8 ms·

My first attempt at iOS app development

236 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

earthnail 1y ago
The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair pricing model won’t even pay a solo dev. Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard, and just having a good product is definitely not enough. Sorry to sound so pessimistic; I just want to emphasise that monetisation and marketing is at least as important on iOS as product development.
- Spivak 1y ago
  But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for an app that's probably very low maintenance. Certainly not bad for three days work.
  - amelius 1y ago
    How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For three days work, that's terrible.
    - vunderba 1y ago
      Made even worse by the fact that the apple developer membership costs 99 USD per year...
      - jll29 1y ago
        So Apple gets $99/year PLUS 30% app revenue share? So at a $2.99 "fair" price point as mentioned in the post, how many copies does he have to sell to break even (assuming 4 days of development priced at $2,500/day contractor rate)? (1 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (100 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (1000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (14574 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) = 0.78 The answer is => 14,574 downloads would give him $0.78 profit, before taxes. (In that time, he would have earned more than $13,000 for Apple.)
        sokoloff 1y ago
        I thought it was 15% for devs selling under $1M per year. It also seems like a super-weird analysis angle to both pay yourself a (very generous) full day rate AND then expect upside on top of that and conclude that making just the $10K for 4 days’ work is somehow a loss for the solo entrepreneur.
        4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
        I think he is implying that that is neutral, not a loss. It is opportunity cost.
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Is the opportunity cost of someone who has never programmed an iOS app before $2500/day as an iOS dev? Maybe in some analyses, but that’s not where I’d estimate it. If they’re turning down other $300/hr work, sure, but that’s not how I read the account.
        ricardobeat 1y ago
        On what planet do iOS contractors make $2500/day? That aside, 1) the author is not an experienced iOS dev 2) hourly rates != cost, and 3) you can certainly get the same app built for under $1000 by a freelancer. You also seem to have accidentally used a $0.99 price instead of $2.99. Real break-even would be closer to 1k-2k sales.
        Spivak 1y ago
        We're talking about an app made as a weekend project to solve a problem the developer themselves has. Most normal humans would count their time as being free. I pity the person who considers the economic value and tax implications of their leisure time projects. So the calculation is just how many downloads do they need to make up for the $99 developer fee which breaks even at 47 downloads at 30% or 38 at 15%. Definitely not unrealistic.
        matwood 1y ago
- neepi 1y ago
  I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so didn’t bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment. I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full time or do a shitty job. I can’t win either way without incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Did the idea really require being an app? Could it have been a website/webapp instead?
    - neepi 1y ago
      It could but I respect my potential userbase too much to make it more convenient for me and less convenient for them.
    - adastra22 1y ago
      How do you do photo deduplication on a website?
      - dylan604 1y ago
        WASM
        adastra22 1y ago
        Photos are on device.
    - criddell 1y ago
      Do you think it’s easier to make a living creating web apps?
      - dylan604 1y ago
        There’s no code signing process or update review. There’s no $99/year registration fee for the privilege to have your code signed. There’s no up to -30% hit on your fees. So yeah, there’s an easier way of avoiding the Apple specific pain points. If you think that I felt it would be easier to program the actual app, then you’re clearly just trying to be a hostile commenter and insinuating something about me.
- heliographe 1y ago
  Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so if you’re not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model. I’ve been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years now (https://heliographe.studio https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable. A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some money in the App Store) is reading: - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you’re an already recognized product. I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0 days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you just have to work on your conversion rate. - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look for the kind of people who might be interested in your product. The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case, choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good results (for now...) - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc. You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99) - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots, descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what seems to work based on their data. The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of your product than you put in the design & development of it. It's a grind for sure — and don't count on Apple to help you in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small indies doing interesting things). Good luck! Eager to try your app :)
