Tides 1.0 on iPhone App Store

The first version of my iPhone/iPod Touch tide and current prediction app is now on the Apple App Store. It’s a very simple app, just an interface to David Flater’s Xtide prediction software running on a server. But it was an interesting experience to work with the iPhone specific APIs and get a finished (free) product out for distribution.

My submission timeline:

• Late Wednesday afternoon July 30: submitted to the App Store for review.

• Late Friday afternoon: server shows Apple testing the software.
• Saturday evening: server shows first end user usage.
• About midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning: received email notifying my app is now “Ready for Sale”.
• Sunday afternoon: first two user reviews appeared in the App Store.
  

I had version 1.1 done and ready to post before 1.0 was available. I’ve made a couple of changes to 1.1 based on user feedback, and will probably jump straight to 1.2, to be submitted tomorrow/Monday.

Wil Shipley Kills 1,000,000 people: “The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing

“The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing: “Microsoft has managed to prove that if you have a friendly expert on a controlled machine (with Vista pre-installed) showing a carefully selected subset of Vista features to an ignorant XP user for a few minutes, the XP user will often say he finds Vista acceptable. Wow”

(Via Call Me Fishmeal..)

But even Scott Adams knows better than to pick on Vista, Wil:

Close Call: “If I mock Vista, and it has an impact on Microsoft stock value, then Bill Gates will have a few billion dollars less to spend on humanitarian projects. Therefore, the comic could end up killing a million people. Those people are all strangers, but still.”

(Via Dilbert.com Blog.)