

Ask HN: Good resource for finding a iPhone developer? - mistermann

My startup is looking for an iPhone (and/or Blackberry) developer to work on some iPhone extensions to our .Net based web application.  
I'm trying to track down an iPhone developer to write a little app as an extension to a .Net based website.<p>I'll go over a few of the required features to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:<p>The web app is basically a collaboration tool (projects, forums, etc)
The iPhone app would need to be able to browse, search, read, and edit online project details (so all of this would be implemented on the server, the iPhone app would essentially just call certain dedicated webservices to get/set the required information)
The iPhone user would be able to take a photograph or video from the iPhone which would upload to the server.
Caching on the iPhone would be necessary (at least for v2.0) to handle disconnected sessions, with auto synching on app startup when re-connected.<p>I know nothing about iPhone development, should an app like this be fairly simple to develop for a moderately experienced iPhone developer?<p>Can anyone recommend any resources, or are any members here proficient in the art?<p>Contact Info:  trevZorgoZuld@shaw.ca (remove the Z's)<p>Thanks for any replies.
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nolanbrown23
Probably one of the more important things is to have a realistic budget. If
you're thinking anything less then a few grand, I can tell you you're not
going to find a good developer in the states.

Try local meetup groups for iPhone devs, they're pretty common all over the
country. If you can't find anyone, send me an email (in profile) and I can put
you in touch with a dev.

~~~
drewcrawford
I second this. I bill at $40/hr and I'm the cheapest iPhone developer I know.

Any developer who's remotely competent it working on his own apps, where he
takes 100% of the risk and 70% of the profit. Unlike desktop/web programming,
where you can sort of snatch the students before they get real jobs, _every_
iPhone developer has a "real" job working for Apple. The only reason at all to
work on contract apps is to _reduce your risk because somebody is paying you
up front_.

If you want somebody decent who writes clean code, budget at least 5-10k and
start interviewing developers. If they've got an app on the app store that you
like, they pass the competence test. It also doesn't hurt to simply cold-call
developers who've written something similar (but be aware anyone with a really
successful app store app is going to focus on that, not contracting for random
cold-callers. I get 15-20 coldcalls a week, and I only even call back 1-2% of
those).

~~~
mistermann
Thanks for the input. But a 5-10k budget for something like this to me seems
amazingly high. The only things that seem even remotely complicated in this
would be the offline synchronization, and the taking/uploading of photos. I
don't know about the synchronization, but is it really difficult to create an
app that can take a picture and upload it to a webservice?

I'm not trying to argue, I am genuinely interested in if this is actually a
difficult thing to do....

~~~
drewcrawford
Please don't take this the wrong way.

I get inquiries like this every day "I have $1k, build me X." Where X is a
moving-target project.

The fact is, I don't even look at a project where the budget is under $5k.
Every project expands in scope as it goes along. Every change, feature
request, "misunderstanding" adds to the time to put together an app. To a
developer, somebody who's trying to put something together on a shoestring
budget is sending off vibes of unreliability, of focusing on cost over
quality, is going to nitpick and obsess about every little thing. I realize
that's a little unfair, but that's how other developers are going to perceive
your request.

There's overhead too. I have to do an estimate; I have to research whether we
can really use that control, how do we do this so that the numbskull apple
reviewers will pass it, have to budget time to wrestle with the gnarly Apple
bugs, have to walk you through signing up as a developer, getting the
certificates, filling out the forms right, setting up codesign chains, helping
you understand app submission... Doing a "hello world" app would probably have
10-15 hours just of overhead, and that's without researching anything
complicated like how to do SOAP requests or whatever technology you're using.

Also, what I have said, and what others have said: lots of people want iPhone
apps, and there are a small number of developers. There's lots of reasons with
for this: one is that (at the risk of starting a flame war) ObjC is harder
than some more modern languages because there's a lot of crap you have to
think about (memory management) that you don't in, say, Python or Ruby. I bet
a third of my time is spent worrying about memory. Plus there's a lot of Apple
hoops to jump through that forms a pretty high effective barrier for
developers.

And, when you think about it, all of the good people are working on _their
own_ apps. The only way to get anyone's attention is to pay them more money
then (they think) they'll make spending equivalent time on their own app.
Either that or pick a developer so incompetent they can't _write_ their own
apps, and obviously that's not what you want (but you'll find an awful lot of
them below the $5k price point).

If your budget is that small, do what others have suggested and pick up a mac
and some books and do it yourself. It will take you a lot longer than someone
who has 5+ apps in the app store, but at least you can do it right within your
budget.