  - vachina 1y ago
- bredren 1y ago
  The author mentions code signing as a tricky ecosystem thing. Well, wait until the app has to get new assets to be resubmitted with bug fixes for new versions of iOS. And if they don’t keep updating it, it will stop working and the buy it for life idea commits the dev to maintenance that isn’t paid for either upfront or through subscription. There are folks who make and give away a lot but some learn their lesson quickly and find ways to get people to put a reasonable amount of recurring payment into the app to make it even remotely sustainable beyond a hobby. FWIW, AI may make this cost so much lower that this kind of thing can make sense now. Something to consider, I suppose.
  - x0x0 1y ago
    Or just developing in Apple's crappy ecosystem. eg Apple publishes a new ios rev; debugging on it requires upgrading xcode; and that requires updating your OS.. Good thing you don't mind wasting a full day or more reinstalling every other devtool you may happen to use. Or xcode just doesn't connect to your ios device because reasons. (The reason is apple writes shoddy slapdash software because monopoly.) So now you're spending another $1500+ on a studio so you can do all this in VMs and see how bad the damage will be to avoid blowing up your main devbox. etc etc.
    - F7F7F7 1y ago
      This sounds like Python development....and React.....and Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3? Or people who invest time in Clojure? Were you a fan of the MEAN stack a decade ago? Build something on it? How's that app doing? What you're describing is not unique to Apple. It's a regular occurrence for anyone who's not writing for a enterprise SAAS company with a largely legacy codebase and a dozen DevOps guys mostly obscuring that stuff from you.
      - tonyhart7 1y ago
        well atleast those react,angular apps still works ios app on apple store??? not so much
      - ClumsyPilot 1y ago
- ensignavenger 1y ago
  At 3 days to develop, the author could make 100 of these apps a year. Of course, they will probably spend additional time developing and fixing bugs, IF the app gets any traction. And if it becomes something more substantial, they could up the price or release a preium in app purchase to upgrade with new features.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- 9d 1y ago
  Pure iOS apps stopped being profitable in 2009 or so.
- MBCook 1y ago
  It’s not just that. Companies who are anywhere between unethical and outright complete scams have discovered how incredibly easy it is to get people to sign up for a free trial for something that milks them of tons of money they don’t realize. Despite the fact that Apple tells you when your subscription will renew it doesn’t seem to help enough people. So they buy a scientific calculator app because they don’t realize that it’s built into the one on the phone and then end up paying five dollars a week for it. And even if they find out after the first renewal that means the app developer got five dollars (minus fees). There’s tons of subscriptions out there that are just completely out of whack with their prices. And Apple just doesn’t seem to care.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Isn't this why most apps are a front end for a data hoovering process so that they can monetize that as well as using ads?
- fractallyte 1y ago
  I released my game for free on the App Store. 1.5 years of effort - for free? Well, it's a calling card that I can flaunt whenever needed. So far, it's helped me land two jobs, and I can confidently leverage it in future too. I never bothered with rankings or marketing, since I can send out the link to anyone. So, that's how I get value out of the App Store.
- nikolayasdf123 1y ago
  true to that. App Store is flooded with junk. it is hard to get to users even with legit free good app. and marketing is unbelievably expensive. users trust into random apps on App Store is very low too. getting iOS apps to work is very very hard.
- nikolayasdf123 1y ago
  it should go without saying that development cost, and rest of operational cost (design, legal, etc.) should be considered as zero. meaning do yourself with no pay. with all money goes into marketing. only then there is slight hope to break even.
- criddell 1y ago
  > Making reasonable money on iOS is hard It’s also difficult to be a solo dev on Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, the web, etc… The safest way is to work as a developer for a company that will pay you to do it.
kaptainscarlet 1y ago
With the recent Expo SDK 53 update that introduced a slew of breaking changes, I've been contemplating switching my app to native. I could perhaps vibe code features on both android and iOS and ship features as fast as crossplatform react native devs.
- tcoff91 1y ago
  Could you share which issues you had with the upgrade to 53? I just recently migrated my employer’s app to sdk 52. We are still on legacy arch for now. I’d love to know more about what I’m in for when it comes to upgrading to 53.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    The switch to the new rendering architecture is really massive, a lot of libraries have subtle bugs that are not yet fixed.
    - tcoff91 1y ago
      Oh yeah for sure. Not going to adopt new architecture yet. It’s a little rough of a transition but once we get through I do believe it will be a game changer for react native. Until reanimated v4 is dialed in I’m staying away. Have you tried turning off new arch for now?
      - cyberax 1y ago
