Every once in a while, a startup comes around with a product that we not only cover, but actually want to use ourselves. PointAbout, a Washington, DC-based self-funded startup, has done just that. AppMakr is absolutely ridonkculous. Basically, AppMakr allows you to create your own iPhone app – for $199. You can include feeds from any RSS-enabled website, and the apps are completely native. Your app is published by PointAbout, AppMakr’s parent company, straight to Apple. If you want it published under your own name or Apple’s publishers license, spend $499. It is an extremely simple product and doesn’t help anyone create complex non-RSS-enabled apps, but it seems that PointAbout has democratized app development in a way that hasn’t been done before.
For any MobileCrunch reader (and readers of our sister and parent blogs), AppMakr is offering 1,000 coupons. Use the code “TECHCRUNCH” to get $150 off the cost of making an app (bringing the price to $49). Visit www.AppMakr.com and use the coupon at checkout.
I was skeptical when I first tried AppMakr: it’s common for products like this to be clunky, and to provide the user with too many options. Surprisingly, AppMakr was extremely well done and easy to use. The downside, of course, is that you don’t have that many options for what goes into your application, and it really does serve a limited purpose. For a blogger like me, it’s great, but you can’t use it to create even the simplest of games or anything like that.
To build your own app, you go on AppMakr.com and register for an account. Then you title your app (we titled it “MobileCrunch”). It automatically populates a list of suggested RSS feeds for you. It correctly found MobileCrunch’s RSS feed, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Vimeo channel. You can select whichever ones you want to be in your app. Then, you can custom-make icons, splash-screens and headers. AppMakr searches Google image search to find suggested images for you – or you can upload your own. Finally, you have options for generating revenue (such as advertising via AdMob) through your app.
It took me just 10 minutes to create my own app, which is impressive. The app is native, too, and doesn’t use Webkit, which is great for user experience because the app stores content on your iPhone for offline reading.
While you are crafting an application via AppMakr, you can also test it on the fly. Every time you make a change, AppMakr.com’s engine shows the change on a mock iPhone on the righthand side of your browser. This lets you test your app and check whether it actually does what you want it to. Furthermore, you can download the app to your iPhone and test it there as well.
All of the apps are packaged the same way and there is no WYSIWYG interface to move buttons around or change the user experience. This also means all AppMakr-made apps will look the same, which is a bit of a problem if a large number of people start using it.
AppMakr has been in beta for quite some time, and during their beta, they’ve managed to attract some tech heavyweights as users. Guy Kawasaki has 12 apps on the store via AppMakr [iTunes link], and Seth Godin has made his own app as well [iTunes link].
AppMakr’s parent company, PointAbout, has been creating custom iPhone apps for companies for 1.5 years, says co-Founder Daniel Odio. They’ve got 15+ employees and are profitable, but felt like there was a huge opportunity to enable anyone to create their own app. As such, they’ve worked hard on developing AppMakr, and even use it for their own custom internal projects. Daniel says that a custom iPhone app can cost anywhere from $50,000-100,000, so they feel that $199 for an iPhone app is a major upgrade.
PointAbout is based in Washington, DC, and has just opened a new office. They are providing office space for free for entrepreneurs in the DC metro area, so feel free to visit their website to find out more.
One significant problem with AppMakr is that it only exacerbates the iTunes App overload, and encourages people (notice I no longer have to say “developers”) to flood the App Store. It seems like someone could easily create hundreds of garbage apps and generate a cash cow business on the App Store. Of course, that is again up to the users – the same thing could be said of Blogger enabling anyone to create a garbage website or YouTube letting anyone put up crappy videos.
The bottom line is: it no longer costs $50,000+ to create an iPhone app, and you don’t need to be a developer to create one. For $199, AppMakr can do it for you. Oh, and if you’re a TechCrunch fan, don’t forget: use the code “TECHCRUNCH” at checkout and the first 1,000 users will spend just $49 creating their own iPhone app.
The question is – do you make a app for your blog or do you just use a good WordPress plugin like WP Mobile Edition http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-edition/
What is more likely to happen, someone download a app for my blog or use their browser?
