I just wanted to throw up a quick post on the current state of gCalWall. I know there’s some things that are a little “wonky”. Some (minor number) of folks have seen issues with all day events, and some other stuff like blurry images. I have every intention of doing everything I can to fix these issues. I also have every intention of working in some requested improvements. But at the same time, I haven’t made much of anything off of gCalWall wall – so while its a product I intend to continue working on, it’s not a “top” priority.
So, long story short – I’m working on it, but I wouldn’t expect to release anything (aside from a major affects everybody emergency bugfix) until the iPhone 3.0 software is released. Why? Well, there’s some things I have to change for gCalWall in 3.0 to work properly and I’ve already got a development build started. So, rather than try and maintain separate builds, I’m jumping ship from 2.x and moving on to 3.x…
brandon Coding, iPhone gCalWall
and unfortunately they don’t look so hot. Now to be fair, the ratings/reviews are pretty decent from the folks who have taken the time to write them. They aren’t all positive, and some are downright rude, but unfortunate reality of the App Store is that (as Iliumsoft wrote) Apple really has designed the rating system to make it super simple for those who “hate it to rate it” and those who love it … to not rate it at all.
Now, I’m happy with what gCalWall has done. It has sold a “decent” amount of copies, and the free version has done very well. I’m never going to make it rich off the application (hell I’m never going to buy a broken down Honda off of it), but for being my very first attempt at building anything its done very well. Ultimately I took a lofty goal (capturing data from Google and getting onto the lockscreen) and for the most part I succeeded. I didn’t truly succeed, but the goal was impossible because Apple doesn’t allow access to the lockscreen. Ultimately, the failure of gCalWall is a failure of my own.
What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that the ratings for gCalWall are very low, because I mis-judged that people wouldn’t mind taking a few extra seconds and setting the created image as a wallpaper. The ratings are low not because the application itself doesn’t work – but because of STUPID restrictions placed on the developers, and my own mis-judgement that people wouldn’t mind the extra steps for the much added benefit of having a useful lockscreen.
Keep this in mind. I want to dynamically update the lockscreen when you run gCalWall. There’s nothing I want more. Its been written in the app description and mentioned in every fricking write-up on the web. I WANT TO DO IT. APPLE WON’T LET ME. So please – if you like the app, review it on the App Store. If your only complaint is that it doesn’t set the wallpaper – TELL APPLE, but don’t give it 1 star reviews because of that.
Long story short – the rating system is broken. Go read about the feelings a successful developer has about the process, and imagine how I feel. Not only am I getting my ass kicked by Apple once for limiting functionality, but I’m getting it kicked again by Apple for having a broken rating process.
brandon iPhone gCalWall
Well, here we are – over a week in the review process (8+ days) and so far I finally have the approval emails for gCalWall and gCalWall Lite version 1.2 but they haven’t shown up on the store. Heck gCalWall still shows “in review” even though it’s been approved.
This is bugging me.
brandon iPhone appstore, gCalWall
My first iPhone app just got approved for sale in the AppStore! I’m frickin excited! Talk about a long process though. Longer for me than many others I’m sure because it took a lot of reading and a lot of learning, but I got it done so the goal has been achieved.
More important than just the app, I guess this validates for me that you can teach an old dog new tricks… a couple months ago the closest I’d come to programming in many, many years was some simple VBScript stuff, and the minor bit of PHP/HTML I have to maintain at JAMM. So, naturally I need to send a HUGE thanks out to all the folks who have taken the time to write tutorials for beginners, the folks who’ve written the books (specifically Erica Sadun, Dave Mark/Jeff LaMarche), and everyone whose taken time to reply to noob questions on forums. There’s a serious wealth of information out there for a beginning programmer and its all come to life in a matter of months – so THANKS!
Alright, almost done with my shameless plug. I’m really looking forward to sharing this experience with everybody as its been very exciting, from the learning a whole new language, thinking through how things should work, writing the code, troubleshooting and beta testing… There’s a ton of stuff to cover so keep an eye on the site as I’ll be covering a lot of that stuff very soon.
gCalWall goes on sale on Wednesday the 25th (I’ll post a link when it goes up) … but for now here’s some more information on the app! I’ll be posting a video demo of the app on Wednesday (on that page) as well so you can see how it works. Alright … I’m off to go do a happy dance!
brandon iPhone gCalWall, google calendar iphone