        Yes, but we found plenty of bugs. Fixed some (e.g. in TrueSheet). It is drastically faster, but I won't call it a "game changer". It's great for us because we have native code modules, and seamless Turbo Modules are nice (you _can_ use them with the old arch, but it requires some jumping through hoops). As for reanimated, I would just stay away from it entirely. Way too many layering violations for my taste.
        tcoff91 1y ago
RASBR89 1y ago
The Photos app has a delicates option - not that I want to piss on your parade but the functionality is already present? Or am I missing something?
- tabarnacle 1y ago
  Didn’t realize this existed, nice.
  - m3kw9 1y ago
    This is how a lot of apps make money. People don’t know something free existed. It’s a lot of marketing and is super important
- radicality 1y ago
  Except you don’t seem to be able to filter by actual duplicates, it shows you both exact dupes and visually similar matches
  - antgiant 1y ago
    Confusingly this does exist but is super weird to get to. Select some photos and then select merge. The pop up that follows will let you merge only the exact duplicates. So you can first merge all your exact duplicates, and then when that is done manually review the visually similar matches.
sebasvisser 1y ago
Funny how the same desire got both of us into building more or less the same app: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199 https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199 Yours looks sleeker though. One thing I learned quickly after having friends use it..other people want different things and catering to more than just myself takes soooo much time. So I stick to building what I want and releasing it for free.
ryandrake 1y ago
Coming from embedded development, where it's mostly crappy SOC vendors providing a barely-working SDK and toolchain they cobbled together from an ancient version of gcc, moving to iOS development / Xcode was in most aspects a breath of fresh air. It does have its annoyances, though. Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry... And the developer program fee is a bummer: It means you can't sustainably release free apps unless you're willing to just ignore that you're burning $100 a year forever. Other frustrations: Apple makes it difficult to maintain support for older devices. They insist you keep updating your tools, but the updated tools tend to drop support for older SDKs and devices. You have to kind of go out of your way to keep your app targeting them. You can see how this plays out by getting a second hand iPhone 7 today and go to the AppStore looking for apps. It will be very difficult to find an app that will run on it. This phone is not that old, but the ecosystem abandons you pretty quickly. They also deprecate things like crazy, so every time you update your tools, you get more warnings about APIs Apple would rather you stop using. It's tough to just write an app once in 2016 and keep it limping along forever. They clearly favor developers who are 1. doing it for a living, 2. targeting latest and greatest devices, 3. updating their app and their tools frequently, and 4. don't mind doing surgery every year to move away from deprecated stuff.
- peterburkimsher 1y ago
  The solution for code signing is coming: through jailbreaks or appdb.to, it's possible to sideload apps without the official app store process. The EU even mandated that there should be other app stores. Building for older models is possible using a collection of virtual machines, or even a multi-boot old laptop.
  - threeseed 1y ago
    a) You still need to code sign on alternative app stores. b) All of your users are still going come through the Apple one.
    - ensignavenger 1y ago
      Reg B... Will they? From what almost everyone I have heard from says, most of their users come thru their own marketing efforts, not Apples.
jll29 1y ago
The Apple ecosystem is polished, but controlling and unforgiving. Tool upgrades are enforced and so are regular hardware upgrades, whether you like it or not. That's hardware that is still working, which Appled decides you will no longer be able to use some software on, just because. And after Apple sells you a computer and developer subscription, it makes you work for them on their share of any app sale. I like some aspects of Apple's hardware, and I liked their older OS and software (when it became preemtive, but UX was more simple and systematic than now), but overall, I prefer open ecosystems.
deverman 1y ago
Congrats on building with Swift!
mvkel 1y ago
A great article that stops right where iOS development becomes a hassle: actually getting it published in the App Store.
rcarmo 1y ago
The author hasn’t yet realized that will need to re-download their app to the phone once a week even if they don’t make any changes, which is the main reason I just don’t bother with iOS development. Not being able to easily maintain apps on hardware I own and having to check in with Apple every few days is insane, and the workarounds are ridiculous and unwieldy. It’s the principle of the thing that gets to me.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  Yes I don’t mind the App Store fee but the fact I can’t write my own apps for my own phone is insanity. I’d write little apps for myself otherwise. Apple do not care about such things of course. There is no modern HyperCard
Gisbitus 1y ago
This post was a wake up call. Last year I spent a week learning Swift the "old fashioned way" following Apple's tutorials, with not much to show for it when I was done. Even though I use AI for coding daily, since XCode doesn't natively support it, I just decided to not use it. Seeing how far you went in just a couple of days, I realize now how much I missed out. Congrats on the app!
nottorp 1y ago
> I'm about 90% done, I think. ... and the rest will take the other 90% of the time :)
monodot 1y ago
