Fifteen years ago, Apple announced the original iPhone. The concept of apps
wasnt clear at the time, and many people thought they were better off
jailbreaking their new smartphones to unlock their potential. When the App
Store launched, a developer created iBeer, a way to drink alcohol from your
iPhone without getting the hangover. Heres the story about the success and
forgetfulness of the app.
Mel Magazine interviewed the magician developer Steve Sheraton. He was the
creator of iBeer, and even before Apple introduced the
<http://9to5mac.com/guides/app-store> App Store, he was already making money
from a video file of a beer that made you feel like drinking from your
iPhone.
He explains that before iBeer, he created the first iteration of the app a
few years before, when he was a magician and created the E-spresso for the
Palm Pilot:
Anything that uses visual effects to cause shock or humor is up my alley. I
built the very first iteration of this mechanism for the Palm Pilot, called
E-spresso, which turned the little monochrome screen into a cup of coffee
but because it didnt have an accelerometer, I just made it a video that you
could time with your drinking motion.
So, when Apple announced the original iPhone, he decided to create a
different version of the E-spresso, but using beer:
Hardly anyone was jailbreaking their phones, so it was impossible to reach
critical mass. So I basically recreated Palm Pilot E-spresso, where the
iPhone shows a video of the drink and you time your actions to match the
video. I figured beer was more attractive than coffee, but also, Im a
[recovering] alcoholic, so my life was pretty much guided by booze back
then, he said.
Sheraton tells that he uploaded a video of himself drinking a beer on his
iPhone to YouTube, and the video blew up. The developer said he was making
around $2,000 a day just by selling the file of the beer video:
I was dead broke, just trying to get by, living on a friends couch, and
suddenly, the video was getting millions of views, which was a lot in 2007.
People were begging me to get this thing on their phones they didnt
even have a word for app yet. (
) It was just a little video file that
people had to hardwire in and download via iTunes, he says. But I probably
made around $2,000 a day for the longest time from that.
When Apple finally decided to launch the App Store with 500 of the best apps
available, the company reached out to the developer to create iBeer for the
iPhone. He says that he made assets from looped videos and image sequences,
as well as used the iPhones accelerometer, to create the app. Sheraton
decided to charge $2.99 from users.
Apart from its visual humor and sort of appealing to the lowest common
denominator, iBeer was a large success because it allowed people to show
their friends what the phone was capable of. You could show them maps and
all these kinda geeky things, but iBeer was easier to understand and a
funny, fun way to show off the iPhones accelerometer and its bright screen
with super lifelike colors.
Mel Magazine continues the interview by saying that iBeer was promoted in
several publications. Sheraton says that during the peak of the app, his
team at Hottrix was making $10,000 to $20,000 a day, but by 2010, the app
faded from the App Stores most downloaded chart, and then he decided to
leave the company and the app for good.
A good joke can only be told so many times. Plus, the mystery of the
technology itself shifted, and peoples tastes changed. It all went
hand-in-hand.
If you want to read the full interview and discover what one of the first
iPhone developers is doing now, make sure to read
<https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/ibeer-app-history> Mel Magazine
<https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/ibeer-app-history> s Quinn Myers
interview here.
By <https://9to5mac.com/author/joseadorno/> José Adorno
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