Control that could be embedded in a form, that would then inherit the inherent functionality of the control, and after the photo is taken, you would then have code that decides what to do with it (save, upload, etc) Do you really have to do great amounts of memory related programming to do this kind of task? * The App store - I have read the horror stories and don't doubt your assertions. But for my app, I have no interest in listing it in the app store for general public consumption...if it has to be deployed via the app store, fine, but I don't want to market in any way to general consumers. Is there no 2nd tier of any kind for corporate aplications? I can't see the logic on Apple's part of making life so difficult for corporate developers (but I can see it for the consumer market) * I've read several anecdotal stories of people writing graphics intensive apps/games in their spare time to learn the platform and doing well....this "fact" seems inconsistent with the idea that the simplest app is extremely difficult. Anyways, I would really appreciate if you could address some of these. I'm getting a bit depressed on the notion of developing on this platform. Approximately 100% of my customers are already on blackberry platform, so I wonder if I should just say screw it and go there. I liked the superior UI, screensize, and multimedia capabilities of the iPhone, and I have no doubt that my customers would have any problem laying out the $ to equip field personnel with one, but from what I'm hearing, if you're not doing mass market stuff, its just not worth the bother.
- 17y ago

mistermann 17y ago

Hi Drew, I read your new post on your blog: http://sealedabstract.com/?p=515 http://sealedabstract.com/?p=515 And I must say, to anyone that is thinking of getting someone to develop an iPhone app, this is a must read!!!! So, regarding that post, I have a couple questions. First, for context, I should mention, I am a developer myself (.Net), I read tons of blogs, I have casually read a fairly large amount of iPhone development related articles (just as they come through places like HN, not because of research). So, a few questions if you don't mind, I have a feeling now that I am quite naive regarding the iPhone: * developing on the iPhone, memory management, the issue with unknown screen size, etc....this gives me the impression that iPhone development is really quite "archaic" low level stuff...ie: nothing is easy or can be taken for granted. I would have thought that despite being a low power platform, no garbage collection, C Language, etc that Apple would have to a great degree abstracted a lot of this away. For example, my take a photo and upload requirement....I would have thought that there would be some sort of a Camera Control that could be embedded in a form, that would then inherit the inherent functionality of the control, and after the photo is taken, you would then have code that decides what to do with it (save, upload, etc) Do you really have to do great amounts of memory related programming to do this kind of task? * The App store - I have read the horror stories and don't doubt your assertions. But for my app, I have no interest in listing it in the app store for general public consumption...if it has to be deployed via the app store, fine, but I don't want to market in any way to general consumers. Is there no 2nd tier of any kind for corporate aplications? I can't see the logic on Apple's part of making life so difficult for corporate developers (but I can see it for the consumer market) * I've read several anecdotal stories of people writing graphics intensive apps/games in their spare time to learn the platform and doing well....this "fact" seems inconsistent with the idea that the simplest app is extremely difficult. Anyways, I would really appreciate if you could address some of these. I'm getting a bit depressed on the notion of developing on this platform. Approximately 100% of my customers are already on blackberry platform, so I wonder if I should just say screw it and go there. I liked the superior UI, screensize, and multimedia capabilities of the iPhone, and I have no doubt that my customers would have any problem laying out the $ to equip field personnel with one, but from what I'm hearing, if you're not doing mass market stuff, its just not worth the bother.

17y ago