Fascinated to read this post as I’m doing almost exactly the same thing. Just started using Xcode for the first time, a month ago. I’m not inexperienced with software development, but having to rely mostly on Xcode, Apple’s Developer documentation, information embedded inside WWDC videos, and random forum posts, has been a pretty rough experience. So Claude has been a massive help, to get to a working app quickly. I am using it in a similar style to the author. Discuss in the UI, try really hard to cherry-pick from the code it generates, while trying to understand what it’s doing. Claude is not clever enough to realise it’s selling you out-of-date APIs, so i feel I need to be super vigilant, which chimes with what folk are saying here about the iOS upgrade treadmill. I’ve supplemented with a couple of technical ebooks as backup. But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! (In my use case it needs to be an app not a PWA because it needs to integrate with device APIs.)
- dirkc 1y ago
  > But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! It's great that you did this, kudos to you! At the same time it is a little sad to read a statement like this. It used to be so natural for anyone doing software development to write things that improves their lives running on their own devices. Mobile has made this so much more tedious and then you need to ask for permission if you want to share the app. Last year I also launched my own app on the app store [1], and briefly reflected on the experience [2]. [1] - https://dingdongdoorbell.com/ https://dingdongdoorbell.com/ [2] - https://www.thebacklog.net/2024/10/22/building-and-releasing-a-mobile-app/ https://www.thebacklog.net/2024/10/22/building-and-releasing...
jacobp100 1y ago
I do iOS dev as a side-hobby too (https://jacobdoescode.com/ https://jacobdoescode.com/) People are right it isn’t anywhere near a salary, but I have fun and it has opened job opportunities too For marketing, I found /r/Apple very receptive to self promotion posts - just make sure you meet the criteria. You can also do a discount period and advertise on /r/AppHookup. Last Black Friday I reduced a $2 to 29c (lowest allowed price) and made just shy of $500, and it boosted my place in the store search Best of luck!
- cAtte_ 1y ago
  what a beautiful website
w10-1 1y ago
The OP makes a surprising amount of progress. As other comments note, it's easy to get caught in the weeds of Apple API's and tooling, but AFAICT they generally do as good as possible at the hard problem of compatibility. The worse problem is that you will get blocked after significant investment. It's because of Apple's scale and focus. They have millions of developers, but only about a thousand really significant ones driving the latest APIs. To avoid delay and noise, Apple ships and demos the happy path, but fails to warn about all the surrounding pitfalls. You will hit one, sooner or later. And any pitfall can be a complete blocker. Unlike web, enterprise, or back-end work, where Java, python, and javascript/typescript libraries and apps are readily available in open-source, bugs present as inscrutable binary blobs that are mostly ignored in the black hole of feedback assistant unless you have some real pull. It's easy to get started as a solo, but to manage the infinite space of mine fields, you'd need to be in a large organization where people have learned where not to step.
sltr 1y ago
> haven't paid for the Apple Developer Program yet Then you aren't even half done. You still have to undergo the memorable experience of code sign and app store review. First wrote iOS apps in 2010. Loathed it then, loathed it now. I shun these devices for which I can't write my own software without permission.
- st3fan 1y ago
  Code signing has been a non issue for years now. It was a complete horror show when we started 15 years ago but in today's Xcode it all just works out of the box.
  - gregoriol 1y ago
    Oh while a single simple setup is easier, it's still a horror show as soon as you need entitlements, more build environments, more devices (wtf does Apple makes us wait 72 hours to add one?!), ... Apple caters to kids starting development these days, not enterprise developers.
- nkotov 1y ago
  Even getting in the program takes time. I signed up on Thursday, had to send a ton of documents, and for organizations, you need a DUNS number. Whole process kind of sucks currently.
bob1029 1y ago
For B2B scenarios, I was able to wiggle my way out of learning the iOS ecosystem by using PWAs in Safari. If you have access to a mobile device management system, it's trivial to push "apps" to the Home Screen of each device using this technique. For B2C, I don't have any good alternative. You're going to need to be in the App Store.
andrewmcwatters 1y ago
The App Store does great business, but its customers aren't the people downloading the apps, their real customers are the developers. It's incidental that the largest businesses in the world have apps on the Apple App Store, but it's not because the App Store is a great platform. If no one is selling annual $100/yr apps, but Apple is charging you that much, you're the customer. There is absolutely no world where polished software that you can own is $2.99, sorry folks. Coffee costs more.
thenthenthen 1y ago
Back in the day, 2017? I made a silly app, not wanting to pay the premium, I tried to release it on the Bigboss jailbreak repo (cydia). Their checks where more ruthless than the Appstore. That was my first and final attempt.
QuelqueChose 1y ago
Is there a repo link to checkout and explore how this all came together? Since using Cursor, been dabbling about getting back into coding areas I've always had some interest in in the past but never developed into a hobby project; Swift is at the top of list.

