Hanchor LLC

Very happy to announce that I’ve submitted my first iPad app, Vegas Mate, to Apple for approval.

For details, please read my complete blog post – there are some screenshots in there too.

http://www.ratevegas.com/blog/2010/03/vegas_mate_for_1.html

I’m writing this mainly for my friend @mtc. He’s said that he doesn’t understand who the iPad is made for. I think it’s made for people like me.

Who am I? I use a computer all day for my job. I write software in a variety of languages for a wide array of uses: iPhone, Web, desktop, etc… I have a MacBook Pro that I dock with two different monitor+keyboard setups, depending on where I am. I use this computer 12+ hours per day – as much as any serious user. I’ve been on the Mac for 20+ years, before that Amiga, C64, etc… I’m a big time nerd, no doubt.

When I’m at home, I have my laptop setup in my home-office. That’s where I have my big 24″ monitor, full-size keyboard, etc… I’ve tried to make it as good a working environment as possible.=

I’ve only been married for five years but one thing I learned fast was that spending time isolated, away from my wife and dog, is not something that helps to build on our relationship. It makes no sense to be squirreled away in the office just to catch up… but that’s been happening – a lot.

One of the things I do often (a dozen+ times a day?) on the computer is read – be it Twitter, my RSS feeds (150+ sites) or my Instapaper archives. I’d love to be able to do these easily in the living room. Could I undock my laptop? Yes, I could… but every time I do, I have to re-size my myriad of Xcode, Safari and Mail windows to match the new smaller screen size – annoying. Do I need all that laptop power to read a Web page? No – the iPhone does just fine, albeit with too small a screen to make it optimal. Can I please get a larger multi-touch device?

Enter iPad.

I see myself using iPad to hang out on the couch, catching up on this stuff that right now I gravitate towards the office for. I can see using it to read at the breakfast table – a laptop is *no good* for reading the New York Times or Wall Street Journal while trying to eat something. A Sunday morning spent out in the well-lit living room sounds far more compelling than lurking in my office. I can’t wait.

The meetings I loathe but have to spend time in? I’d rather take notes on iPad in OmniGraffle than on a laptop – it’s just [sounds] better.

I tried using a netbook – it just wasn’t for me. I bought a Dell Mini a few months ago, hoping that it would fill the ‘computer for the living room’ void. I had it for three days before I returned it – it was an exercise in frustration. I’m a full-time MacOS X user but my work means I’m in constant contact with Windows – that wasn’t the reason (I actually think Win7 is pretty good – a big step forward for MS). The Dell netbook just wasn’t usable! The keyboard was a piece of crap – a tiny toy – I could type faster on my iPhone. The screen was like a Fisher Price ‘My First PeeCee’ type deal. I shouldn’t have expected more, that’s just what the netbook market is – cheap crappy computers for people that don’t care.

What am I looking for in iPad? A portable device that’s fantastic for consuming media (no, I don’t like Flash, thank you very much), with the semi-occasional need for content creation covered as well. I could imagine weekend trips without my laptop, as long as I could send my photos to Flickr via iPad (I’m already aware of third parties planning this).

As a developer, I have a ton of ideas for iPad. I think Apple has make a bit of a mistake to imply that iPad apps will just be like re-vamped iPhone apps. I think the apps we will see for iPad will be far more complex and probably unique, though related to their iPhone brethren. iPad apps will require a larger budget for higher-res graphics, completely new UI paradigms and more  advance planning on that UI. I know for my apps, the planning process for iPad has been far more complex than ‘bigger version of Vegas Mate’. I want to do something great for the bigger interface. I have ideas but nothing to announce.

I’m excited for iPad’s release. I think ultimately it will be a big hit, though it may take a year or two to get traction. It won’t replace my laptop – I’ll always need both – but I can’t wait to consume my content on a bigger multi-touch device.

My partner in the Bombora project sent me a link to another app in the Weather category on iTunes. We’re constantly looking at what our peers are doing – some have some great ideas and there’s nothing wrong with being pushed forward by someone else’s solution to a coding or UI problem.

This morning’s link was different. It seems that another app, NOAA Buoy Data Reader, went ahead with an interface that seems very, very familiar. I’ve posted some comparison shots below – our app on the left, theirs on the right. They didn’t even bother to use different colors for the status icons.

