iSick 1.1

iSick 1.1 went live today, I changed the availability date, so lets see if this will bump it back to the new releases.

Launch Day Disaster

Well iSick - Just Disgusting hit the App store today with a resounding thud, thanks largely due to Apple's horribly confusing release date system. The app was posted on the store today but the release date was set nearly 2 weeks ago, putting iSick around page 20 of the new release entertainment apps.

Utterly disappointed that all this work I have pured into iSick is all for nothing at the moment. Apple really like to make it hard for indie dev's.

The iSick Experiment

iSick – Just Disgusting is the first app to be released by Mathew Manning Apps. I took on the development of iSick as a challenge, and I knew that with very little programming skill or knowledge it was always going to be difficult.

As a service to all developers (current and potential) I will follow up this blog post approximately 1 month after launch. With it will come an in depth look at the sales of iSick and how I feel various factors have influenced its performance. The following will detail all of my experiences leading up to the launch of iSick, including a little history about me.

About me:

I am a 21 year old student studying game design and animation at Qantm College in Melbourne, Australia. I fell in love with my iPhone when I first downloaded Field Runners, and seeing how such a simple game could work so effectively on the iPhone piked my interest. With my iPhone in hand and a lot of time spent on public transport, my imagination went wild with simple app ideas. Frustrated that these ideas were only alive on paper, I decided to research what was involved in making an app. I was excited to see how cheap it was to become a developer, all I needed was a low end, Intel based Mac mini and a subscription to the developer program. Further increasing my desire to make iPhone apps were the amount of success stories from the app gold rush of late 2008, such as that of Trism. So I saved every penny for a short period and forked out the necessary cash to get started.

Jumping in head first:

During April 2009 I decided that it was time to give it a shot, so I spent a little less than $1500 AUD on a Mac mini and some text books off Amazon. After it had all arrived I waited a few weeks for the end of trimester break at uni. When my holidays began I hit the ground running, working through many of the introductory exercises in an attempt to familiarise myself with Xcode, Cocoa Touch and the iPhone SDK. Unknown to me at the time were the intricacies of launching an iPhone app, so I started to think of a starting point. Flipping back through all of my ideas, it dawned on me that making a game would be way out of my league, so I had best start simple. Back to the drawing board I went and while I was researching I came across this blog, which confirmed my suspicions that I was in way over my head. Not only that, Owen’s experiences as a developer not based in America alerted me to the fact I had a lot of legwork to do before I could put anything on the app store.

It’s business time:

For me to release an app as an individual I would still need to register myself as a business, something I had next to no knowledge about. So I researched more, read some contracts, filled in mounds of paperwork, made multiple international phone calls to the IRS, and I was finally able to release apps to the app store.

Should’ve dipped my feet in:

So as my holidays were drawing to a close, there was no start to my app in sight. With time running out I had to think differently, I had to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and think like the big companies. I decided to take something that is proven and popular and add my own spin on it. Enter iFart, ridiculously successful over the Christmas period in 2008, an app which to me seemed like it would be a no brainer. (*WARNING TECH TALK*) I add a picker (the wheel selector), with each value on the list to store a variable of the file name of a sound byte. Then a giant button in the centre of the screen would use one of the iPhones in-built functions to play the sounds.

After resolving some technical issues I banged it together fairly quickly and it seems to work fine on both my device and simulator. Then I added some more features, like a random button and accelerometer functionality, but these didn’t work properly. Every time I played a random sound, it seemed to play the previously selected sound. Stumped by this problem, which didn’t seem to be caused by the coding of these random functions, I wasted much time banging my head against a wall, making no progress. But after some digging I found the cause of my problem; the app was trying to load every sound into the buffer each time the value on the picker was changed. The random functions worked correctly, playing randomly what was in the buffer, but the code could not load each sound fast enough. Confused, I did some more research and came across this site and with the help of their OpenAL tutorial, among other resources, I created my own sound engine for the app, which loads each sound into a buffer on launch.

