6 ms·

Cheapest MBA Program for CS Students Costs $99: It's Called the App Store

52 points by alain94040 17y ago

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
I came ready to hate, but it's actually a good idea presented well and simply in the blog post. The one statement I (slightly) disagree with: "Strike that. You will know that you passed the class when you recoup that investment tenfold. How many other classes you took offer such direct, undisputable grades?" I doubt you'll make $1k, or even $100, but even if you don't you'll still learn a hell of a lot, so just by doing it you pass the class.
- alain94040 17y ago
  I doubt you'll make $1k, or even $100 How do you know if you haven't tried? What does it take to make it to $100? The App Store solves a very nice problem for learning sales: every product is put on an equal footing on the App Store, unlike the wild, wild Internet.
  - cesare 17y ago
    > every product is put on an equal footing on the App Store This is not completely true since what Apple decides to promote in the "what's new", "what's hot", "staff favorites" etc spots makes a huge huge difference.
    - alex_c 17y ago
      Out of curiosity, how would one go about bringing their app to Apple's attention to be potentially listed there? Or is that process, as well, completely opaque?
      - cesare 17y ago
        It isn't possible as far as I know. And it wouldn't make much sense since everybody would like to be featured.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - baddox 17y ago
    And that equal footing is pretty shaky. Simply put, without great luck or some intense marketing, your app is just one of thousands, only to be buried in the App Store after a day or two.
- tienshiao 17y ago
  Maybe I was just lucky (though not that lucky), but it should be pretty easy to make back that $100 even without any marketing. My opinion is that if your app does something slightly useful and basically works, you should be able to make back that $100 easily. Ideally, you'll make more than that especially over the course of a year.
  - MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
    That's true. I'm just a born cynic, and the App Store brings out the worst in me. All the get-rich-quick bullshit I see spewed everywhere burns me up. But yeah, $100 is definitely reasonable, and $1k is not out of the question.
    - cesare 17y ago
      Did you know that a lot of apps on the App Store are the sample projects from Apple themselves with just some images changed (almost all the level apps for instance)? Some didn't even changed the images. And, since the people approving the apps are a completely separated department, they couldn't know and they even featured some of them.
      - ikhare 17y ago
        I don't know about the getting featured part but the apple sample code is provided for developers to use as they wish. I agree though that simply putting up the sample code is not very cool. There are not a huge amount of these as far as I can tell.
Brushfire 17y ago
As a person who is entering a top ranked MBA program in about 3 weeks, I think any MBA would agree that doing something like this is a good idea for the learning. At very worst, you will learn what doesnt work.
- ptn 17y ago
  Pretty valuable info for a "very worst" scenario.
- jonsteinberg 17y ago
  As someone who did the MBA, I think it's an incredibly valuable asset but one that is mispriced and too long in duration. I've gotten more experience building apps on elance and trying to build business cases. The valuable insights can be gained from the books of the best lecturers (in my case Bruce Greenwald http://bit.ly/Vz5SL http://bit.ly/Vz5SL) and direct correspondence. I think the MBA should be 3-6 months long and priced accordingly. And have a larger entrepreneurship component for those that are so inclined.
joshfinnie 17y ago
Unfortunately, I think an apps popularity isn't based off of the things mentioned in this article. Apps like "Pull my finger" and "Mafia Wars" are not popular cause the creator priced them correctly or they were marketed well.
- pxlpshr 17y ago
  all he was saying is that it goes the other way too, especially as the app market populates. iFart was made by Joel Comm, believe me when I say he had a hand in marketing the app to drive the number of sales that it did. http://www.joelcomm.com http://www.joelcomm.com
- alain94040 17y ago
  I'd argue the contrary. For an iPhone app to take off, marketing is first and foremost. Buzz is a key ingredient. There are many ways to create buzz, and that's what makes the platform so relevant to teaching some concepts. At least for me, hands-on experience is a required complement to theoretical learning.
- jamesk2 17y ago
  Knowing a market is pretty intrinsic to marketing. It seems obvious now but iFart was genius in that lots of people found the concept funny enough to pay a dollar for. I know plenty of people who have bought it on a whim at parties.
  - cheapy01 17y ago
