Learn It, Phase 2 (Simple Sample Apps)

Well, I finally finished up Beginning iPhone 4 Development, and I think I'm going to revisit the iOS Game Programming book that I abandoned a few months ago, but in the meantime, I'm going to forge on.

For phase 2 of this Learn It step, I'll be going through the motions with some practice apps - from Guide It all the way through to Send It (if it's good enough) and Tell It (which I'm doing right now).  This should give me some experience to apply to larger projects, and will help me to refine my plan a bit.

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm documenting my plans and progress right here on this blog, and intend to do so throughout the project... not only is this as good a place as any to work out plans and track progress, but I'm hoping it will eventually work toward my Tell It step, by generating at least a small amount of followership and buzz for when I finally publish.

Having thought it over, I've decided to make a stab at 5 or more "practice" apps, and below are the guiding principles for choosing them.  I'm also going to spend some time writing down the guiding principles for the reaminder of this entire project - and that will have some bearing on my sample apps - but I'm not going to wrapped around that just yet.

1. Must be simple and feasible - ideally, these are apps that I'll be able to develop in a few weeks each; of course, I may come back to this later and, realizing that I'm not nearly as smart as I thought, change this to a few months each, but I don't want to get hung up on this step if I can help it.
2. Must have at least one aspect or feature that is marketable, or directly related to a marketable app that I could write in the future - in other words, I want to learn at least one thing on each app that will make me better at writing apps.
3. Must bring something new to the table - even if it's only a small improvement on an existing app idea, I'd like to do something unique with each app, not just re-hash what's already been done.
4. Must embrace the iPhone / iPad format - this will definitely carry over to the larger project to come, and is less important on the practice apps, but I want to make sure that even these simple samples have the look and feel of fairly well-polished iOS application.
5. Finally, when taken as a whole, my sample apps must hit each of the high points that I expect to use once I move on to making something really marketable; I'll have to make some assumptions here, since I don't know exactly what I'll end up pursuing yet, but I've got a pretty good idea that it's likely to be a game with an immersive environment, a catchy appearance (i.e., cute characters), a smooth interface, and motion-detection, to name a few obvious items.

I'm going to give myself some leeway on #4, not wanting to get bogged down (trying to polish a turd, so to speak), and I'm definitely not going to get too wrapped around #5, because I want this project to develop on it's own terms, without me pre-supposing so much that I miss a really good idea or (perhaps worse) take the wrong approach to a good idea.

So with that, I'm going to spend the evening brainstorming some app ideas that are simple, marketable, unique, iPhone-y, and applicable to a bigger future project.  Hopefully I can come up with 10-20 ideas, and pick the best 5, based on those criteria... oh, and reading - I'll be spending the evening doing that, too.