Welcome to My Dream App. You’re about to be involved in a revolution in the software industry: a no holds barred, totally transparent and ridiculously low barrier version of Macintosh shareware development. Ever wished you had the programming chops to create a killer app? For the first time, you’re going to have a chance to make those dream apps come true.
By entering the contest, your idea will be competing for a slot in the initial round of the 24 best, decided by our three developer judges, Austin Sarner (AppZapper), Jason Harris (ShapeShifter), and Martin Ott (SubEthaEdit). Each of these talented Mac developers will be weeding the coolest ideas out of the bunch, focusing on innovation, marketability, and feasibility of development. Then comes the fun part. These 24 entrants will, over the next five weeks, compete, blog, and further develop their ideas. The catch? The rest of the users on the site will be voting to determine who stays in.
We have high-profile Macintosh developers, well-known tech journalists, popular bloggers, and the best UI designers in the industry lined up to give feedback and help develop your ideas over the five weeks of voting. People like Kevin Rose (Digg), original Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, New York Times columnist and best-selling author David Pogue, and even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. But of course, by the end of it, only three ideas will remain.
This is the best part. Not only will each of the winners receive a prize (ranging from iPod Shuffles to Mac Books), but under development manager John Casasanta’s watch, their ideas will be made into full shareware applications by each of the developer judges and published under My Dream App, with royalties reserved for each winner.
The next couple of weeks are a critical part of the event, and to get the best 24 app ideas possible, we need you to enter. We don’t care if you’ve never bought, or for that matter, downloaded a shareware app before. We don’t even care if you’re a Mac user. What we care about is the quality of the idea. So if you’ve had something stewing in the back of your head for a while, or experience an epiphany sometime during the next couple of weeks, register and enter your idea. We’re looking forward to seeing it.
And, well, if you don’t, go ahead and register anyway. It’s free, it’s going to be a lot of fun, and as you post feedback on blog posts, reply to discussion threads in the forums, and of course, vote on your favorite apps, you will be leaving your mark and helping change the face of software development forever.
Good luck to those who plan to enter!
