Sitting in extended Spanish, eager to eat lunch, and tired of conjugating verbs, all that’s on students’ mind is how much longer do I have to sit in this classroom. Without the teacher seeing, students slyly check the remaining class time on the MyStaples app. Only five minutes left. Thank god.
Since Staples students use that app multiple times everyday, Peter Sauer ‘16 thought the release of the Apple’s iOS 7 software this month was a good excuse for an app update.
Sauer, the creator of the new app MySHS said he was excited to be the student to update it. Although there are some new changes, the app still serves the same purpose as it did before.
“[The new app] works better with iOS 7. There’s a difference in the way it looks obviously,” said Sauer. “[And] it has a feature which allows you to set reminders for your assignments so it’ll send you a notification when that happens.”
Another addition was the GPA calculator which Mac Barreca ‘16 said was his favorite part of the new app. Sauer’s reasoning for adding that was that “there [are] a whole bunch of [GPA] apps out there but none of them really work for our system so [he] decided [he] might as well, it wasn’t that hard to add in.”
In 2010, Staples student, Eric Lubin created the original MyStaples app. According to Sauer’s Web Applications teacher, Nathaniel Dewey, Sauer talked to Lubin to get the code base from him. Dewey then said, Sauer’s app was his own work separate from the class he teachers. “What we learn in class is web related. It’s not iPhone programming so he’s transferring his skills, but it’s not what I teach.”
While discussing the process of programming, Sauer said, “It was relatively easy to make the app. Xcode, which is the application used to make the apps…has a predefined way to do things, so I just kinda followed that.” He also added that there are a lot of design tips on Apple Developer forums to follow so the apps match the look of the software.
Dewey applauds Sauer for taking on such a difficult project and making it appear so easy. “To out of the box make an app when you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s a challenging process. But to go even further and take someone else’s app and modify it and something especially as complex as the Staples app which communicates with the server and has the times and all of that on it, it’s a very complex process.”
Sauer is pleased with how successful his app has been after it’s release date on September 17th. Always willing to hear suggestions on how to improve the app further, Sauer said, “I’ve had some requests to make a calendar section where you could view everything in a monthly view of all your assignments…I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I’m going to look into it.”
The new app can be downloaded, separately from the old app, in the App Store under the name mySHS.
