fiat lux (cahier lukhnos)

I mentioned among a series of tweets that the risk for developing an iPhone app is becoming pretty high lately. The biggest problem is that there’s no guarantee that the user’s data is safe in these respects:

1. There’s no guarantee that iTunes performs faithful, controllable, restorable backups for any data stored in an application’s virtualized ./Documents/ folder
2. Even if it’s possible for a more technically savvy users to extract the backed-up data (and we’re discounting the factor that there is iTunes for Windows and I don’t have much clue how we existing Mac developers are going to deal with that, other than offering service utilities for Windows), there is, AFAIK, currently no way to put the backed-up data back into an app bundle as the user wishes
3. Many developers (among them Craig Hockenberry and Brent Simmons) have expressed the frustration over the fact that we developers have absolutely no means to help the user out of any trouble. Releasing an app in wild becomes playing with Russian roulettes.

My biggest fear is that if the situation doesn’t improve, these risk factors will swell up to the point that supporting becomes endless nightmare for developers, and many data-intensive apps will become simply not do-able–because users won’t trust them with their local data. Some forms of liability issues will also surface.

And if the situation doesn’t really improve, I fret that those factors will start driving out applications that rely on local data (many productivity apps fall in this cateogry), leaving only three do-able apps: games, web service clients, and photo apps (because they have access to the camera roll).

Games and photo apps are by their nature platform- and device-dependent and they will always have a place as native apps. But the driving-out of native productivity apps, local-only or more “rich” (i.e. they sync or work with remote ends), will make the point of going native a huge disappointment. If that is what’s going to happen in the long run, it will be a big setback for the whole point of a native iPhone SDK.

lukhnos :: Jul.23.2008 :: tekhnologia :: No Comments »

TapExpense is available on Apple’s iTunes AppStore today. It is a nifty expense tracker designed for the financially fastidious and global trotters. It lets you keep records of expense in different editable categories, payment methods, and most important of all–different currencies. It also gives you reports grouped by currency.

The idea of a multi-currency expense tracker comes from my personal needs. I’ve been keeping expense records since 1994, and from 1996 on not a day without a record. I only use Excel for its power and flexibility.

But keeping expense records with Excel can be an overkill sometimes. You don’t want to open your laptop for that when you’re on the road. So iPhone/iPod Touch is a nifty solution to this. Hence the software. And also because I travel often, keeping records in different currencies is a problem. A good tool that accommodates and groups such information is a bonus.

Zonble and I have been developing this application for the past few weeks. It’s our first commercial iPhone application, and we’re both glad and proud to be part of the historical launch of the AppStore–the first in the industry–among the first 300-500+ applications on Day 1 from midnight New Zeland time, July 11, 2008. (The number varies according to availibility of different apps in different countries).

This is our first modest step. And we’re still learning from the process. A lot. We are already receiving reviews and comments. We’ve already submitted version 1.1 and are working (or even reworking) on many different parts of the app. Simple as the idea looks, only by doing it have we realized that there are so many details and nuances. Plus that touch-based device requires a totally new mentality and modus operandi. We have actually unlearned lots of our Cocoa habits and skills along the way.

We also have a lot of open questions for Apple. Questions on how the business model will cater different needs, particularly those of us small independent software vendors. I believe even Apple is learning from the process. This is an interesting relationship, and might even shake the rules of the game in mobile software development.

It’s an exciting time indeed. For some moment I even felt it’s like Christmas in July.

Once again, my thanks to our customers and our friends. We’ll bring the best of ourselves to give you the best mobile phone apps in the world.

Cheers!

TapExpense is available at Apple’s AppStore. It’s US$4.99, 3,99 €, £2.99 or ¥600 according to the region. It runs on both iPhone 2G, 3G and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 2.0. Currently it lets you export your data as plain-text .CSV to an e-mail. We’re working on enhancing user experience, security features and possible import/export options.For more info visit tapexpense.com or the link to the AppStore. Developed by Lukhnos D. Liu and Weizhong Yang with the support of Lithoglyph Inc.

lukhnos :: Jul.11.2008 :: business :: 1 Comment »