Sunday, July 26, 2009
Clarus 1.0: A Development Postmortem
On Friday, June 5th we released Clarus - a Mac only application designed to keep track of your pets’ lives. Clarus has had the quickest idea to released product turnaround in the history of my career as a programmer. I started work on Clarus in Feburary, officially pronounced the program “done” on the 21st of May, and spent the time between then and now sorting out non-code stuff, like the new website, localisations, updating our online store and so on.
This is partly down to how cool Core Data is in Cocoa. Thanks to Core Data and a few other technologies built in to Cocoa, the base functionality - the ability to enter details into the program and save them - was done very quickly indeed. The majority of the development time was taken with making the program look great and integrate with the rest of the system (iCal, Address Book, AppleScript, printing, etc).
Read moreFriday, June 05, 2009
Clarus 1.0 Released!
Chicksands, United Kingdom - KennettNet Software Ltd is proud to introduce Clarus 1.0, their new pet management solution for Mac OS X. Perfect for maintaining insurance documents, medical records, vet bills, and expense receipts, Clarus was specifically designed to manage a pet’s life and paperwork, all in one convenient, easy-to-use utility. When a pet needs to be rushed to the vet, the last thing a pet owner needs is searching through piles of paperwork for that missing document.
Read moreWednesday, April 22, 2009
The Great Debate: How Do I Actually Sell My Apps?
Preface: Note that all figures talked about in this entry are approximate, but based around my own sales and costs to make the figures relevant.
This argument seems to pop up again and again in the Mac development circle:
How do I collect money from my users?
Back in the days of shareware being distributed on floppy disks with magazines, many developers simply asked the user to send a $5 bill through the mail. These days, however, cash is pretty much obsolete for anything but car boot sales. Now we have to charge the user’s card ((This includes PayPal accounts, since they’re just another thing the user has that contains money)) over the web and have the license delivered by email.
When looking for solutions, the aspiring Mac developer has two options: either write the store yourself and integrate with a payment gateway (like their bank or PayPal) or use a third party service that does the lot (like eSellerate).
At first, doing it yourself looks like the much better option. Payment gateways are cheaper than full services, and you have the coding experience to throw together a simple store that integrates with them. It’s also been done before, and there are a few open-source stores you could use instead of writing your own.
Number Crunching
Right, let’s break down the average direct costs of selling apps - not including man-hours.
Read moreSaturday, March 07, 2009
Location, Location, Location
At the beginning of this week, my company moved offices for the third time. The company has just finished its fourth accounting year and we’re looking to have a great fifth year. Four years ago, I was hoping I’d get this far but had no idea whether I would or not.
It’s been pointed out to me that this final move is the most significant move yet for me personally. I didn’t notice because I’ve been so busy actually organising the move, but they’re right - the past five years of my live have revolved around the University of Hertfordshire campus, first as a student then a tenant in their offices.
If I’d realised that before the move I’d have probably been a bit apprehensive about it. We’re all resistant to change and this marks the end of the biggest chapter of my life so far - I started it as a kid fresh out of 6th form and I’ve come out an adult with more responsibilities than most ((Man, that comment’s an invitation to get flamed, isn’t it?)) pretty well equipped to deal with the real world. Whatever that is.
I thought it’d be interesting to give a little history to where I’ve been (physically) with KennettNet Software, and why I went where I did.
2004: Working from Home
This doesn’t really count as a location for the company, since I moved into a proper office pretty much as soon as the company was formed. Still, it’s where I started! I built this desk (not very well) myself - favourite feature was the inbuilt backlighting and power sockets for charging stuff.
2005: St. Albans
In 2005, I took a year out from my Uni course (Computer Science) that was supposed to be a year’s industrial placement. Unfortunately, running my own company didn’t count, since the University “doesn’t like it when students work for members of their own family” and, no matter how much I argued, I’m a member of my own family. Bummer.
Read moreSunday, February 08, 2009
My Love Of Icons
Note: All artwork and icons depicted in this article are Copyright © KennettNet Software Limited. Do not reproduce without written permission.
When writing a programming project, there are three major things that signify that your project is nearly finished, and has transformed from a project into a product. They are:
Putting the project into an issue tracker
This signifies that the project is no longer an unfinished collection of code, but a useable program with issues that need to be fixed. Putting a project into issue tracking too early will just create thousands of worthless tickets as you work through your specifications.
Releasing a build to someone outside your office/computer
Again, it signifies that your project is becoming a useable product when you can show it to other people and be fairly proud of your application, despite the fact it isn’t finished yet.
Getting Artwork
This is probably less important to most than me, but getting final artwork done - such as toolbar and application icons - is a big step, and converts your program from some code with placeholder icons into something unique and yours. This step only happens with projects you’re really committed to since it costs time and money to get done right.
This is my favourite step in product (vs. software) development by far. Successfully implementing “wow” features comes a close second, but going through the process of developing artwork for an application is something I really enjoy and get really passionate about. Now, in a large corporation or even a company large enough to have staff a hierarchy, I imagine X budget gets assigned to icons and artwork and it gets done. On the other hand, I get very excited when the time comes to get some icons done, and normally end up sending an email to our icon designer before the specs of what I want are fully formed in my head. I honestly believe that if I had the budget, I’d get professional icons done for every idea that pops into my head, from our released software to the internal tools we use for support.
To me, the quality of the icon on a program really represents the product as a whole and how much the developer cares about the quality of their product. I love reading articles like this, and I’m glad lots of other people feel the way I do. Over time I’ve come to care about application artwork more and more, from “something pretty cool” for my early apps to something that’s absolutely essential to get right, no matter how much heartache it takes.
Read moreFriday, July 25, 2008
Music Rescue 4.0 Postmortem
After lots of months and several deadlines missed, we’ve finally shipped Music Rescue 4.0 to the public. This release has seen a major shift in the development methods we used, and essentially marks the move from a company with one guy doing all the coding to one with multiple people working on the same thing.
As such, I thought I’d do a bit of a postmortem on our techniques and my thoughts on them, for anyone interested.
First, some history…
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