teknote systems corporate blog

Today was the day Google published my very first app. *Woohoo!*  And why is this tidbit newsworthy?  Well, with years of experience in the Computer Science/IT field programming, developing websites, and hardcoding instructions for various electronic devices, building apps just seemed trivial to me.  Why create wimpy little programs to just turn around and give away for free or $.99 a download?  Who wants that?  Lots of folks, apparently, because those "wimpy little programs" are selling like hotcakes.

And so there I went jumping on the bandwagon, clueless about how to start.

Enter what I like to call the "App-Building Cheater Method" via appsbar.com. Starting out, I read all of the fine print to verify the "free-ness" of this service, scouring the FAQ looking for a conveniently buried cost.  None?  Ok, let's do this.  So then I set up an account by creating a username/password, then followed the 4 easy steps posted on the home page. (See image below.) The hardest part in the app-building process was finding the best color scheme to suit my liking, but otherwise, appsbar did all of the behind-the-scenes code generation for me.

Drawbacks?  Yes, you knew there had to be something negative to report.  After all, freebies tend to come with some sort of hang up, and here are just a couple that I found right off the bat:

1. Credits. Appsbar takes credit for building your app by displaying "appsbar adamk" as the developer beneath the app title.  Ok fine, perhaps the completed app is Adam's intellectual property. But still.  I'm not sure I want my clients to know that I didn't generate the underlying code in the app I designed by way of an app-building service.
2. Limited Themes.  Appsbar uses Digi, a code-building wizard, to generate basic app types from which you can select. Unfortunately if your idea falls outside of the type-list, too bad for you.  Appsbar might possibly add suggested types in future updates, but otherwise becoming a registered devloper via the iPhone/iPad Software Development Kit (SDK) might be in your future.  And yes, being the ultimate deep-down geek that I am, I'm already there.