So much to do with such constrained resources

Well, first things first, Crab Crawl 1.0 is now available in the iTunes app store!

 

So what next?  That brings me to my point.  I am just one person, with a full-time job which takes the bulk of my day.  But I have tons of ideas / desires, and not enough time to see them all through.

Aside from any ideas I have, I’ve got to make sure that I’m keeping my existing apps up-to-date.  That’s an issue I didn’t properly anticipate.  The more apps I create, the more maintenance I have to do.  From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense to spend much effort updating apps unless they generate a significant amount of revenue, but I still feel compelled to continue to add cool stuff for the customers who support me.  (I had to try really hard to avoid sounding markety-businessy there.)

Beyond that, what should I do next?  Another iPhone game?  That’s my current plan.  But what about the iPad?  It’s had some impressive preorders already and it has a lot of potential.  I could create a game on it, sure, but there are other interesting applications I can envision.

And then, of course, there’s this little thing called the Windows Phone 7 Series.  My knee-jerk reaction is to stay far, far away from any Microsoft phone.  I bought one before, after all – a fancy HTC smartphone with features that put the iPhone to shame.  But Windows Mobile killed my soul.  It was every negative stereotype about Microsoft rolled into a single device.  Slow, cumbersome, annoying, with an OS that felt like it was ported from a desktop version. 

So now, finally, Windows Mobile 7 – er, wait, Windows Phone 7 Series – is on the horizon.  The developer tools are available.  It looks slick and streamlined; more like the Zune (which is good) than a desktop OS (which shouldn’t be on a phone).  But it’s Microsoft, and they know how to take a good thing and screw it up.  I don’t believe I have any unwarranted bias against Microsoft, though.  I want them to succeed, desperately, because I want to use their far superior development tools, and their less-closed platform.  I’ve even gotten over my troubles with the long, Microsoft-esque name: “Windows Phone 7 Series”.  I can write it off as foresight on MS’s part.  (Assuming all goes as planned, we’ll just be calling these things “Windows Phones” and we’ll just tack on a number / designation for whatever the latest version is.)

But it’s so risky to leap to the Windows Phone, and admittedly it’d be a bit soul crushing to come crawling back to Windows after I invested almost 2 years in the iPhone platform.  But if I had a magical guarantee that the Windows Phone was going to have identical marketshare as the iPhone, you better believe I’d jump on it.