iPyro!, the hottest new app for your iPhone or iPod Touch, lets you release your inner pyromaniac.
iPyro!, which was released by neuralMuse on February 17, lets you choose from a number of images, or allows you to load your own pics from within the app and set them on fire.
So if you’ve ever envisioned torching your ex – without the mess, this is the application for you.
The app was developed by Matt McKinney, manager for a pharmaceutical company, and Michael Muse, who develops mapping software for the military.
So how did two ordinary guys end up developing an iPhone/iPod Touch application?
Matt explains, “I was sitting in bed eating a bowl of cereal, watching TV, and I saw on the news that Apple was getting ready to launch an app store.”
Matt began researching online, and thought the opportunity seemed perfect. “They pretty much eliminated all the traditional barriers to entering into a business” he says.
According to McKinney, Apple provides the software, marketing, and a captive audience of customers who can only purchase applications for their iPhones or iPod Touch through the App Store.
“We could be sitting right beside a company like Sega,” says Matt. “You couldn’t get that kind of shelf space in a different world. They’ve leveled the playing field for guys like us, and allowed us to compete successfully.”
“It just seemed like something right up our alley,” Matt says, continuing, “I instantly thought of Michael – first of all, because I don’t know the first thing about programming, and second of all, because he and I are on that same Beavis and Butthead wavelength – the type of stuff that goes here. It just fit for us.”
Michael (left) and Matt (right) playing with fire
Michael says he hadn’t really paid much attention to the iPhone, but when Matt approached him with some compelling articles about what was happening in the market, the two began brainstorming. “We think our niche is to find things that no one’s ever thought of and to be able to bring them to market a little better,” he says. “We thought with that combination we could go somewhere with it.”
Matt is responsible for the graphics and Michael does the programming, which he says is tough because the language used for iPhone development, Objective-C, is a raw language compared to that of the cushy world of Microsoft vs. net programming, and requires much more ‘heavy lifting’ to get from A to B.
“It is a mo fo to actually get anything done on an iPhone, so pretty much very talented C programmers of old are going to excel at this,” Michael says. “It’s not an easy world to waltz into, but if you have experience you can get some good stuff done.”
Michael says the idea for iPyro! came from a tutorial he found long ago that had a real fire algorithm in it that mathematically calculated what fire would look like in a 2-D simulation. “It just stuck in my mind as something that was really cool, that they just gave away, ya know?”
Transferring that knowledge to the iPhone proved challenging, however, and it took 3 or 4 different approaches to make the application work.
Michael and Matt have other applications in the works and hope to use the proceeds from iPyro! towards the development of an application they believe will dominate the iPhone world. According to Michael, the project is something that’s never been done.
Because they are aware they need someone with more advanced knowledge to pull it off, they have recruited Michael’s co-worker, Tom Kroll, to lend his talent to the effort. Michael calls him a Jedi warrior of programming. “We have a solid team,” he says.
Michael estimates they will need 500 hours of full-time dedicated effort for the project.
View screen shots and video of the iPyro! application below, as well as a link to the iPyro! website.