    sounds silly but there are great ideas in potty humor. people love to laugh at farts so its a good reason to develop an app. I wouldn't pay a buck for it but college kids and grown men in their 50's and 60's would too. <a href="http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>cheap http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>ch... checks</a> <a href="http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>cheap http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>ch... personal checks</a>
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  But identifying a market correctly is a key business skill. I think apps like the ones you mention are pretty deplorable, but it's a sad fact that many people derive enormous amusement from fart jokes.
Tichy 17y ago
I think there have been similar opportunities at most times? There are always ways to try to make money off small applications. Also, entering the app store costs more: you also need a Mac and at least an iPod.
- alain94040 17y ago
  You can check out the world of micro-ISVs (indie software developers). It's been tough in the last 5 years or so, because everyone has their own web site and are trying to reach a wide consumer audience. Just browse the spectrum of questions on http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz. You are correct about the cost of the Mac and iPhone. But a lot of students I meet already have a MacBook.
- w1ntermute 17y ago
  Also, entering the app store costs more: you also need a Mac and at least an iPod. You can also just dual boot/virtualize OSx86 on a non-Apple PC.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    "just" might be an overstatement: I wouldn't know how to go about it, and I would feel uneasy about using a hack for professional development.
joez 17y ago
The article neglects the networking aspects of getting an MBA. The connections you develop while getting an MBA is often described as the most valuable element. Paying a large sums is what is both right and wrong about an MBA. Networking is important, I am just not sure if it is worth a 200k tuition. Maybe if you are also expanding your network while building your iPhone application to investors and fellow hackers, you might be indeed getting most of an MBA for $99.
- alain94040 17y ago
  You are raising an important point. Let's say half of the value of an MBA is in the teaching of business, which the article covers. The other half is in getting the diploma, the network and the brand recognition. I guess my view is that for the average MBA person, whose goal is to get a high-paying job in a mid-size to Fortune 500 company, the piece of paper and the network are very important - go get the formal MBA. For the 1% of hackers who like to get ahead of everyone else and take the fast lane to life, the App Store is an intriguing approach. More efficient.
codedivine 17y ago
Well for people who do not own a Mac, make that $1100 :( If only Apple made an SDK for Windows ., sigh.
- kqr2 17y ago
  Actually, you can put together a much cheaper system. I put together one for about $400: * Dell Mini 9 on sale (~$200) * Memory and SSD upgrade (~$100) * Retail Mac OS X (~$100) http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-i...
  - cesare 17y ago
    The Dell Mini 9 (which is Atom based) wouldn't be fast enough for the iPhone emulator (which you would use most of the time even if you own an iPhone). Moreover, Xcode on OSX86 kernels is unstable and buggy (first hand experience).
    - pcc 17y ago
      Afaik the iPhone is simulated not emulated, the binary is built for x86. So I doubt it would be too slow -- certainly not slower than the device itself.
      - cesare 17y ago
        Now that I think of it, I've tried it on a machine with an AMD processor which was 2Ghz (don't remember the exact model) but it hadn't SSE3 support. SSE3 instructions are emulated on OSX86 which makes it inherently slower. And on my 2Ghz machine with 2Gb of ram the emulator was in fact slower than the device itself. The Intel Atom has support for SSE3 instructions so it should work better but I believe the stability problems are still there.
        pcc 17y ago
        Intriguing you would find it slower, I guess it is possible that the binaries are built to the baseline Mac architecture requiring some instructions to be emulated via invalid instruction exception on lower instr sets, which may also explain some of your other stability issues. But looking at your other comments I'm surmising your main contention is that one might just as well get a real Mac (eg Mini). I agree fully with this, imho the price difference is hardly worth the time to deal with all the various issues around install, upgrading etc. I've also found the Mac mini to be completely adequate; and it still seems to me that even buying an iMac at $1k+ is still a pittance for a toolchain for this type of platform, considering one also gets a general-purpose computer to boot.
dlevine 17y ago
I just finished my MBA, and decided to start a company out of business school. I can honestly say that I've learned more about starting a company in the past 3 months than I did in the two years before that. The only way to learn entrepreneurship is by doing it.
mindhacker 17y ago
Well, you can do the same thing for lot less by developing a facebook/opensocial application.

