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My Dream App: Coming Monday, Final Details

August 19th, 2006 at 1:41am • Posted in My Projects • Tagged My Projects

Well, that was a dry stretch. Sorry about that, but I’ve been consumed by my current project for the past week, getting it ready for launch.

This is going to be the final teaser before My Dream App opens up, so I’m going to give you guys some substantial info, instead of the list of names that the last teaser basically was.

So, a lot of you were right on the money with this being a competition for app ideas. I know many of you out there have some brilliant ideas just begging to be done as shareware apps, but don’t have the programming skills (or programmer friends) to make them happen. So that’s what we’re going to do, with the best possible team backing you up, if you win. You’ll get your dream app realized in brilliant form, developed by top-notch developers, designed by the best UI designers, and ideas fully formed with critique and suggestions from some of the best minds in the industry.

Prizes are pretty much finalized. We’ll be giving away over a dozen iPods as well as quite a few Macs for those who get far enough in the rounds, not to mention royalties for the winners.

Here’s a little mini-preview of the website, designed by my friend David Lanham and coded up by Scott Meinzer:

MDA Site Preview

And, I suppose, why not? One more roundup of guest judges that have been flowing in over the past few days. Former TechTV host and This Week in Tech podcaster Leo Laporte will be imparting his opinions on the entries, as will be influential blogger Merlin Mann of 43folders and New York Times columnist and book author David Pogue. Developers Cabel Sasser of Panic and Brent Simmons of Ranchero will be giving input from the developer perspective, and Jon Hicks (Firefox icon among other things) and Bill Bart (better known as BBX) will be providing UI feedback and advice. And perhaps coolest of all, we have some Apple alums on board, including the original Mac evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, Finder creator and Macintosh team member Bruce Horn, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

My Dream App will open up on Monday.

I leave you guys with Steve Wozniak’s reply to my request for guest judging:

“This is great and creative and interesting and should be entertaining! Of course I’ll be a guest judge.”

Now, back to work!



Comments

Up until this point, there have been 56 responses to “My Dream App: Coming Monday, Final Details”:

Blonde

August 19th, 2006 at 1:50am

Sounds great, I cant wait! Keep up the good work! :D

ncus

August 19th, 2006 at 2:07am

Good luck on your app :)

Jonnotie

August 19th, 2006 at 3:39am

This all is so amazing.

Praveen Sharma

August 19th, 2006 at 3:41am

Fun idea! Will any public voting be involved?

Phill Ryu

August 19th, 2006 at 3:41am

Praveen, yup. Definitely.

Sebastien Gomez

August 19th, 2006 at 3:45am

Awesome idea, now if only I had ONE dream app I could think of.. There are so many!
I’m sure the ideas will be interesting to read through, can’t wait to see who wins.
Good luck to all of us non-developers :)

Sebastien Gomez
http://www.gomezproductions.com

Ivan Brezak Brkan

August 19th, 2006 at 6:28am

First… Great idea!

Secondly… Great panel of judges as well as developers/designers…

Third… DAMN!!! :)

Suneet Misra

August 19th, 2006 at 8:21am

This is so great Phill, I can’t believe you’ve got all these names on board. Nice work man!

Pat

August 19th, 2006 at 8:35am

Awesomeness ;D

Alex Kadis

August 19th, 2006 at 10:34am

Oh this is going to be amazing! I can’t wait!

PS: You’ve been dugg http://digg.com/apple/My_Dream_App_Coming_Monday_Final_Details

Dustin Bachrach

August 19th, 2006 at 1:40pm

That is one awesome list of judges. Pretty much everyone important to Mac except current Apple employees.

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 2:40pm

What about the guy who has a good idea but you “judges” decide not to do it and then 3 months later the app is created by someone else who stole the idea !!!! Why would someone give you their cool idea and risk having it rejected cause you “judges” didn’t see the “coolness” in it. And please don’t say that if it’s cool then it’ll a winner. We’ve seen many times in history where “cool” apps or inventions aren’t “accepted” right way by certain people.

Matt

August 19th, 2006 at 2:52pm

Are you looking just for consumer app ideas? Or would you consider educational or pro app ideas too?

Also, does it have to be a self-contained application? Or would you consider a plugin to another app?

Phill Ryu

August 19th, 2006 at 2:54pm

Matt, consumer app ideas would probably do best, as ultimately it’s the users who vote and decide which ones make it.

Ben

August 19th, 2006 at 2:55pm

Chezpaul! If this is such a problem for you go to http://cocoalab.com/cocoalab/index.php download the tutorial and write the app yourself.

