iPhone Nonoriddles

<Columbo>Oh, just one more thing</columbo>:

I've put up a prototype page of the latest puzzle for those *checks browser logs* zero of you who solve on the iPhone. Since I only have testiphone.com to go off of, if any of my three readers (one of which I'm pretty sure is me) has an iPhone or know someone who does, I'd appreciate it if they could give the page a test and let me know how it goes. It's is at:

http://www.nonoriddle.com/iphone.html

I'm an iPhone developer... well, not really

The idea of me getting an iPhone is inherently silly. Considering how many features I would end up using on a daily basis, it'd become the equivalent of paying a monthly fee to use a digital camera. Which is not to say I wouldn't love to have one: If someone walked up to me off the street giving away an iPhones with a free 2-year-plan, I wouldn't be saying no (who would?).

But I've been considering for a few months whether producing nonoriddles for the iPhone would be economically feasible. I was thinking along the lines of developing a free interface and then offer a $1 monthly/$10 yearly/$15 biyearly subscription for a packet of 10-15 puzzles per month. The drawback (well, not the only) is the fee to get listed. Could I sell enough puzzles to make it worth it to pay the it?

Since the SDK is free, I figured what the heck. I could mess around and if I thought it might be worth it, then I could go ahead and pay the $99 fee. Added bonus: It'd give me a chance to learn Cocoa.

I registered as an iPhone developer and I downloaded the SDK. Problem is, I didn't read the fine print, which was kind of important: It's for Macs only. I don't have a Mac. I don't have access to a Mac. I don't know anyone who has a Mac, apart from my brother in Long Beach, and he's not running 10.5.

That adds another $1500 or so to my start-up costs. How many customers would I have to have to break even? Apple takes 30% of all that's sold, so let's say I net $10 for each biyearly subscription. That's about 160 bi-yearly customers I would need to cover costs. Right now, I think I have about 15 regular visitors to nonoriddle.com, so I'd need a ten-fold increase and they would have to be interested enough to pay for two years up front.

Something tells me it's unlikely.