Four years ago today, the Apple App Store launched, changing the face of software distribution. Anyone from a curious 13-year old to a grizzled developer who lived through learning Pascal can release an app and hope to strike gold. Even Apple’s own operating systems are distributed with this model now. I distinctly remember my first thoughts on the matter. I was standing in line for the iPhone 3G, not for myself, but for a coworker who I had convinced to upgrade (so I could get his original iPhone). Imagine, the internet in my pocket, anywhere I went. The future had arrived for me. Four years later, this has become commonplace. But I do remember being asked on that line, “so what do you think about this app store?” by a curious line stander. I didn’t have much background actually developing software yet, so I heartily told him “Eh, you can already download apps from Installer, who cares where you get it from?” (Sidenote: Remember Installer?)

iOS 6 ends up bringing a lot of interesting new features to the regular user, and looking over the API differences, not a lot on the developer side of things. iOS 5 was a gigantic leap for developers, starting with ARC, Storyboards, and a bajillion¹ APIs opened up. I’m willing to bet that this is becoming Apple’s calling card. One on, one off, is now to be prevalent in designing both hardware and software.

When I was a kid, I used to try and make words and phrases out of my phone number, because before the internet we had nothing better to do. These days, if you want a custom phone number, there is a way to do it for only $3. So, here’s a quick little life hack for you.

I figure, might as well get these on the record, and afterwards we can all laugh at how wrong I am.

Below is a letter that I wrote.