How We Built an iPhone App for $4873.92 | Hacker News Reader

How We Built an iPhone App for $4873.92

gifterapp.com

26 pointsmadmotive19 comments

I detect the beginning of a new Internet meme: "How we did XXX for $YYYY.YY".

I don't really see the point of these articles either. Why include memory for XML parsing and the flight to WWDC? I'm pretty sure the app could have been made without those. The article is about what they spent, but it doesn't generalize in any meaningful way.

Yeah. I also like how people stopped writing software, the kind that actually takes skills and time to make (and customers to bill for), and switched to free "apps" that seem to take as much time to build as time required to blog about it.

Notice how few open source developers, those who produce tons of actual software, blog very little. That's because they're busy coding, thus not much time left to "share their experiences while coding". How many active Linux kernel devs have popular blogs? Yet those are the kind of people that can actually say something interesting.

I don't hear much from devs who're working on next gen. Apple stuff either. Only "iPhone app devs" and "google engine app devs" and other "app devs"... Damn "apps"...

What's with all the hating? I can see where constantly seeing "How we did XXX for $YYYY.YY" can get a little tiresome, but they also serve a purpose. One, they're insight into what sort of expenses a venture like this takes. Sure, you have some expenses that most people would discard, but then you just get a lower number.

Two, it provides knowledge and inspiration to people out there who have yet to start their ventures. Not everyone wants to be a linux kernel coder, some kids out there might want to be iPhone software developers, and this article tells them that even a teenager can probably do it over the summer with a little sweat equity and some money saved up from a job. These kind of articles make entrepreneurship less of a mystery, and thats a good thing.

On a sidenote, a teenager wanting to be an iPhone developer over the summer would probably want to subtract a couple thousand dollars from that figure, since Apple does have a student scholarship program for WWDC that provides college students with free wwdc tickets (whether you pay for travel/housing depends on where you live/which college you attend as individual programs may reimburse you for that up to a certain amount).

I'm guilty of a "I did XX with $$ in time XX" but shared my experience during it. Not as much the expense, but more relating to decisions made. Hopefully it's interesting and helpful in some way.

http://weblog.markbao.com/2008/how-i-built-a-webapp-in-18-ho...

This is partially true--those who actually spend a lot of time coding often do blog, but rarely about "their experience coding"--rather, they blog about actual issues related directly to what they're doing. The various blogs hosted on the ffmpeg website (multimedia.cx) are great examples of this. Though I do find that in periods of time when I actually have a lot of work, I don't have time to post much in terms of updates--or at least I justify it that way.

I agree with you, but I have a hierarchy for "things I respect". On the top of my list, are people who write useful open source projects. emacs, Linux, Perl, SBCL, Ruby, Python, whatever... the list goes on... they're all good. I often disagree with some decisions their communities make, but they are writing excellent software, giving it away for free, and then letting me make whatever changes I want to it. How can anyone complain about that.

Moving along down the totem pole, are people writing other types of Free Software. Do we really need another open source forum app? Not really, but at least you are trying to share your software with the world. Trying to be helpful is almost as honorable as actually being helpful.

Continuing, we have useful proprietary software projects. I will probably not use these (instead opting to get whatever algorithm from a textbook and write it myself), but I'm not going to complain about their existence. Mathematica, Matlab, some commercial Lisps, etc. fall into this category. Code I can't see and modify kind of sucks, but this sort of software is useful.

Nearing the bottom are the "apps developers" you talk about. They spend a lot of time blogging, and the rest of the time writing marginally-useful applications that are closed source. Sorry guys, I'm just not all that excited. I'm not going to use your app, and I'm probably not going to learn anything from your blog (since there's no code), so it's just ... meh.

Finally, we reach the bottom of the totem pole. This spot is reserved for people that spend most of their time talking about "software development" but never actually doing any. I could name names (the only reason we know about these people is because they SEO their blogs), but I won't; I think everyone knows who I am talking about.

Anyway, not sure what the point of this post was. Oh yeah; please write open source software. It helps everyone, and sharing is fun, and it will make people like you! If you have time to write about it, please do, there are thousands of people that want to hear about how you developed free software. The story is interesting, and for details, the code is available for perusal. That's always good.

These articles are sometimes interesting when the person writing them outsources everything. That way you get the true cost.

But 'omg o hay i built an app with 5$.... ( and 5000 man hours but that doesnt count right )' gets old

I'm the author of this blog post, and I thought I'd respond to a few valid points that have been brought up here:

- The reason I wrote about and actually itemized cost is because, well, you don't see much of that at the moment. People like Paul Graham say that a startup can be funded with $20000, but what does that really mean? What's the nitty-gritty?

