
4 apps, one weekend - mobitar
http://bitar.io/4-apps-one-weekend/
======
okal
This is really inspiring, man. Great work, and good luck. I might do one of
these solo hackathons myself, given all the stuff I have floating in my head
that never gets to see the light of day. Sort of reminds me of
[http://hackalone.org](http://hackalone.org) \- a "hackathon for introverts",
which was shared on HN a while back. I normally just end up buying domain
names and sitting on them, until I get a notification a year later reminding
me of my failure :-) I have a tonne of ideas I get excited about every now and
then, some of which I think are good, all (or most of) the knowledge and tools
I need to implement them, no pressing financial constraints, and a decent
amount of free time. Yet I rarely start any of them, and the ones I _do_ start
I do _not_ finish. It's frustrating trying to understand this complete lack of
motivation.

PS: I'm a little bothered by how you used "transgendered" in reference to UI
design. Some people might find it insulting.

~~~
mobitar
Haha same with me man. My cycle is 1. come up with an idea 2. buy a domain for
said idea 3. repeat step 1

It wasn't until very recently that I made the very obvious discovery of "the
only way I'll ever make it is to make it". I discovered that entrepreneurship
is not about coming up with ideas, it's about bringing those ideas to life. I
wrote about this epiphany here: [http://bitar.io/the-
entrepreneur/](http://bitar.io/the-entrepreneur/)

PS: I'll change that word :)

~~~
okal
Loved the second article too. A bit like the saying "Writers write." I keep
looking for that point when I get lost in my work, a state of flow, and I
abandon anything that doesn't take me there. Maybe it's not _just_ about
inspiration, or getting into the zone, but just doing it.

Great blog you've got there. Why, oh why, did all you cool kids stop using
RSS? :-)

~~~
mobitar
Good point. Here's an RSS feed:
[http://feeds.feedburner.com/bitar/feed](http://feeds.feedburner.com/bitar/feed)

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k-mcgrady
I like the thinking behind routines. Each of these apps seems to solve a
problem that you had but that quite a lot of other people also likely had.

I'd love to see a follow up showing how these apps did for you.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Was going to say the same thing, basically I do a variant of this when
camping, adding to the list of things I missed or forgot, so that by the time
I've done the first few camping trips of the season I've refreshed my memory
of all the things I need. I built a list in Trello which I've been adding too
but it would be handy to have a non-online way to note something which got
added back to the routine once I was in connection range again.

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brianbreslin
I like the idea of recurring task lists, i.e. a group of tasks that belong to
a template/type of event. We do this for event planning in asana, but do it
manually.

~~~
gala8y
This is a very powerful idea - just unearthed an old post for you:
[http://evhead.com/2008/09/processizer.html](http://evhead.com/2008/09/processizer.html)

~~~
brianbreslin
I wonder if anyone took that to heart and built it? Maybe ev would fund it?

Edit: guess sales force already did
[http://help.do.com/customer/portal/articles/490143-how-
do-i-...](http://help.do.com/customer/portal/articles/490143-how-do-i-set-up-
a-recurring-task-)

And asana [http://blog.asana.com/2012/01/create-repeating-tasks-for-
you...](http://blog.asana.com/2012/01/create-repeating-tasks-for-your-
recurring-to-dos/)

Though neither is a task template

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Aqueous
I really like the "Do Something" app - I think that one will do well. Good
job! I'm aspiring to this level of productivity.

~~~
mobitar
Ha thanks! Don't be fooled to think that I'm at all productive. I just got
tired of wishing.

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rafeed
Congrats on shipping your apps! That's great.

Not sure if it's just me, but the "Do Something" app icon [1] looks a bit too
heavily inspired by the Apple Trailers app icon [2], with gloss removed for
iOS 7 (on iOS 7 itself there is no gloss although it's there in the iTunes
link), no film roll in the middle, rotated 45º, and used round rects on the
corners of the ticket.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/do-something-find-things-
to/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/do-something-find-things-
to/id761825917?mt=8)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-movie-
trailers/id4719...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itunes-movie-
trailers/id471966214?mt=8)

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applecore
$25 a day is $600 a month.

Not exactly "measly" for mostly passive income.

~~~
mobitar
Not measly at all. Bought me Chipotle every day. But in the startup world
where we hear daily about multimillion dollar deals, $25 is measly.

~~~
evan_
Looks like your apps are so much more useful than a lot of the multi-million
dollar apps that get sold.

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hrabago
Congrats man. Write and ship an app in one weekend is like the goal I could
never reach. The closest I came is a long weekend, some hours the next week,
and the weekend after that. The other time I got close was two full weeks.

It takes me too much time to get the UI (and they're never works of art
anyway), screenshots, app store description, not to mention the final polish.

~~~
xauronx
I was able to finish a "game" in a single night. Search the app store for "Pee
in the Dark" and you'll see the final result. I ended up spending a second
night releasing an update a couple weeks later for updated icon and game
center.

It's a pretty terrible game but I guess you just have to pick something that
you think is a "terrible idea" and just get it done. I'm sort of ashamed of my
work, but to just get something completed feels good. Not everything you do is
going to be on your headstone :)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
You'd be surprised; you don't get to write your own headstone :)

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vayarajesh
I always get similar inspiration to do something.. but somehow it goes away
due to lack of good environment to work in.. and lot of distractions around
me..

How do you tackle distractions which potentially can fade out the inspiration
to create something awesome.

