We have only recently began developing iPhone and iPad applications, but who knew we would take it on so gracefully and naturally. With the successful launch of our first iPhone application for the iTunes App Store, we were able to spread our wings into other markets. We have since developed two other applications, giving us a well developed sense of estimated completion dates, pricing, and exact quality. It really has been a wonderful adventure to learn such an amazing and state of the art system. What clients don’t seem to understand is how everything works.
The best thing for anyone wanting to make an app isn’t money, its time. Rather than putting a ton of money into an app and forcing your team to push it out, creating rational and reasonable deadlines is number one. We are living in the age of the great race where everyone wants everything yesterday. You can tell which apps were massaged to perfection and which apps were pushed out with money and harsh deadlines.
A great app isn’t made in a month, no matter how many people are breathing down your neck! Finding the time to beta test, design the UI, program to perfection, follow the one hundred and one rules the app store demands you follow, creating the concepts, the graphics, the app store profile, etc. will never be done well with a rushed deadline, and you can expect your app to crash over the weirdest things!
Here are some good examples!
Flixel: Flixel is an iPhone app that really does something quite unique. Flixel is an app that allows a user to create a GIF animation by simply taking a photo of something and erasing the part that you want to move. The bad part is that it’s extremely slow and glitchy. When you try to post to tumblr, your gifs do not move, also having to scratch everything off of your image can be quite tedious, and the app has crashed on me several times. With only 2 and a half stars as its official rating, this is the perfect example of a rushed application. It has a wonderful idea, great concept, and good graphics, but it has so many problems that nobody gave a darn to fix because of self inflicted deadlines. Adding just one more month to their process would have sent this app over the edge, where it should be today.
Spotify: I love Spotify, so it pains me to diss its iPhone application a lot! Please go out and download its services for your Mac or Windows platform. With only five bucks a month for unlimited music, its a great purchase. Unfortunately, the app was obviously released and even updated under a rushed deadline. The app is simple enough. You can create a playlist, search for music, share music, see what your friends are listening to, etc. The bad thing is the crazy amount of bugs that are scattered throughout multiple types of iPhones and various versions. For example, the entire view will shift making everything unclickable. Some people report the app crashing after a few songs play. The music sometimes just stops. The app should be a perfect five star rated app, but because of all of its issues, its rated only three and a half stars in the iTunes App Store. It increased since its last update of only two and a half stars. If they would have just beta tested this app for 2 more weeks, that would have kept their rating up and more people would be using Spotify.
Facebook: Facebook for the iPhone use to be terrible. It would crash all of the time, and its buttons would never work. Pictures would load that were not even the right photo, and sometimes messages were never sent. Today the Facebook application for the iPhone has only a handful of bugs, but these are still due to rushed deadlines. The most annoying bug I have seen on this app is when I have a message. Sometimes the message shows up, and sometimes it only acts like its going to show up. You can’t play videos in the timeline at all. The really strange part about this whole thing is that it doesn’t have an official rating at the moment. There is a very good reason for this and its because everyone thinks this app is horrible. There is a total of 250,760 reviews, yet there isn’t an official rating. Sounds to me like Facebook paid a lot of money to Apple for that to happen when they should have paid their developers to take a little more time and smooth out all of the bugs.
So with the right amount of time, the right amount of money, the right idea, and Helium Design Co, I can guarantee that your app will be more successful than Spotify, Facebook, or Flixl. If your interested in our prices, feel free to contact me robert@heliumdesignco.com.
