iOS developer and designer writing about indie app development. Doing it from Ottawa, Canada.
Hi there! It’s been a while since I wrote anything. There are reasons for that, but they’re all rather nebulous and hard to pin down. That’s sort of what this article is about. It’s also a retrospective of sorts; a look back at the last year and a bit, which has been wacky and wonderful and horrible all at once. It’s about some career decisions I’ve made in that timespan, and how those have…
It’s been about a month since the initial release of Oh Bother , and after a surprisingly action-packed rollercoaster of post-launch buzz, the dust has finally settled. Last time round , I wrote about the development and launch of the app, and touched a little bit on how, by my modest standards, the whole thing felt like a success. Today, I thought I’d tell the more detailed story of how the app,…
On May 14th, I launched Oh Bother — my first independent app in 7 years. I wrote a bit about my decision to build Oh Bother here , but now that my little app is actually out in the world, trying to make a name for itself, I thought it’d be fun to reflect on the whole process and on what comes next. Here we go! The timeline April 2 Initial commit! Had the idea, had the name, and had big ambitions…
Hi! 👋 It’s been a little while since I last wrote something on the ol’ blog. I’ve been hard at work on a new project over the past few weeks — the subject of this article, as it happens — and much to my everlasting chagrin, there’s only so much time in a day. So, the blog had to be put on hold for a few weeks. The good news is that I’ve now got lots to catch up on here! So, what have I been up…
Putting earth-shaking world news aside for a moment: the BIG news in our little iOS developer bubble over the past couple weeks has been the official addition of mouse and trackpad support in iPadOS 13.4. For various reasons, I think most of us love the idea of being able to use our iPad as a “computer” — with Xcode for iPadOS being the holy grail we’re all longing for — and this is a big step in…
I’ll be honest: I didn’t accomplish a whole lot this week. As of right now, COVID-19 appears to be more or less causing the world to fall apart in a way that most of us have never really seen. It’s, uh…not great! So it’s been genuinely tough to focus on much of anything. On the face of it, my week shouldn’t have been particularly disrupted by any of this — I work from home every day anyways, and…
Has this ever happened to you? You’re an iOS developer. Maybe you’ve been doing it for a while, or maybe you’re new to the scene. Maybe you prefer to think of yourself as an “iOS engineer,” because it sounds better and no one seems to agree on whether there’s a difference. Whatever the situation: you’re feeling restless. You’ve worked on interesting projects before — successful ones, even — and…
This week, I’m doing a set of 3 short articles that explore some more advanced, concrete ideas around custom transitions. I give some additional context in the first one, so you may want to take a gander if you haven’t already: Mastering view controller transitions, part 1: make them reusable Mastering view controller transitions, part 2: make them feel natural As a quick refresher, here’s an…
This week, I’m doing a set of 3 short articles that explore some more advanced, concrete ideas around custom transitions. I give some additional context in the first one, so you may want to take a gander if you haven’t already: Mastering view controller transitions, part 1: make them reusable As a quick refresher, here’s an example of the transitions we introduced in the first article, and that…
Last week, I wrote a primer on how custom view controller transitions actually work. If you missed it and are relatively new to this stuff, or want a quick refresher, you might want to check it out here . This week, I’m doing a set of 3 short articles that explore some more advanced, concrete ideas around custom transitions. This was originally intended to be one relatively straightforward…
In the first few steps of this series, we’ve talked a bit about the idea that the success of any app — and especially a small indie project — often hinges on the quality of execution. An app that is thoughtfully designed and makes obvious the amount of care and polish that went into building it likely stands a much better chance of capturing some real interest than one that feels same-y or slapped…
We’ve got a great little idea for an app . Our project is all set up and ready to go . Get excited: the time has finally come to start building this thing! …So where do we start? This is actually kind of a tricky question. Here are a few options that might spring to mind: We could just sort of…start from the beginning. We could simply imagine the first thing a user will encounter — account…
Last week, we figured out what it is we actually want to build . Now, armed with a killer idea, we’ve got one more step to take before we can really start thwacking away at the keyboard and creating our indie masterpiece. There’s a great concept in cooking called mise en place , which basically says that it’s crucial to have all the required tools and ingredients neatly laid out in your workspace…
Back in the early days of the App Store, a prevailing sense quickly grew that all you needed to become an overnight success was a great new idea for an app. I’m not sure that was ever really true, but certainly, it was easier then to stand out on the strength of a unique idea, and build a successful app around it, than it is today. I think that idea of the App Store as a get-rich-quick machine…
I’ve got a big idea for a series of articles I’d like to start writing. On its surface, the pitch is simple: I’m going to show you, step by step, how to build a successful app as an independent app developer. As you can see from this map, this is going to be quite easy. … The reality, of course, is that I have absolutely no idea how to build a successful indie app. I’ve never done it, and…