I think the big advantage here is reducing the noise and the effort. If I'm going mountain biking this afternoon it only takes me about 10 seconds to let all my mountain biking buddies know that. I don't have to figure out which group I'm sending the invitation to and explain what I'm going to do and where.
Yeah, combined with the above comment, I think this is a good idea. This was actually my initial thought (but with 2 friends) early on, but I wanted to experiment with the idea of only having a paid version because I believe paid apps get more usage (I might be crazy here).
This is a good point and I see the turn off of "pay for this and hope your friends will too." This is the sort of feedback I was looking for - would someone buy this then ask their friends to do the same or is that too much to ask?
I built the backend server with Rails (I knew this already), but the rest was native iOS, so all Xcode. As far as how to architect it, I'm not sure I'd be much help. I basically jotted down what the app would look like and just started with individual features. I did have some help and advice from two iOS devs when it came to questions like, "I want it to do X, what is that called in the iOS world?", so I was better able to search for answers.
Basically, I'd just start with a feature of your app and try to build it. Most likely, someone smarter than both of us has done it and written about it (or at least something similar enough). Once you start writing code, you'll quickly get a feel for how things work and have a better sense of what the overall app should look like. Not sure if that helps any but good luck.
I built this in 37 days with no prior iOS experience (though I did have experience with ruby/rails). I think it could be useful but I'd love some feedback.
As a current Buildium user, I really like the look of this. I'm a small property manager and although I love the convenience of having software like this available I'm curious how your online payments are processed. My biggest complaint with my current program is that it takes 5-7 days for rents to hit my account and then another 5-7 for them to hit the owners' accounts.
I think a great market for a product like this would be real estate agents that do some property management (10-25 units).
Thank you for asking this. I am in a very similar position and just recently threw myself out there for a rails job. After showing off some small and simple projects I've done, I was told that I need to learn more (specifically: TDD). So, I'm reading and trying out everything I can and will repeat the process.