Interview: Danilo Campos; An iPhone Developer with A True Passion
By: Hillel Fuld
We have decided to add some variety to the things we post here, so we will be interviewing mobile developers regularly. Today, I interviewed a truly impressive individual by the name of Danilo Campos, who is living proof of the potential that iPhone development brings, both to the individual, and the market as a whole. Danilo is not one of those people who has been developers since the beginning of time, he has a business degree, and only began developing in 2005, creating products for Second Life.
When the iPhone SDK was released, it was love at first sight. Danilo taught himself how to develop for iPhone the same way he taught himself to develop for other platforms, all out of a need to “build great things”. Danilo’s first app was something he built for himself to use as a “counting tool” called Tallymander. Danilo explains that he did not expect to sell this app to too many people and he did not think he would make more than $40 from Tallymander. However, that was not the outcome, and it became a popular app that received positive feedback from its users. Read more about the app and its history in the interview below.
Danilo has released other apps as well, such as Swedeshop and Globejot, but Tallymander remains his favorite. The following is the interview I conducted with Danilo:
1. Please tell us your name and a little bit about yourself.
“My name is Danilo Campos. I’m an iPhone Developer in Bend, Oregon, USA. I’m devoted to product management and making things people will love to use.”
2. How long have you been developing?
“I have a total of three years of software development and product management under my belt, with one of those years spent with the iPhone. Back in college I got hooked on the twin passions of building software and managing products by paying my bills developing content in the open-ended MMO Second Life. I took a break for a few years but rediscovered my purpose when the iPhone was opened up for development.”
3. On what mobile platforms do you develop?
“I write applications for the iPhone. It’s a wildly exciting platform to build on. While the marketplace may be competitive, iPhone OS offers the best mobile experience available. That’s where I want my work to be. iPhone gives me, as a developer, a lot of tools to work with while letting me build the sort of experiences that are exciting to me.”
4. Please tell us about your latest app.
“My latest application is Tallymander 2.0. It’s a tally counting application with heavy customization options, data sharing and a system for building chains of spreadsheet-style equations. I’m a huge spreadsheet nerd, but there’s no easy way to translate the spreadsheet experience to your pocket. Tallymander tries to distill the basics: keeping track of numbers and analyzing data in real-time. I get customer emails detailing innumerable different uses people have found for it — it’s such a treat to be surprised by my own app. I’m excited to see where people take it, especially now that they can easily send their setups to other users.”
5. What inspired you to develop this app?
“Tallymander was built, really, for myself because I’m incapable of doing mental math. Back before I did iPhone development full-time I had to count up my dry cleaning every few weeks, but all the counting apps in the App Store were either hideous or didn’t really address my situation.
I expected I’d make, maybe, $40 on Tallymander, but I wanted the challenge of building a useful, usable app. People downloaded it and I was surprised: they loved it. I added a few feature requests from my customers and then got moving on other projects. A week later, Apple had approved my update and selected Tallymander as a Staff Favorite. It was a hugely validating and exciting experience — and nice to be proven wrong on my pessimistic sales projections. Since then I’ve shipped some other applications but Tallymander remains my favorite. So many people tell me about the different uses they’ve found for it and all that feedback led to completely rewriting it and adding a ton of new features in 2.0. It’s been so great to see this product grow — 2.0 is really, really great and I’m proud to hear from my customers when they send me feedback.”
6. Where do you see the mobile industry 5 years down the road?
“The obvious answer is explosive growth: there are plenty of problems we all encounter in our day-to-day existence. Mobile devices are in our pockets almost all the time and now they’re powerful enough to solve many of those daily issues through clever software. It’s like the personal computer revolution all over again. Ultimately, though, it’s even more potent since this time the devices making big changes are constantly with us instead of being chained to desks. We’re on our way toward a connected world that makes the early days of mass internet adoption look like cave drawings.”
7. Please tell us your impressions on the various mobile platforms from a developer’s perspective. Please include iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.
“Microsoft’s Mobile strategy is a mess. Windows Mobile 7 won’t be on the scene until the end of 2010. HTC, which makes most WinMo devices in existence, is switching gears to produce Android phones. Motorola is going whole-hog on Android, too. Microsoft has a stagnant platform on their hands and the handset makers know it. Add to that the confusion of their other mobile development efforts for Zune and the picture is just indecipherable. I don’t have any intention of developing for WinMo — that OS is yesterday’s news. Symbian is in the same boat — there’s no excitement around the platform, which means no devices to run apps.
There’s no joy in BlackBerry. I’ve played with their devices. Their handsets with hardware keyboards feel junky and unintuitive. The screens are claustrophobic. Their touchscreen handsets are nearly unusable. BlackBerry’s play is entirely business-focused, dedicated to an enterprise market. That’s okay, that has its place. But that’s no fun to develop for.
The iPhone has an outstanding SDK, a really great, uniform-spec multi-touch device to run it all on and powerfully devoted developer community. It’s a joy to develop for. I was a passionate iPhone user before I was an iPhone developer. That’s crucial. I think success depends upon loving the platform you want to build with.
It doesn’t yet match the iPhone’s polish but I think Android has a bright future. Like I said, a lot of handset makers are moving toward Android. Developers can go a lot deeper into Android than they can with the iPhone: Android opens up its system underpinnings while the iPhone enforces a strict sandbox. I can feel some definite curiosity leaning in Android’s direction and that will only grow as the OS matures.
Absent in overall mindshare lately is Palm’s pre and webOS. We’ll see where it is in a year but for now, with weak developer support and only a few hundred thousand device sales, it isn’t terribly interesting to think about.
I love developing for the iPhone. It’s a device and OS I love to use personally and there are 50 million devices available to run my apps. It’s a great time to be in this business.
