My experience with releasing my first iPhone OS application, Subnet Calc, has been a process which has taken me through learning a new programming language to trying to grapple with legal contracts. I thought I’d share some of my experiences…
So it all started around mid-October 2008 when I decided to finally take a look at the iPhone SDK that I had downloaded and installed. This involved learning how to use XCode which is Apple’s integrated development environment and learning the language of choice from Apple, Objective-C. XCode I found easy to learn how to use – it’s a very good piece of software which does a very good job. Objective-C on the other hand was quite hard to get to grips with. I found it hard to get my head around memory management and the syntax. I have come from a good C++ background and so I found it hard to understand the strange syntax of Objective-C. But after reading a couple of books I begun to understand it more.
After having figured out XCode and Objective-C, I decided to try my hand at creating an iPhone OS application. I decided to start out small and develop an application to help network administrators with remembering information about the subnets which they manage. So I started work on Subnet Calc.
It took just a couple of weeks to get a working copy of Subnet Calc which I then decided I would take the plunge and pay the £59 fee for membership into the iPhone developer program. This meant that I could then test my applications on my iPod Touch and eventually release them to the App Store.
So, after a week of testing on my iPod Touch I was ready for release! I submitted using the online iTunes Connect web-app which was relatively painless, but what I didn’t realise is that by submitting the application, I had kicked off the process of getting a contract in place to enable me to sell applications on the App Store. This contract ended up taking THREE WEEKS to process to completion! That really was quite annoying, especially because I was only submitting a free application!
Anyway, eventually Subnet Calc managed to find its way into the App Store! It has been quite a strange month or so, but it’s been rewarding and I am pleased to have something available in the iTunes App Store.