Origin stories Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Origin Stories: Joel Grasmeyer, Construction Cost Estimator

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Feb 8th, 2013)

I met up with Joel a while ago and we struck up a conversation about estimating construction costs because my father-in-law had been a contractor. He had what looked like a great app for estimating these costs, and it's now available for iPhone, iPad and Mac. In this Origin Stories I talk to ...

Origin Stories: Dave Taylor and Band Together

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Dec 28th, 2012)

Dave Taylor has been building games for a while. You may have enjoyed some of his work on Quake or Doom, in fact. He's also the developer behind the indie game Abuse (for those who remember that one). But lately Taylor has been teaching a new generation of game designers how to make games. We ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Developer Matt Drance

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Dec 7th, 2012)

Matt Drance may have learned Turbo Pascal at age 6, but didn't really dive back into programming until college. Once he did, he found he had a knack for software, which lead him to California during the dot-com boom, then at Apple for a while. Now Matt's an independent iOS developer and ...

Origin Stories: Sonnet Technologies

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Nov 30th, 2012)

Sonnet Technologies has been around for 26 years, and was founded by a former Apple engineer. I've long been a fan of their products, first with a PPC daughtercard upgrade for my 8500 years ago. In this Origin Stories I talk to Greg LaPorte about the history of Sonnet. As a bonus, check out ...

Origin Stories: Tekserve

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Nov 16th, 2012)

Tekserve is a much-beloved Apple repair and sales shop in Manhattan. Our own Mike Rose has been a customer, and profiled the shop a little while ago. In the video below, I speak with Tekserve's CTO, Aaron Freimark about how Tekserve began, and a short history of Manhattan's longest-open Apple ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Retro Dreamer

by Mike Schramm (Nov 9th, 2012)

Today we continue our Origin Stories series by interviewing Gavin Bowman, one of the co-founders of Retro Dreamer, a great iOS indie developer that's released games like Velocispider, Duckers, and most recently, Happy Fall. In the interview, Bowman lets us in on the wild story behind Happy ...

Origin Stories: MacTech Conference

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Oct 26th, 2012)

About the only time you'll see Neil Ticktin sitting down during the MacTech Conference is to eat, very briefly. I managed to get him to sit down long enough to do a quick interview about how the conference began for this week's Origin Stories. ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Bartender

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Oct 5th, 2012)

We wrote up Bartender for Mac as a Friday Favorite some time ago, even though the app isn't out of beta. In this Origin Stories, I speak with Ben Surtees, who has been programming since he was 15. Check out the story behind Bartender in the video below, and the app itself if you're tired of ...

TUAW Origin Stories: PDF Cabinet

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 28th, 2012)

PDF Cabinet is one of many PDF tools on the App Store, but Cabinet features some niceties like real-time collaboration and drag-and-drop document management. It also sports a skeumorphic or "real-world" look, complete with stitched leather, if you're into that sort of thing. In the video ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Cydia

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 21st, 2012)

This was a special treat for me, being a huge fan of anyone who hacks a closed system to make it better. In this Origin Stories we learn how Jay Freeman (saurik) got started in programming and how he came to create Cydia. Cydia is the premiere "alternative" apps venue outside Apple's own App ...

TUAW Origin Stories: EleMints

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 14th, 2012)

The developer of EleMints, Dimitri Bouniol, started programming as a kid and picked up iPhone programming quite fast. While he's moved on from chemistry, find out why he created EleMints in the video below. Origin Stories is a continuing series on TUAW highlighting the purpose behind apps and ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Picky

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Sep 7th, 2012)

Picky used to be Pod+, but since WWDC (when this was filmed), the developer has changed the name. The idea behind Picky is simple: a tool for quickly filtering through artists and songs by viewing them based on how many songs of theirs are on your iOS device. When Pod+ became Picky, the dev who ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Pomodorable

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Aug 24th, 2012)

If you're into time management principles you may have heard of the Pomodoro Technique. At its core is the notion of setting a timer (generally around 25 minutes) and focusing on one task for the duration. If this interests you, Pomodorable is an attractive Mac timer app that adds a few ...

TUAW Origin Stories: Model Release

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 27th, 2012)

There are a few "model release" apps on the market. These apps have boilerplate contracts which allow a model in a photo or video to virtually sign those contracts. Model Release was created by a fashion photographer to meet his needs, however, and as such I think it's one of the best of its ...

TUAW Origin Stories: FlipBook HD

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 13th, 2012)

I'm a bit of an animation fan, both finished works and the tools that make them. iOS devices can come close to the old methods of drawing, moving and capturing animation because they can simulate "touching" the objects and moving them around as your would on a light table. FlipBook HD is as ...