Thoughts on ArkSwitch, my first "popular" app

I think I can safely say that, to date, I've not really released anything that I could consider popular. Things like The Vista Syn are useful tools for a very limited audience. That's exactly what I expected when I released ArkSwitch, a finger-friendly Windows Mobile 6.5.1+ task manager. After all - it's a task manager, which there are plenty of out there; for an unreleased version of WinMo; and it doesn't even have the coolest features of other task managers, like taking over the X button.

Well, that's not entirely how it happened.

I released the app around 11 PM on 2010-01-14 on the xda-developers forum, which is pretty much the best Windows Mobile forum out there, even though it (currently) only has HTC-manufactured devices in its device-specific sections. It got a few downloads and some feedback posts, which I answered. I got a rather odd, generic-looking, PM (private message) the next day, saying that somebody put the app up on their website and that I am "now famous", which I found humorous since it was posted to a website I've never heard of. Regardless, people kept commenting and offering suggestions for ArkSwitch. I released two newer versions with more enhancements. And a few days after that, I decided to do a search for "arkswitch".

I did not expect to find what I did. First of all, it was apparently available on a few mobile warez sites, which is a bit strange, because I released ArkSwitch as freeware. But stranger yet, I found a lot of mentions on various mobile software-related websites! Not only that, but it was in multiple languages, too! I found news entries and forums threads in Russian, Spanish, French, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, and Chinese. There are probably more; I didn't go through too many pages of results.

Frankly, I am rather surprised. I never expected ArkSwitch to take off like that. At time of writing, just the latest version has over 1700 downloads on xda-developers alone, and hundreds more on the various other sites that are hosting it themselves. I am, of course, pleased that people are enjoying my work. This experience only inspires me to do more things like it. I have been meaning to work on a couple more apps, but I've been lazy about it. Maybe now I will actually do it.

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Comments

It ought not to surprise you. :) We all know that there are many task switchers for WM in existence (no names :p). All have problems of some sort. The crucial issue, as with any app, is that even small problems can be magnified by a usage situation. For example, the task manager supplied with a certain Korean-brand WM phone is graphically pretty, but I find it takes too long to start and is too difficult to get to (in the same amount of time, I could have rebooted the phone.) Worse, some other task managers are subject to the same slowdowns as the apps they are meant to be closing. Maybe these issues wouldn't matter in an e-book reader, but given what a task manager is used for, "anything that isn't fast is food". Often, we forget that it's not enough these days to just fulfill a technological function - apps have to make life genuinely easier. The iPhone is a form of rebellion against this. And with apps being easier to get hold of, technological "natural selection" will reward those apps that are well thought through and which continually evolve and improve - yours being a good example. So keep on being inspired!

LF1 (not verified)

February 11, 2010 - 1:06am

Thank you very much!

Arktronic

February 11, 2010 - 10:23am