Super Sync Me

Inter­ested in devel­op­ing an app? Mar­cus Radich is here to start you off. From ProDesign 106.

The Apple AppStore is a place of won­der and excite­ment for many iPhone and iPod touch users, but iPad applic­a­tions are now show­ing up for those with the “next” port­able com­puter (more later).

Apple's App Store.

New Zea­l­and has a num­ber of applic­a­tion developers for the iPhone plat­form – some are inhouse, some pub­lish to the store only, oth­ers (like my com­pany) will write applic­a­tions for you to pub­lish. When it comes to the lead­ers in the iPhone devel­op­ment com­munity in New Zea­l­and, you will prob­ably know of Orsome and Polar Bear Farm – but there are also a num­ber of developers who fly below the radar!To begin devel­op­ment, you have to start with a Mac. You will want a more mod­ern Intel-based Mac with a fairly large screen. (One of my developers has a 27” and 21” screen con­nec­ted to his Mac). The reason for this is that you need to see your code, the soft­ware emu­lator which is run­ning your applic­a­tion, the con­sole for any mes­sages and a debug­ger to start and stop your code. Who said Pho­toshop was the king of palettes?
Once you have your Mac in place, point your browser over here and sign up for the US$99 devel­op­ment pro­gramme. Once you have been approved by Apple, you can down­load the iPhone SDK (Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Kit) and start devel­op­ing your idea.
Once your applic­a­tion has been com­pleted, you can sub­mit this to the Apple AppStore for approval. Be aware that the wait is some­times longer than you expect – but they are care­fully check­ing your applic­a­tion before approv­ing it for sale.
Now, if this seems a little out of your league, you can con­tract an iPhone developer to take your idea and code it into an applic­a­tion for you. For more inform­a­tion on this, don’t hes­it­ate to con­tact me! We have been devel­op­ing applic­a­tions for the iPhone AppStore since 2008.
The iPad. For me, the iPad is the first “real” Macin­tosh. If you look at the ori­ginal design spe­cific­a­tion for the Mac put for­ward by Jef Raskin in 1979, it was about being less com­puter and more appli­ance – like a toaster. The iPad fits this bill. You will never have to care about the oper­at­ing sys­tem, fonts, mice or train­ing on how to use it, because everything is touch ori­ented and simple – you only need a few minutes on it to be pro­duct­ive. The AppStore (with its 150,000 apps) lets you quickly and eas­ily get hold of an applic­a­tion to fill any com­put­ing task. This is the future of mobile com­put­ing. It won’t replace design work­sta­tions, but for admin­is­tra­tion and mobile users it is a home run.

Apple iPad.

Which model should you get? Well, of course that depends on budget and needs – but for me the 32GB iPad 3G is the most logical choice. It will have enough space to store everything I need to take with me – and it will have 3G for net­work­ing where ever I go. Per­fect. You will be temp­ted to go for the wifi-only ver­sion, but believe me, you will wish you had the 3G ver­sion as soon as you see someone else email­ing where you can’t. Hope­fully it will be a simple mat­ter of get­ting a data-only SIM from a local pro­vider. It seems the future of mobile com­put­ing is finally here!

Links:

m-works.co.nz
polarbearfarm.com
orsome.co.nz

Con­tact:

marcus@me.com

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