

 Tapbots shows how much you can do with just a little upfront - billydean
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1713-tapbots-shows-how-much-you-can-do-with-just-a-little-upfront

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stanleydrew
I think these kinds of posts are a bit deceptive:

"You can keep your day job. Just two months of nights and weekends. Then
launch it. Maybe it’s not perfect yet. But get it out there."

I mean I'm all for releasing early and often, but it actually does take a lot
of work to make a good application. From the Tapbots guys themselves:

"We are going to write simple but incredibly polished applications that are
created specifically for the iPhone/Touch devices. Two guys, lot’s of passion
and a lot of hard work..."

How do you reconcile this? These guys want to spend a lot of up-front time
building polished apps whereas the 37signals guys are saying get something out
there even if it's not perfect. Seems like a contradiction to me.

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mileszs
In defense of 'release early and often', the 'often' part is more difficult
(from what I understand) on the iPhone. Each update must go through the
approval process. That takes time -- time during which you are getting no
feedback about the updates you've made. "Release early and often" is a lot
easier when you're talking about a web app on server that you control.

I do agree that the 37s post seems contradictory in light of that.

~~~
tophat02
It's actually not that bad. I updated my little game "Recall" _cough_
shameless plug _cough_ and it only took a few days from submitting the new
binary to getting it pushed through.

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jsdalton
Yet another 37signals article that's actually about survivorship bias.

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tophat02
True, but you could also look at it this way: perhaps these 37signals articles
are helping to illuminate WHY some of these things survive.

After all, success criteria in iPhone apps (or apps in general) may not be
objectively quantifiable, but I'm sure there are plenty of do's and don'ts
that will help.

~~~
jsdalton
Well, if you go back and read the article, they actually offer no useful
information or opinions about why Tapbots might have been successful, other
than the fact that it's "two guys in a basement" as opposed to some big VC-
funded venture.

What gets my goat about this article is that they treat this like it's some
novel idea -- as though there are not hundreds and thousands of hackers
toiling away after hours and on weekends (yours truly included), to the
chagrin of wives and girlfriends everywhere, trying to put together awesome
applications without any kind of funding or outside help whatsoever.

Highlighting the fact that one company succeeded with this approach is not
merely useless, it probably only solidifies the unfortunate myth that all it
takes is a little pluck and a lot of sweat to be successful in an endeavor
like this.

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nonrecursive
The tapbot products really are awesome. These two guys wanted to create their
own interfaces for their products from scratch, and they succeeded.

However, I think it's worth noting that the tapbots programmer has been
writing objective-c since the 80's. Even with that amount of experience it
took two months of "nights and weekends" to create their weightbot app. If
you're just starting with objective-c / cocoa / iphone development, I think
it's unrealistic to expect to achieve their level of quality in as short a
time.

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ja27
But did they get paid by Apple yet? Cashflow is king and depending on one
customer or partner for the majority of income doesn't make for a healthy
company.