236 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair pricing model won’t even pay a solo dev. Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard, and just having a good product is definitely not enough. Sorry to sound so pessimistic; I just want to emphasise that monetisation and marketing is at least as important on iOS as product development.

Spivak 1y ago
But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for an app that's probably very low maintenance. Certainly not bad for three days work.
- amelius 1y ago
  How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For three days work, that's terrible.
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Made even worse by the fact that the apple developer membership costs 99 USD per year...
    - jll29 1y ago
      So Apple gets $99/year PLUS 30% app revenue share? So at a $2.99 "fair" price point as mentioned in the post, how many copies does he have to sell to break even (assuming 4 days of development priced at $2,500/day contractor rate)? (1 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (100 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (1000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (14574 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) = 0.78 The answer is => 14,574 downloads would give him $0.78 profit, before taxes. (In that time, he would have earned more than $13,000 for Apple.)
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        I thought it was 15% for devs selling under $1M per year. It also seems like a super-weird analysis angle to both pay yourself a (very generous) full day rate AND then expect upside on top of that and conclude that making just the $10K for 4 days’ work is somehow a loss for the solo entrepreneur.
        4hg4ufxhy 1y ago
        I think he is implying that that is neutral, not a loss. It is opportunity cost.
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Is the opportunity cost of someone who has never programmed an iOS app before $2500/day as an iOS dev? Maybe in some analyses, but that’s not where I’d estimate it. If they’re turning down other $300/hr work, sure, but that’s not how I read the account.
      - ricardobeat 1y ago
        On what planet do iOS contractors make $2500/day? That aside, 1) the author is not an experienced iOS dev 2) hourly rates != cost, and 3) you can certainly get the same app built for under $1000 by a freelancer. You also seem to have accidentally used a $0.99 price instead of $2.99. Real break-even would be closer to 1k-2k sales.
      - Spivak 1y ago
        We're talking about an app made as a weekend project to solve a problem the developer themselves has. Most normal humans would count their time as being free. I pity the person who considers the economic value and tax implications of their leisure time projects. So the calculation is just how many downloads do they need to make up for the $99 developer fee which breaks even at 47 downloads at 30% or 38 at 15%. Definitely not unrealistic.
        matwood 1y ago
neepi 1y ago
I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so didn’t bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment. I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full time or do a shitty job. I can’t win either way without incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Did the idea really require being an app? Could it have been a website/webapp instead?
  - neepi 1y ago
    It could but I respect my potential userbase too much to make it more convenient for me and less convenient for them.
  - adastra22 1y ago
    How do you do photo deduplication on a website?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      WASM
      - adastra22 1y ago
        Photos are on device.
  - criddell 1y ago
    Do you think it’s easier to make a living creating web apps?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      There’s no code signing process or update review. There’s no $99/year registration fee for the privilege to have your code signed. There’s no up to -30% hit on your fees. So yeah, there’s an easier way of avoiding the Apple specific pain points. If you think that I felt it would be easier to program the actual app, then you’re clearly just trying to be a hostile commenter and insinuating something about me.
heliographe 1y ago
Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so if you’re not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model. I’ve been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years now (https://heliographe.studio https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable. A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some money in the App Store) is reading: - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you’re an already recognized product. I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0 days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you just have to work on your conversion rate. - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look for the kind of people who might be interested in your product. The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case, choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good results (for now...) - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc. You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99) - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots, descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what seems to work based on their data. The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of your product than you put in the design & development of it. It's a grind for sure — and don't count on Apple to help you in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small indies doing interesting things). Good luck! Eager to try your app :)
- vachina 1y ago
bredren 1y ago
The author mentions code signing as a tricky ecosystem thing. Well, wait until the app has to get new assets to be resubmitted with bug fixes for new versions of iOS. And if they don’t keep updating it, it will stop working and the buy it for life idea commits the dev to maintenance that isn’t paid for either upfront or through subscription. There are folks who make and give away a lot but some learn their lesson quickly and find ways to get people to put a reasonable amount of recurring payment into the app to make it even remotely sustainable beyond a hobby. FWIW, AI may make this cost so much lower that this kind of thing can make sense now. Something to consider, I suppose.
- x0x0 1y ago
  Or just developing in Apple's crappy ecosystem. eg Apple publishes a new ios rev; debugging on it requires upgrading xcode; and that requires updating your OS.. Good thing you don't mind wasting a full day or more reinstalling every other devtool you may happen to use. Or xcode just doesn't connect to your ios device because reasons. (The reason is apple writes shoddy slapdash software because monopoly.) So now you're spending another $1500+ on a studio so you can do all this in VMs and see how bad the damage will be to avoid blowing up your main devbox. etc etc.
  - F7F7F7 1y ago
    This sounds like Python development....and React.....and Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3? Or people who invest time in Clojure? Were you a fan of the MEAN stack a decade ago? Build something on it? How's that app doing? What you're describing is not unique to Apple. It's a regular occurrence for anyone who's not writing for a enterprise SAAS company with a largely legacy codebase and a dozen DevOps guys mostly obscuring that stuff from you.
    - tonyhart7 1y ago
      well atleast those react,angular apps still works ios app on apple store??? not so much
    - ClumsyPilot 1y ago
ensignavenger 1y ago
At 3 days to develop, the author could make 100 of these apps a year. Of course, they will probably spend additional time developing and fixing bugs, IF the app gets any traction. And if it becomes something more substantial, they could up the price or release a preium in app purchase to upgrade with new features.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
9d 1y ago
Pure iOS apps stopped being profitable in 2009 or so.
MBCook 1y ago
It’s not just that. Companies who are anywhere between unethical and outright complete scams have discovered how incredibly easy it is to get people to sign up for a free trial for something that milks them of tons of money they don’t realize. Despite the fact that Apple tells you when your subscription will renew it doesn’t seem to help enough people. So they buy a scientific calculator app because they don’t realize that it’s built into the one on the phone and then end up paying five dollars a week for it. And even if they find out after the first renewal that means the app developer got five dollars (minus fees). There’s tons of subscriptions out there that are just completely out of whack with their prices. And Apple just doesn’t seem to care.
dylan604 1y ago
Isn't this why most apps are a front end for a data hoovering process so that they can monetize that as well as using ads?
fractallyte 1y ago
I released my game for free on the App Store. 1.5 years of effort - for free? Well, it's a calling card that I can flaunt whenever needed. So far, it's helped me land two jobs, and I can confidently leverage it in future too. I never bothered with rankings or marketing, since I can send out the link to anyone. So, that's how I get value out of the App Store.
nikolayasdf123 1y ago
true to that. App Store is flooded with junk. it is hard to get to users even with legit free good app. and marketing is unbelievably expensive. users trust into random apps on App Store is very low too. getting iOS apps to work is very very hard.
nikolayasdf123 1y ago
it should go without saying that development cost, and rest of operational cost (design, legal, etc.) should be considered as zero. meaning do yourself with no pay. with all money goes into marketing. only then there is slight hope to break even.
criddell 1y ago
> Making reasonable money on iOS is hard It’s also difficult to be a solo dev on Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, the web, etc… The safest way is to work as a developer for a company that will pay you to do it.

