11 days ago, I launched my first app, DoodleDesk, onto the Mac App Store. I had realistic expectations – I’d set my sights at a few hundred pounds profit over the year, enough to pay for a nice meal out or something. Nothing fancy. Of course, all app developers dream of App Store Success, and I was one of them, but I didn’t think I had a chance of coming anywhere near close to that.

The first few days of sales were encouraging. I did very little marketing and was selling 10-20 a day – one day I got a review on a French website and sold almost 40! I was pretty chuffed with that.

Then, on the 19th, Apple decided to put DoodleDesk on the front page of the Mac App Store in the “New & Noteworthy” section. I was absolutely amazed. My app was now surrounded by a collection of really superb applications, and was right up there for everyone to see. Incredible. At around the same time, the press release I’d put together was released, and a number of sites re-printed it. Suddenly, 10-20 a day looked a bit meagre.

I shan’t go into precise figures, but it’s certainly a lot more than I had expected. In one day over the weekend I surpassed what I’d hoped to make over the year. Because I’m quite anal about these things, I kept an eye on the app’s position in the charts. The peak values were:

• Top Paid: #19
• Top Grossing: #48
• Top Paid (Productivity): #6
• Top Grossing (Productivity): #14

At one point, DoodleDesk was higher in the Top Grossing chart than Angry Birds. Angry Birds!! As you’d expect, things are starting to tail off now the initial excitement is over, but it’s still surpassing expectations daily.

Whilst all this has been incredibly exciting, the most exciting part has been the emails and tweets I’ve had from people who are enjoying the app. I knew there were people out there who wanted something along these lines, but to hear from people who are actively using and enjoying the app has really made the whole experience. Some of the users have found fantastic use-cases for DoodleDesk – such as one man who intends to use it for tutoring his grandson over screen share. Superb. I couldn’t ask for any more.

Of course, the flip side to this is the people who aren’t enjoying your application, and I’ve had a good few of those as well. What has been frustrating for a first-timer on the App Store is how people will prefer to vent their annoyance at the app publicly by reviewing it, rather than emailing me with suggestions or constructive criticism. Similarly, only a few people have given positive reviews (though this has improved over the last day or so), although I’ve had plenty of positive messages from people personally.

Ultimately it’s not an issue – some of the negative reviews border on the ridiculous, and the app is simple enough to speak for itself. Public criticism is something I was worried about before I launched the product, but in my experience it’s far outweighed by the personal messages you receive from genuinely happy users.

What next? The difficult second album. So many ideas of my own, and many more wonderful feature requests from users. The trick will be making the app as useful as I can for everyone, whilst retaining the simplicity and ease of use. Watch this space…

Just a quick one to say that DoodleDesk has been featured in the New & Noteworthy category – very exciting! We’re looking forward to some exciting times ahead as the app gains a bit more widespread knowledge.

Version 1.1 of DoodleDesk is now available on the Mac App Store. This update fixes numerous minor bugs from the first release, including:

• Issues with edit menu items
• Copy issues on the save dialog
• Hiding of the “Show desktop” hover
• Restricting the open file dialog to only DoodleDesk files
• Issues with the eraser path changing once drawn
• Issues with save prompt when creating new documents
• Issues with creating new files when the current file has been edited

After much procrastination on my part, I am pleased to announce that DoodleDesk is now live on the App Store. DoodleDesk is a Mac App that replaces your desktop background with a whiteboard, allowing you to draw freely over your desktop, as well as adding text notes. It’s perfect for sketching out ideas, plans, diagrams, or simply wiling away some time idly doodling. But don’t take my word for it, check out these glowing reviews:

This app could single-handedly save the rain-forests.

- Bob Geldoff

One minute I was making bacon, the next minute my world had changed.

- Pork & Apple Magazine

If there’s any silver lining in today’s depressive society, it’s the ability for small companies to post fake reviews of their latest products.

- Ed Balls, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

DoodleDesk is available on Mac OS X for £3.99 ($5.99) through the Mac App Store. Click here to launch the App Store.

Just received this obviously broken spam comment. Interesting to see the markup!

{The|The very} {crux|heart|core|root} of your writing {while|whilst} {sounding|appearing} {agreeable|reasonable} {initially|at first|in the beginning|originally}, did {not|not really} {sit|work|settle} {well|properly|perfectly|very well} with {me|me ...

A short while ago, two people got married in England. A man called Melvin wasn’t very happy about it. We enjoyed it so much at the idio office, that I made a little song out of it. Enjoy

Angry Melvin by jacques-van-der-griff

I’ve still not heard anything from Twitter regarding the closure of my Chinese Twispers account. Very annoying. I was a big fan of that account, and felt it deserved to live on. Hence, I give you Chinese Twispers Live. Instead of having a set of pre-determined replacements for words, you can enter your own and enjoy the wonder of defacing other people’s tweets. Then you can share those with your friends so you can all enjoy – what more could you want? Hope you enjoy it!

Today, I found out that the Chinese Twispers Twitter account (@chinesetwispers) has been suspended. I’ve not heard from Twitter on this matter, but have reached out to them. Annoyingly, all the tweets appear to have been lost, including all the favourites. I’m very disappointed about this, since many months of hilarity were included in that account, and now it’s all gone without so much as a suspension notice from Twitter.

I’ll start work on a replacement this evening, but it will never be the same. Good-bye, old friend!

If anyone has some of their favourite Twispers they happen to remember and would love to share, go ahead and comment on this article and I’ll start a dedication page.

I just came across this, and thought I’d share it with you whilst I’m working on a couple of things and don’t have time to post properly.

The Fast Fourier Transform, implemented in an SQL query. This guy must be absolutely insane. Kudos to him!

http://www.adellera.it/investigations/nocoug_challenge/index.html

Thanks to AppleScript, an office with multiple Mac users can be a prankster’s dream. We recently infuriated a co-worker for the best part of a week, using only 3 lines of code, which I’m about to share with you. First, some ground work:

• You’ll need the user’s computer password (if they lock their Mac). Wait until they’re off sick or out of the office, and call them to say you need something off their computer. Or, if someone has knowledge of your co-worker’s password, sweet-talk them into giving it to you.
• Whilst you’ve got access to their computer, go to System Preferences -> Sharing, and make sure “Remote Apple Events” are turned on. Make a note of their computer’s address at the top, as in the screengrab below.

Now you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to have fun. Open up the “AppleScript Editor” on your computer, and paste in the code below.

tell application "Chrome" of machine "eppc://user@computer-name.local"
	open location "http://emuspin.com"
end tell

(Here’s a direct link to the file)

Obviously, replace “user” with the username of your co-worker, and “computer-name” with their computer’s address. You can also change the URL to whatever you like, and if they don’t have Chrome installed be sure to swap that value for Safari. Hitting “Run” in the AppleScript Editor should prompt you for their password, and then open that page in a new tab of their browser. Repeat as much as is deemed necessary. We found it particularly funny convincing our co-worker that it was voice activated – every time they said “Emuspin” we would open http://emuspin.com on their computer. The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!