Stanford student Luke Ekkizogloy is writing an iPhone app that controls the lights in his house, but he has bigger dreams.
“I have what everyone has in mind, and that’s to make money,” Ekkizogloy told Wired.com.
Ekkizogloy, like many other students enrolled in Stanford’s iPhone programming class, is aiming to strike it rich by selling software through Apple’s prolific iPhone App Store, which surpassed one billion downloads last week.
Many software developers view the App Store as a digital Gold Rush, where companies big and small can potentially make millions with a single big hit. With 40,000 applications in the App Store to date, competition among iPhone developers is fierce. Still, even independent programmers like Ekkizogloy stand a chance, provided they have a good idea, cleanly written code and some luck. One of the most inspiring success stories involves Ethan Nicholas, an independent developer whose iPhone game iShoot earned him $600,000 in the month of January alone. What’s more, Nicholas taught himself how to code for the iPhone by reading websites.
But it’s probably easier to learn iPhone development if you have the resources of a world-class university at your disposal — and an Apple employee for an instructor. Stanford is so serious about training the next army of iPhone developers that the tech-savvy university hired Evan Doll, a senior iPhone engineer for Apple, to teach CS193P — a computer science course titled iPhone Application Programming.
Doll taught Stanford’s first iPhone class in fall 2008, and the current quarter is now running in its fifth week. In the class, students are building programs using the iPhone software development kit, which requires learning Objective-C — the programming language for iPhone. They’re also learning the basic fundamentals and principles of coding for the iPhone, such as memory management, interface construction and animation design.
In addition to the 60 students enrolled in the course and 40 squatters sitting in, thousands are taking Stanford’s iPhone class remotely via iTunes. In the iTunes U educational channel, wannabe iPhone developers can download video podcasts of the lectures along with the course slideshows — all free.
Stanford’s iPhone programming course is part of Apple’s iPhone University Program, which launched September 2008. Participating schools gain free access to the iPhone SDK and all the tools needed to develop apps for the handset, courtesy of Apple.
And as if offering an iPhone class weren’t enough, Stanford is expressing its enthusiasm in the device in its very own iPhone app “iStanford.” Free through the App Store, iStanford allows iPhone users to easily look up class schedules, the Stanford directory, the campus map and sports news.
When Wired.com visited the class last week, Doll was explaining the fundamentals of building an iPhone application interface. A common iPhone app interface, he said, is composed of a navigation bar at the top and a tab bar at the bottom.
“These are patterns for organizing your iPhone interface, but don’t reinvent the wheel,” Doll told the class. “At Apple our philosophy is if you do a lot of the same thing, make it useful.”
The Stanford brainiacs had plenty of useful ideas for apps. Mike Gao, a computer music technology student enrolled in the iPhone class, is best known for creating the Lumi, a digital console for mixing and remixing music on the fly. Gao said he plans to rewrite the Lumi interface for an iPhone app.
“The iPhone has millions and millions of people downloading apps through the App Store, so [Lumi on the iPhone will] definitely hit harder,” Gao said.
Other ideas? Student Patrick Costello (above) is thinking about coding an app to help workers log their hours — a digital timesheet of sorts. Sports fan Sean Beausoleil is toying with the idea of creating an iPhone app for fantasy football players. Anand Madhavan hasn’t decided on an app yet, but he’s fermenting the idea of a simple tool that helps gardeners.
And Mike Fogel (above) is thinking about coding an app for users to take pictures of each other’s outfits to vote on how well they match — crowdsourced feedback, similar to the idea of Hot or Not? Fogel is also learning iPhone software development to code a burrito application. Just what about burritos, exactly?
“Burritos — that’s all I can say,” Fogel said. “I’m not liable to talk about it.”
Makes sense: How could he get rich if he gave away his idea?
Only halfway through the course, the students still have plenty to learn before turning their app ideas into a reality. Their assignment for the week was to design a basic app that updates social networking feeds for services such as Twitter and Facebook. Sounds simple and barebones, but learning a new programming language is more difficult than it appears.
Is 10 weeks enough to learn to code a quality iPhone app? We’ll find out in June, when the course concludes and the students will submit their final projects to the App Store.
Meanwhile, some examples of App Store apps that came from fall quarter’s iPhone students include Air Guitar, a virtual guitar app; Stress Bust, an app that plays a video of ocean waves accompanied by guided voices to help you relax; and Abodi, an app that searches Craigslist and enables users to bookmark their favorite listings.
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Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
If you’re a staunch pessimist like me, people who seem to always be walking on sunshine weird you out. Fortunately, a new iPhone application called Daily Downer should drag those bright-eyed Pollyannas down to your bleak reality.
