Artemis is an app for cinematographers that won an Emmy in 2018 for its technical contributions to the film industry. It’s been used on films such as Lady Bird, Logan, Blade Runner 2049, and tv shows such as Narcos and Poker Face.

Working on an app like Artemis has been a bit of a dream because I’ve always admired the craft of film & tv from a distance. Meaning … I watch an embarrassing amount of film and TV and am a sucker for the Vanity Fair Notes on a Scene series. I also have a weird ability to quote movies from a single viewing decades ago (but ask me what I had for breakfast and I’m useless).

But this is an app for cinematographers, not an app for trivia night.
So what do I know about cameras?

I’ll tell you what I know about cameras … absolutely nothing 😅.

But I am an iOS developer and I would argue that skill opens the door to whatever world needs an app built. Which means that as long as I buy into whatever that app is selling, I have a pretty good chance of doing it justice. For instance,

At Hart, I got obsessed with health care.
At Acorns, I went deep on fintech.
And at GOAT, I nerded out over two-sided marketplaces.

So now? I get to build something for the people who actually make the things I quote at breakfast (sorry to my wife who has heard me yell, “YEESS, DO IT SETH!” more times than anyone should).

But there was one big difference: Hart, Acorns, GOAT … those were VC-backed tech startups. Which meant they had Systems, Standards, and Infra.

Artemis is a homegrown app built by film professionals who needed a tool that didn’t exist, so they decided to just make it themselves. Which is absolutely incredible because that means they taught themselves the tech part and built this thing completely from the ground up.

It’s been around for 15+ years, has become an industry standard, and I repeat, IT WON A FRIGGING EMMY.

But 15 years of figuring it out alone with no technical mentors means a decade-plus of compounding tech debt. All of which leads here: how I took over a 15-year-old codebase and gave Artemis the systems it never had.

Before continuing, I do want to say that as a self-taught dev myself, I wouldn’t be able to take on a project like this without the techincal mentors who showed me right from wrong. Oh, I made so many wrongs lol. Thank you Rocky Demoff, Boris Oks, Jarred Davis, Alvin Yu, Hyung Lee, Tony Albor, Warren Dodge, Toby Evetts & many more.

1. Set up Communication & Collaboration Tools.

I like to set up systems and Infra before even looking at the code. Luckily, you only need 3 tools for this:

• Slack for comms.

• Figma for designs.

• GitHub for code and issue tracking.

You can swap GitHub Issues & Projects for Linear or JIRA, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone on the team knows what’s happening, what’s next, and what’s on fire. And to take it a step further, I pipe my issue trackers into Slack so that everyone sees when things open, move, close, or get commented on. This scene from Silicon Valley basically tells you everything you need to know.

For an added bonus, you can build an AppStoreConnect integration into Slack to get notified about daily sales updates:

For the startup vets, you’ll notice I left Notion off the list. With a tiny team, Notion is overkill because fast-moving products outpace documentation anyway. Plus, one of my favorite things a co-worker has ever said to me,

“If you ever want to hide something in plain sight, put it in a Notion doc.”

2. Set up a crash reporting service.

If the app doesn’t have a crash reporting service in it yet, now’s the time. I need actual insight into what’s breaking and not just anecdotes and hearsay. A crash reporting service will give me a paper trail for every crash and a fighting chance at actually reproducing and solving the issue.

A lot of startups go with Firebase and Crashlytics because it’s free, but I like Sentry because it takes data privacy more seriously.

3. Slowly, make your way into the codebase.

I make tiny, tiny, tiny non-business logic edits at first. It gets me familiar with how things are wired up. Fix some fonts, change some colors, tidy up some padding, clean up some copy.

It feels like nothing, but in a codebase you’re completely unfamiliar with, I guarantee that updating a data model, changing a network call, or even something as simple as moving a button from one corner to another will break something you didn’t expect.

But while I’m making these tiny, almost imperceptible changes, crashes are going to start rolling in from your crash reporting service. And those will become your first “business logic” fixes. It’s not sexy, but that mysterious crash that’s been plaguing users for years? You can eradicate it and earn some easy goodwill with the rest of the team.

4. Find your bitxh.

Now, I’m ready to find a feature that’s important to the app but not too big. Something you can redesign and refactor that people will take notice of, something that will buy you more credibility.

But still keep it small! Let this feature be your tour guide through the rest of the codebase. For Artemis, I chose the Exposure Panel:

It starts with the simplest questions like, “Why is the AUTO button red?” and “Is that red a system red or a custom red and if custom, what is it called and where is it stored?” All things you take for granted once you’re months into a codebase but these are important things when you’re just getting into it.

