So this is probably my biggest confession yet.  I made a crap iPhone app.  I thought it was crap, people who downloaded said it was crap, it IS crap.

So why did I make it?  Well at the time iBeer was in the top 10 and they'd just raised their price to $2.99.  It's a fake beer!!!  So I thought OK this is want people want.  Silly crap.

My crazy icons app, as mentioned in my last post, had been rejected.  But I wanted to use the code for something.  So I replaced the icons with smilies and called it crazy smilies.  Through this process I learnt a lot about developing apps.  I taught myself how to do sounds, simple flipbook type animation and a whole lot more.  I was currently enrolled in a Java subject at university, so until this app I only had a vague idea about object oriented programming.  I was really starting from no knowledge and learning everything as I go.

Although I thought the app was crap my girlfriend liked it.  It made silly noises, some goofy animation, I thought maybe it would appeal to the young and the young at heart.  Maybe.  Anyway the market would decide if it was good or not, if people don't like it they give it a bad review.  If you read the reviews and everyone says it's crap then you wouldn't buy it.

Well the reviews starting flowing in from around the world.  Most of these were written when I made the app free for a brief period.  Wild Walt seemed to like it but most everyone else didn't.  They started off bad and just got worse.

I think it was best summed up by someone in Singapore who wrote.  "Yup! You'll be Crazy to spend your dollar on this ugly app. Nothing much, except when you touch the M&Ms, they don't melt. Instead, thay say something. I'm not sure what they say, I ain't interested either. They look hideous. O, don't ever show it to a child, they will cry and won't be able to sleep at night. Crap."

But there weren't many apps in the store, and my app was fairly unique.  It still made around $2,000 australian dollars profit in total over several months.   Most of that in the first few weeks.  Of course I wasn't happy with it or the bad reviews I got.  But I was busy trying to get other apps in the store that would be popular.  But eventually I found some time to change the app completely and make it a game for small children.  I moved the app the Entertainment section to Games for Kids.  But the reviews seemed to only get worse and nearly all reviews started to say it was "crap".

The app has faded off the charts to oblivion and now makes about $1 a day if I'm lucky.

So what did I learn.  If I think an app is crap then no doubt other people will too.  There must be more to the popular apps than just stupid crap.  So I just had to work out what that was.  More on my newest non-crap apps in future posts.

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