
How We Built an iPhone App for $4873.92 - madmotive
http://gifterapp.com/blog/files/bedd9a6a1425818f49ef0645cc71044c-1.html
======
jrockway
I detect the beginning of a new Internet meme: "How we did XXX for $YYYY.YY".

I don't really see the point of these articles either. Why include memory for
XML parsing and the flight to WWDC? I'm pretty sure the app could have been
made without those. The article is about what they spent, but it doesn't
generalize in any meaningful way.

~~~
tx
Yeah. I also like how people stopped writing software, the kind that actually
takes skills and time to make (and customers to bill for), and switched to
free "apps" that seem to take as much time to build as time required to blog
about it.

Notice how few open source developers, those who produce tons of actual
software, blog very little. That's because they're busy coding, thus not much
time left to _"share their experiences while coding"._ How many active Linux
kernel devs have popular blogs? Yet those are the kind of people that can
actually say something interesting.

I don't hear much from devs who're working on next gen. Apple stuff either.
Only "iPhone app devs" and "google engine app devs" and other "app devs"...
Damn "apps"...

~~~
tstegart
What's with all the hating? I can see where constantly seeing "How we did XXX
for $YYYY.YY" can get a little tiresome, but they also serve a purpose. One,
they're insight into what sort of expenses a venture like this takes. Sure,
you have some expenses that most people would discard, but then you just get a
lower number.

Two, it provides knowledge and inspiration to people out there who have yet to
start their ventures. Not everyone wants to be a linux kernel coder, some kids
out there might want to be iPhone software developers, and this article tells
them that even a teenager can probably do it over the summer with a little
sweat equity and some money saved up from a job. These kind of articles make
entrepreneurship less of a mystery, and thats a good thing.

~~~
silencio
On a sidenote, a teenager wanting to be an iPhone developer over the summer
would probably want to subtract a couple thousand dollars from that figure,
since Apple does have a student scholarship program for WWDC that provides
college students with free wwdc tickets (whether you pay for travel/housing
depends on where you live/which college you attend as individual programs may
reimburse you for that up to a certain amount).

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glitwack
I'm the author of this blog post, and I thought I'd respond to a few valid
points that have been brought up here:

\- The reason I wrote about and actually itemized cost is because, well, you
don't see much of that at the moment. People like Paul Graham say that a
startup can be funded with $20000, but what does that really mean? What's the
nitty-gritty?

\- I didn't include things like pencils and chairs because everyone has
pencils and chairs. I wanted to touch on what and where we had to spend to get
this particular app going. Your results may vary; surely if you're doing a
game you'd probably need more art assets, etc. The point is not that oh, we
did this for so little money, we're so great - it's a personal story of how
_we_ built an app, and to embolden others that hey, it's doable. That's why I
linked to the Guy Kawasaki post at top of this article - it inspired us!

\- TX is probably trolling, but I have to dispute the idea that linux kernel
devs don't share their experience. Sure they do: it's in their well-written
code and comments. We're closed source, but my partner will be posting about
technical issues and speed wins for iPhone development soon, and there will be
more to follow when the iPhone NDA lifts. Our app may seem simple, but if you
could open it up you'd find an elegant tourbillon - it wasn't thrown together
in the slightest.

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ashleyw
I'm sorry - but is this a joke?

Out of the 11 items they brought, $4873.92 overall, 8 of them, $4136.94, seems
like totally unessential.

I was expecting something where the bulk of the costs consisted of salaries
for X days/weeks of work. But instead the bulk consisted of a trip to the
WWDC, tons of ram, and icons?

Maybe this wasn't the point of the post, but it seems like they totally missed
the point of building an application...or at least the point of a "How we
built X for $Y" post. But it seems every single one of those posts are totally
inaccurate - one where they built one for $10k (but had 9 people working on
the project!), one where they built a site for $8.75 (because that's the cost
of the domain - nothing else included), and now this where they built one for
$5000 (but included totally unnecessary items).