Bri3D

August 19th, 2006 at 2:55pm

Alright, so you’ve got a hugely impressive judge lineup.  

But who’s going to be coding this “dream app?”

Inquiring minds want to know.

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 2:59pm

I guess my question is: How secret does the idea stay ? And How much input does the winner get in the building process.

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 3:01pm

Thanks Ben but I don’t think that answers my question.

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 3:04pm

Hey, nice link, thanks Ben

Phill Ryu

August 19th, 2006 at 3:05pm

Chezpaul, the 24 ‘finalists’ will have their ideas made public (so people can vote), so there is a chance of a developer ‘ripping them off’. However, you can be sure that I would raise hell about it, and I think most developers would think twice before risking their reputation, and probably just see if the contestant would be interested in working with them. In fact, I’ve already talked to three or four developers who are interested in hooking up with runners up after they are eliminated.

Also, the winners have as little or as much input in the developmental process as they want.

Markus

August 19th, 2006 at 3:09pm

Sweet sassy mollasy! I have a ton of projects that are just itching for this thing. Can’t wait!

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 3:23pm

I have just one idea but it’s a damn good one (my own personal thoughts of course). Stupid idea too and would be bought up right away by some company I know… So it’s not a consummer app.

bahen

August 19th, 2006 at 3:25pm

Phill, would you consider having all applications avaiable for viewing (including those that don’t win nor are runners up)? There are a lot of devleopers out there looking for ideas and this would be a great way to get some apps written which people would actually use!

Danny Trinh

August 19th, 2006 at 3:26pm

I second ‘bri3d’s comment – who is going to be working on said “dreamapp”?

Phill Ryu

August 19th, 2006 at 3:26pm

bahen, we’ll only be making the 24 finalists viewable, in part to protect the rest from getting stolen. (The more there are, the easier it is to steal an idea without anyone noticing.)

Chezpaul

August 19th, 2006 at 3:27pm

Hey Bahen I got a great idea… ;-)
haha… ;-)

Erik

August 19th, 2006 at 3:43pm

What about having entries licensed under the creative commons?

Scott Shawcroft

August 19th, 2006 at 4:11pm

Who specs out the program? Who has final say on issues? Who would own it? Would it be made freely available (GPL) or some other license? What programming languages would be used to create it? What platform would it be targeted at?

Lester Nelson

August 19th, 2006 at 4:14pm

Wow. You guys really have an all-star list of names attached to this. I’m impressed!

Jamie MacDonald

August 19th, 2006 at 4:21pm

This is incredible! This might just be my chance at getting a MAC finally! The royalties wouldn’t be bad either!

wyldeone

August 19th, 2006 at 5:49pm

My problem is always opposite of this. I have the skills to implement any idea I may have, but never have any great ideas.

James P

August 19th, 2006 at 5:51pm

That’s a fantastic idea. Can’t wait until launch!

Archonu810

August 19th, 2006 at 5:55pm

The most amazing part of it all was the marketing and PR you’ve done which resulted in getting all these people on board. Very impressive.

Richard

August 19th, 2006 at 6:34pm

What are you going to do if you get duplicates of great ideas?

Andre

August 19th, 2006 at 6:41pm

Holy shit. I can’t wait.

Tobias

August 19th, 2006 at 8:33pm

Wow! I was impressed by you getting Kevin Rose on board, but you got so many more impressive people aswell, thats insane. I really like this “My Dream App” thing, I hope I can come up with a good idea as I can’t code to save myself.

Steven

August 19th, 2006 at 9:23pm

Wait, if someone gives you a really good idea and you develop it into an app and make hundreds of thousands what do they get?

Or do you just make it and hand it over to them?

Phill Ryu

August 19th, 2006 at 9:24pm

Steven, “royalties for the winners”. You’ll see Monday.

luxuryluke

August 19th, 2006 at 9:37pm

Wow, what a tease!
Btw, good choice of Jon Hicks, he’ll be quite handy to have around. Can’t wait to see what’s up Mon…

Jeremy Higgs

August 20th, 2006 at 12:02am

It sounds like a neat idea. Good luck with it.

However, I hope you have some plan on how to best allow developers (potentially) spread across the world to work together. In my experience, not working in the same office as, or at different times to, your colleagues is very difficult, as you can’t throw ideas around and discuss them.

Evrey

August 20th, 2006 at 12:50am

Прикольно, но нет времени переводить………я доволен :)

Chezpaul

August 20th, 2006 at 12:51am

Will it be just ported for Macs ?
I’m asking this as I’m guessing this will be digged and a bunch of people will be ready this and submiting… Don’t you think ?

