A retrospective on iRooster, my first Mac OS X app
8 days ago
- #Nostalgia
- #Mac Development
- #Shareware
- iRooster was the author's first commercial Mac OS X application, developed in 2003.
- The app turned a Mac into an alarm clock that played iTunes playlists, solving the author's problem of oversleeping.
- iRooster embodied the shareware ethos—solving personal problems and sharing solutions with others.
- While not financially lucrative, the app was pivotal in the author's career, serving as a coding education and résumé builder.
- The development journey from version 1.0 to 2.0 taught valuable lessons in user feedback, iterative development, and polish.
- In 2022, the author open-sourced iRooster's code, marking it as a time capsule of early Mac development.
- iRooster stands as a testament to starting small, solving real problems, and the importance of scratching your own itch.