52 points by alain94040 17y ago

I came ready to hate, but it's actually a good idea presented well and simply in the blog post. The one statement I (slightly) disagree with: "Strike that. You will know that you passed the class when you recoup that investment tenfold. How many other classes you took offer such direct, undisputable grades?" I doubt you'll make $1k, or even $100, but even if you don't you'll still learn a hell of a lot, so just by doing it you pass the class.

alain94040 17y ago
I doubt you'll make $1k, or even $100 How do you know if you haven't tried? What does it take to make it to $100? The App Store solves a very nice problem for learning sales: every product is put on an equal footing on the App Store, unlike the wild, wild Internet.
- cesare 17y ago
  > every product is put on an equal footing on the App Store This is not completely true since what Apple decides to promote in the "what's new", "what's hot", "staff favorites" etc spots makes a huge huge difference.
  - alex_c 17y ago
    Out of curiosity, how would one go about bringing their app to Apple's attention to be potentially listed there? Or is that process, as well, completely opaque?
    - cesare 17y ago
      It isn't possible as far as I know. And it wouldn't make much sense since everybody would like to be featured.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- baddox 17y ago
  And that equal footing is pretty shaky. Simply put, without great luck or some intense marketing, your app is just one of thousands, only to be buried in the App Store after a day or two.
tienshiao 17y ago
Maybe I was just lucky (though not that lucky), but it should be pretty easy to make back that $100 even without any marketing. My opinion is that if your app does something slightly useful and basically works, you should be able to make back that $100 easily. Ideally, you'll make more than that especially over the course of a year.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  That's true. I'm just a born cynic, and the App Store brings out the worst in me. All the get-rich-quick bullshit I see spewed everywhere burns me up. But yeah, $100 is definitely reasonable, and $1k is not out of the question.
  - cesare 17y ago
    Did you know that a lot of apps on the App Store are the sample projects from Apple themselves with just some images changed (almost all the level apps for instance)? Some didn't even changed the images. And, since the people approving the apps are a completely separated department, they couldn't know and they even featured some of them.
    - ikhare 17y ago
      I don't know about the getting featured part but the apple sample code is provided for developers to use as they wish. I agree though that simply putting up the sample code is not very cool. There are not a huge amount of these as far as I can tell.

Brushfire 17y ago

As a person who is entering a top ranked MBA program in about 3 weeks, I think any MBA would agree that doing something like this is a good idea for the learning. At very worst, you will learn what doesnt work.

ptn 17y ago
Pretty valuable info for a "very worst" scenario.
jonsteinberg 17y ago
As someone who did the MBA, I think it's an incredibly valuable asset but one that is mispriced and too long in duration. I've gotten more experience building apps on elance and trying to build business cases. The valuable insights can be gained from the books of the best lecturers (in my case Bruce Greenwald http://bit.ly/Vz5SL http://bit.ly/Vz5SL) and direct correspondence. I think the MBA should be 3-6 months long and priced accordingly. And have a larger entrepreneurship component for those that are so inclined.

joshfinnie 17y ago

Unfortunately, I think an apps popularity isn't based off of the things mentioned in this article. Apps like "Pull my finger" and "Mafia Wars" are not popular cause the creator priced them correctly or they were marketed well.

pxlpshr 17y ago
all he was saying is that it goes the other way too, especially as the app market populates. iFart was made by Joel Comm, believe me when I say he had a hand in marketing the app to drive the number of sales that it did. http://www.joelcomm.com http://www.joelcomm.com
alain94040 17y ago
I'd argue the contrary. For an iPhone app to take off, marketing is first and foremost. Buzz is a key ingredient. There are many ways to create buzz, and that's what makes the platform so relevant to teaching some concepts. At least for me, hands-on experience is a required complement to theoretical learning.
jamesk2 17y ago
Knowing a market is pretty intrinsic to marketing. It seems obvious now but iFart was genius in that lots of people found the concept funny enough to pay a dollar for. I know plenty of people who have bought it on a whim at parties.
- cheapy01 17y ago
  sounds silly but there are great ideas in potty humor. people love to laugh at farts so its a good reason to develop an app. I wouldn't pay a buck for it but college kids and grown men in their 50's and 60's would too. <a href="http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>cheap http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>ch... checks</a> <a href="http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>cheap http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1764689>ch... personal checks</a>
anigbrowl 17y ago
But identifying a market correctly is a key business skill. I think apps like the ones you mention are pretty deplorable, but it's a sad fact that many people derive enormous amusement from fart jokes.

