This is part 3 of my blog series on the history of my app Numerology. See Part 2 here.
The Birth of Cocoa
In 2001, Apple released the first version of Mac OS X 10.0, the first desktop version of their new OS based on NEXTStep. All the great APIs from NeXTStep (hence the NS prefixes to all the class names and such) together were called Cocoa.
Now I finally had my chance to use the wonderful platform I’d been wanting to use for almost a decade. My full-time job was still with Java and enterprise world and it was increasingly not fun. I spent my off-time learning Cocoa. My first app was not Numerology though. It was an app called PhoneWord that found all the words you could make from a phone number. For example, from the phone number 555-5299 you could get 555-JAZZ.
PhoneWord
I wrote other apps as well, and tried to sell them on my website, but none did very well.
Becoming a Mac OS X Developer
My Java job was so boring that I would have not much to do for hours. I worked for a large corporation as a contractor. Even to do a build, you would have to get permission from headquarters, so we had lots of time on our hands. I would spend a lot of the time working on Cocoa apps and learning Cocoa.
In 2003, I found a small company in Park City that wrote Mac software. I contacted them and they hired me as a contractor to help work on their software. I quit my Java job and started working as a Cocoa developer.
The Birth of the iPhone
Let ’s jump ahead a little to 2007. I’m still working as a Mac developer and as a contractor. In January at MacWorld, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone. I was super excited. I knew then that this was the future and like all developers, I wanted to write apps for it. Super disappointed at Apple’s initial statement about just writing web apps for it. I think all developers knew that it was just a matter of time before we could write apps for it and those apps would most likely be using the Cocoa frameworks.
In March of 2008, the iPhone SDK was released. The main framework for the user interface was called UIKIt and was heavily based on Cocoa’s AppKit but tailored for phones and small screens. In fact, the whole group of frameworks for creating iPhone apps was called Cocoa Touch. Everyone wanted to create apps for it.
The App Store opened on July 10th, 2008.
Transitioning to an iOS Developer
Around this time, the world was in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. I was laid off from my job doing Mac OS development. Not many companies were hiring and it was hard to find a job.
However, lots of people wanted to write iPhone apps. I started freelancing and finding contracts to write apps and of course I applied for my Apple Developer account so I could sell my apps on the App Store.
Stay tuned for part 4, where I’ll talk about the beginning of Numerology on the App Store.