What comes next? I don’t know, we’re discussing internally. That said, it’s just bad form to rip off someone else’s idea and there’s a big difference between being inspired by other good work and just being lazy.

On a final note – a UIToolbar and a UITabBar on the same screen? Really? Ughh. They didn’t copy that from us.

I read a lot on the Web.

I see articles all the time that look like they might be interesting. I’ll be cruising through my Twitter feed in Tweetie 2 (iPhone) or reading RSS via NetNewsWire (Mac OS X)… maybe I just found something via Google. This happens a dozen times a day at least.

Whatever the source, I don’t always have time to read everything right that second. There was a time when I would bookmark things like crazy, save links or even email myself to keep track. No longer.

I started using Instapaper about a year ago. It’s a simple ‘bookmarklet’ you put in your browser. When I see something I want to save for later, I click this link in my Safari toolbar. This transparently saves the link off into my Instapaper account.

When I’m looking for something to read, I head over to Instapaper.com and look at my feed. As I read the articles, they drop off my list.

What’s awesome is that there’s also an Instapaper iPhone app. It takes the articles that I’ve tagged, strips out everything but the text (no graphics or ads) and saves them offline – once downloaded I can read these even if I don’t have coverage. There’s also support for other devices like the Kindle, though I don’t use it myself – this will make a great iPad app.

Tweetie 2, my favorite iPhone Twitter client, has built in support, as do many others. When I see a link in a tweet, which probably happens 5-10 times a day, I can swipe and save to Instapaper with a single tap. Incredible.

There are few tools that have dramatically changed the way I use the Web as much as Instapaper. Basic use is free, there’s a charge for the high end iPhone client. I’d strongly suggesting giving it a try.

I’m very interested in iPad development – I’ve been going through the SDK for a few days, thinking about it in depth. That said, I think Vegas Mate really fits the phone/mobile concept very well, more so than it might on a larger screen size like we see on the iPad. Vegas Mate will run on the iPad, in either 1x or 2x mode (though so far it looks pretty weird in 2x, as I think most apps will).

I’m working on new iPad apps and I think I have some good ideas… but they won’t be Vegas Mate, at least exactly as you see it on iPhone… and I intent to continue Vegas Mate development – nothing is changing there, it’s a product I love and I have big big plans for the future.

What will likely be shared – the content. That’s a large part of the value of Vegas Mate and a place where I’m making significant investments over the next few months.

What I end up doing on iPad will be a bit of a different experience. I’m having a blast re-thinking all of the UI and workflow stuff for a larger screen. I hope you dig it too, whatever it ends up being.

On Wednesday, Apple introduced the iPad to the world.

The system uses the same Cocoa Touch APIs that power the iPhone. It’s safe to say that I’ll have iPad apps in the near future – I’m already experimenting with the developer software.

So far, it looks like lots of fun!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about porting Vegas Mate, one of my iPhone apps, to other platforms, specifically Android. I see a future where Google and Apple both have significant market-share and thus if the goal is to make mobile apps a real livelihood, it’d be a good idea to be on both platforms. I’m a curious fellow so it could also be fun to compare and contrast the different platforms to see how they solve similar problems differently.

On the Android side, there are basically two top devices at the moment – Motorola’s Droid on Verizon’s CDMA network and the unlocked Google/HTC GSM-based Nexus One, also available on T-Mobile with subsidy.

This post has nothing to do about network reliability or performance – there are many people far more qualified than I that have done exhaustive tests on that front. Everyone knows that AT&T on the iPhone is pretty bad in some cities (though fortunately not here in Santa Barbara).

This post is also not meant to be a thorough review. For the Nexus, I’d recommend skimming this Engadget review if you’re curious about all the ins and outs.

After looking closely at both the Droid and the Nexus One (N1), I decided to purchase the latter, for the following reasons:

1. The N1 runs Android 2.1, slightly newer than the 2.0 version running on Droid and while they say an upgrade will come, it hasn’t yet.

2. I was able to get the N1 unlocked and without a contract, meaning I could easily use it as a ‘test’ phone on AT&T without having to sign up for another provider’s service.

3. The Droid has a hardware keyboard but compared to a BlackBerry it really sucks. I’m used to software keyboards via the iPhone so the form-factor of the N1 was more appealing.

I ended up using Android for a few days to try to get a feel for the OS and see if the hype around the phone was justified.

