GottaKickit |
“The functionality is improved, it’s more satisfyingly integrated with the device, and — most importantly — it provides a smoother, less stressful, experience to the user.” — Chris Zamara, GottaKickit lead developer |
Smoking cessation app GottaKickit Now is a veteran of Apple’s App Store. But only with iOS4.0 has a key feature — a notification sound that works even when the device is sleeping — been achievable.
As the operating system in Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch continues to mature, it can make a real difference to the features that software applications — ‘apps’ — are able to deliver. A case in point is the veteran smoking cessation app GottaKickit Now, which debuted under the now-antiquated version 2.2 of the operating system at the beginning of 2009. According to its creators, GottaKickit Now benefits significantly from the recent iOS 4.0 release, which has made possible the full realization of a feature that was a key but unfulfilled element of the app’s original design.
“The whole point of committing to mobile platforms was the concept that user convenience was key to success”, says Nick Sullivan, inventor of GottaKickit. “With regard to portability, for example, we needed a device that fits in your pocket just as easily as the cigarette pack that most smokers keep on hand from morning till night. The iPhone solved that one for us by providing a slick pocket computer as a common consumer item. But there was one problem we couldn’t solve as elegantly as we’d hoped, and that was in the area of notification.”
Sullivan, a Canadian software developer, quit cigarettes himself in 1991 using a primitive version of the GottaKickit software and an all-but-forgotten hand-held computer — the RadioShack PC-6. The computer could calculate and display the time of the next cigarette allowed, but it offered no way to signal the user when the time actually came.
Fast forward to 2009, and the iPhone, for all its sophistication in many areas, was almost as limited with regard to notifying the user. Only when the device was switched on, and then only when GottaKickit was actually running in the iPhone’s one-app-at-a-time operating environment, could it sound a chime to tell the user that it was time to smoke. For most users, the better choice was to check manually. That worked for them as it had for Nick Sullivan back in 1991, but it was clear that the ultimate in convenience was yet to be achieved.
Now it seems they may have licked it at last.
“With the new iOS 4.0 operating system Apple has added features that provide enormous benefits for applications like GottaKickit Now”, says Chris Zamara, GottaKickit lead developer. “By using the new ‘local notifications’ feature in iOS 4.0, we were able to make a new version of GottaKickit Now that is easier to use, and can provide notifications even when your iPhone is in sleep mode. Although we finally managed to work around some of the notification issues pretty well even in the older version of GottaKickit, the new one is better all around. The functionality is improved, it’s more satisfyingly integrated with the device, and — most importantly — it provides a smoother, less stressful, experience to the user.”
The improvement in the usability of the app is considerable. Even if GottaKickit Now is not currently running, or if the device is asleep, you’ll still hear the characteristic chime telling you that it’s time to smoke under the GottaKickit plan; and when you look at the screen, an alert box confirms it. A quick touch then opens the GottaKickit main screen, where you ‘flick the lighter’ as usual to tell the app that you’re lighting up.
Stay with the system, the makers of GottaKickit say, and within a few months you should be ready to leave your cigarettes behind for ever. And then you’ll have space in your pocket for a new gadget.
Users looking for a logical way of quitting smoking cigarettes no longer have to resort to expensive drugs, ‘e-cigarettes’, or other self-defeating nicotine delivery systems. They can choose the scientifically-based solution from GottaKickit.com that costs less than a pack of smokes: GottaKickit Now, in a new version for current models of iPhone and iPod Touch.
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