A year or two back three of us (one only very part-time, and two of us inexperienced) developed an iOS app that did two way translation (speech - text - text - speech) using two three different services from two different vendors, from scratch in less than a week. In Objective-C. (It didn't get submitted to the App Store, it was demoed to potential investors and then disappeared, presumably owing to the existence of similar apps.)

Not a terribly ambitious app, but no less ambitious than the app described.

Ruby Motion looks interesting, but I don't really see how it would make a big difference to shipping something like this in a very short time frame.

Hi, great looking app, well done! I'm wondering if you ended up caching the Tube status information on your own web server, or if you are directly accessing Transport for London's site?

Incidentally my first iOS app is also a London tube statuses app. But i never made any money out of it, (i deemed it unworthy of 1$).

Although i was learning Obj C for some time, i developed my tube map app in 2 weeks of starting with cocoa framework.

Its time to start looking at marketing 101 lessons :).

I'm curious if the author was able to earn the initial investment in the tools: 200$ RubyMotion + 100$ iOS Developer.

If you know and enjoy coding in Ruby, you intend to target only iOS, and you don't know Objective-C, C or C++ than RubyMotion is a good investment.

On the other hand, if you want to target iOS and Android you'd better learn Objective-C and Java. An interesting alternative is to use HTML5 and JavaScript if you already have a good background as a web developer.

This is great. I spent much, much longer on my first iOS app and it isn't half as successful. Very well thought up and executed.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like because iOS is such a hot platform right now everyone is trying to hop on the bandwagon without learning anything new. Write iOS apps in ObjC. It's not hard, it's not that different, it's just something you don't know yet.

Might just be the fonts, but this looks like a Windows 8 app.

Congrats on the launch!

> earning me enough pennies to buy some Dominos pizza.

To a large extent this has been the real problem in the iOS app domain for a while. Apps are far more likely to make you enough to buy a small pizza than even approach earning you a reasonable salary.

Part of it, I think, are the mechanics of the App Store itself. Search has been broken for years. When compared to searching on the 'net the difference is stark. This is unfortunate because developers who do a little financial math will, without a doubt, walk away. You are far more likely to make money with a good website than on the App Store. That's why people hesitate to spend $200 on Ruby Motion...you simply won't get your money back unless you use it to write apps for others and earn money for your work rather than from your apps.

Great post - I love reading about this rapid fast releases, even better when the writer had to learn a new language.

I was curious about ruby motion beforehand but now I can't wait to get stuck in.

Oh, and congrats! :D

Congrats. I still can't get by the initial cost of RubyMotion. I know, it will pay for itself, but that's a lot of initial buy-in going on faith. I wish they had a demo version available to try before buying.

I'm really curious about that.

There are about half dozen similar applications on the Appstore, for free.

I tried a few, and most of them did the job they were suppose to do fairly well.

How did you convince people to choose yours as opposed to the other ones that already existed ?

Clearly the Metro article is what pushed people (that possibly didn't know that those apps existed) to actually get and download your app.

Congrats and kudos.

I'm also pushing out a rubymotion app in the next week. Its hard to estimate how much time it saved me but it definitely made building the app a much more enjoyable experience.

This looks like a sales pitch for Ruby Motion to me.

"BUT, and it's a big butt" - deliberate misspelling?

4 days for approval? That's pretty fast.

Three years ago my friend published his first app in the App Store. He taught himself Objetive-C and had never programmed a day in his life before. He first app made a few bucks a day so you know what he did? He build another app. And another. And another. You know what he is doing today? House hunting in San Francisco and taking frequent vacations to Hawaii. By the way he did this working four days a week. So the problem is not really the App store it's that peoples initial exception don't intersect with their willingness to put in the time needed to build a business.

I think there's a lot of factors at work, the search is terrible but there's plenty of app recommendation services now, one of the big issues seems to be that there's now a mindset of "£1.79? That's really pricy" and they'll move on pretty quickly. That's a big barrier and it's not going away anytime soon really, but alternatives like IAP are now getting push back and mobile advertising doesn't seem to be a solid cash stream yet.

There's partly also a trust issue. If I go to buy an app on the App Store, there's a very good chance that the $5 is complete rubbish, is buggy or lied in it's description. There's no way of getting a trial, and getting your money back is harder than pulling teeth.

It's extraordinarily easy to get burned.

Not only on iOS. The "App Store" model as it is implemented today on most platforms is bloated and corrupted, it's just a mess. It _could_ be a tad better on Android since Google allows 3rd party app stores (could open up for specialization etc, like Steam for Android or similar) but in reality you still must be on Google Play (which is a hell hole) to succeed.

That's just a fun term, safe to say it was a fair bit more than pennies for a pizza. $200 ruby motion was definitely paid off from this app.

Congratulations. From an idea to an App Store app in 2 weeks is very impressive, but it's 10x more impressive given that you were learning along the way.

Simple question, though: what's the story behind the Metro article? Your story is interesting enough that it makes for good reading anyway, but I was wondering (and absolutely no offense intended -- there's nothing wrong with it imo) if you had a contact/friend/similar who helped you get the article? Again, congratulations, I hope your app continues to sell well.

Again, congratulations for your conviction.

I actually was doing something similar (well, the very same actually) a few months ago, got to a working version, but then saw that there were already plenty of options, got discouraged, and suddenly lost all interest in polishing/publishing it...

Actually, it is a very useful function. It has usefulness and simplicity. Would you mind to give ROI analysis for your project? This will be helpful to the audience here.