To summarize – in it’s current form Android is not bad but not great. It has come a long way in 18 months but still is not as polished as the iPhone experience. Others have said this and I think it’s very apt – using an Android phone feels a lot like running Linux on the desktop – it works but something feels missing. You really get the sense it was ‘designed’ by engineers, not real designers. Android seems like a collection of technologies, not a finished, polished product designed with a single vision.

Both of these pieces do a good job of describing that feeling and I’d recommend reading both:

• Boy Genius Thoughts on Android

• Daggle.com

I did run into glitches and annoyances:

• Animations can be jerky.

• Application UI varies enough between the apps that you don’t instantly just know how things work.

• The lack of pinch-and-zoom, a common interaction technique on the iPhone, seems like a major omission in day-to-day use.

• I really miss the iPhone’s hardware based ‘silent’ switch for turning off the ringer in one move.

• The soft buttons below the screen only work about 75% of the time – otherwise they do nothing.

• I never realized how much I missed short-cuts like being able to tap at the top of an iPhone table to get all the way back to the top.

• The iPhone assigns ‘gravity’ to scrolling to give it a more natural feel. That’s missing here.

Some stuff about Android is really cool: I loved the Google Goggles app. Very neat, even if it’s basically a tech demo at this point. The N1 itself is a very nice piece of hardware – well built device that feels very solid in your hand.

The open nature of the system is both a strength and a weakness. You can replace core components with new software – Google Voice can replace the dialer for example – that’s very cool. Still, this brings me back to the Linux analogy – the system is infinitely configurable and interchangeable but sometimes I want less choice – an expert to define a great experience and hand it over to me to use.

As an iPhone developer, I’m as sick of the App Store BS as anyone. Still, a recent experience with my mom made me see things a bit differently. She recently moved to the iPhone and to her, a single store run by Apple is a reassuring thing, not a negative. After many years as a customer, she trusts Apple and likes the system they’ve built with iTunes and the App Store.

The Google Marketplace is not all that impressive – difficult to find applications and while some are pretty good, I didn’t find any that struck me to be of the same quality as the very best iPhone apps (there are tons of crap apps on iPhone as well). A technical issue with Android significantly limits the amount of apps you can store on the device though this is supposed to change with a future software update.

Some users are reporting issues with the N1 cell radio performance. The sticky part of the issue is that they can’t get anyone to take responsibility – it seems Google has a thing or two to learn about customer support for direct consumer purchases. Waiting two days for an email from the support guy doesn’t work if your phone is busted.

Bottom line – I’m staying on iPhone, at least for now. I’ll keep watching Android and I’m still seriously considering porting an app, if only to see how hard it would be to do so.

For someone that’s buying now and not sure what to do, it’s important to keep in mind that the iPhone 3GS is probably half-way through it’s lifecycle – most people expect new hardware in June. Apple (unlike Google w/ Android who have splintered their platform a bit with multiple versions and no unified upgrade) are very good about providing the latest software for all their phones – even the original iPhone can run the latest 3.1 software. Still, new hardware will likely include cool new features and it would be a shame to miss that by a few months with a purchase today.

Also, the January 27th event that will supposedly bring an Apple tablet may also bring news of iPhone OS 4.0 – critical data for someone deciding between the two mobile OSes.

Like many others, I think it’s great to see Apple get some serious competition with their smartphone – that’s the only thing that will push them to ‘do the right thing’ when it comes to the App Store, the OS and the platform in general.

Version 1.0 of SBClick has hit the App Store.

This is an app I’ve been working on for those guys for a few months, as well as on some backend Web tools built with Ruby on Rails.

This app, along with the most recent version of Bombora, both use the HTTPRiot framework on the iPhone side – it makes using REST services a total piece of cake.

SBClick 1.0.1 should be submitted to Apple soon – we found a few things that needed adjustment right after 1.0 went in, along with some tweaking based on user feedback.

Weekly write Richard Abowitz did a profile on Vegas Mate for this week’s Las Vegas Weekly.

Go check it out!

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2009/sep/03/sin-city-your-hand/

After a few weeks of ‘negotiations’ with Apple over the rating that needed to be applied to Vegas Mate 2.0, I’m happy to report it is in the store.

Customers seem happy – they’ve been very patient waiting for this release.

I’m also happy – I think it came out great.