Spotlight: Ivan Mackintosh

Ivan Mackintosh

Ivan Mackintosh hails from Christchurch and is the author of apps such as Dynamate, WhatBirdNZ and more. As part of our ongoing Spotlight series, I caught up with the man with the best surname for an Apple developer ever to find out more.

How did you come to be involved in iPhone development? What’s your background?

My interest in programming started back in the mid 80s on my Atari 800. My first published game was called Crumble’s Crisis by Red Rat software back in 1986. I had a string of releases on the Atari 800 and then I went quiet for a few years until handhelds started coming out. First the Neo Geo Pocket Colour and then on to the Gameboy Advance. I’ve always been in to gadgets so when the iPhone 3G was released (all of the gadgets that you could want rolled into one) and you could program it I just had to have one.

Is this just a hobby for you or are you planning on turning it into a full-time career? (Perhaps it already is?)

This sort of thing has always been just a hobby for me. I’ll catch a few hours at a weekend and the odd evening – it all depends how my day at work has gone. My full-time job is as a software engineer for a SCADA Telemetry company in Christchurch. The majority of my full-time work is desktop Windows programming so the hobby of playing around with the iPhone is a little bit different (a change as good as a rest?).

From my experiences so far, the only way I could see this being a full-time career is if I did more contracting work. I enjoy the programming side of iPhone development but really struggle with the marketing side. Free apps seem to be able to market themselves but as soon as there is the $1.29 price tag then it is a different story, especially now that Apple no longer gives developers iTunes exposure for an update.

Has the level of success you’ve received with your apps matched your expectations?

I think that WhatBirdNZ has been very successful but probably due to it being free. My games, Dynamate and Dynamate Christmas Edition haven’t done so well, yet. I blame this on my poor marketing ability given that both of them have received good reviews from people that have downloaded them. Dynamate Christmas Edition was released for a period of 1 month last year. This year I have tidied the code up and made a few changes and released again as an update so I’m hoping to have more success this year.

WhatBirdNZ

For my main programming efforts this year I have been doing contracting work for Hot Café Ltd in Auckland for an app that was recently released called Hot Typer. This has been great for me as I have had all of the development fun but without the marketing.

Do you see the iPhone as a viable platform going forward? Do you see scope to continue to invest time and money into developing for it?

It would be really nice if Apple opened the iPhone up a bit more as it is sometimes quite restrictive with each app being in its own sandbox. For example, being able to SMS from an app. The Hot Typer app is all about using a custom keyboard, however, being in a sandbox means that if you want to use it for anything other than emails or notes then you have to exit the app (it can do an automatic copy) then start up the SMS app and paste. Another thing I’d like access to is writing events in the calendar.

I do see why Apple disallows this and I bet they had a chuckle when the first iPhone worm came out only attacking Jailbroken phones! I’ll continue to do updates and the odd new app as I have time and still find it fun.

Dynamate Christmas Edition

What else are you involved with? What other pies do you have fingers in? (android / winmo / other?)

If only there were more hours in the day!

What advice do you have for would-be iPhone developers who are new to programming?

For a win-win situation develop apps for yourself and you can’t go wrong. If it doesn’t sell you’ve still got the app you wanted. If it does sell and become a success then that’s a bonus.

Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us Ivan. You can check out Ivan’s Apps on the app store from the link below.

– [iTunes]