State of the App

Hey everyone, there's a few things that I want to write about. For today, we're going to talk about the app for iOS that I've made several posts on.

A few months ago my developer account expired and I decided not to renew it at this time. My reasoning is pretty simple: I don't want to be directly supporting a company like Apple who is trying to poison the personal computing industry. I'm tired of the system lockouts, the constant injunctions against competitors' products. The fact that you must develop for iOS on an Apple computer (or in a VM) also annoys me.

On top of that, it's expensive and time consuming for someone casually working on it to keep up with the entire system. My iPhone 3G is still running iOS 3.1.3 to keep it from getting bogged down. My VM is running an older version of OSX, so I can't install the latest dev tools. If I wanted to do things the "proper" and "right" way (according to Apple) I would need to spend around $1000 just to bring my tools (computer and iphone/ipod) up to date!

Setting aside my stance against the company, the iOS app market is highly competitive. Sure, I was working on something in a less competitive subsection, but is it really worth my time? Maybe yes, maybe no, but what I do know is that I'd rather be spending the time working on my electronics projects than grinding out more PDFs for the app.

So since I'm not renewing my account, it goes hand-in-hand that I won't be finishing this app in the near future. Maybe someday I'll come back to it and finish it off. Apple currently falls in with a small list of companies that I choose not to financially support (Sony and Ubisoft are the others). If they manage to pull their self-righteous head out of the sand, then I'll rethink my position.

Early App Screenshots

Hello everyone, I bring to you today an app update!

Since the last post I've added a few sections: Taylor series, probability distributions, linear algebra, and the 4-band colour code for resistors. Still a few sections to add to math, but I took a different direction tonight and was working on the main menu's graphics. I decided to take some screenshots of a few different parts of the app to share them with all of you.

Let me know what you think!

[edit] For those wondering, the name isn't finalized yet. I've been playing around with a few ideas, and I wanted to see how this one looked.

Introducing, the APP!

Sorry for the failing, its been quite the past few weeks. The term has been pretty intense, with homework filling up most of my time. Speaking of term work, I didn't manage to get into Econ 101, the instructor refused to let me in.

Before I get to the main topic of this post, I'd like to mention something. shortly after my last post, my girlfriend and I celebrated out 1 year dating mark! I'm not going to take up a bunch of this blog post with with rambling on about how awesome she is, so go check out her blog here.

So yes, now for the main topic. In the spare time that I've had, I've been working on...an app! Specifically, I've been working on an equation reference app for the iOS platform. I thought to myself, "how can I use my years of physics experience to make an app?" and this is the idea I came up with! I know that I can provide a more comprehensive solution than the few other similar apps on the store, so why not?

After investigating a few of current apps available, I found the following: the majority of them cover the basics well, have a limited physics section, and include some completely useless material (did you know that x+0=x ?? ). Now granted, I understand that not everyone knows everything, but I feel that some concepts don't require an entry in an app like this. That's why I'm not going to include stuff like that in my app just to "pad the equation count".

For launch, I'm aiming to include material that would be useful for a senior high school / early university student. Currently, the following has already been implemented:

• Physics
• Newtonian Mechanics
• Electricity and Magnetism
• Optics
• Fluid Mechanics
• Thermal Physics
• Quantum (basics such as photo-electric effect)
• Math
• Tables of derivatives
• Trigonometric identities
• Electronics
• Capacitors
• Resistors
• Inductors
• Error Calculations

It should be noted that none of the sections in physics have been done at a deep-level. Its all been aimed at the experience level I stated above.

Heck, I'd someday like to have equations from much more advanced material included (equations for time-dependent perturbation theory anyone?). For now, some more fleshing out of the math section is important.

So although a lot of the current apps have a number of the equations that I already have, their organization of the material is very poor. I'm approaching the problem from the perspective of someone who would actually find this information useful, so I'm able to organize the equations in a more optimal way.

I should also note that I haven't seen others with the error calculation equations. That alone could probably be packaged into an app. I know that every time I have to write a lab report, I constantly forget these ones.


There's a bunch I want to add into the math section before launch (integrals, geometry, taylor series, etc) and some tables (eg coefficients of friction for common materials). If there is anything that you would like to see included in the launch version, or in a future version, please let me know in the comments below, via twitter, or by email.



TL;DR
Making equation reference app for iOS, send me stuff you want included.


Thanks!