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I nearly posted a rude one-liner on Twitter about it. I was sat here in front of my laptop, browsing iTunes and slightly miffed that I’d submitted my iPhone application a week ago and that there had been no sign of movement since then.

Then I received an email from Apple with the good news. So yes, as I type this I don’t see it, but apparently Yummy is now “ready for sale” and will be making its way to the App Store very shortly. (I assume it’s a gradual process and that some people may be able to see it now.)

How exciting is that?!

Update: Yummy is now on the AppStore (opens in iTunes).

As many readers know by now I am in the late stages of developing and releasing an iPhone application. This is the first time I’ve ever really been involved in the launch of a consumer product and while there’s nothing here that is likely to surprise any marketing guru’s, I’m finding it an interesting process.

I talked about pricing previously, but today I want to talk about the competition.

I downloaded the SDK¹ shortly after the original announcement. The first version was fairly primitive, with little to no support for the drag-and-drop style of development used for parts of Mac OS X programs. I played around a bit, compiled a few demo applications but didn’t really get very far. Too hard, I though.

The beta’s came and I started having ideas for programs that I might want. Initially I thought they were too easy for a professional developer and certainly something that other people would be working on.

Turns out that I was wrong. Not only were most of the applications available on launch day very simple — tip calculators, currency converters — but no-one had thought to implement my idea.

Partly as an “itch to scratch” and partly because I had no competition, I set to work. This time rather than doodling around I had a goal. Well, a vague goal. My first attempts were too ambitious for my limited experience of the SDK and didn’t go very far.

I really gained some traction when I switched to my current scheme. All was going well until a couple of weeks ago when I saw a headline announcing my first competitor.

My first reaction was panic.

My second reaction was also panic.

It was a big deal. I’d got used to having no competition, to dictating myself exactly what features it needed to have and to thinking entirely in abstract terms about pricing. Reality intruding was hard.

I eventually calmed down enough to download a copy. Fortunately reality wasn’t nearly as bad as the simple idea of a competitor. Although unfinished, my application was already more sophisticated. It worked in a slightly different way but mine had more features, more closely conformed to Apple’s user interface guidelines and provided better feedback to users.

It did mean that I had to refine my thinking about pricing. But most importantly I had to start considering when to release it. Should I trim a few features so I could release it early? Or keep going, be a bit later but have something unique? In the end I just decided to keep going. Another “me too” product wouldn’t have managed to overcome their first-mover advantage, but extra features might.

If there’s a lesson here it’s that making the best product you can is a better use of your time than examining the competition. Happy users is the key to success and improving your software is the best way to achieve that.

1. Software Development Kit, the program you use to write other software.↩

Today is a big day for me. A few minutes ago I uploaded my iPhone application up to Apple’s servers, the first step in making it available to users in iTunes and its App Store.

You possibly have two questions. First: what does it do? Secondly: when will it be available?

I know, I have been deliberately vague when talking about it online. This is partly because I didn’t want my thunder stealing by pre-announcing, but mainly because it’s only been in the last week or so that I’ve been sure that I was going to publish.

You’ll note that I’ve still not described what it does. All I’ll say is take a look at the icon¹ and think of the name. And, more importantly, keep an eye on Yummy’s website. I’ll be publishing a series of blogs to tell you what it does and some of the decisions I took to make it.

The second question — when — is pretty much out of my hands. Apple will now, as the screen-shot above tells you, review it and, unless I’ve made any mistakes in the rather complex process, make it available for download. The length of queue is not public so it could be tomorrow or the end of September or, more likely, somewhere in between. Fingers crossed that it’s soon!

It’s taken a lot of effort to get to this point and I’m keen to get it in the hands of users. Many thanks to B for putting up with me during this process and for making the great Yummy icon; my gratitude to A for trying to get beta versions installed (damn that 0xE800001 error); and to everyone else who has offered advice and feedback.

1. Not sure what wrong with the colours. It looks great on the phone itself which, presumably, is not colour managed.↩

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Earlier today daringfireball pointed me to Byline by Phantom Fish, a Google Reader client-side application for the iPhone.

Since I recently abandoned Safari’s built-in RSS reader for Google, this is just the kind of application that I have been looking for. Unlike a lot of programs I’ve found on the AppStore, Byline seems to be very well put together. The author appears to have included a thoughtful set of features. Not everything, just those elements you use every day; either a good starting point for later versions or an Apple-like approach depending on your perspective.

However, one thing worries me: Google have not released a publicly available API for Reader. Unless Phantom Fish have reached some deal with Google — and there’s nothing on their website to say that they have — then the only way that this application can work is if they reverse engineered the protocol¹.

I’m confident that the interface works now, but what about tomorrow? The popular opinion is that Google are not happy with parts of the API and will publish the full version soon, but until the API is publicly available and stable there are no guarantees and it could change at any time.

Do you want to spend £5.99 on an application that could be disabled at any time by a third party? As useful as it looks to be, I don’t want to start relying on an application with foundations as shaky as this.

1. My first thought was that it was just a specialised RSS feed. However, the video shows support for the “Star” functionality and they say that it synchronises read status, etc.↩

Daniel Jalkut in his recent blog discusses a generally positive review of a useful Mac utility that closes with the suggestion that it “should be free.” The crux of his piece seems to be:

In short, if the product were free as in charity, would the product even exist, and be good enough to mention on MacBreak Weekly, where Leo could wish that it was free?

People have different motivations for making good software¹ but I think it’s fair to say that the most polished software usually has some form of income stream, whether that’s a licence fee, banner adverts or something less direct.

Of course one problem about selling software is piracy, but fortunately Brad Wardell wrote a great blog entry about just that and the effect that it has on his games company:

It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

How, you might ask, is this connected with Jalkut’s argument? Well, the simple truth is that reviewers of your software are not paying customers. Their needs and desires and value judgements are not the same as yours². Of course reviewers can raise the profile of your program but unless it results in more sales and not just more usage of your software then adding features or lowering the price only to please them is a waste of time.

If you want to sell software, your first priority should be keeping your customers happy, not reviewers.

1. Jesper notes his reasons for offering his software for free. His argument makes complete sense but does not invalidate Jalkut’s complaint.↩
2. I’m reminded of the comparative reviews of word processors that you got before there was little alternative to Microsoft Word. No matter how fully featured the program was, disregarding how user-friendly it was and regardless of the quirky or unique innovations it had, no word processor would ever get an unreserved recommendation without a decent word count feature. How many people even use a word count?↩