$20,000 a day and an escape from alcoholism: the amazing story of iBeer, the “beer for iPhone”

His name probably won’t tell you much, but there was a time—and not just any one—when Steve Sheraton it was the absolute monarch of iPhone apps. In July 2008, with the App Store fresh out of the oven, its iBeer application managed to become a complete success and stand out from the fifty-plus competitors that launched the Apple platform. It was so successful that it remained on the list of most downloaded apps until 2010 and he made $20,000 a day that allowed Sheraton himself and his team to live like authentic Rock stars.

The curious thing is that he achieved it with a proposal that was apparently as simple as it was successful, more similar to a bar joke than to a sophisticated tool for the even more sophisticated Apple mobiles: iBeer, quite simply, pretended to turn iPhones into beer mugs that you could shake and swing. With something from tomorrow you could even give the hit and make your friends believe that you were hitting some good lingotazos. And why beer? Simple: in addition to being very visual, thanks to its shine, texture and foam effect, ideal for taking advantage of iPhone screens, Sheraton itself readily admits that he was an alcoholic at the time.

His story has reported it to Mel Magazine now, more than a decade after the incredible success of iBeer and with Sheraton itself converted into the sector. The developer, who is now 52 years old, lives on a Spanish farm surrounded by his family and fruit trees and dedicated to creating apps designed for illusionists. Nor is this choice fortuitous. Although the anxiety caused by his work even forced him to retire, Sheraton is also a magician.

His experience, of course, seems like a master trick.

From coffee with Palm Pilot to beers with iPhone

Years ago, when “app” still sounded like jargon and was far from being a commonly used concept, Sheraton decided to create a tool that allowed “converting” the monochrome screens of the old Palm Pilot — Palm Inc’s personal assistants — on coffee mugs. It was just a video and it wasn’t very successful, so it ended up in the drawer. When about ten years later he came across the iPhone, however, he saw the perfect opportunity to rescue him.

Apple’s device offered a high-definition display, brilliant colors, and—the real key to iBeer’s realistic effect and subsequent success— an accelerometer which allowed him to play with the position of the device. The problem was that, not working for the Cupertino company, Sheraton couldn’t create software for the iPhone. There was the option to test with modified mobiles and eliminate the manufacturer’s restrictions, true; but that didn’t seem like much of a solution either.

“Hardly anyone was jailbreaking their phones, so it was impossible to reach critical mass. I basically recreated the Palm Pilot E-spresso, where the iPhone shows a video of the drink and you sync your actions to the video.” explica a Mel Magazine. To make the effect more striking decided to change coffee for beer. “I thought I was more attractive, plus I’m an alcoholic [en recuperación]So my life was pretty much drinking back then.”

With nothing to lose, Sheraton recorded himself testing his invention and uploaded a video to YouTube in which, as if it were the best magic trick, he seemed to drink beer from his iPhone. Taste. Well if you liked it. His piece began to accumulate millions of views and he received requests from users interested in doing the same with their iPhone. Sheraton, then around 37 years old and sleeping on a friend’s sofa, decided to take advantage of the opportunity: he dedicated himself to selling the video file, which people had to download through iTunes, for $2.99.

Little by little the snowball got so big that Sheraton found himself winning a whopping two thousand dollars a day. That, of course, attracted the interest of Apple itself, which to prepare for the launch of its App Store in mid-2008 had dedicated itself to finding program developers capable of demonstrating the potential of the iPhone.

With luck on his side and determined not to let the opportunity pass him by, Sheraton set out to prove that his idea had a hook. He drew on his background in film and photography, used looping video and image sequences, and took advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer, the phone’s own motion detector. Thanks to your angle measurement, the application could create the sensation that the beer inside the screen moved—and even emptied—with the oscillations.

At the time of baptizing the app, he decided to resort to a simple formula but with a mark: iBeer.

Developed by the company Hottrix, the application launched on the App Store for the same price as it had worked before: $2.99. The first day I was already at the top from the list, a position from which he did not step down for a year. “In addition to its visual humor and lowest-common-denominator appeal, iBeer was a huge success because it allowed people to show their friends what the phone was capable of. You could show them maps and all that kind of geeky stuff, but iBeer was easier to understand and a fun way to demonstrate the iPhone’s accelerometer and its bright screen with super realistic colors,” Sheraton muses.

The success was brutal. hottrix ended up winning between $10,000 and $20,000 a day and even had to deal with another firm that developed a similar app and sued it for 12.5 million dollars. Beyond allowing the payment of prohibitive rents or the purchase of antiques, success also had its bitter face. “The sudden popularity of the app and that lifestyle, along with all the hype and stress that comes with it, is an avalanche that can destroy people —recognize—. And when you have an alcohol problem, all those problems are exacerbated.”

But everything has its end, you know. There is no empire that lasts a thousand years and iBeer was no exception. In 2010 it faded from the App Store’s hit list as other great apps made their way into it. “A good joke can only be told a certain number of times,” acknowledges Sheraton, which decided to assign the intellectual property rights to Hottrix.

Now, installed on a farm in Spain, with 52 years, enjoying his family away from the spotlight, the fame and the stress that usually accompanies the great technological bells, Sheraton is dedicated to developing applications for magicians, a sector with less anxiety.

“iBeer is the burp that grew bigger than me”, jokes Sheraton in reference to the loud flatulence that the app incorporates, as one more of its tricks to have a good time.

Via | Mel Magazine

Cover Image | Hottrix