The End of an Era
Just over 3 years ago, in late October 2010, I filled out a writer application on iPhone.AppStorm in a bit to start writing about iOS after I’d gotten my first iOS device — a 2nd hand 3rd gen iPod Touch. Josh Johnson, the then-editor, graciously replied, and weeks later my first AppStorm post (oddly enough, about the Bing for iOS app that I can’t remember using once since writing the post) was published. And with that, my AppStorm journey began, one that’d lead me to becoming editor of Web.AppStorm 6 months later and finally going full-time with AppStorm when I additionally became editor of Mac.AppStorm just over a year after that.
Along the way, I managed to write for every AppStorm site other than Android.AppStorm, penning a total of 771 articles (not including sponsorship posts), which averages to very nearly one full-length article per week-day since I first wrote for AppStorm. Most of my articles were around a thousand words long, so I’ve easily published well over 700,000 words for AppStorm (and quite possibly over a million). Far more importantly, I’ve made great friends on the AppStorm team, virtual met dozens of amazing developers, paid off my college loans and gotten married. It’s been one awesome journey.
But sadly, the AppStorm phase of that journey ends here. Collis, Envato’s CEO, penned the last AppStorm post today announcing the site’s closure, something I’ve known was coming now for a short while. It’s a bittersweet moment — we all wished AppStorm could be more, and want it to live on, and yet I’m excited about my future at Envato where I’ll now be working as the new Software Training Editor at Tuts+. And the AppStorm legacy will live on in all of us, as each of us who used to be on the AppStorm team will continue to write about software on our own — expect to see more app reviews on Techinch in the coming weeks and months.
AppStorm all along stood for high-quality independent software reviews that, in the period when the word “app” entered the common vernacular, made it easy for anyone to see if a new app was what they needed in their toolkit. I’m tremendously proud of the work our team did, and will always be proud to say I was the Mac and Web editor at AppStorm. And yet, it was still tough. Writing full-length, high quality, exhaustive reviews is still hard work, and paying for it with banner ads is tougher since every site is competing for quality sponsors and pageviews. Still, I believe the AppStorm team did a great job despite the odds.
That's why it only makes sense to say thank you to the AppStorm editors who took a chance on me when I first started: Josh Johnson, David Appleyard, and Jarel Remick. And then, thank you so much to each of my co-editors and managers at AppStorm: James Cull, Kevin Whipps, Rita El Khoury, Joel Falconer, and Joel Bankhead. Last but not least, thank you to each of the awesome writers I've been privilaged to work with at AppStorm. You guys are awesome, and I'm honored to have worked with each of you.
So now, I’m starting on my new Tuts+ position, one you’ll hear more about soon — and I’m also working on some Techinch.com tweaks that’ll make it better for high quality app reviews. It should be an exciting year!
Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.