kaptainscarlet 1y ago

With the recent Expo SDK 53 update that introduced a slew of breaking changes, I've been contemplating switching my app to native. I could perhaps vibe code features on both android and iOS and ship features as fast as crossplatform react native devs.

tcoff91 1y ago
Could you share which issues you had with the upgrade to 53? I just recently migrated my employer’s app to sdk 52. We are still on legacy arch for now. I’d love to know more about what I’m in for when it comes to upgrading to 53.
- cyberax 1y ago
  The switch to the new rendering architecture is really massive, a lot of libraries have subtle bugs that are not yet fixed.
  - tcoff91 1y ago
    Oh yeah for sure. Not going to adopt new architecture yet. It’s a little rough of a transition but once we get through I do believe it will be a game changer for react native. Until reanimated v4 is dialed in I’m staying away. Have you tried turning off new arch for now?
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Yes, but we found plenty of bugs. Fixed some (e.g. in TrueSheet). It is drastically faster, but I won't call it a "game changer". It's great for us because we have native code modules, and seamless Turbo Modules are nice (you _can_ use them with the old arch, but it requires some jumping through hoops). As for reanimated, I would just stay away from it entirely. Way too many layering violations for my taste.
      - tcoff91 1y ago

RASBR89 1y ago

The Photos app has a delicates option - not that I want to piss on your parade but the functionality is already present? Or am I missing something?