Tichy 17y ago

I think there have been similar opportunities at most times? There are always ways to try to make money off small applications. Also, entering the app store costs more: you also need a Mac and at least an iPod.

alain94040 17y ago
You can check out the world of micro-ISVs (indie software developers). It's been tough in the last 5 years or so, because everyone has their own web site and are trying to reach a wide consumer audience. Just browse the spectrum of questions on http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz. You are correct about the cost of the Mac and iPhone. But a lot of students I meet already have a MacBook.
w1ntermute 17y ago
Also, entering the app store costs more: you also need a Mac and at least an iPod. You can also just dual boot/virtualize OSx86 on a non-Apple PC.
- Tichy 17y ago
  "just" might be an overstatement: I wouldn't know how to go about it, and I would feel uneasy about using a hack for professional development.

joez 17y ago

The article neglects the networking aspects of getting an MBA. The connections you develop while getting an MBA is often described as the most valuable element. Paying a large sums is what is both right and wrong about an MBA. Networking is important, I am just not sure if it is worth a 200k tuition. Maybe if you are also expanding your network while building your iPhone application to investors and fellow hackers, you might be indeed getting most of an MBA for $99.

alain94040 17y ago
You are raising an important point. Let's say half of the value of an MBA is in the teaching of business, which the article covers. The other half is in getting the diploma, the network and the brand recognition. I guess my view is that for the average MBA person, whose goal is to get a high-paying job in a mid-size to Fortune 500 company, the piece of paper and the network are very important - go get the formal MBA. For the 1% of hackers who like to get ahead of everyone else and take the fast lane to life, the App Store is an intriguing approach. More efficient.

codedivine 17y ago

Well for people who do not own a Mac, make that $1100 :( If only Apple made an SDK for Windows ., sigh.

kqr2 17y ago
Actually, you can put together a much cheaper system. I put together one for about $400: * Dell Mini 9 on sale (~$200) * Memory and SSD upgrade (~$100) * Retail Mac OS X (~$100) http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-into-the-ultimate-os-x-netbook http://gizmodo.com/5156903/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-9-i...
- cesare 17y ago
  The Dell Mini 9 (which is Atom based) wouldn't be fast enough for the iPhone emulator (which you would use most of the time even if you own an iPhone). Moreover, Xcode on OSX86 kernels is unstable and buggy (first hand experience).
  - pcc 17y ago
    Afaik the iPhone is simulated not emulated, the binary is built for x86. So I doubt it would be too slow -- certainly not slower than the device itself.
    - cesare 17y ago
      Now that I think of it, I've tried it on a machine with an AMD processor which was 2Ghz (don't remember the exact model) but it hadn't SSE3 support. SSE3 instructions are emulated on OSX86 which makes it inherently slower. And on my 2Ghz machine with 2Gb of ram the emulator was in fact slower than the device itself. The Intel Atom has support for SSE3 instructions so it should work better but I believe the stability problems are still there.
      - pcc 17y ago
        Intriguing you would find it slower, I guess it is possible that the binaries are built to the baseline Mac architecture requiring some instructions to be emulated via invalid instruction exception on lower instr sets, which may also explain some of your other stability issues. But looking at your other comments I'm surmising your main contention is that one might just as well get a real Mac (eg Mini). I agree fully with this, imho the price difference is hardly worth the time to deal with all the various issues around install, upgrading etc. I've also found the Mac mini to be completely adequate; and it still seems to me that even buying an iMac at $1k+ is still a pittance for a toolchain for this type of platform, considering one also gets a general-purpose computer to boot.

dlevine 17y ago

I just finished my MBA, and decided to start a company out of business school. I can honestly say that I've learned more about starting a company in the past 3 months than I did in the two years before that. The only way to learn entrepreneurship is by doing it.

mindhacker 17y ago

Well, you can do the same thing for lot less by developing a facebook/opensocial application.