Yet, owning an iPhone in those days wasn’t cheap. I’d started building furniture, crafting pieces like end tables and sofa tables that I sold locally, and eventually, I bartered my way into getting my first iPhone. A friend of a friend had one but didn’t seem to fully grasp its potential—or maybe just didn’t have the same enthusiasm. I offered an end table in exchange, and soon enough, I had my own iPhone. Having it felt amazing; it was like holding a gateway to endless possibilities.

Diving into App Development: Humble Beginnings with Soundboards and Pranks

When the App Store launched in 2008, a whole new world opened up. Apps back then were incredibly simple—novelties that used the iPhone’s basic functionalities like the accelerometer or sound. I remember seeing apps that simulated a lightsaber or a glass of beer that “emptied” when you tilted the phone. They were fun but limited, and as I experimented with these early apps, I started thinking, “I could do this.”

I continued experimenting, creating several more button-based soundboard apps with different themes—robots, aliens, funny noises you could play for friends. Then I got a bit more ambitious, learning how to string animations together. One of my next apps, “Stop Dripping,” was designed as a prank. It featured an animated dripping faucet with sound effects that mimicked a leak. You could hide the app and leave it running, confusing people with the sound of a dripping faucet. It was a silly concept, but it taught me how to combine animations and sound in a way that would come in handy later.

Finding Success with Backgrounds by Artists

When the iPad came out, it felt like an invitation to experiment with larger-scale projects. One of my most successful early apps was a background-download app featuring artwork by various artists I knew. At the time, iPhones didn’t allow users to set custom wallpapers, but the iPad did, so I saw an opportunity. I collected high-quality images from different artists, organized them by name, and created an app that let users download these backgrounds. I didn’t fully know what I was doing, but somehow, it worked. The app was downloaded over a thousand times in its first day, with a surprising amount of traction in places like Indonesia. Seeing something I created have that level of success felt exhilarating and motivated me to keep learning.

Creating The Little Lost Dog: A Special Project

All of these experiences—soundboard apps, animations, background collections—were building blocks that would lead me to a more personal project: The Little Lost Dog. This was a story my dad had written for me and my sisters when we were young. It was a poetic tale about a dog we loved who had gone missing, and my dad had written it to help us cope. It was a story about reunion and comfort, illustrated by one of my dad’s friends and created just for us. Years later, I wanted to take everything I’d learned in app development and use it to bring that story to life as an interactive iPad app.

The process of building The Little Lost Dog app felt like the culmination of all my early experiments. I used animations to transition between pages, added sounds to interactive elements, and designed it so that children could tap on different parts of the illustrations to hear audio effects. It was a labor of love, blending everything I’d learned from the soundboard and prank apps with the visual and interactive possibilities of the iPad. And the result was something that wasn’t just another app—it was a digital version of a story that had always been close to my heart. Sharing it with my dad was incredibly special; it was a way to honor the story he had written for us.

Later, I the made this available as an ePub on the Apple Books store. The Little Lost Dog by Bob Trahan

Building Toward a New Career

Creating The Little Lost Dog app was the pinnacle of that period of my life, combining all the different skills and tools I’d picked up along the way. It was also the project that opened doors for me professionally, eventually leading to my first job in tech as an iOS developer at a consulting agency called the Smyth Group. Looking back, I realize how much of that journey was about building on each small experience, experimenting without fully knowing where it would lead, and trusting that each lesson would find its place.

In a way, it was like my earlier experiences in woodworking—stacking small skills, learning through trial and error, and discovering that each project, no matter how humble, was part of a larger story. Entering the digital world wasn’t just about building apps; it was about realizing that every creative effort adds up, every skill has value, and that sometimes, what starts as curiosity can lead to something life-changing.