Since we had a great feedback for our Make Coffee app, we decided to answer most of our users questions. Since we are not native english speakers we apologize for any mistake and we'll be glad to receive your help to improve our list.
Thanks a lot!
1: What is Make Coffee?
Make Coffee is a funny iPhone app. It is a virtual coffee maker, able to simulate the making of espresso, regular and cappuccino coffees. Its goal is to "prove" that the iPhone can do anything, even make coffee, and that is true that "there's an app for just about anything"! Of course this is just for fun!
2: Can it really make coffee?
- No. Not yet at least but... Ok can't tell you anything, this is a classified thing... you will soon know more!
3: Can I virtually drink coffee using the accelerometer?
We are trying to implement an accelerometer based function, but coffee is drunk in cups that are rarely transparent (not like sodas or beer). This means that even if you could virtually drink it, you would never be able to see what's happening to the liquid inside the cup. Moreover, since the espresso and the cappuccino cup have a completely different shape from the one on the iPhone, implementing this function would be virtually impossible or really bad looking. However we are working on finding a turnaround to improve our app in this direction in the very near future.
4: Why is there no interaction with coffee?
This is a bit technical. Make Coffee uses multiple advanced render graphic techniques, called Raytracing and Global Illumination. The iPhone cannot handle such a realistic 3D visual in real time, so is impossible for us to implement a real time interaction. To add more interaction we should use an Open Gl 3D engine but your coffee would not look good at all (no cool glossy reflections, no soft rounded corners, no metal shiny surfaces etc). We don't want people to say, "hey, the iPhone can even make ugly coffee!". We are working on finding a solution that goes beyond the iPhone capabilities. But as you can easily understand it could take us some time. We are already conducting some experiments.
5: Why is coffee prepared so fast in your app?
A coffee needs time to be properly prepared. Even with a modern coffee machine it would take at least twice the time our app takes. Since the goal of our app is to make a joke, the longer time wouldn't do the trick because your "audience" wouldn't be surprised, and would stare in front of your screen losing interest every second. It's a matter of what is called "comic timing" and has nothing to do with pure realism.
6: Why you spell it "Espresso" and not "Expresso"?
The word "Espresso" comes from the italian. What is called espresso in the states, in Italy is simply called "caffé" (coffee), because the "caffé espresso" is considered as the coffee "par excellence". If you ask for a coffee in Italy you will have a strong shot of espresso. If you want a classic espresso you'll have to ask for a "caffé lungo" (long coffee). If you want a regular coffee you will have to ask for a "caffé americano" (american coffee). If you want to try something really hardcore, ask for a "ristretto" (short): beware, it could explode in your mouth!
Moreover, you have to know that in some countries, the word "espresso" is translated into "expresso", countries like France, Spain, Portugal and sometimes even in the Us and Canada. For more information about the etymology of the word "espresso" and its usage we invite you to refer to this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso
