Since I bought myself an iPad I decided to get my hands dirty again with XCode. I felt immediately at home programming for iOS. The brilliance of the Cocoa framework shows here as well. It is also a great opportunity since it hasn't bloated yet and is simple to learn.
Before my hobby gets out of hand I want to validate whether it is worth spending time on. Balancing my career with spending time with my 1 1/2 month old daughter is not easy. Adding a hobby project as well is not evident. Thus these are my 3 requirements:
Number one is easy. Designing and programming are my work and hobby. Doing it on the mac with Cocoa makes it gold.
To fulfill number two, I have the rule to only work on my project at home. It's easy to get tempted to just work on it at the office after my hours. I noticed I was getting home at night when the family was already asleep. No need to say that's bad.
I find I can combine spending time with my daughter and program rather well. She sleeps for max 3 hours and then forces me to take a break. I can entertain her with what's on the screen, and get some exercise to play with her. Double win.
To fulfill point three I did some research. Anybody can sense that the mobile market is big and there's a lot of money to be made. I wanted to get some figures though.
Since their introduction Android and iPhone have become the main players on the mobile market. Apple reported to have sold $ 1 billion so far via their App Store (WWDC 2010 keynote) since the start in July 2008. At this time there are currently more than 400 000 apps available accounting for more than 10 billion downloads. The android market is currently good for about 200 000 apps. We haven't seen anything yet though. The mobile market is expected to triple by 2015 according to Juniper Research.
The way I see it, is that a mobile app would be a great way to increase visibility to the company. The app should be simple, and allow you to accomplish the most core tasks. In case of Collibra's Glossary that would be searching for terms and validating definitions.
Stay tuned as I will publish my adventures on getting on the App Store.