With my first major hurdle overcome, I felt reinvigorated and became more ambitious with my app. I was thinking of ways to make it stand out and be different from iFart, rather than just another blatant knock-off. So I came up with a theme for my app, the most disgusting sounds imaginable, with a sound to gross out anyone at anytime. On top of that I dreamed up new features, not seen in any of the previous sound simulator apps. Busy whittling away at making my app as feature rich as possible, I lost track of time. Not only was the new trimester well underway at university, but my first wave of assignments were nearly due. Panicking, and struggling to get the last feature implemented, I figured that banging my head against the wall harder than last time would work. It didn’t. So the time came when I was forced to stop working on my app to focus on my studies. I became frustrated that my tendency for thinking too big had bitten me on the ass, and caused the release of my app to slip out of sight.

Light at the end of the tunnel:

Time passed and my next holidays came. A little burnt out from the trimester and app, I took a short break from work. When I finally got back to working on my app I decided to remove my erroneous feature, which had since become obsolete with the release of OS 3.0 anyway. I removed the code and began polishing. I wanted it to look unique and funky, and to do so I added animated backgrounds and a suitably disgusting looking UI. Low and behold, there it was: a finished version of iSick! I began testing it thoroughly on the devices. It had worked fine on the simulator and when I had occasionally tried it on my own device, so was expecting it to go smoothly.

Sadly for me, it didn’t. I discovered an inconsistent bug that caused the app to crash frustrated once again, I searched for the cause of the crash but to no avail. To stubborn to implement a ‘work around’ to the problem I was determined to fix it. After weeks of research, much head banging and an upgrade to snow leopard (for the spiffy new analysis tools) I gave up. There seemed to be no solution to a problem I could not identify. So I refactored my code and redesigned the app to work around the problem and voila! It was finished, finally. Through rigorous testing, no known bugs and a strict adherence to the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), I sent it off to Apple confident I wouldn’t be one of the copious rejection stories. I was wrong, again.

Apple rejected iSick based on its content being objectionable/pornographic. At the time iSick had an array of farts, burps, queefs, coughs and vomiting sounds. But the reviewer deemed the queefs to be offensive. I questioned the decision, which resulted in a phone call to the reviewer in America, where we discussed why queefs were offensive. Knowing I wasn’t getting anywhere and that trying more would only delay the release of iSick, I removed the queefs and resubmitted. The time waiting for the resubmission gave me time to think. I feel that it is hypocritical for Apple to reject my app based on queef sounds, where apps like the Bruno and Sex Facts/Sex Jokes are freely available. Two weeks and later iSick had been approved! This gave me 1 week to prepare for the October 30 release date.

The final stretch:

So my app is close to release and I am working like mad writing this blog and setting up pages for it on Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Twitter. Marketing is something I had in the back of my mind since I decided on the theme, and I have done my best as a struggling independent iPhone developer. If all else fails this was a tough learning experience. If you have discovered this blog post and read it all the way to the end, I hope this has helped you in some way. I am open to questions so feel free to send me an email or just comment on this post.

My thoughts:

Ill finish with a brief overview of the statistics; in all, I spent approximately $1650 on equipment and services. From the minute I opened the textbook until launch I estimate there has been anywhere from 100-150 hours of work put into this venture.

Going into this I thought hard about how I would avoid all the pitfalls of iPhone development, yet most of my attempts to avoid a problem inevitably lead to me facing a more difficult and serious issue. It would seem it is impossible to avoid them all.

Lastly I’d like to thank all of the people who have given me their time. I couldn’t have done it without them.

Tim McKay of Temp Bookkeeping, thanks for all the amazing business and tax advice, couldn’t have got it off the ground without you. Contact

Kit Fennessy of Blue Vapours, thanks for all the invaluable marketing advice, here’s hoping it pays off. Contact

Nick Whiley for taking all of my marketing photos.

And most of all Kate Deutscher for being so supportive and patient with me through this long and arduous process.

Grounds For Rejection

Just got off the phone to Apple who, as I previously posted about, has deemed Queefs too offensive to be included in my app, apparently any sexually related sound will be grounds for rejection. Major Sigh, ill resubmit without them, see what i can do in a later patch :(

App Rejected

Apple deems Queefs to be too offensive apparently so ill have to resubmit :(

at this rate anyways it should still make the October 30 release date

Setting up

I have been a bit slack actually starting the blog/twitter etc. but finally have created them ;P

iSick is very close to completion and will be submitted to Apple within a week.

Stay tuned for more news and info.

m@