14 DAY TRIAL // Cult of Mac has posted an interview with iFart Mobile lead developer Joel Comm over at the Orlando Sentinel. Weighing in on the beginnings of his somewhat controversial app, Comm revealed that he and his team simply let their “inner 12-year-old to express themselves” and iFart was born.
The interviewers, of course, first wanted to hear a description of the iPhone app from the makers’ mouth.
Mr. Comm's answer was, “It’s an electronic entertainment or sound machine. It produces flatulence noises. There are a number you can select from. Each has their own name and you push the button to fart now and it makes the sound. We built in a few other interesting features like the sneak attack which you can set to go off after a certain number of seconds or minutes. And the security fart, which when you put the phone down after five seconds, it goes into alarm mode and if anybody picks the phone up, and it detects motion, then it lets off the designated sound. We also included fart a friend, which lets you e-mail a selected sound to another e-mail address. And then there is the ‘record a fart,’ which lets you add a custom sound to the selection wheel.”
Asked why they actually went and created the app, Joel revealed the obvious – they were pretty darn sure it would sell!
“As soon as Apple announced they would release a software development kit, we knew we had to develop iPhone applications,” he said. “I knew this device would be the definitive handheld computer. I pulled my executive team to the conference room and we went to the whiteboard and started writing down all kinds of ideas. None of us can remember who came up with the idea of a fart machine, but we just cracked up when we thought about it and said ‘we have to develop this.’ That was it. A bunch of grown men allowing their inner 12-year-old to express themselves. We knew it would sell,” Comm concluded.
According to the report, iFart has sold more than 350,000 copies to this day. The app is priced at $0.99. It was also revealed that, at one point in time, iFart was the most downloaded app of the week.