Make a Personal iPhone App: …only to see it get rejected from the app store. There are several startups (Mobile Roadie, MobBase, iSites) empowering small businesses, musicians, and bands to create their own iPhone apps without knowing any Objective C (the programming language used to build apps). You create an account, upload a few photos, enter your Twitter username, enter your blog’s RRS feed URL, and write a couple background paragraphs. It’s so simple. Pricing for a custom app can be anywhere from a $20 to $500 activation fee, and $8 to $29 in monthly fees depending on how many people install it. What are you paying for besides avoiding programmers and designers? You don’t have to worry about communicating with Apple. These companies handle everything. As an experiment, I thought I should try it out. I spent a couple hours arranging the menus to my liking and excitedly clicked “Publish.” My original intention was to take lots of screenshots and describe the process of building an app. That idea was trashed once my app got rejected. Apple claimed that they don’t want to become a “yellow pages” store. At first I was upset by this decision, but after some time thinking about it I realized that they made the right choice. Why should there be a “David Klein” iPhone app that only provides my tweets and blog posts? Who would download it? My mom? She doesn’t even own an iPhone (although she’ll soon own an iPad)! In my opinion personal apps are a waste of space in the app store. 140,000 apps and counting, but your personal content needs to stay on Twitter and Facebook.

Make a Personal iPhone App:

…only to see it get rejected from the app store.

There are several startups (Mobile Roadie, MobBase, iSites) empowering small businesses, musicians, and bands to create their own iPhone apps without knowing any Objective C (the programming language used to build apps). You create an account, upload a few photos, enter your Twitter username, enter your blog’s RRS feed URL, and write a couple background paragraphs.

It’s so simple.

Pricing for a custom app can be anywhere from a $20 to $500 activation fee, and $8 to $29 in monthly fees depending on how many people install it. What are you paying for besides avoiding programmers and designers? You don’t have to worry about communicating with Apple. These companies handle everything.

As an experiment, I thought I should try it out. I spent a couple hours arranging the menus to my liking and excitedly clicked “Publish.” My original intention was to take lots of screenshots and describe the process of building an app. That idea was trashed once my app got rejected. Apple claimed that they don’t want to become a “yellow pages” store.

At first I was upset by this decision, but after some time thinking about it I realized that they made the right choice. Why should there be a “David Klein” iPhone app that only provides my tweets and blog posts? Who would download it? My mom? She doesn’t even own an iPhone (although she’ll soon own an iPad)! In my opinion personal apps are a waste of space in the app store.

140,000 apps and counting, but your personal content needs to stay on Twitter and Facebook.