Interview and Giveaway: Jerry Brace of Awaken
Posted by Marvin Sum on 06/13/07 in Apple
Here at MacApper, we love talking to some of the most creative developers. After all, great applications are what we like best. I recently got the chance to chat with Jerry Brace, the founder of Embraceware and creator of Awaken.
For those who’ve never tried or heard of it, Awaken is an innovative alarm that allows you to both wake-up and fall-asleep to your iTunes music. It also has a fullscreen mode and supports the Apple remote. I started by asking him about his background, and also the significance of yesterday’s iPhone announcement.
Marvin: Jerry, thank you so much for joining me. First of all, I’d like to know what got you into developing Mac applications?
Jerry: Thanks for having me. I’ve been interested in programming since I was 9, when I got a Commodore VIC 20. My neighbor offered it to me before tossing it in the trash. It had no software - just the BASIC language and I had no reference materials or books or an internet to find help.
Basically without knowing what programming was, I guessed at words and eventually figured enough out to use it for math homework, and later made some primitive games.
I continued programming/development on the PC route after that - not ever using a Mac along the way until late 2001 when I got an iBook G3. At the time I poked around in Project Builder and read up on some Cocoa/Objective-C tutorials. I started a bunch of project ideas - not finishing any of them - but learning in the process.
In 2005 I decided to take the hobby seriously and build an app from start to finish. I decided on something I had a use for and hopefully others would as well - that app was Awaken.
Marvin: Awaken is very innovative, in fact I just bought it a few minutes ago! Did you create it to solve a problem, scratch an itch or for some other reason?
Jerry: The response to Awaken has been great from the start. I have to thank the Cocoa Development community for being so helpful to a new comer and answering all of the “noob” questions. We got a nice plug on G4TechTV’s Call for Help with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur which was the coolest thing and gave us a nice boost (check out the video).
Awaken was picked as my first project because it was something that I had a use for and none of the apps available back then had the features that I wanted. I’ve been using it everyday ever since and it’s great to see other people get interested in it and contribute by submitting their feedback/feature ideas.
Marvin: What’s it like being an indie Mac developer? Do you face issues such as annoying customers, piracy, and does Apple provide good developer support?
Jerry: I love being an indie Mac developer. I’ve kept my day job in the meantime but Mac development is by far my favorite.
I have to say that I haven’t found any customers annoying. There have been a few Windows users out there who purchase Awaken after just looking at it and write in to ask why they can’t open the .dmg… Once they find out that it’s a Mac OS X only app - the same question pops up every-time - “Will there be a Windows version?” - I think we all know the answer to that one.
As far as piracy goes - you can’t really avoid it; you just have to accept that a small percentage will go that route. Although I’ve had many people purchase Awaken after they pirated it for a while, they’ve come out and told me that up front. Some people just don’t like the idea of any restriction when testing an app, although Awaken allows a 2 week trial with full functionality.
Apple have been amazing in every case that I needed help and they see issues through until they are resolved. I couldn’t say anything negative about them.
Marvin: What sort of Mac hardware are you running?
Jerry: Right now my main Mac is a MacBook Pro, my wife has the iMac G4, we have a Mac mini connected to the living room setup to serve as a media center and I have my old iBook G3 available for testing the minimum system requirements for Awaken. I test Awaken on all 4 with each update and every new version of iTunes.
Marvin: Quick! Name 5 apps sitting in your dock right now.
Jerry: Damn - my dock is hidden… Did I run out of time? Okay - let’s see - Xcode, Interface Builder, iTunes, Photoshop CS3 and iChat. There ya go…
Marvin: Apple recently announced that the iPhone does 3rd party applications, but in the form of web apps. Will you be actively pursuing this route?
Jerry: Jerry: Of course I’d rather an SDK to build a native app and I’m sure that will come in time. A web solution is the next best thing. My day-job for the past 6 years has been as web developer so this fits in nicely. It’ll be very interesting to see what kinds of applications get developed. We’re ready at Embraceware to get started today.
Marvin: What are your future plans for Embraceware? Will we be seeing any new apps soon?
Jerry: Currently we are adding more languages to Awaken. We added French last week and I’m currently working on Spanish this week - lots more to come. Future plans right now include a new app which is in development, then we’ll be working on our first game. We really can’t wait to do both! After that - more apps and games. We’re here to stay
Marvin: Sounds great! Jerry, thank you so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you.
Jerry: Thanks again for having me.
Thanks to Jerry, MacApper has 5 licenses of Awaken to giveaway. To be considered, you have to answer this question: What is one feature you’d like to see in Awaken? Leave your answer in the comments, the more creative it is, the higher your chances are of winning.
However, we realize that not everyone has the time to think up new ideas, so we’ll award only the top three ideas each with a license; the remaining two licenses will go to two readers who can suggest the best wake-up song. Again, post it in the comments.
The competition will be judged by Jerry himself, plus several of the MacApper staff. You have up till 16th June 18:00 EST to enter. Of course, you’re welcomed to submit both a song and a suggestion.
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