Eduo

August 20th, 2006 at 7:37am

This is a wonderful idea. I do worry, though, that it lends itself to favor “snazzy” apps instead of useful ones.

A similar thing has been done in the past for features in a project (instead of apps) and the problem with the voting was that features that were obviously cool but maybe not that useful got an incredible amount of votes, while features that were really useful but maybe weren’t as cool or weren’t understood by the users (because maybe they weren’t as easy to grasp) got to the bottom of the pile.

Something like this may happen here as well, if you’re not careful (I guess it depends on who is doing the voting and how it’s done). Someone with amazing photoshop skills or wonderful writing aptitude could make a mediocre application sound like the bee’s knees, while somebody else may have poor writing or PS skills and thus not get their idea properly understood, even if it’s a great, revolutionary idea.

That’s the first thing that comes to my mind any time voting is made the way of choosing features. It may be my background in corporation app development (where the biggest thing in a meeting may be the colour of an icon, as that’s as far as the voters understood), which have made me cynical. I do trust implicitly almost all the people involved, though, so I’m still waiting on how this turns out.

Marko

August 20th, 2006 at 7:56am

I think this is a great opportunity for people who don’t know how to code or design an application properly.The one thing I didn’t get yet – Is this contest for web applications or desktop applications?

Chezpaul

August 20th, 2006 at 1:13pm

Nicely said Eduo. I think you’re right on target. I can totally see this happening.
I was hoping only the panel would vote..
We’ll see.

Ben Briggs

August 20th, 2006 at 2:21pm

All that’s needed now is a TV Show!!! :P

Don Parr

August 20th, 2006 at 2:42pm

I have a dream – app :) . An email client application that incorporates emoticons, stationary and sound for the Mac. Similar, but not identical, to “IncrediMail” on the PC side. The closest I’ve found on the Mac side thus far is “Balzac,” which uses views instead of folders for mail. Though interesting, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind :( .

Rob

August 20th, 2006 at 3:44pm

Thank you Don, I will make sure to submit that as my idea when the site is released.

Ryan

August 20th, 2006 at 4:01pm

I can’t tell if Don Parr is being sarcastic or not… emoticons, stationary and sound in an email client all sound like bad, bad ideas to me.

Kroc Camen

August 20th, 2006 at 4:07pm

My Dream App already exists, several in fact. A killer app should be transparent, and make you productive. It should be as natural as a hammer is for hitting nails.

Just in the way it mimicks X Factor, I see this competition going the same way. All the genuine talent (and productivity apps) will be weeded out in the name of hype and cool. In the end people are left with something with a pretty face, but absolutely no substance, destined to sell a billion copies entirely off of the produced hype wave in the competition.

A real app should be firmly fixed in reality. One of the most innovative apps I’ve seen recently is WriteRoom which has a great understanding of the importance of a tool, and productivity.

Tobias

August 20th, 2006 at 6:02pm

Kroc Camen You make some really good points, here in the uk we have X Factor. The X Factor and programmes very similar usually have a black finalist, but the public vote them out even though they tend to be the best singers. I think its sad that rascism still exists in this manner.

My Dream App hopefully wont make the mistake of choosing hype and cool over productivity, although hype and cool can come hand in hand with a good productivity app (quicksilver is a pretty good example of this). In My opinion the best apps are the ones which are useful and well polished, it hurts me to use an app which has good productivity but doesn’t feel os x’y or looks really ugly.

James

August 20th, 2006 at 7:02pm

“Chezpaul, the 24 ‘finalists’ will have their ideas made public (so people can vote), so there is a chance of a developer ‘ripping them off’. However, you can be sure that I would raise hell about it, and I think most developers would think twice before risking their reputation”

You sure think very highly of yourself, what makes you think that anybody gives a shit about what you say? You’re nothing but a prepubescent teenager, as demonstrated by your post flaming Bryan Lund.

Also, why do you have a well-known GPL violator (Mr. David Watanabe) on your panel/team/whatever?

Jimi

August 20th, 2006 at 8:36pm

`shit man, WOZ, shittttt

Charles Evans

August 21st, 2006 at 12:24am

James – Nice comments. You should clearly be the one giving lessons in maturity.

Phill Ryu

August 21st, 2006 at 12:27am

James, I mean I’ll be raising hell about it on the site, My Dream App. People may not care about what I personally say, but it being a condemnation by MDA will hopefully hold some weight.

Bryan Lund, well, let’s just say the story doesn’t end there. I’ll be posting something hopefully in a few days about some more proactive measures I’ve been undertaking.

George

August 21st, 2006 at 2:50am

Its Monday (for 2 hours here in central time zone). I wanna see please….

: (


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