tabarnacle 1y ago
Didn’t realize this existed, nice.
- m3kw9 1y ago
  This is how a lot of apps make money. People don’t know something free existed. It’s a lot of marketing and is super important
radicality 1y ago
Except you don’t seem to be able to filter by actual duplicates, it shows you both exact dupes and visually similar matches
- antgiant 1y ago
  Confusingly this does exist but is super weird to get to. Select some photos and then select merge. The pop up that follows will let you merge only the exact duplicates. So you can first merge all your exact duplicates, and then when that is done manually review the visually similar matches.

sebasvisser 1y ago

Funny how the same desire got both of us into building more or less the same app: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199 https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199 Yours looks sleeker though. One thing I learned quickly after having friends use it..other people want different things and catering to more than just myself takes soooo much time. So I stick to building what I want and releasing it for free.

ryandrake 1y ago

Coming from embedded development, where it's mostly crappy SOC vendors providing a barely-working SDK and toolchain they cobbled together from an ancient version of gcc, moving to iOS development / Xcode was in most aspects a breath of fresh air. It does have its annoyances, though. Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry... And the developer program fee is a bummer: It means you can't sustainably release free apps unless you're willing to just ignore that you're burning $100 a year forever. Other frustrations: Apple makes it difficult to maintain support for older devices. They insist you keep updating your tools, but the updated tools tend to drop support for older SDKs and devices. You have to kind of go out of your way to keep your app targeting them. You can see how this plays out by getting a second hand iPhone 7 today and go to the AppStore looking for apps. It will be very difficult to find an app that will run on it. This phone is not that old, but the ecosystem abandons you pretty quickly. They also deprecate things like crazy, so every time you update your tools, you get more warnings about APIs Apple would rather you stop using. It's tough to just write an app once in 2016 and keep it limping along forever. They clearly favor developers who are 1. doing it for a living, 2. targeting latest and greatest devices, 3. updating their app and their tools frequently, and 4. don't mind doing surgery every year to move away from deprecated stuff.

peterburkimsher 1y ago
The solution for code signing is coming: through jailbreaks or appdb.to, it's possible to sideload apps without the official app store process. The EU even mandated that there should be other app stores. Building for older models is possible using a collection of virtual machines, or even a multi-boot old laptop.
- threeseed 1y ago
  a) You still need to code sign on alternative app stores. b) All of your users are still going come through the Apple one.
  - ensignavenger 1y ago
    Reg B... Will they? From what almost everyone I have heard from says, most of their users come thru their own marketing efforts, not Apples.

jll29 1y ago

The Apple ecosystem is polished, but controlling and unforgiving. Tool upgrades are enforced and so are regular hardware upgrades, whether you like it or not. That's hardware that is still working, which Appled decides you will no longer be able to use some software on, just because. And after Apple sells you a computer and developer subscription, it makes you work for them on their share of any app sale. I like some aspects of Apple's hardware, and I liked their older OS and software (when it became preemtive, but UX was more simple and systematic than now), but overall, I prefer open ecosystems.

deverman 1y ago

Congrats on building with Swift!

mvkel 1y ago

A great article that stops right where iOS development becomes a hassle: actually getting it published in the App Store.

rcarmo 1y ago

The author hasn’t yet realized that will need to re-download their app to the phone once a week even if they don’t make any changes, which is the main reason I just don’t bother with iOS development. Not being able to easily maintain apps on hardware I own and having to check in with Apple every few days is insane, and the workarounds are ridiculous and unwieldy. It’s the principle of the thing that gets to me.

bowsamic 1y ago
Yes I don’t mind the App Store fee but the fact I can’t write my own apps for my own phone is insanity. I’d write little apps for myself otherwise. Apple do not care about such things of course. There is no modern HyperCard

Gisbitus 1y ago

This post was a wake up call. Last year I spent a week learning Swift the "old fashioned way" following Apple's tutorials, with not much to show for it when I was done. Even though I use AI for coding daily, since XCode doesn't natively support it, I just decided to not use it. Seeing how far you went in just a couple of days, I realize now how much I missed out. Congrats on the app!

nottorp 1y ago

> I'm about 90% done, I think. ... and the rest will take the other 90% of the time :)

monodot 1y ago

Fascinated to read this post as I’m doing almost exactly the same thing. Just started using Xcode for the first time, a month ago. I’m not inexperienced with software development, but having to rely mostly on Xcode, Apple’s Developer documentation, information embedded inside WWDC videos, and random forum posts, has been a pretty rough experience. So Claude has been a massive help, to get to a working app quickly. I am using it in a similar style to the author. Discuss in the UI, try really hard to cherry-pick from the code it generates, while trying to understand what it’s doing. Claude is not clever enough to realise it’s selling you out-of-date APIs, so i feel I need to be super vigilant, which chimes with what folk are saying here about the iOS upgrade treadmill. I’ve supplemented with a couple of technical ebooks as backup. But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! (In my use case it needs to be an app not a PWA because it needs to integrate with device APIs.)