- I didn't include things like pencils and chairs because everyone has pencils and chairs. I wanted to touch on what and where we had to spend to get this particular app going. Your results may vary; surely if you're doing a game you'd probably need more art assets, etc. The point is not that oh, we did this for so little money, we're so great - it's a personal story of how _we_ built an app, and to embolden others that hey, it's doable. That's why I linked to the Guy Kawasaki post at top of this article - it inspired us!

- TX is probably trolling, but I have to dispute the idea that linux kernel devs don't share their experience. Sure they do: it's in their well-written code and comments. We're closed source, but my partner will be posting about technical issues and speed wins for iPhone development soon, and there will be more to follow when the iPhone NDA lifts. Our app may seem simple, but if you could open it up you'd find an elegant tourbillon - it wasn't thrown together in the slightest.

I'm sorry - but is this a joke?

Out of the 11 items they brought, $4873.92 overall, 8 of them, $4136.94, seems like totally unessential.

I was expecting something where the bulk of the costs consisted of salaries for X days/weeks of work. But instead the bulk consisted of a trip to the WWDC, tons of ram, and icons?

Maybe this wasn't the point of the post, but it seems like they totally missed the point of building an application...or at least the point of a "How we built X for $Y" post. But it seems every single one of those posts are totally inaccurate - one where they built one for $10k (but had 9 people working on the project!), one where they built a site for $8.75 (because that's the cost of the domain - nothing else included), and now this where they built one for $5000 (but included totally unnecessary items).

Personally having been to WWDC a couple times now, I'd think that it wasn't all too inappropriate to include in the cost. It is a very useful resource for pretty much any Mac/iPhone developer, and I know many who consider the sessions, the networking, and sitting down with engineers to talk over things to be worth more than what they paid for the conference. And to be honest, I don't think they missed the point much by including the cost of icons as well. It's part of the application. Some may do it in-house, others will pay for work. To not count it as part of the app is fairly unreasonable...what else would you be doing if you needed icons? Making your own? (Not always the best idea, and for some will waste more time for an inferior set of icons vs. just buying a decent set.) And well...if the RAM helped them be more productive, then so be it.

Maybe I would have had a separate "Optional costs, but ones we really thought were justified/important for what they gave us" category for those three that people seem to be taking the most offense from. Sure, you and some others may not be interested in spending $600 on icons or $3000 on a trip to WWDC because you don't need it for whatever reason, but many do. In fact, I'd say that would apply to a lot of apps on the app store now where I know/know of the developer(s), since I saw so many of them at WWDC with MacBook Airs.

It may be inaccurate to you, but I don't think it's that far off. Everyone's different, and this is just one case I don't think is that unique.

$297.98 - Emergency RAM. For a while we had to parse a 12gb XML file. Every day. Louis got 8 more gigs for his Mac Pro overnighted out.

I'd really like to know what the hell this 12GB XML file they needed to parse multiple times was.

EDIT: The developer replied here: http://gifterapp.disqus.com/how_we_built_an_iphone_app_for_4...

I think it was a pretty good article. If you think an item was unessential, well, you can do the math, subtract it. It was a pretty good round-up of how they did it. You may make fun of the icons, but a lot of businesses outsource these days, and they decided to outsource that. If it was something that would just have delayed them, then it was the right choice. And it illustrates just how cheaply it would be to outsource that sort of thing.

I have to congratulate these developers for creating what appears to be a very useful iPhone app on a shoestring with lots of sweat equity.
However, when it comes down to how much it cost, like jrockway said, it's not very meaningful to others. Furthermore, I'm already sick of the prospect of the pissing contest where developers say they can develop another app for even less. Blech.

I see an easy way they could of saved $3,000 right off the bat.

I've said it once here already and I will say it again. I have not come across many Mac|iPhone developers who were unhappy with what they got out of WWDC, unless all they were doing all week long was getting plastered.
It seems like a complete waste of money to some, but when you consider what you can get out of it: the sessions, the seeds, the _signing up to talk to an apple engineer about your app to get help with virtually everything_, the session videos, the people you meet...it can and is well worth the money to attend.
There are some conferences I have been to that were mostly along the lines of "what the hell is this *&#$" where I've fallen asleep and skipped entire days, and WWDC is not one of them. It's definitely an experience I recommend to developers should they be able to afford the time/money it costs to attend. I'd even know of some that would say WWDC's cost is nothing compared to what it's saved them in terms of all the things they got out of it that they used.

How about the time you spent not making $100+ per hour working on consulting projects. I'm guessing iPhone dev is probably $150+

epic failure right here: $120/year - DreamHost: We use DreamHost for a bunch of miscellaneous services, and this also included our domain name.

Not a single item in that list belongs to "Development" category. But since he's writing about non-development spending categories, why not include a cost of chairs, tables and pencils?
Also, when I flag shitty content, where does this "flagging" vote go? I'm using it as a missing downmod feature.

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