~~~
silencio
Personally having been to WWDC a couple times now, I'd think that it wasn't
all too inappropriate to include in the cost. It is a very useful resource for
pretty much any Mac/iPhone developer, and I know many who consider the
sessions, the networking, and sitting down with engineers to talk over things
to be worth more than what they paid for the conference. And to be honest, I
don't think they missed the point much by including the cost of icons as well.
It's part of the application. Some may do it in-house, others will pay for
work. To not count it as part of the app is fairly unreasonable...what else
would you be doing if you needed icons? Making your own? (Not always the best
idea, and for some will waste more time for an inferior set of icons vs. just
buying a decent set.) And well...if the RAM helped them be more productive,
then so be it.

Maybe I would have had a separate "Optional costs, but ones we really thought
were justified/important for what they gave us" category for those three that
people seem to be taking the most offense from. Sure, _you_ and some others
may not be interested in spending $600 on icons or $3000 on a trip to WWDC
because you don't need it for whatever reason, but many do. In fact, I'd say
that would apply to a lot of apps on the app store now where I know/know of
the developer(s), since I saw so many of them at WWDC with MacBook Airs.

It may be inaccurate to you, but I don't think it's that far off. Everyone's
different, and this is just one case I don't think is that unique.

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tlrobinson
_$297.98 - Emergency RAM. For a while we had to parse a 12gb XML file. Every
day. Louis got 8 more gigs for his Mac Pro overnighted out._

I'd really like to know what the hell this 12GB XML file they needed to parse
multiple times was.

 _EDIT: The developer replied
here:[http://gifterapp.disqus.com/how_we_built_an_iphone_app_for_4...](http://gifterapp.disqus.com/how_we_built_an_iphone_app_for_487392_none_gifter/#comment-892510*)

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tstegart
I think it was a pretty good article. If you think an item was unessential,
well, you can do the math, subtract it. It was a pretty good round-up of how
they did it. You may make fun of the icons, but a lot of businesses outsource
these days, and they decided to outsource that. If it was something that would
just have delayed them, then it was the right choice. And it illustrates just
how cheaply it would be to outsource that sort of thing.

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byteCoder
I have to congratulate these developers for creating what appears to be a very
useful iPhone app on a shoestring with lots of sweat equity.

However, when it comes down to how much it cost, like jrockway said, it's not
very meaningful to others. Furthermore, I'm already sick of the prospect of
the pissing contest where developers say they can develop another app for even
less. Blech.

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rob
I see an easy way they could of saved $3,000 right off the bat.

~~~
silencio
I've said it once here already and I will say it again. I have not come across
many Mac|iPhone developers who were unhappy with what they got out of WWDC,
unless all they were doing all week long was getting plastered.

It seems like a complete waste of money to some, but when you consider what
you can get out of it: the sessions, the seeds, the _signing up to talk to an
apple engineer about your app to get help with virtually everything_, the
session videos, the people you meet...it can and is well worth the money to
attend.

There are some conferences I have been to that were mostly along the lines of
"what the hell is this *&#$" where I've fallen asleep and skipped entire days,
and WWDC is not one of them. It's definitely an experience I recommend to
developers should they be able to afford the time/money it costs to attend.
I'd even know of some that would say WWDC's cost is nothing compared to what
it's saved them in terms of all the things they got out of it that they used.

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richcollins
How about the time you spent not making $100+ per hour working on consulting
projects. I'm guessing iPhone dev is probably $150+

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vaksel
epic failure right here: $120/year - DreamHost: We use DreamHost for a bunch
of miscellaneous services, and this also included our domain name.

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tx
Not a single item in that list belongs to "Development" category. But since
he's writing about non-development spending categories, why not include a cost
of chairs, tables and pencils?

Also, when I flag shitty content, where does this "flagging" vote go? I'm
using it as a missing downmod feature.

