Blogs

We've been a bit quiet lately, but it's not because we're on holiday. As soon as the paint dried on version 1.0 of Mental Case for iPhone, we began on version 2.0, a much more ambitious project.

The good news is that we are almost ready to start beta testing version 2.0. It includes many of the feature requests we received (eg. creation of notes on the iPhone, correction of notes), plus a few nice surprises. In short, it is a much more polished and far-reaching app than version 1.0.

Remember when Steve Jobs stood on stage at MacWorld to introduce the world to the iPhone, and told us all that Apple planned to sell 10 million in their first year. (That was later clarified to be the first full calendar year, namely, 2008.) Well, Apple have already hit that mark with a few months up their sleeve, and — as pointed out by others — they are not the slowest months for sales.

Some of the more technically-oriented Mental Case users may be interested in a story I just finished writing for MacResearch.org. It is a tutorial for programmers, showing how a Mac and iPhone can 'talk' to one another. If you are interested in how Mental Case syncing works, this tutorial gives you a peek under the covers.

Drew McCormack
Mental Case Developer

It's only been about 5 days since Mental Case appeared on the iTunes App Store, but — from this end — it feels more like 3 months. Downloads of the iPhone app have been strong, and this has driven customers to the Mac app, which we hoped it would. Sales there have exceeded expectations. With the increase in user base has come considerably more support work, but that's a nice problem to have.

We’ve been following the highs and lows of the iPhone 3G release with some interest, particularly now that Mental Case for iPhone is entering the last stages of development. The App Store represents an enormous opportunity for developers, but also presents a few conundrums: As gatekeeper, Apple is responsible for the quality of apps that make it into the store, but also seems to be making moral judgements about certain submissions.

Aside from being chief developer on Mental Case, I also do a lot of writing online, most notably on MacResearch.org. Until now, my contributions to the Mental Case web site have been limited to posting short news stories, and partaking in forum discussions, but it seems like a good time to expand the dialog, so I've decided to start posting regularly on this blog.