The thing is you might be right about App overload because I might just go ahead and make a App anyway.
Incidentally, why doesn’t Techcrunch render for mobile phones?
Murat, I’m one of the co-founders of AppMakr. Just saw this post and your comment.
We’re big fans of anything that helps render the web on mobile devices, like WordPress’ plug-in. It’s quite different from an app, though. Here are a few differences:
1) By making an app, you get access to a new distribution channel – the iTunes app store. You can charge for your app in iTunes, if you so choose (yes with AppMakr you can put ads in your app from AdMob, Medialets & Google, and/or you can charge for your app, up to you).
2) The app is native, snappy and extremely fast. You don’t have to wait for web pages to render. Plus, it works offline, so you can read the app’s content in the subway, etc.
3) Apps can do more than web. Things like augmented reality, acceleration sensors, proximity sensors, etc. Although HTML 5 is catching up with lat & long and offline capabilities, most people don’t know how to use it effectively, and we believe that apps will always be steps ahead of web since they are software that can dig down into the phone. At AppMakr we’re focusing next on exposing some of these really cool features of the phone.
At the end of the day, we think you should do both. We say mobile web is like a “lake” – wide distribution, but shallower functionality, where apps are like a “well” – deep functionality but narrow distribution on many fewer phones. So to be effective, devise a strategy for both. The good news is that now instead of costing $10k+ to make a native iPhone app, you can make one for $199 through AppMakr.
Happy AppMaking,
DROdio
@AppMakr
Thanks for the quick reply.
You’re right, with mobile you shouldn’t just put all your eggs in one basket if you want reach.
I guess what I’m stuck on is the proposition to encourage the user to download (and use) a app which has a feed for my blog. My head tells me it’s just the long way round to get someone to interact but because of the App Store popularity and reach I could potentially pick up a couple of extra readers.
The data might be useful too. How do Apps which are just feeds normally do anyway?
It’s a fair point and one obvious limitation of AppMakr. Then again, a lot of apps are just native implementations of web technologies, but they are still useful. If you have a large readership, some percentage will probably find the iPhone app useful, but probably not the majority.
To us, it’s all about distribution channels. iTunes has turned out to be a very powerful one.
Content gets repurposed all the time – you’ll hear the same news on the radio, TV and in the newspaper. The key is to get it to users in their preferred method vs. just one method.
Also, a really cool thing about apps is that they are a piece of software that sits on the phone’s home screen. So now you have something you can leverage from a business and monetization standpoint. For example, you could go get a sponsor for an app, have that sponsor pay you $5k to co-brand the app, and then go make the app for $199 through AppMakr. So there are all these ways to monetize apps that have never been explored because before AppMakr, apps were just too expensive to produce. We’re hoping that with AppMakr, people will start to think of apps as being lightweight, even disposable tools. So you make an app for an event, or for a series of blog posts on a certain topic, or for a mashup of 20 blogs on the same topic (like Geoff Livingston’s Greenversation app, which he made through AppMakr – http://go.AppMakr.com/Greenversation for the iTunes link).
One last point – AppMakr is new, and we wanted to just do one thing and do it well. So yes, today all we do is re-package RSS, YouTube, Podcast, Flickr and other content in a really slick, wicked fast app. But in the next few months, we’ll be introducing lots of very interactive features, like the ability for users to take pictures or post comments, or get instant notifications about news, and much more. So I guess what I’m saying is that *today* an app made through AppMakr is just as good, or really a bit better, than getting the same content from your blog. But as we really explore what apps are capable of, those differences will increase dramatically.
DROdio
Hey, that’s a nice little summary of the native app vs. web app argument right there.
Yeah, RSS apps are pretty common in the Android Market. Since it only costs twenty-five bucks for a dev account and all, and doing something basic like that is dead easy and mostly a matter of canned Java classes and XML.
I’m writing one, myself, actually, and I ain’t no engineer, nohow.
I got my app too http://getap.ps/ouriel
courtesy of Odiogo Apps who has a similar techno and created that app for me
Awesome awesome app. I feel like these types of startups definitely bridge the gap between idea people and actual phone developers, because right now phone developers are making a killing, simply because there aren’t very many of them. Even if their idea is so-so.
