Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! (<i>magical</i>, even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have <i>better</i> apps! I should be so desensitized by how <i>interesting</i> the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been reduced to nothing but feeds to scroll through, clients for online services, and crappy games.<p>What in the world happened?<p>Edit: Some people are mentioning the quality productivity apps available, particularly on the iPad Pro. I didn't mean to suggest there aren't quality apps, I meant to suggest there aren't <i>interesting</i> apps that turn these devices into wondrous multi-tools. Apps that use the sensors in novel ways to interface with the real world; that make your phone or tablet more of a <i>device</i> and less of a <i>screen</i>.<p>I also want to say I didn't mean to imply that there are no quality games on mobile; it's just hard for them to survive (Apple Arcade is an interesting workaround for this), and also games in general just usually don't have the kind of novelty I'm talking about here.
If you like this kind of behind the scenes, i highly recommend Ken Kocienda's book "Creative Selection" about the development of some parts of the first iPhone.
I wasn't there but I heard from the folks at Netflix who were there that they had a very similar experience getting Netflix to work on a pre-release iPad. Secret dark rooms, bulky cases so you couldn't tell the exact dimensions, cagey Apple reps with NDAs, very little time with the device, etc.
Here’s another post about a similar situation with an app which was on the first iPad’s sent to reporters:<p><pre><code> https://home.theodoregray.com/blog/2014/7/31/how-the-elements-came-to-be
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22775624</code></pre>
The author writes well. Slightly off-topic compared to the iPad piece but the story about his time in a glider in the Yorkshire dales is a cracking read:<p><a href="https://thinkfractional.blog/a-day-to-remember/" rel="nofollow">https://thinkfractional.blog/a-day-to-remember/</a>