Get your app built and shipped fast

As an experienced Apple developer, I can

• Create your iOS mobile app (or OS X program) from start to finish, or from your spec
• Help your software development team meet deadlines
• Get your iOS application into the App Store while or before your team develops in-house expertise — plus I’ll transfer my expertise to your in-house programmers
• Improve your iOS / iPhone app user interface

iPhone app development cost

Mobile app development costs depends on your project’s size and complexity — mainly your iOS app’s number of unique screens and custom controls.

Simple, self-contained stand-alone iOS apps are fastest to develop. Your app will require more development time if it has a custom UI, or connects via an API to a back-end server database or hardware.

It is fastest to develop for one device only — iPhone or iPad. A universal app that targets both needs to be better thought out, and will require additional graphics. It is much faster and easier to develop a universal app from the beginning, rather than trying to retrofit later. iPad to iPhone retrofits are particularly awkward because available screen real estate is so much smaller.

Already have some of your app’s functionality on your website or available through CMS? Serving it via a hybrid app is generally much faster than developing the same content in iOS.

The better your spec and the less it changes during development, the lower your mobile app development cost and the faster your iOS / iPhone app will get completed and into the App Store.

Required:

• You must know what you want, or I can’t build it. Write it down, preferably as a requirements document or full-blown spec with wireframe — this will save time.
• If you want a program like X over there, be prepared to pay for my time to look at it.

When we get on the phone, I’ll want to know:

• What do you have?
• What do you want? (Pictures always help.)
• What is your budget?
• Approximately how many unique screens will your app need? (This lets me estimate how well your budget fits what you want done.)
• List any third-party APIs that your app will need. For instance, your app will need an API to talk with a server, database, or website.
• How much of your app’s functionality is already available through your website? It usually costs less to deliver web content through a hybrid app that serves web pages rather than duplicating website functionality in iOS.
• How detailed are your design documents? Do you have a requirements document? A wireframe? Flowcharts?
• Are the final artwork and server APIs ready? While development is fastest if these are already done, they commonly get developed in parallel as your app gets built.
  
• To make a detailed app development time / cost guesstimate, I’ll need a line-item list of controls on each of your screens — one line per item, preferably with lines numbered. This lets me categorize items as simple or complex.
• Who will do QA testing?

For faster app development, also provide:

• Requirements document tells me your program needs to be able to do A, B, and C. This is high-level, and comes before the wireframe. It can be an email with line items, preferably numbered so we can easily refer to them without confusion.
• Design documents. A wireframe is ideal. A requirements document will work.
• Flowcharts are not necessary, but they help debug your logic and pin down your functional expectations, and catch navigational black holes. These can come before or after your wireframes.
• Final artwork. (If you don’t have artwork, I can provide an experienced graphic artist / designer to create it for you.)
  
• Specify UI components from CocoaControls.com. Simply tell me, “I want a screen that looks like this. I want my popup alerts to look like that.” Cocoa Controls features over 3000 UI elements for iOS and OS X, all with screen shots. These provide known working off-the-shelf functionality for your app, which can greatly speed development.
• QA testing. The faster your QA people can test project versions and give me feedback, the faster I can finish your project.

Ready to take action on your software?

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