The first version of an application is different to any other, and it is the hardest one to actually ship. This is especially true if you are an indie developer.

When you start a new application you probably have a list of features and a sketch of what you think/hope/wish the 1.0 version of your application will look like. As an indie developer you are the only one that knows exactly what is on this list, but you often feel like you can’t release an application until the whole list is completed, even though nobody else would be any the wiser.

The other major difference about a 1.0 version of an application is the lack of immediate pressure to release it. When you have released an application you are often pressured into releasing an update for a new feature or simply to fix some bugs. As an indie developer the only pressure you get is from yourself (and I try not to moan at me too often).

So over a week ago I finally decided my baby was ready to see the world, so I sent off the 1.0 version of my application Actionify to Apple and waited for it to go through the review process. To my pleasant surprise there was no problems first time round (Apple usually find something) and Actionify was released on Friday. Actionify is a GTD inspired Task Manager, that also offers a cloud sync subscription that allows users to collaborate on Projects. If you want to know more about it, you can click on the link here, but I won’t overload this post info. I am very pleased with how Actionify has turned out, the 1.0 misses a few features from my original list but also some additions that I added due to the feedback I received during the beta testing (thank you testers!!!). Inevitable it took longer than I had originally hoped, but this was mainly down to me underestimating the amount of effort and paperwork it took to set up a limited company (in the UK) and everything that goes with that (e.g. Banking, Transferring my iTunes Connect Account etc etc). In terms of development time the project probably only over run by 1 or 2 months, while this is not ideal, it isn’t to bad either.

In terms of technology, Actionify requires Mac OS 10.7 as the UI is mainly built with view based table views and the new Core Data APIs. I think view based table views shaved about 2 months off of my development time, so support for 10.6 wasn’t really an option for me. 10.7 also has a JSON Parser (NSJSONSerialization) and Popovers (NSPopover) built in, and although there are open source projects that offer similar functionally, I prefer to only depend on code by Apple and myself (rightly or wrongly) wherever possible.

The application syncs with a Rails application that I host on Heroku, and I couldn’t recommend Rails and Heroku enough. Rails is a great framework and Ruby is a great programming language, the best thing about Rails (for a non web developer) is everything has its place. Rails forces you to have a certain folder structure and I found this extremely beneficial … you can also add features with only a few lines of code which can only be a good thing. Heroku’s main benefit is you don’t have to think about servers and you just have to worry about your app. You simply deploy your code using a git push and you’re done. Moreover the majority of basic Heroku Add Ons are free, so you can start using Heroku without any risk (I am honestly not on commission, I just like it :) ).

I want to end this post by saying no matter how many times you release an application, seeing other people downloading it and using it is always the best feeling a developer can get, so if you can … SHIP IT!!!