It's that time of year again to write the M Cubed Birthday Year-In-Review Extravaganza™ post (albeit one day late). So what happen with M Cubed over the past 12 months and what would I like to have happen over the next 12 months

The Barren Spell

I had hoped that this year would have been the most productive in M Cubed's history. Sadly barring this past week it has ended up the worst. Prior to this week there had just been two major updates: Minim 2.0 and Code Collector Pro 1.4. But those both happened prior to April. From April to November there wasn't a single major release of any product and it is all down to the iPad.

After releasing Code Collector Pro 1.4 I started work on Lighthouse Keeper 1.2. Sadly this work was interrupted by the release of the iPad. I had a plan to write an iPad app and set to work designing it. It was going to be a whiteboarding app and it was going to be great. Except it didn't really work well as an idea, so I then moved onto a notebook app. I designed it and even started coding, but it was a pain to do, so I redesigned it. And I started coding this 3rd design, but again it was awkward. So then I focused on an app that was more a collection of lose papers.

But again the idea didn't go too far. Then I finally had an epiphany. The idea for the iPad app had initially come from that of an app I'd be planning for the Mac. It would be a sort of interactive storyboarding app, letting you storyboard almost anything. So I decided to create a storyboarding app for iPad.

Unfortunately by now it was July so I'd wasted over 3 months on failed attempts. So I set to work straight away, planning, designing and coding. Features were planned and many cut all in the effort to make 1.0 as soon as possible. Finally on Monday, nearly 8 months after I decided to make an iPad app, Storyboards was released.

Sales have been going well, the best of any new M Cubed app. Sadly the feedback hasn't been quite as good. The reviews largely focus on how little it seems to do for the price. And to be frank I do agree with them, but I had to cut features out to release on time, features that will, over the coming 12-18 months make their way back in.

Indecision

The big issue this year has been indecision and bad decisions. I've changed my mind too much and lost a lot of time due to it. About a month prior to the release of Storyboards I realised that I should make things work differently to allow for more flexibility in the future, and I cam very close to re-doing large parts of the app.

Thankfully, I've learned my lesson. I decided that 1.0 would ship as is and I can gradually change things over future versions. Sure it would be underpowered and not as flexible a tool as I wanted, but it would be released, earning money and generating feedback. And I could start work on other stuff.

Acquisition

Not too long ago I saw a tweet from a friend on Twitter. He was looking to sell his apps off as he didn't have time for them as well as other things in his life. I jumped at the chance to gain another app, especially one with lots of future potential and so we started talking. Yesterday the announcement was made public and Syllabus became M Cubed app number 5 (technically not the 5th we've ever had but the 5th app we currently sell).

Scaling Back

There has also been some scaling back this year at M Cubed. Fabio left for other things taking the employee count down to "just me" again. As such M Cubed has also stopped offering any design services and I'm focusing purely on writing apps.

Future Plans

So what are the future plans? Well for the next 6 months I'd like to try and get Lighthouse Keeper 1.2, Storyboards 1.1 and Code Collector Pro 1.5 out. Lighthouse Keeper 1.2 will be the last large update I'll do for a long while. All future updates will have at most one big new feature or two medium new features but no more. "Smaller, more frequent releases" is the mantra for 2011. Hopefully I can stick to it, but we'll have to see this time next year when I'm writing a post for M Cubed's 6th birthday.

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