Yesterday, Apple approved the lite version of WordMind. You can check it out on the App Store. There is only one available mode and the potential number of words to guess has been reduced to about 100.

Here’s a great article on spatial thinking as it applies to software usability. Now I wonder about where I can use this to improve things in my own software, which is a sign of a good article.

I’m happy to announce that WordMind appeared on the App Store some time last night. You can check out the website or check it out in iTunes.

Craig Hockenberry has written a great article about how to get started developing for the iPhone. He mentions some very helpful links and resources.

As of yesterday, my first iPhone game has been submitted to Apple. The game is called WordMind and is a word guessing game. The process has been fun, though making the self imposed deadline made things a bit tougher. I learned from experience some of the things I had read about releasing software. e.g. You can’t put everything into your first release. There are so many more features I could have included, but in order to get it out the door I had to pare it down to the essentials.

When Apple has approved the app, I will post an announcement here. In the meantime, you can check out the website I made for it at http://www.fanfoot.ca/wordmind.

When doing an Ad Hoc build, do NOT release a build created with the device set to the simulator. It will not work. The resulting app will be empty for all intents and purposes because the simulator does not use normal builds.

Lesson learned: Try every build before releasing it, even if you think nothing has changed.

Over the last few months I’ve been digging into devloping an iPhone/iPod Touch game. While I am not ready to announce it, I thought I’d give a few thoughts.

First, I love Objective-C and Cocoa. Right now these are my preferred tools for development. I’ve been toying with Mac development for a couple years, but diving into it for the iPhone has been fun. I am of the opinion that C is the wrong way to add objects to C, and Objective-C has proven that for me. The language is simple and powerful. And Apple has done a great job porting Cocoa to a mobile device.

As for the App Store, I view it mainly as a mechanism for sale and not a marketing tool as some people seem to believe. Viewed in this context, it is a great thing. We all have out hopes for how Apple could improve it, but I just want to applaud them right now. There’s nothing else like it, and it seems to be a resounding success.

More thoughts coming later…

Joel on Software posted an insightful article about web standards. The article makes clear the issues surrounding web standards, or any standards.

I’ve backed the idealist decision by Microsoft to default to IE8’s standards mode . The reason is that it discourages web developers from moving forward. But I don’t have a solution any more than Joel does.

Craig Hockenberry has a nice write up of what have been some of my biggest questions regarding the iPhone App Store.

The one question that I’d add is concerning the differences between the iPod Touch and iPhone. There are capability differences in the hardware. I assume that part of the review process is to determine compatibility, and that iPod Touch users will have fewer apps available as a result.

via Daring Fireball

Planet Cocoa is a great resource for following blogs about Cocoa and Mac development.