Thanks for the kudos, iphone developer. That’s just what we were shooting for!
>The bottom line is: it no longer costs $50,000+ to create an iPhone app, and you don’t need to be a developer to create one.
This is somewhat misleading. AppMakr is fine for simple apps that deliver basic RSS content, but production quality native apps that do anything interesting (ie., custom graphics, GPS, peer-to-peer, camera, push notification, in-app purchases, etc.) can still cost $50K and up.
That’s funny… This site ( http://www.appflight.com) lets you make a genuine custom app, and is lightyears more advanced than this… I bought one from appflight for my band and its under review right now from Apple… To each their own i guess
Hey John – thanks for the tip! I hadn’t seen this before (I just noticed on the site it launched on Dec 22). We’ll look into it and let you know what we think.
My first impressions: they are very similar, definitely. AppMakr seems to have a much better UX but AppFlight seems to have more features and is more “custom.” We’ll dive deeper and let you know what we think.
Gagan,
Great article. You’re right – we’re new on the scene. If you’d like a tour – please let us know and we’d be happy to show you around.
We actually just came across AppMakr and it looks like a good product. A little competition never hurt anyone and hopefully our (and their) customers will benefit from it!
Just a side note, AppFlight donates 10% of your purchase to charity. The best part – you get to select from our list where your donation goes!
People helping people – it’s a great thing.
Hey John – just to clarify the website is http://www.AppFlight.com
Cheers!
Agreed, this industry is just beginning and this industry is going to be huge.
One thing I’ve noticed with all the other services (correct me if I’m wrong) is that the user has to pay up-front, before trying the service out.
With AppMakr, you can register for free and actually build your app. You only pay when you publish to iTunes. We even let you test the app on your phone for free.
But again, comments are welcome
I have to say that there are a few companies doing this now. AppWhirl, my company, has been in open beta for a couple of months, has a bunch of apps in the wild now, and does the same thing free:
http://www.appwhirl.com
“One significant problem with AppMakr is that it only exacerbates the iTunes App overload, and encourages people (notice I no longer have to say “developers”) to flood the App Store.”
Yeah, that was my first thought, and then I looked again and saw that this app that does nothing but make RSS readers doesn’t cost a dollar-ninety-nine, it costs TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.
If you need to make an iPhone app that is more complicated than an RSS reader I would recommend using http://www.AppWizard.com.
It takes about 45 minutes to build your app and you can actually select to sell your app in the AppStore.
The current app store design (even with the latest changes) won’t be manageable with the flood of (mostly similar) apps.
App search sites like http://www.appexplorer.com/
help, but Apple needs to reorganize things to scale up.
Rich,
I believe your right that Apple needs to step up their search game. That’s definitely a good point.
With that said, the structure of these Apps are “somewhat similar” but it’s the content and information within them that matters. The overall goal of an app is to “connect” the user with the content. Users are actively searching out and finding content that interests them… and now, connecting to it wherever they are.
Why not save a few hundred dollars and make a website that automatically configures for an iPhone? Use Device Atlas for recognition http://mobiforge.com/
This isn’t an online app creator, it’s glorified bookmarking.
James -
Great point. I thinking have a website that automatically configures for an iPhone or any mobile device is definitely an important feature to implement as well.
However, apps like AppMaker & AppFlight connect the user to the end goal much quicker. With a click load of an icon, the user is prompted with what they are looking for much quicker than typing a url/clicking a bookmark . In addition having capabilities like a music player, youtube, etc adds a more interactive way to get someones content (the whole purpose of apps to begin with right?).
We’ve taken some time to write an in-depth blog post on the argument for fully native apps vs. just mobile web apps: http://blog.appmakr.com/web-apps-vs-native-apps
- DROdio
This space has a lot of players in it already – AppWhirl does the same thing but free:
http://www.appwhirl.com
While some Web services provide standard templates to build an app, SeattleClouds – iPhone app builder lets users fully customize their iphone application.
http://SeattleClouds.com
AppMakr apps don’t work on the 1st gen iPod Touch. They are a troubled company if they can’t make a feed reader work like everyone else has.