FIB-U-LATOR iPhone app ready for sale

After what seemed to be an eternity of waiting, developing, waiting, mucking around with settings, more developing, and yet more waiting – my iPhone app FIB-U-LATOR has been listed as Ready for Sale, and is awaiting propagation into the App Store.

w00t! w00t!

I’ve been working on this app for several months in my spare time, learning Objective C along the way, and working in a completely new development platform and process than what I’m used to. The entire process has been quite daunting, frustrating, tiresome and rewarding all in the same breath. For a while it seemed as if I would never get it off the ground, and in all honesty, I was ready to give up and move on. There always seemed to be another hurtle in my path. Be it lack of experience with Objective C, Cocoa, and the iPhone platform, trying to get a bank account set up, or trying to figure out how to deploy my application for distribution.

With all of those behind me I am only waiting for FIB-U-LATOR to appear within the App Store itself after being approved by Apple. This last step, from what I have read can take from a few hours, to a couple of days as long as your certificates and account is all set up properly. As with anything else, I would imagine it also falls prey to how busy they are, and luckily I think it has been ample time since the OS 3 was released that it shouldn’t be a huge issue.

So what is FIB-U-LATOR? It’s a pretty simple excuse generator that had it’s life start almost 5 years ago as a Flash app I built figure out the SQL Components that came in one of the FLash Developer Resource kits back when they were still Macromedia. It sort of took on a life of its own after that, and the database grew quite quickly from just a few of us adding stuff at work. The just a few months ago I decided it needed to be an app. Since then, I’ve learned a great deal about development on the Mac and for the iPhone and I have another app in progress, and another lined up after that.

I’ve also set up a Facebook page, and added the apps section to my portfolio site, Perubique.com. My goal here is to have some fun, makes some good apps and make a little cash on the side. One thing I have yet to complete is a place for folks to submit, and then rate excuses so I can then take the top rated submission and add them to future updates. I’ve kicked around a couple of contest ideas too, to help generate buzz as well as stimulate sales – but hopefully in a fun way, not a money grubbing way.

When FIB-U-LATOR is completed its journey and is fully available in the App Store, I will distribute the links across all my sites.

Thanks for everyone’s help, friends, family, and Apple/iPhone dev board people.