~~~
mobitar
When you realize you really have no choice but to get something done, you
won't let anything get in the way.

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jemeshsu
This routine app developed by someone I know is better in my opinion:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/routines/id370297791?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/routines/id370297791?mt=8)

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franl
"When the motivation came, I decided to squeeze every last bit of it before it
vanished again." Amen to this. I think this is a critical attribute of super
productive people. Good work, and thanks for the great reminders!

~~~
mobitar
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

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dannylandau
Agreed with all positive comments -- very inspiring and impressive! I'm
planning to download Do Something & Great Words. Do you mind sharing how much
time each of the apps required proportionally?

And what API do you use for Word app?

~~~
mobitar
Thanks! Do Something took the longest of all of them since that had custom UI.
But the other 3 I did something funny. I started with Note 22, and after I
finished that, I duplicated the entire Xcode project and refactored it into
Routines. It's a lot of the same code. I then duplicated that entire project
and refactored into Great Words. Although the main features are different, the
underlying architecture is very similar, so I was able to reuse a lot of
components from all the apps.

~~~
icpmacdo
You going to release the source code for them :) ?

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mattquiros
How much time did you spend testing these apps, or what tools did you use for
testing? I'm really amazed at how you were able to put four out in the open in
one weekend. I usually spend quite a lot of time fixing bugs.

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jere
I'm surprised at how useful your four ideas were. Nicely done. Dumb question,
but how hard was Do Something? I would figure whatever integration you would
need would take _a lot_ longer than 1/4 of a weekend.

~~~
mobitar
Almost every app I've ever done has consisted of retrieving JSON data from
some endpoint, parsing it, and throwing it up on a table view. So at this
point, using AFNetworking, I can hook up to an API with no effort at all. That
was actually the easiest part of the app. The difficult parts were the app
related stuff - the transitions, loading, location services, categories, in
app purchase, etc.

~~~
tejaswiy
First up, Congrats. I've tried the app in a weekend thing myself, but never
had enough motivation to pull through to the end. Shipping is hard!

As an iOS developer, doing this in a couple of hours is a bit crazy. It'd
probably take me a day - day and a half to do.

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sciguy77
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for making Great Words!!! I've gone through
dozens of word apps and none could do this. I was about to buy a dev license
to make it myself, glad you saved me the effort. :)

~~~
mobitar
Haha, I hope you find it useful :)

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sakai
This is very cool -- thank you for sharing.

Would you mind sharing the data source(s) you used for the Do Something app?
Curious about both what resources are out there and how easy they are to
integrate.

~~~
mobitar
Do Something uses the Foursquare API to pull out their most popular places. It
was pretty easy to set up.

~~~
sakai
Cool. Thx!

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1337biz
Any stats so far on the apps? What are your plans for promotion?

~~~
mobitar
That's a good question. Rather than promoting 4 different apps, what I really
want to do is throw these 4 fishing rods in the ocean and see what bites. Once
I figure out which one I think has the most potential, I really want to spend
more time on it, and spend time marketing and promoting.

~~~
trevmckendrick
Agreed.

99% of profitable iOS apps do little to no promotion. Instead, they're found
via search or on the top lists.

Better to try a bunch of things, as you say, and then invest your time into
improving whichever is already working best.

This is exactly what I did with my Spanish Bible apps.

~~~
1337biz
I like that perspective. Very different to the often propagated big-launch
mantra. Can you share a bit more on what approach you took with the Spanish
Bible apps? Thank you!

~~~
psuter
This was on HN some time ago: [http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-
in-the-app-sto...](http://www.trevormckendrick.com/my-first-year-in-the-app-
store/)

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Zaheer
Great work! My favorite two apps: Great Words & Routines. 2 problems I always
have and you've solved em! I only wish I could create iOS apps as fast as you
haha.

~~~
mobitar
Thanks! Hope you find them useful

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elietoubi
Thanks for sharing ... Definitely inspiring. Just wondering ... how long did
the design work took?

~~~
mobitar
Design work? There is no design work in iOS 7. The icons were all really
simply. Great Words is just a "g" with single fill color, Note 22 is just
three lines with a white background, Routines is pretty much just like Note 22
with a different background color, and Do Something is just basic shapes.

~~~
edgo
I beg to differ. There is always design work, you made design choices and even
if they were careless choices you always have a final work that might be great
or just poorly designed.

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seivan
Your perfected the art of shipping.

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raphaelcaixeta
I have something similar to Do Something pending App Store review right now.
Great execution!

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jayhuang
Great work! Now the question is how to find a way to do this sustain-ably (:

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bouk
Oh man, Do Something looks like a great idea! Good job man

~~~
mobitar
Thanks, let me know if you find it useful

