Blogs

There are many different ways you can use Mental Case, for any number of goals, but I'm guessing that very few have thought of using Mental Case as an app to store wish lists.

We often get emails from users complaining that their lesson is too large, and that they can never get through it all. Indeed, if you have 800 cards in your lesson, it's more a hindrance than a help. These cries for help usually conclude that a new feature is needed, such as 'throttling' the flow of cards into the lesson.

The Mental Faculty has an opportunity to do a presentation/interview on Mental Case for Apple's web site. This would be a good opportunity to publicize Mental Case, helping us and the Mental Case user community.

The catch is that we need a case study, an example of Mental Case use in a school or class. So we are appealing to the Mental Case community for someone that is prepared to be in the presentation (remotely via phone or skype) to talk about their experiences using Mental Case in a class, school, or college. If there is anyone out there willing to take this on, please email us.

Since we started developing for the iPhone, Mental Case has seen a welcome burst of sales, not only on the iPhone, but also on the Mac. It is difficult to say what exactly is responsible for this, but it is a good bet that it is a combination of having a syncing iPhone client, teaming up with Flashcard Exchange for content, and lowering the price on the Mac to $15 for students. These decisions seem to be at the root of the sales renaissance, but whatever the cause, it's good news for us as developers of the app, but equally good news for users that have 'invested' in the app.

It may seem a bit strange for a developer to ask a favor of his/her users, but here goes: If you have an opinion — good or bad — about either version of Mental Case for iPhone, please post a review in your local App Store and give what you think is a fair rating. We don't want anyone to lie, just give what they feel is a fair evaluation.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the economics of developing iPhone apps for sale in the App Store. Craig Hockenberry, best known for his work on Twitterrific, attracted a lot of attention with his open letter to Steve Jobs in which he expressed concern over the proliferation of 99c apps in the top 100, and the difficulties that poses for established developers to turn a profit making more full-featured apps for iPhone.

Many of you will have noticed by now that Mental Case 2.0 for iPhone has hit the App Store shelves. The new release — or should I say, ‘releases’ — are the result of a significant development effort, and are a major improvement over version 1.0.

Despite this, we have received a few very angry emails, and forum posts, accusing us of ‘slimy’ and dubious business practices. I’ll be perfectly honest — I didn’t see this coming at all. It never occurred to me that someone would be insulted by our upgrade path, but they clearly are. I’m not sure if this is a widespread concern, or just a concern for the few that bother to email, but to hopefully clear the water, let me explain our reasoning.

We've been a bit quiet lately, but it's not because we're on holiday. As soon as the paint dried on version 1.0 of Mental Case for iPhone, we began on version 2.0, a much more ambitious project.

The good news is that we are almost ready to start beta testing version 2.0. It includes many of the feature requests we received (eg. creation of notes on the iPhone, correction of notes), plus a few nice surprises. In short, it is a much more polished and far-reaching app than version 1.0.

Remember when Steve Jobs stood on stage at MacWorld to introduce the world to the iPhone, and told us all that Apple planned to sell 10 million in their first year. (That was later clarified to be the first full calendar year, namely, 2008.) Well, Apple have already hit that mark with a few months up their sleeve, and — as pointed out by others — they are not the slowest months for sales.

Some of the more technically-oriented Mental Case users may be interested in a story I just finished writing for MacResearch.org. It is a tutorial for programmers, showing how a Mac and iPhone can 'talk' to one another. If you are interested in how Mental Case syncing works, this tutorial gives you a peek under the covers.

Drew McCormack
Mental Case Developer