From there, you start exploring the other buttons in the right-hand bar (what do these do?). Then how navigation works (overlay, modal, or push?). Then how exposure, focus, white balance, and tint values are persisted. Then what those values actually mean.

And so on.

One tightly focused feature taught me a lot about how the app actually worked. And that’s when I could finally start making real changes.

5. You ready? You look ready.

From here, you can finally start shipping real features! Woohoo. Are you going to break things? Absolutely. For instance, a couple weeks before relaunching, a friend texted me this:

And I’m not going to lie, that text made me question if I was actually the right person for the job. But that’s why TestFlight and betas exist! We got to the bottom of this before the launch by meeting up in person and plugging him directly into the matrix (i.e. aka my computer and Xcode), located the issue, and fixed it.

So on top of having patient beta testers (thank you, again, Justin Lee), you’ll have Sentry to catch it, Slack to communicate it, and finally enough context to fix it fast.

So that’s the playbook! Or at least my playbook 🤷🏻‍♂️.

As for Artemis? The relaunch is now live, and I’m quite proud of it! You can download the newest version of Artemis here and learn more about the team behind the app on IG here.

I ended my last article on a high note (finally getting to meet the creator of Lagree himself), but 18 days later, and 2 days before my wedding, I was hearing from his lawyer.

I, at first, thought it was a phishing scheme. I mean, I’ve been an iOS developer for 11 years, and I have never received an email from “App Store Notices”. Plus, doesn’t this look like spam?!

Unfortunately, it was not spam; It was a cease and desist letter telling me I was infringing on the Lagree trademark by calling my app “Lagree Buddy”.

I was gutted.

Some people in the r/LagreeMethod Reddit warned me that this may happen, but I didn’t believe them. Or I guess I didn’t want to believe them. Call it naivety, but I thought I’d get a pass because my app is a tool to help people with their practice.

It’s a complementary product, not a competing product.

But I totally get it. It’s his right and his trademark to protect, and if I’m not allowed to use it, then so be it. My only wish is that they would’ve just asked me (since we’ve DM’d on Instagram), versus sending a lawyer.

But enough drama. We’re here to document and learn, so moving on!

Speaking of learning … welcome new subscribers from iOS Dev Weekly & Hacker News. I’ll try not to bore you guys, but this was my favorite comment/interaction about my last piece:

Am I getting sued?

That was the next thought after realizing it wasn’t a phishing scam.

An overreaction? 100%.

But I’m no lawyer, so when you see the words “at risk of termination from the Developer Program”, rational thoughts go right out the window.

Luckily, I remembered a story my friend Jasper once told me. He’s the Head Chef and owner of Rosalynn Supper Club, and when he ran into some hurdles early on, he noted that he kept those issues to himself, only to find out later that his mentors and peers had all dealt with something similar. And everyone told him:

Dude, why didn’t you just reach out and ask me? I went through that exact thing!
I could’ve helped you save so much time and money.

So with that in mind1, I reached out to my (now) brother-in-law, who has run his own company for several years. And he immediately put me at ease with his own stories and words of advice.

I won’t go into detail about what was shared, but I instantly felt better and rational thoughts began reentering my brain.

But could I fix this in 3 hours?

I had to fix it in 3 hours because wedding festivities were officially set to kick off at dinner. I mentioned I was getting married in 48 hours, right?

So yeah. I had to scramble.

I hurried home, sat down at the dinner table, and maniacally tried to think of new app names. The leader in the clubhouse for a good 15 minutes was “Slow Buddy” until more oxygen reached my brain, and thankfully triggered the thought, “THAT WILL NOT BE INTERPRETED THE WAY YOU THINK IT WILL BE INTERPRETED.”

After an hour or so (naming things is hard), I stuck my feet in the sand and decided on 4 Count. It was brand-agnostic yet specific enough that people in the community would understand immediately.

Next, I had to get this change into the App Store. There were a few places inside the app that still had the old name (like the Settings and App Store Screenshots), but I was short on time, and I was pretty sure Lagree’s legal team didn’t care about that. They just wanted the name changed on the App Store. So I would get to those details another day.

That took another half hour to get a new build ready and submit it to Apple.

My final step was crafting a response to Apple and Lagree’s legal team. I was doing good on time, so I took an extra beat to acknowledge that I understood their position and was already complying, but also to express how disappointed I was in this development.

Especially since I have openly tagged and communicated with Lagree HQ about the app since its launch in March, and they seemed genuinely positive about it. The same with when I took Sebastien’s class and met him in person.

I wanted to say all that because this was a project born out of passion. I’ve been doing Lagree since 2019, and I found a way to use my skills to contribute to it, not take from it. It was important for me to say that even if it didn’t matter.

