Gizmodo’s Developers Cubed series offers a behind the scenes look into Australia’s up and coming dev scene. This week: We chat with Aaron from Bronron, a lone wolf iOS developer who has created half a dozen apps during his 16 month development career.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
It’s not just Steve Ballmer’s favourite sweat-laden catchcry! If you’d like to be featured in Developers Cubed, shoot a note to freelance.broughall at gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Who are you and where do you work?
My name is Aaron and I am currently a database administrator by day and iOS programmer by night. I am a one man band when it comes to programming, marketing, and designing anything that needs to be done. When developing for iOS I have two working locations, first one is my spare room in my house converted to a office. The second is a seat on a train – I commute to work travelling two hours a day on the train so thats a solid two hours before and two hours after work I spend coding. It’s a curse and a blessing sometimes. I often get distracted when i am at home by the Xbox, TV or wife but when I am on the train there is limited 3G coverage so I cant browse the internet or be checking Twitter or Facebook.
Why do we know you? What have you created?
Well i wouldnt say that people know me, well not yet anyway. So far in my 16 month iOS developer career I have created six apps, all currently available in the App Store. My first and so far most successful is an App by the name of Beer Kings. It is a drinking game based on the popular game King of Beers. Great for parties, small gathering or pubs. After that came two Piano App’s (Sonaip & Animano) which combined have had 20,000 downloads. These two App’s are free and contains a number of normal Pianos as well as a number of Animal Pianos. Then there is Binary clock which speaks for its self, App Ideas and my newest App for the iPad called “Todos List”. All my Apps can be found by searching Bronron in the App Store or iTunes.
What platforms do you develop for?
Currently I am only developing for the iOS platform. I am hoping that once I get another 12 months under my belt of Apple development I might move to the Android but again it depends on how the moble market is looking.
What are you working on right now?
Right now I would say I have a number of side projects going, one for my current employer and another I have teamed up with a graphic designer and we are working on a story book for kids.
How did you get into development?
As long as I can remember I always wanted to code and make stuff. I always like the idea that coding was making some from nothing, these days all you need to write iOS apps is a Mac and xCode and maybe a couple of books on Objective-C. When I was growing up there wasn’t much as far as resources to develop.
What do you think about the rise and rise of App Stores? How has it influenced your titles?
The App Store is great, it’s great to see the rise of the Indie developer. No longer are we limited to what the big development companies want us to like. For programmers like myself (the hobbiest programmer) it’s awesome, I dont need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a title out the door or on distribution as the Apple provides all that for you in a nice yearly fee.
What’s your favourite app that you didn’t create?
I have a couple, the Apps I use on a daily basis are, Twitter, Facebook, iBooks, Mail, TripView and eBay. The one I wish iI had created would have to be TripView, its so simple yet so complex at the same time plus it means I can organise my schedule a lot better.
What phone do you use? Why?
I have a collection of phones, iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. What can I say i am fanboy at heart…
What advice do you have for budding Aussie developers out there?
My advice is to keep at it. Make sure your product is polished enough prior to release. Think like Apple, ask yourself would Apple be proud of my app? When you look at all of Apple’s Apps you never see anything half done or not working, that’s because they will never release something that doesnt quite work or is half done. It’s better to make sure your app is Apple-Polished and 100% functional that way your customer perception will be higher when you do a release a couple of weeks later with the new features.