I had owned my iPhone for approximately six months when I decided to try my hand at coding and publishing my very own iPhone app. The smartphone world was being revolutionized before my very eyes and it seemed that every technology story was about a hot new app available in Apple’s App Store. Not being one who likes to fall behind the times and always up for a challenge, I decided to teach myself the Objective C programming language and learn to use Apple’s developer toolkit to construct my own app for the iPhone. After spending $100 to become an Apple Developer and gain access to the developer toolkit, I soon realized that the software would not work on my Windows based laptop. Conveniently this gave me the excuse to sell my HP laptop and buy the new MacBook that I had been eyeing every time I walked by the Apple store at the La Cantera Mall. Finally with the purchase of my new MacBook complete, I was on my way to creating my masterpiece. It wasn’t until then that I realized I did not have an idea. Every time I thought I had a great concept I’d search the App Store and sure enough, there would already be something there that did what I envisioned my app would do. After several days of brainstorming, I decided to do something simple to get my feet wet in the app coding world. I coded, designed, and a week later I had an app that displayed a thank you note for contributing to my college education. Inspired by the “Million Dollar Homepage”, the idea for my App was that someone would buy the App for one dollar and in return, they would have an App that displayed a thank you note anytime they wanted to reminisce back on the time they helped put a kid through college. Unfortunately Apple didn’t see the brilliance in my idea and they soundly rejected my App for having “No Functionality.” Still determined, I went back to the drawing board and while working on this very website I decided I should make an app that made it easier to access my blog posts on the iPhone. After several more days of coding and designing, I now had an app that functioned as an RSS Reader, picking up and listing my ten most recent blog posts by title.  After almost two weeks of anticipation, on October 20^th, 2009, Apple finally approved the KirkScheidt.com Reader App and for nearly a year, it could be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store on any iPhone.

Update: Though I never made a penny from my endeavor, it was satisfying and rewarding all the same. Coding Apps wasn’t for me so I hung up my hat and declined to renew my developer’s license. A short time later, Apple removed my App from the App Store.