Late last week, we got notice that my pet iPhone project (SnappFiles) got approved for download on the Apple App Store. Yay! We got hundreds of downloads in the first 48 hours and some great feedback so far.
What is this SnappFiles thing? It's a way of accessing your Lotus Quickr files from an iPhone or iPod Touch (or, in a few months, your new iPad). Works with Quickr 8.0 and higher, both the Domino and the Websphere versions. It uses the native iPhone viewers to display files, so any file format the iPhone can natively view can be used to open a Quickr file.
For a general description of what the app does, Rob Novak -- owner and intergalactic leader of SNAPPS, aka "my boss" -- did an excellent overview on the day it was released, and Paul Mooney has a nice writeup with lots of screenshots. I also put a short demo video up on YouTube, if you're a visual learner:
A few common questions we've received in the past several days:
- How long did the app take to write? About 6 months, start to finish, although I was also working on billable projects and Lotusphere sessions during development. (That being said, there was plenty of late-night coding too.) I had a working version of the app done in half the time, but there are a lot of details to attend to, from usability to graphics and colors to edge cases to memory leaks and error handling. Big difference between throwing something together and having it ready for production. I also tried to make the app as dead-simple to use as possible, and it's often hard to make something easy.
- Will there be an Android version? Possibly, although it'll be on a different code-base. Viktor is looking at some options right now.
- Can I edit docs and re-upload them to Quickr? Not right now, although we're looking at good ways to do that. Some of the new features of the iPad might help to move this functionality along too, both because of the new SDK and the larger form factor (no matter how you do it, editing docs on something as small as an iPhone is not ideal).
- Will this app always be free? The version that's on the App Store right now will remain free, yes. There's always the possibility of releasing a "premium" version with a lot more functionality that will cost money.
- Can I hire you to write an iPhone app for my company? Absolutely. SNAPPS would love to help you with that. Contact me directly at jrobichaux@snapps.com and we can talk.