Tapulous

Much has passed since I first showed up at Tapulous’s doorstep on a tuesday in June. Orphaned thanks to the preoccupations of everyone around me, the first few days of my internship entailed mostly trying to stay out of the way. During that week, nearly the entire core of Tapulous’s coding talent had assembled in the old Palo Alto office for marathon sessions. Food was brought in for every meal and arriving in the morning to work often revealed employees who had opted to work all night rather than retire to their hotel rooms. There was no time for sleep: the App Store was opening.

It was in this whirlwind that it was decided I needed something to do. In the spirit of iApp-a-Day (Sean Heber), Andrew and I agreed that a fortune cookie app would be an appropriate place to start. Little did I know it would take me an entire summer to complete.

The dual goals of Fortune were like those of every other Tapulous app: to achieve the beauty of a mac app and the virality of a facebook app. Under the tutelage of designer Louie Mantia, I was introduced to indie mac development — in particular to the idea of a ‘delicious’ app. Louie believed not just that apps should be useful, but that they should be beautiful — they should be jewelry for your phone and computer. And, as Louie liked to emphasize, such ‘deliciousness’ could only be achieved one way: attention to detail.

Fortune is a direct product of that philosophy.

Break open the cookie: tap it or slam it against the wall. Tap on the fortune to remove it. Watch the scrolls drop to the floor revealing buttons. Tap on the fortune label that appeared above. What’s on the back? Lotto numbers. Now tap the broken halves of the cookie. Break them down all the way. The cookie will never crumble that exact way again. Hit refresh to sweep the cookie crumbs off the floor. The crumbs float up with an invisible broom, the scrolls snap back up, and another cookie falls from the cieling.

When I started building Fortune there wasn’t even an app store. But, to my dismay, as the summer passed, fortune cookie apps began popping up. As each new fortune cookie app was released (there are now an astonishing 6 other fortune cookie apps), Andrew would ask how Fortune stacks up. It has been a long month since I finished working on Fortune and submitted it to the app store. Now that Fortune is finally released I will tell you how it stacks up.

Fortune is a very simple app. It facilitates the reading of, creating of, and sharing of fortunes. It does all these things gracefully and consistently. Fortune Cookies is the only fortune app that delivers user-created content. The AOL Fortune app has 50 hard-coded fortunes. Another fortune cookie app boasts it has 500 fortunes. I personally wrote 200 fortunes for the launch of Fortune Cookies, but already in the first hours of the app’s life there have been many hundreds of fortune submissions including my personal favorite: “You will soon accumulate a great appreciation for teletubbies”.

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote about the idea of ‘true forms’ — for everything on earth there exists a ‘true form’ of it in heaven.  A table on earth is only a distorted reflection of the true form of a table which exists in heaven. Given this Plato spent much of his time philosophizing on the ‘true form’ of things like justice and morality. Why I am writing about this? I think that the practical application of Plato’s theory of the forms is to realize that there is a way things should be and way things shouldn’t be. In my opinion a Mac comes closer to achieving the ‘true form’ of a computer than a PC — a Mac is closer to my idea of what a computer should be (intuitive, reliable, beautiful). So many apps on the App Store today are not what they should or could be. They are built hastily and carelessly, cluttering the store. Fortune Cookies is a simple app. It has a narrow and focused utility. But it is what it should be, and like all Tapulous apps, there is an attention of detail that should warrant interest (even to those users who don’t find the function of the app particularly appealing). I am very proud of Fortune Cookies and hope you enjoy it — even if only fleetingly.

Thank you Tapulous for the opportunity and inspiration.

-Kyle Macomber (aka kyle the intern)