Marc Edwards is one of the well known team behind Mac Dashboard Widget aces iSlayer and iPhone development house bjango, whose apps include Jobs, Cities, Darkness, and Phases, and he was kind enough to sit down and talk App development and ecosystem with TiPb.

TiPb: Your team is famous for their Mac OS X Dashboard widgets, was developing for the iPhone really the easy transition some have suggested?

Marc: For us, yes. Our widgets have used Cocoa plugins for quite some time. A lot of widgets are straight HTML, Javascript and CSS though, which is very different to what’s needed for iPhone apps.

Was there anything substantially different about developing for the iPhone? If so, did you learn anything that you will effect your future Mac development?

The biggest lesson seems to be quality. Apple have some great bundled apps, so if you want to fit in, you’d better make sure you spend as much time as they do on the small details. The effective hit area of a human finger also means you have can only have a small number of buttons on screen at once. That keeps you on your toes—almost everything has to be contextual, which is quite different to traditional Mac development.

With some of Apple’s built in Apps, like Stocks, Weather, etc. seeming more like OS X widgets than real Apps, there was once speculation that Apple may open up a widget platform for the iPhone as well. With both WebApps and App Store apps, do you think there’s still a place for a dedicated iPhone widget development system?

There probably isn’t much point in a development platform between web apps and App Store apps… Apple can and will keep on extending WebKit, allowing for better web apps that look and behave more like App Store apps. That’s probably enough for anyone who doesn’t want to develop using Cocoa.

So the line between the two is close enough to not warrant another choice. But hey, who knows what Apple will do!

There been ongoing controversy about the App Store and how to both get exposure for apps and earn a fair living off their development. Do you think app developers are currently racing to the bottom, and pricing themselves out of business, or do you think volume and building user base will prove a viable model long term?

I don’t think pricing is as much of an issue as others seem to. We’re talking about a platform with millions of users (don’t forget iPod touch users when adding up the total). A huge portion of those users seem to buy apps.

If anything, I think we will see some more expensive apps appear, as all the small ideas get done well enough that each app type has a clear winner. Once the low hanging fruit is gone, developers will probably head towards bigger projects.

Either way, I’m not sure less than $5 is a bad pricepoint for an app. Just make sure you have a very good, very small team developing it and you’ll be fine.

Now that the numbers are approaching 10,000, what could Apple do to make iPhone apps more discoverable by end users?

Search results ordered by rankings. A “newly popular” section might work too. I think it’s going to be fairly difficult to keep iTunes as it is for music while making it work for the App Store too. I’m sure they’ll figure it out though. These kinds of things have been working well on web 2.0 sites for years.

What are your thoughts on the new “rate upon deletion” feature of iPhone OS 2.2? Is this unfair to developers who may get more negative reviews now? (fair disclosure, I’ve only give 4 and 5 star reviews to Apps I’ve deleted).

For Apple to build better search and ranking tools, they need all the good data they can get. Right now there’s a lot of fairly average apps on the store, so I don’t see how rate upon deletion should be something any decent developer should worry about.

I’ve also rated some apps well on deletion. Maybe a rate after 20th launch would be good too, although you don’t want it to get in the way too much.

Thanks Marc, we really appreciate your taking the time!

bjango is the website, and the apps are all available via the iPhone App Store (iTunes Link)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Interview: bjango’s (and iSlayer’s) Marc Edwards on the Mac to iPhone Transition and the App Store Outlook

Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad of Tapbots are the breakout designers and engineers behind Weightbot (iTunes link), one of the most original user experiences released on the iPhone App Store to date. Continuing the iPhone blog’s behind-the-scenes look at iPhone application development, Mark and Paul were kind enough to take time and discuss their ideas on interface and interactivity, and how what more we might expect from Apple’s next generation mobile platform.

TiPb: How was approaching the iPhone interface for this App different than how you would have approached an interface for another platform?

Mark: It was really different coming from a web design background. 320×460 isn’t a lot of space to work with and then you have to factor in the huge difference in input devices. A person’s finger is a lot less accurate than a mouse cursor. At the same time, I wasn’t designing a website so I was freed from a lot of rules and conventions I’ve been following over the past 8 years. So my initial approach was pretty simple. If Weightbot was an actual physical device, how could I make it usable and fun at the same time?

Paul: The thing I found challenging about dealing with the iPhone interface is that users want a silky smooth and yet the iPhone and iPod touch are both very slow compared to any modern Mac. I spent a lot of time juggling things around in order to get a consistent 60 fps for all the various animations within Weightbot. Coming from our current Multi Gigahertz, Multi Gigabyte and Multi Core world where for the most part you don’t have to worry about performance to a platform like the iPhone where every cycle and byte counts is a big change.

TiPb: Weightbot’s interface is obviously both creative and innovative. Is the robot theme something that came to expressly for that app, or does it exemplify a personal style of interaction that you can see pushing further in future with different types of Apps.

Mark: The whole robot theme sort of just fell into place. That happens a lot with the work I do. I can’t always sit down with a piece of paper and try to think up a whole concept from scratch. I prefer to just dive into the work and then see what ideas pop up from it.

