Thursday, September 4, 2008

Some ideas to build a good iPhone Application

With the release of the iPhone, Apple has also managed to lure their customers to write applications for them by releasing the official Software Development Kit (SDK). Within a month of the launch of the App Store, Apple had already sold $30 million of applications. This is really commendable considering that most of the applications on the iPhone are free.

More and more people are rushing to develop applications for the iPhone. Most of the applications developed are free but some of them do charge a small fee (starting from $0.99). Imagine the potential income that could stem from the opportunity of reaching out to a customer base of millions of people spread all over the world. These are not just iPhone users but also users of the iPod Touch.

The problem is, if applications aren't easy to use, they won't have a future. The phone only has a limited amount of memory. In addition, too many unused applications will only make the phone harder to get around. "Novelty increases people's tolerance for unusable things," says Dave Yeats, a senior research scientist at Perceptive. "As they use it and the novelty wears off, some of these usability problems will start to be more irritating."


Your application must make use of the strengths of the iPhone. Some of the strengths I can think of are the intuitive usability, accelerometer and utilizing shortcuts. These are some of the features which set the iPhone apart from its competitors and as application developers you must keep this in mind while drawing the blueprint for your next application. One of the ways is to study the applications that Apple has developed for the iPhone - even the nitty gritty details which make it such a lovable product. One good idea would be to actually crack open one of Apple's applications to see how it is done.

I personally have embarked on creating an application for the iPhone with my brother which is due to be launched in a couple of weeks' time. It is not too difficult to create an iPhone application as long as you are clear with the concept and are willing to spend some time learning up the SDK. There are a number of books available and one such book from Amazon is listed below. If you want to earn that extra income, why not try your hand at designing an iPhone application?




[Via Forbes]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As far as I know the developers kit is only available on Mac though, right? I'm a PC guy but I'd love to have a try at this. If you want some extra cash, try going to Elance - people are willing to pay big money for iphone app developers there...

Raj said...

Yes, its only available on a Mac. I don't have a Mac but my bro does. So he helps me with the coding. I will be launching my first application in a week or two.