Thanks for all the comments everyone. I was the editor who commissioned the piece. To give some context the writer had about 12 days to write the article. An impartial observer (not me obviously) might get the impression that the people offering up advice here might need to take themselves a little less seriously. Have a lovely day and thanks for reading and commenting.
To give some context, most of the people on this site are professional software developers. i.e., my full-time job is writing iPhone apps, so I've been thinking about that process for the last 2-3 years.
For me personally, 75% of my working hours is spent talking to people who have an app idea and don't have the funds to execute, and trying to separate those from paying clients. If I could cut that number in half, I would literally be twice as productive. It would be like adding 3 hours to every workday, or producing an additional ten apps a year.
Fair enough. This is hackernews. I've passed the link to this comment thread along to the writer and we'll slowly educate the client base, one at a time.
On the contrary, we love the article. I'm not an iOS developer, but to me the obvious steps are to start from "figure out the development environment". Apparently to an outsider, finding a consultant to do it is about the only option, and he doesn't even have the resources or background to communicate effectively with developers. I guess I'm used to working with people who, though they may never have written a line of code in their life, are familiar with the process at a high level.
