Ep2: Companies Who Make Money: Armin Heinrich

Recent buzz and hysteria surrounding overnight success stories of applications built for the iPhone seem to have been garnering almost more hype than that which surrounded those early Facebook applications (though those stories, were and still are about numbers of users not numbers of dollars).

Of all the ‘iPhone apps’ one stands out as a particularly interesting case. This app cost 1K USD did nothing and is probably the simplest and most elegant ‘app’ “ever” developed designed. It made the owner 5K in pure profit before Apple decided to pull it. Reasons for it being pulled amount to 2 pissed off buyers complaints who pressed ‘buy it’ by mistake ‘apparently’. I’d personally quote a saying me old man taught me ‘a deals a deal’.

This ‘app’ will gain no respect from the hardcore hackers who are proud of their ability to make the world dance from their command line, nor from those who have invested millions into developing complex offerings that flop at the box office. But why not? Why does something so simple and elegant not deserve respect in this field?

I am also guilty of “once” believing that if an application was built for a ‘fiver’ and over the weekend it was not worthy of any acclaim, but come on, isn’t that simply jealousy by an overzealous developer? What counts at the end of the day is what the market makes of it and in this case six rich bastards and two retards liked it enough to press that dangerous buy it button.

If this teaches us anything, it’s that what counts at the end of the day is not the technology used, nor the effort surmounted, but rather the idea and the idea alone.