Reboot (It’s about time!)

I am starting over with this blog, and with the direction I am going.

As I sit on my couch writing this on my shiny new MacBook, I am contemplating my direction. I finally got an iPod Touch for Christmas (2 months ago) and am still enamored by it. After seeing what Apple is doing with the iPad, I really got excited. The iPod Touch is great, I love the apps available for it, but never considered diving in to start developing my own apps. The iPad is a different story. I have so many great ideas for it that I am trying to decide which one to start on.

For all the bad press that Apple gets about the App Store, that is another thing that is pushing me to develop apps. When I was thinking about creating commercial software for Windows, I always had to consider payment processors, shopping carts, etc. Just search on any forum that caters to small software founders and there is usually at least one post a week about which payment processor to use, or someone telling their horror story about how Paypal is screwing them, or that Google Checkout doesn’t show the correct price (because of different currencies). And thinking about collecting sales tax for where I live, and where the buyer lives.

With the App Store, I don’t have to worry about those things. Yes Apple takes 30% off the top. But when you start researching costs for different payment processors vs a merchant account, that 30% doesn’t sound that bad. The App Store keeps track of what the customer bought, so the customer can always reinstall it without emailing you for a new key.

So this is what I am going to do going forward:

Develop one or more apps for the iPad.
Adapt those apps to fit the smaller screen of the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Try my hand at marketing those apps.

Check back soon. I will be posting regular updates on going from a .Net developer to an iPad developer.