Anonymous: Jeff, In your latest post you said the following about the current Tumblr iphone app:
"It was my first foray into software development and taught me a great deal of patience."
Does that mean that you never developed a phone app for before?. I guess that to develop those apps you need some knowledge so my final question is, What is your exactly your background that allows you to create these programs.
No. I had never developed an iPhone app before. In fact, I had never developed any application before. Up to that point I was an interface designer working on government CMS software (woof). The deepest I’d ever gotten into actual programming was a few “hello world” level programs in Ruby.
When the iPhone SDK was announced I knew that a mobile client was perfect for Tumblr, where I had just recently started blogging. Around July of 2008 Tumblrette started as a design exercise for what an iPhone Tumblr client might look like. Then it kind of became a personal goal to make the design into a working application. I talked with a few engineers to see if they would like to take it on as a side project but they were either too busy, thought iPhone development was never going to take off or thought I was an idiot. In their defense, in August of 2008, most developers probably shared the same sentiment about the iPhone as my colleagues shared about me.
So back to your question, my background in programming started with Tumblrette. I picked up a copy of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (since there were no iPhone OS programming books at the time) and started absorbing Objective C and Cocoa. I learned by committing to a goal and sticking to it, and within a few months I had an app on the App Store.
This story, however, is not unique. I know many designers that did the same thing. Eddie Wilson, who makes Snow Reports has a similar story. The iPhone was very striking to design-minded people from the day it was announced and we all learned whatever we needed to know to see our designs come to life on that screen. The iPhone tends to attract people that care about interface and experience. Perhaps that’s the reason that the iPhone is where it is today. I’m proud of the fact that I’m a very small part of that story.