~~~
mistermann
Hi Drew,

I read your new post on your blog: <http://sealedabstract.com/?p=515>

__And I must say, to anyone that is thinking of getting someone to develop an
iPhone app, this is a must read!!!!

So, regarding that post, I have a couple questions. First, for context, I
should mention, I am a developer myself (.Net), I read tons of blogs, I have
casually read a fairly large amount of iPhone development related articles
(just as they come through places like HN, not because of research).

So, a few questions if you don't mind, I have a feeling now that I am quite
naive regarding the iPhone:

* developing on the iPhone, memory management, the issue with unknown screen size, etc....this gives me the impression that iPhone development is really quite "archaic" low level stuff...ie: nothing is easy or can be taken for granted. I would have thought that despite being a low power platform, no garbage collection, C Language, etc that Apple would have to a great degree abstracted a lot of this away. For example, my take a photo and upload requirement....I would have thought that there would be some sort of a Camera Control that could be embedded in a form, that would then inherit the inherent functionality of the control, and after the photo is taken, you would then have code that decides what to do with it (save, upload, etc) Do you really have to do great amounts of memory related programming to do this kind of task?

* The App store - I have read the horror stories and don't doubt your assertions. But for my app, I have no interest in listing it in the app store for general public consumption...if it has to be deployed via the app store, fine, but I don't want to market in any way to general consumers. Is there no 2nd tier of any kind for corporate aplications? I can't see the logic on Apple's part of making life so difficult for corporate developers (but I can see it for the consumer market)

* I've read several anecdotal stories of people writing graphics intensive apps/games in their spare time to learn the platform and doing well....this "fact" seems inconsistent with the idea that the simplest app is extremely difficult.

Anyways, I would really appreciate if you could address some of these. I'm
getting a bit depressed on the notion of developing on this platform.
Approximately 100% of my customers are already on blackberry platform, so I
wonder if I should just say screw it and go there. I liked the superior UI,
screensize, and multimedia capabilities of the iPhone, and I have no doubt
that my customers would have any problem laying out the $ to equip field
personnel with one, but from what I'm hearing, if you're not doing mass market
stuff, its just not worth the bother.

~~~
drewcrawford
I think your concerns could be better answered one-on-one than in this forum.
Contact info on my website in profile.

------
drewcrawford
> should an app like this be fairly simple to develop for a moderately
> experienced iPhone developer?

Yes. The only thing really difficult that you want to do is syncing, which can
be done by a competent developer.

Don't forget, though, that there needs to be some time spent designing a
winning interface. You don't want users to have to type in markup with the
keyboard; you need an intuitive way to do that on a mobile device. Little
touches like that are the difference between something people use and
something they don't use, and going through that process takes some time.

~~~
mistermann
If by markup, I assume you mean bolding text, things like that, or did you
mean something else?

I suppose that would be nice, I guess the iPhone doesn't come with a native
rich text editor of some sort?

So do you happen to know anyone that might be interested ina project of this
nature??

~~~
drewcrawford
Well you mentioned forums and project editing, I naturally assumed there would
be some sort of bbcode (or html, or equivalent) for markup. Typing that on an
iphone keyboard would be a real PITA.

No, there's no rich text editor of any sort. You've got plain text entry and
you can render HTML in Safari. That's it.

Sorry, I don't. I'm "booked", in the sense that I have too many projects of my
own to take on any new clients. All the other developers I know are in the
same boat. Like I said above, try cold-calling people who have done something
similar.

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ghotli
I know a few of these guys personally. They started making iphone games but
lately their success has been garnering them contracts with local businesses
to make internal iphone applications. You might want to get in contact with
them.

<http://www.resolutegames.com/>

------
cesare
I think you should provide a way for people to contact you.

~~~
mistermann
Sorry, updated....

------
ajkirwin
Actually, I prefer to think of your name being Trev Zorgo Zuld, like some kind
of arcane coder from days long past, skilled in the obscurities of Fortran and
COBOL.

