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I wish to build an iPhone app, but I've never ventured into anything like this before, appart from the very basics of HTML. I want to know how difficult it will be to create this app, if you really need someone pro to do it, or if it's managable to learn by a newbie.

The app: Basicly the app works as a notepad AND a dictaphone. You should be able to create posts, which you can give a headline, write text, record sound, add searchwords and save. All these posts should be listed by date, with the ability to search through them, using the given searchwords. That's it. How difficult do you think this will be to accomplish?

If you believe this will be doable by a newbie, where do I start? (I don't have access to a Mac computer to do the work on, so can I create everything on my windows PC, and transfer the project to someone else to compile and so on?)

Btw, don't be too technical in your reply, because I really don't know much about this topic, that's why I'm asking your help, to see if I should just trash the idea all together.

Inder Kumar Rathore
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user2004478
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    If you don't even know programming, it's going to be hard. –  Jan 23 '13 at 15:54
  • First off, without a Mac to work on, then you're relegated to hiring someone else to do the work, in which case it doesn't matter how hard it would be for you, but rather how much you're willing to spend to see it done. For a veteran iPhone developer, I imagine this wouldn't be that difficult of a task, but for someone who's only ever touched HTML, I'd guess it to be pretty close to impossible without doing a lot of work to get up to speed. Even PhoneGap/Cordova would be a huge learning curve, if you've never used Javascript before. – Jason M. Batchelor Jan 23 '13 at 15:56
  • creating basic applications with stock UI doing boringly generic things is relatively easy. High quality UX-based designs on the other hand - which is precisely what iOS customers expect - are a rather different matter. – marko Jan 23 '13 at 21:39
  • Of course it's doable by a newbie. Everyone starts as a newbie. So far no-one was born knowing how to program. – JJJ Jan 24 '13 at 13:38

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I'm not sure this question can be "answered". It's to subjective. I will offer a few words of advice though.

  1. You can develop the app. It will be hard and take a lot of dedication. If you love to learn new tools, new programming languages, new operating system APIs - and love the challenge of programming; then you should absolutely give it a whirl.
  2. If you're concerned about time to market, then you'll have to hire professionals.
  3. This app pretty much already exists. Review similar apps already for sale and ask yourself if you or the team you assemble can build something better. If you can't, by all means build it for fun; but don't publish it.

Doing this without a Mac will be next to impossible unless you explore things like Appcelerator Titanium.

Best of luck!

Dave
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  • How much would I roughly cost to hire someone to create this app do you think? I would provide the graphic needed (Im a graphic designer), so it would be the coding and so on I needed done. – user2004478 Jan 23 '13 at 16:34
  • Apple's "Notepad" app does everything you describe, except allowing the user to record "sounds". With iOS 6 dictation, every app has the dictation feature for free; so that's no longer a great distinguishing feature. Searching for "notepad" in appstore reveals a few hundred note taking apps, including big-league players like "Evernote" and "Notability". I think the best way for you to make money with this app idea is to close the book on it and put whatever you'd have spent into AAPL stock. ;) – Dave Jan 23 '13 at 17:53
  • I didn't want to make the app to earn money on it. Actually, i wanted to distribute it free. And by dictaphone I didnt mean voice to text convertion, but simple sound recording, saved with text – user2004478 Jan 24 '13 at 03:16