When you have an iPhone idea instead of just grabbing a piece of paper, snag a copy of MockApp and do it in Keynote. There’s also a PowerPoint template if you’re so inclined.
MockApp will allow you to do exactly what it sounds. You can quickly storyboard your application. By quickly, I mean relative to how well you know Keynote or PowerPoint and how clear of an idea you have for the flow of your application.
MockApp keynote template
You can play around with your app and link between screens. You’ll have a mockup of exactly what you want your app to look like and how you want it to function before you fire up XCode and write a single line of code.
If you are an ideas person but not comfortable coding yourself, this is a great way to get your idea across to a colleague or a programmer or agency you’re hiring to develop your application.
It’s a tremendously useful tool for thinking through your own applications.
Not terribly long after my last post, I had a heart attack and have been out of commission for four months. The good news is that I’ve made a wonderful recovery with no measurable permanent damage. Unfortunately, I’m about six months behind in my development schedule due to both the heart attack and other extenuating circumstances.
I have a great app idea born from the heart attack, but that will have to wait until December of 2010 when my cardiologist and I can collaborate on remote cardiac monitoring. I already have a hardware guy lined up who has made a few test boards for another hardware project.
Soonish I’ll be posting again about current and upcoming projects. The Landscapes app is back up and going. I will be attending WWDC 2010 in San Fransisco to present my first iPad and iPhone applications, one of which will be for managing historic landscapes. I hope the other will be an application for my favorite tabletop roleplaying game.
When I started in earnest with the iPhone SDK, the most frustrating thing I found about it was Interface Builder. It makes it harder to grok what’s going on, particularly if you’re new to Objective-C and the iPhone SDK. Fortunately I’m not alone in that frustration and a few folks have been good enough to tell us how to do that.
Distractions keep you from getting into the zone. I find that voices, especially conversation, are especially distracting. Unless it’s something I’ve seen a bunch of times, having a movie or show run in the background is also distracting. Silence doesn’t do it for me either.
I’ve found that instrumental music, such as movie soundtracks, is a wonderful way to keep my brain entertained and help me get into a good flow. Even better, nature sounds (also called soundscapes) help me relax and keep my mind focused on the tasks at hand.
Landscapes is coming along pretty nicely. The first alpha is done. I’m building out data entry screens and working on handling location on the iPod Touch (more of an issue, but I can workaround) and compass direction.
GPS isn’t as accurate as I would like, but I’m making the fields editable. Right now I’m going with latitude/longitude, but will put in a conversion for UTM. Letting users select a preference would be ideal, but it should default to UTM.
I’m eager to use Joe Hewitt’s excellent three20 library for this project once the major refactoring is done and it’s a bit more stable.
"Two weeks is just the normal time it takes for Apple to review apps." (via @joehewitt) Be patient, people. Sheesh at the AppStore comments. 6 months ago