dirkc 1y ago
> But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which improves your own life, running on that computer you’ve been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! It's great that you did this, kudos to you! At the same time it is a little sad to read a statement like this. It used to be so natural for anyone doing software development to write things that improves their lives running on their own devices. Mobile has made this so much more tedious and then you need to ask for permission if you want to share the app. Last year I also launched my own app on the app store [1], and briefly reflected on the experience [2]. [1] - https://dingdongdoorbell.com/ https://dingdongdoorbell.com/ [2] - https://www.thebacklog.net/2024/10/22/building-and-releasing-a-mobile-app/ https://www.thebacklog.net/2024/10/22/building-and-releasing...

jacobp100 1y ago

I do iOS dev as a side-hobby too (https://jacobdoescode.com/ https://jacobdoescode.com/) People are right it isn’t anywhere near a salary, but I have fun and it has opened job opportunities too For marketing, I found /r/Apple very receptive to self promotion posts - just make sure you meet the criteria. You can also do a discount period and advertise on /r/AppHookup. Last Black Friday I reduced a $2 to 29c (lowest allowed price) and made just shy of $500, and it boosted my place in the store search Best of luck!

cAtte_ 1y ago
what a beautiful website

w10-1 1y ago

The OP makes a surprising amount of progress. As other comments note, it's easy to get caught in the weeds of Apple API's and tooling, but AFAICT they generally do as good as possible at the hard problem of compatibility. The worse problem is that you will get blocked after significant investment. It's because of Apple's scale and focus. They have millions of developers, but only about a thousand really significant ones driving the latest APIs. To avoid delay and noise, Apple ships and demos the happy path, but fails to warn about all the surrounding pitfalls. You will hit one, sooner or later. And any pitfall can be a complete blocker. Unlike web, enterprise, or back-end work, where Java, python, and javascript/typescript libraries and apps are readily available in open-source, bugs present as inscrutable binary blobs that are mostly ignored in the black hole of feedback assistant unless you have some real pull. It's easy to get started as a solo, but to manage the infinite space of mine fields, you'd need to be in a large organization where people have learned where not to step.

sltr 1y ago

> haven't paid for the Apple Developer Program yet Then you aren't even half done. You still have to undergo the memorable experience of code sign and app store review. First wrote iOS apps in 2010. Loathed it then, loathed it now. I shun these devices for which I can't write my own software without permission.

st3fan 1y ago
Code signing has been a non issue for years now. It was a complete horror show when we started 15 years ago but in today's Xcode it all just works out of the box.
- gregoriol 1y ago
  Oh while a single simple setup is easier, it's still a horror show as soon as you need entitlements, more build environments, more devices (wtf does Apple makes us wait 72 hours to add one?!), ... Apple caters to kids starting development these days, not enterprise developers.
nkotov 1y ago
Even getting in the program takes time. I signed up on Thursday, had to send a ton of documents, and for organizations, you need a DUNS number. Whole process kind of sucks currently.

bob1029 1y ago

For B2B scenarios, I was able to wiggle my way out of learning the iOS ecosystem by using PWAs in Safari. If you have access to a mobile device management system, it's trivial to push "apps" to the Home Screen of each device using this technique. For B2C, I don't have any good alternative. You're going to need to be in the App Store.

andrewmcwatters 1y ago

The App Store does great business, but its customers aren't the people downloading the apps, their real customers are the developers. It's incidental that the largest businesses in the world have apps on the Apple App Store, but it's not because the App Store is a great platform. If no one is selling annual $100/yr apps, but Apple is charging you that much, you're the customer. There is absolutely no world where polished software that you can own is $2.99, sorry folks. Coffee costs more.

thenthenthen 1y ago

Back in the day, 2017? I made a silly app, not wanting to pay the premium, I tried to release it on the Bigboss jailbreak repo (cydia). Their checks where more ruthless than the Appstore. That was my first and final attempt.

QuelqueChose 1y ago

Is there a repo link to checkout and explore how this all came together? Since using Cursor, been dabbling about getting back into coding areas I've always had some interest in in the past but never developed into a hobby project; Swift is at the top of list.