Paul came to me one day telling me he wanted to test the iPhone market and was going to start off simple with a weight tracking app. He asked if I was interested in helping out and didn’t want to spend more than a week or two on it. I think the original plan was to use all of the standard UI elements provided in the SDK, but I thought I’d let my imagination run a little and then see what Paul would think. My initial sketch was simple. It was just the shape of the iphone with the lcd as seen on the app today. One thing popped into mind at that point. It was Eve from Wall-e. Everything just fell into place from there. Weightbot was inspired by Eve, and the Tapbots idea was based on the whole concept of different utility robots in Wall-e. That was such a great movie. When I was in high school, my dream was to become a 3d modeler for Pixar. Obviously, my career went off on a tangent (along with this interview).

So now that you know the story of where Tapbots and Weightbot came from, obviously you can expect there to be more robot applications in the future.

TiPb: Given the stylization, was it difficult to balance form and function, and make sure the interface didn’t take over or drown out the underlying App?

Mark: Over the years, my web design philosophy has matured. I used to be all about the flash, bang, whiz type of websites, but one day I just realized that people just want to use the site or get the information they need. That’s not to say flashy sites don’t have their place. I’ve just changed my philosophy on it. So my take on all UI design is function first, and then wrap a solid, usable design around it. The same approach was taken with Weightbot. I pictured a user balancing on his/her scale, and easily being able to enter weight data into the app with one hand and without needing too much precision or concentration.

The Wii fit is probably the best example of simplicity because it weighs you and stores your weight data automatically. It’s also somewhat fun to do. The big flaw with it is you have to turn on your TV and Wii just to do it and that can get tedious if you do it everyday. I know because I have one and hardly ever turn it on anymore. So Weightbot needed to be very simple, fun enough to be motivational, and not feel like a chore to use. I’d like to think we did a pretty decent job on it.

TiPb: Did developing an interface for the iPhone change the way you may approach future interfaces on other platforms? Did you learn anything special from developing for the iPhone?

Mark: New experiences always help shape the way you think about other things. I’ve definitely learned a lot from the experience and I’m sure it will influence my work on the web. Maybe not from a visual standpoint, but definitely from a user experience point of view.

TiPb: You use touch and accelerometer based interactions in your Apps. Are developers fully tapping the potential of iPhone interactivity yet? What more, if anything, could Apple surface to help developers create even better user interactions?

Mark: Some developers are doing really cool stuff with it. The multi-touch screen, accelerometer, and even the mic are all input devices for the iPhone. Developers should use them to their app’s advantage. Our main purpose for using them was to simplify the interface. Imagine having a “graph” button in Weightbot to switch to the graph. The button would have to be small so it doesn’t make the interface busy, but then the user has to look for the button. Using the accelerometer was a no brainer. It keeps our interface clean and it’s very intuitive.

Google Earth makes really good use of the accelerometer and multi-touch controls. I think games are also pushing how users can interact with the iPhone. I think the possibilities are almost limitless so we will be seeing a lot of great solutions in the future.

Paul: I don’t think most developers fully tapping the iPhone at all. It’ll probably be another year before we see a large number of apps that really push the iPhone. Unfortunately in the current iPhone SDK there’s very little defined support for detecting things like two finger swipes or shaking the iPhone. You pretty much have to depend on accessing the accelerometer and Event code at fairly low levels. Once Apple provides some higher level support for these features you are going to see more and more developers using them in innovative ways.

TiPb: What worked out especially well for you with Weightbot? Any favorite features or elements that you’re especially happy with?

Mark: I’m happy most with the pure simplicity of it. Part of me wants to say this is the final version. But we get a lot of feature requests and Weightbot is nothing without people using it. So we will do our best to make our users happy without sacrificing on the initial vision of Weightbot.

Paul: I really like the Date Slider screen, maybe its because I spent an obscene amount of time tuning it, but I really enjoy the effect of flicking the Slider and hearing it tick as it switches dates.

Mark, Paul, we sincerely appreciate your taking the time to share with us and our readers!

Tapbots is Mark and Paul’s website, and their premiere application, Weightbot, is available via the iTunes App Store.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Interview: Weightbot Developers Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad Discuss iPhone Interface Innovation

If Steve Jobs is the patron behind the concept of the iPhone, then Jonathan Ive is certainly the artist whose hand crafted its ultimate realization.

Apple’s reclusive Vice President of Design recently spoke with the Independant’s Claire Beale on the nature of design, winning an unprecedented six (6!) Black Pencil awards, and what drives Apple’s success:

“We have a very clear focus that all the development teams at Apple share, a focus around trying to make really great products. That can sound ridiculously simplistic, almost naive, but it’s very unique for the product to be what consumes you completely. And when I say the product I mean the product in its total sense, the hardware and the software, the complete experience that people will have. We push each other, we’re very self-critical and we’ll take the time to get the product right.”

Witness, of course, the iPhone.

Be sure to hit the read link for the complete article.

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This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Interview with iPhone Designer Jonathan Ive