Keith Ahern is chief executive of development studio MoGeneration. Having achieved success with iPhone apps, he jumped at the chance to develop for the iPad. The company released its first app, an encyclopaedia of health and medicine, last week.
He says the doubts surrounding the device are unwarranted, and believes the gadget is going to be one of the biggest things to hit publishing in decades.
Can you describe how MoGeneration started?
We actually jumped on the iPhone bandwagon about 18 months ago, I was working for News Limited and helped do some iPhone-optimised websites for them. Stepping back further than that, we looked at vendors who would provide mobile sites, but many had the attitude towards the iPhone that it would be just another phone.
That was disappointing, because I thought it was different. But I convinced News Ltd to let me put together a crack team of designers and developers, and we knocked out three mobile websites in three weeks. This was before the launch of the iPhone, it went really well and basically blew off the competition. Then I took that team and we started doing it all ourselves.
What was your reaction to the iPad launch?
We read a lot of news, and occasionally were privileged enough to know some information, but nothing the public didn’t know. I really believed it would happen about a week beforehand, the rumours grew and so on. When it came out, we weren’t surprised, and we went through the same process like everybody else.
It’s interesting though, our reaction was that it was great, except some people kept saying “oh, it’s just a big iPod Touch”. That was funny to us, because we think that’s a great aspect of the device. We could immediately see demands for this device in industries like mobile, healthcare and construction. We got it, and understood there would be a niche.
What made you decide to jump on the iPad, what features made it attractive?
It was really a no-brainer for us and a lot of other iPhone developers because it’s such a similar device. The biggest change was in design and usability, so we had to invest a lot of time with our development people but we thought there was a big difference, and you can see that in the encyclopaedia app, although we are bringing out an iPhone version soon.
Why move to the iPad, instead of developing new apps for the iPhone? What made you so confident?
We just thought the content was going to be great on the iPad. We had our usability guy spend a day doing mock ups and that sort of thing, and we changed our priorities and fast-tracked the iPad version ahead of the iPhone knowing it would be a superior app.
The new app can reach a world market, and we have our publishing group behind it as well. I mean, to be honest we were realistic about our expectations because we knew the device was going to be new, but sales have doubled every day.
Is there anything you won’t develop on the iPad?
We are 18 months on in our journey and a little more focused on what we do. One area we decided to get out of is games, because the quality of games that are out there now are simply extraordinary and certainly high-end games are something we just don’t do. The competition is too much. Our core of competency is elsewhere, because we feel we do online services, integrating with online services and publishing that much better.
Are you abandoning the iPhone altogether?
We’re absolutely going to develop on both devices. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up devoting 50% of our time squarely on the iPad, because of the publishing content available. Over the past 18 months we’ve been developing so many processes and we’ve moved that into a mobile publishing framework called Oompf, and that’s enabling us to do a lot more with both platforms.
Did you make a mistake in moving too quickly, or is it good to get started on the trend straight away?
We took the initial leap with the app that’s out there now, and we’ve worked on that for quite some time. So we didn’t just throw everything out there, rather we’ve put one app out there and we’ve managed to get some consumer demand from that. There are a lot of companies who don’t understand what device to go for, but we’re seeing a lot of publishers understanding the iPad.
They know their content doesn’t work so well on the iPhone, and that the iPad is the way to go, so we’re going with that demand as well. For example, a magazine would make sense on the iPad, but mightn’t work on the iPhone and they have to do a stripped down version of it. Whereas the iPad can repdroduce the strength of a magazine’s layout faithfully, iPhone can produce the utility of a magazine faithfully, such as price comparisons, reviews and so on. It’s going to be an interesting time for apps, I feel like developers are catching on to it all, as well as publishers, and there’ll be some good content coming out for quite a while.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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