Interview with Brent Simmons, Creator of NetNewsWire
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In this latest episode of Mobile Orchard’s iPhone Developer podcast, we interview Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire for the iPhone and Mac.
Brent talks about adapting a desktop app’s UI for iPhone, has advice for indies making a living selling iPhone apps, describes how he successfully split MarsEdit from NetNewsWire, gives some examples of cool iPhone apps, describes his “anti-packrat” compulsion, and chats about the complexity of syncing iPhone and desktop apps.
You can listen using the Flash player above, download the MP3, or subscribe to the iPhone Developer Podcast using the instructions at the bottom of this post.
For easy scanning of the interview, the following indexes shows what was covered and when:
- 0:25 – Adapting the desktop NetNewsWire UI for iPhone
- 1:45 – Determining what to cut out of the UI
- 2:50 – Dave Winer on UI: “bring your user along”
- 5:50 – “Whenver you have a preference it means you punted”
- 6:00 – Advice for indies: making a living selling iPhone apps
- 7:30 – When one product grows another: spinning out MarsEdit
- 8:55 – MarsEdit split: no user outrage: pricing and upgrade strategy
- 10:20 – Other cool iPhone apps: Things & Weightbot
- 12:30 – Being an “anti-packrat”
- 14:00 – The pleasure of deleting code
- 14:50 – Sync: desktop-to-iPhone and back
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We hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you have any suggestions of who we should interview (or want to be interviewed yourself), use our Contact page or leave a comment against this post. Thanks for listening!
During the “cool iPhone app” section, the app Brent is talking about is WeightBot by TapBots: https://tapbots.com/weightbot
(I’m not affliated in any way, but it’s a sexy app)
Weightbot is the Weighing App he talked about. And He’s right, the design is stellar.
I’ve been using NetNewsWire for some time (paid for it). The interface for the iPhone version is okay, but it certainly seems a bit rushed for the “AppStore launch deadline.” It’s not really useful to me until in honours my “Don’t Refresh” settings from the desktop app (“Platform” limitation?). I concur that the iPod version should keep to a simple/concise UI. It doesn’t necessarily need a “Refresh” preference that can be set. Would also be nice if it recognized when it didn’t have a connection (iPod touch). Certainly looking forward to Brent’s next update. Thanks for the interview.
fyi, the weight tracking app mentioned at 10:35 is called weightbot at https://tapbots.com/weightbot
In case you were wondering the weight tracking app mentioned in the around 10:20 is Weightbot
Ack! My oversight forgetting to put the links into the show-notes. Fixed.
Is this podcast in the podcast feed? Either I’m overlooking it or its not there.