Some here may recall that my husband is a professor of Digital Media in the School of Art at the University of Florida. We are also a BIG Apple family…he has used Macs in many of his art projects, both in the creation of the work and the presentation of the work.  He currently has a work at the Tampa Museum of Art called GameSpace.

As his interest is in art and technology, he has been developing ideas for using the iPhone.  His focus involves the cultural impact of new media with a particular emphasis on contemplation in gameplay.

Being extremely busy, teaching and doing all of the other things required of junior faculty, he was not able to begin working on the idea, in earnest, until mid May.  For about 6 weeks or so, he worked, night and day, on an app with a couple of other artists.  After mailing some forms to Apple, uploading the application to the Apple development website and completing some other “informational” forms online, the waiting began on June 22.  Yesterday, July 4th, he received an email from Apple, telling him the app had been approved. 

He had heard the approval process was around 10 days and that was pretty much correct.

If you are so inclined, you can check out the app here.

He realizes that this app won’t appeal to everyone.  He’s playing with ideas that may only be of interest those involved in the art/game theory community.  However, as a “regular Joe”, I find Mower to be a relaxing break from some of the more frenetic games I have downloaded.  The sound of the lawnmower and the fact that I don’t have to “attain” anything is a nice alternative, for those times I have a few minutes to kill.

The experience, thus far, has been a positive one.  It very easy to work with Apple’s procedures, and he thinks the iPhone is a great development platform.  He’s anxious to start on some new ideas but is now teaching summer school, soon followed by the fall semester…too many ideas, never enough time, but that’s the way it goes.

Everyone:

Steph requested feedback on posting a topic about Jack’s iPhone app before the topic was created. Jack Stenner has been a long-time advocate of the Macintosh platform as a learning tool in higher education and as a means for disciplined creative expression.

I think it’s exciting to get a glimpse of the app development and distribution process from an AFB member and witness the migration of talent to the the iPhone/iPod touch platform through the experiences of someone who has been an active and contributing member of our community.

Take too long to load.  Aimlessly mow for awhile.  Always pop up the stats screen and slow to recognize my touch commands.

Comments by a guy who didn’t know how to mow the lawn, paid a gardener to do so.

Mace - 05 July 2009 04:35 PM

Take too long to load.  Aimlessly mow for awhile.  Always pop up the stats screen and slow to recognize my touch commands.

Comments by a guy who didn’t know how to mow the lawn, paid a gardener to do so.

Jack asked me to tell you thanks for the feedback, Mace.  He also said that the iPhone 3G is the slowest of all the iPhones (even the older ones) and you might try re-starting it…that can help performance of all apps, not just his.

He also said that the “slow loading” is a general complaint amongst developers using Unity.  Unity is supposed to releasing an update, soon, that will, hopefully, solve the issue.

Mace - 05 July 2009 04:35 PM

Comments by a guy who didn’t know how to mow the lawn, paid a gardener to do so.

Wow. Mace the virtual gardner. What innovations might be dreamed up next!

sstenner - 05 July 2009 05:24 PM

He also said that the iPhone 3G is the slowest of all the iPhones (even the older ones) and you might try re-starting it…that can help performance of all apps, not just his.

Now that’s a useful tidbit from Jack’s iPhone app adventure. 

It might be fun to design mowing patterns for the major league ballparks using the mower.  Thanks for sharing the development saga with us.