Hops 1.0 now available!

Big day for me. Hops 1.0 is (finally) available.

This is something I have been working on for close to a year now. A far-too-large portion of that year was spent trying to get my company name set with apple, but I digress.

This is the very first iPhone app I have ever made. This is also the first time I’ve done anything with Objective C. So it’s a pretty exciting day for me.

A few answers to some questions I want to answer, both for you (the user), and myself:

Why did you make Hops?

When I got my iPhone, it happened to coincide with my really starting to dive into craft beer. I had dipped my toes in the waters before, but then I saw Beer Wars and it struck such a chord with me, that I decided to really start to explore the world of what I now arrogantly refer to as “real” beer. But I have a shitty memory. So I was having real trouble keeping track of what beers I had or hadn’t drank, and beyond that, what I thought of the beer I was drinking.

I took a look around the app store (which really is the first place I go if I’m trying to solve one of life’s problems) and there were some options there, but nothing I really felt good about throwing my money down for. I remember talking about this with some people (at Cambridge One over some beers), and someone said: “Why don’t you just make one?”. I laughed and brushed it off, but holy crap if the idea of just making one myself didn’t stick with me. I don’t really have a development background (I’m a film editor, by day), but I’ve done some light scripting in Ruby and Python. So I decided (in the shower) that I would make a go of it. I would build something, and for the first time, I would try to sell it.

Why should I use Hops?

I believe that there are a few reasons:

• For me, Hops has been a really great way to not only keep track of my beers, but it has really been instrumental in getting me to branch out and try newer, different, more exciting beers. The simple act of wanting to log new beers means that I will choose beers just to be able to add them to my catalogue.
• The sharing features make it really easy to tell the world when you enjoy (or hate) a beer. Simply tap the action icon in the toolbar, choose your service (Email, Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr at the time of this writing), and away you go. If you aren’t logged into these services, you will be prompted for authentication. And you can always log out of your services (Or turn on and off specific services) inside the setting panel.
• Being able to quickly search my log for a beer, and instantly be able to look up when I drank it, and what I thought has saved me from repeating a mistake many times.
• Being able to sort your beers by different criteria can show you your drinking habits in really interesting ways. You may be surprised at how many beers you drink from a specific region, or be able to say “Wow I really need to try more of ’s beers”. Or maybe seeing a log full of IPAs is just what you need to maybe go try a nice porter.

Why does it cost $3.00? That’s so expensive!

Again, a number of reasons:

• Your device cost (at least) $200. I think $3 is a marginal price to pay for software that works well.
• This is not my full time job. I have other responsibilities on a day to day basis other that sitting around answering support email. So if I’m going to provide the level of support I hope to be able to provide for this (and all future) apps, I need to set the price based on what makes financial sense. At $3, I can afford to continue development, and continue to do my real job, and I don’t have to worry about getting a million people downloading the app for free, and burying me in support email.
• A free app simply isn’t financially viable. If you want to hear a much more experienced developer talk about this, listen to episode 5 of Build and Analyze, and listen to Marco Arment talk about his experiences with the paid and free versions of Instapaper.

tl;dr

Click here to see the app on the app store.

I just want to say thank you to the excellent community over at StackOverflow for the help I received during development. I’m spoiled that I have such a resource to help me learn something as complicated as this. If you’re ever thinking about getting into development, I can’t recommend that place enough. I also got a whole hell of a lot of inspiration from guys like Marco at Instapaper, Loren Brichter of Tweetie/Twitter for iOS fame, and of course the amazing work by the teams at Apple.

I have some really fun ideas in store for Hops. I had a blast building it, and I really hope you enjoy it.