With all taken care of (and 30 minutes to spare!), it was finally time to get my wedding weekend started.

But what did I forget?

Oh man, so many things.

• I submitted the app on Thursday before dinner.

• It got approved on Friday during the rehearsal dinner.

• I released it instantly without telling any of my users.

• Got married on Saturday.

• Packed for the honeymoon on Sunday.

• Ran to the airplane on Monday because we were the last to board.

• And then got this notification early Tuesday morning:

This warmed my heart.

Well, first, it sent me into another panic, but then it warmed my heart because holy shit, I guess I really did make something that people love! How cool is that?!

But I did have some explaining to do.

Why didn’t I communicate this name change to anyone? I think, subconsciously, I was still feeling ashamed that I got a cease and desist letter. Felt like I was getting in trouble at school, and I didn’t want anyone to know. I was hoping that I could quietly make the change and no one would notice (or care).

But I couldn’t be happier to be wrong. I couldn’t do it quietly, nor should I do it quietly. Also, what the fuck did I have to be ashamed of? It’s not like I tried to unethically circumvent the NBA salary cap.2

I made a good product that people love and that is objectively pretty cool.

So I leaned in and changed all the social handles, bought a new domain name, put up a few stories on IG, and went back to enjoying my honeymoon.

Glass Half-Full

I again want to reiterate that I have no hard feelings toward Sebastien or the Lagree team. I still love the workouts, I still think his class was awesome, and I’m still adding features to my app.

We’re all good!

But honestly? It might’ve worked out for the best. Being forced to rebrand might actually open up the market for me. Because the app is not Lagree-specific. It can be used for Solidcore, Coreology, and really any slow resistance training method. So instead of serving one brand, I can serve an entire fitness category.

Not bad for a cease and desist letter!

• The Lagree Buddy app has enough quality features that this is an actual, useful thing that I feel comfortable promoting & charging money for.

• There are more features I want to build, but they’re bigger features and are still weeks from releasing (because I need to QA them in the real world).

• Since the hard paywall and overhauled onboarding (discussed here), there has been a noticeable increase in purchases (woohoo! see chart below)

Given the information above, I figured I should try an experiment.

What if I spent every business hour on marketing/distribution instead of coding and building more features?

That felt so uncomfortable to even say out loud because it meant spending a week on social media and talking to people about the app. But it also meant not hiding inside the code.

So here’s a detailed (but slightly stream of consciousness) recap of how that week went.

Day 1 || Monday, August 25th

If any influencers out there want to give me some tips on how to IG correctly, please do. But my current thought process is to craft a story arc for one day. And then to break that arc into 4-6 posts, to be posted every 3 hours or so.

I do this because I don’t want it to feel salesy or spammy. So I at least inject some sort of narrative. So today’s story arc was:

• Working on new feature at home, but oh no! it’s broken!

• Thought I fixed it and took it to class, but oh no! still broken!

• I found out why it was broken, explained it, and took it into another class …

• FIXED.

• FIXED 2.

• FIXED 3.

I also spent the day reaching out to new studios & trainers I saw wearing Apple Watches. Sent out 10 today and got 2 responses.

Day 2 || Tuesday, August 26th

I bought a Microformer last week, so let’s use the thing for some content!

I signed up for Lagreeing at Home, found an instructor with an Apple Watch, snapped a lot of photos, and got busy creating and scheduling another story arc.

I almost immediately got a response from Lagreeing at Home about collabing, and I’d have to say… that’s a pretty big win. Lagreeing at Home was born out of the pandemic and has been an incredible presence in the Lagree community, so hearing some affirmation from them is a fantastic feeling.

I wanted to do more cold DM’s to studios and trainers today, too, but sometimes the Apple Gods say “try again tomorrow” (wheel of death! see below).

Day 3 || Wednesday, August 27th

It’s only been two days, but I’ve been struggling with the actual creation of content itself. Struggling might be the wrong word… underestimate? I underestimated the amount of work it takes!

I planned everything out on Monday. But then you have to obviously create the stuff, and all of that takes so long! So today, today is going to be an FAQ series. But the question is how to create it creatively so it’s not just social media slop.

And after playing with a basic Q&A and not liking how it looked (aka ugly and sales-y) ... I went hunting on Reddit and found this incredible tool (Postfully) to create fake text messages and came up with this for my Q&A instead:

Day 4 || Thursday, August 28th

I signed up for THE Sebastian Lagree’s class on Sunday. Three reasons why:

• I want to show him the app in person

• I’m running out of content and I need some photos of a new studio 😅

• I’m getting sick of social media and wanted to do something in real life loll

I needed a break from creating content, so I cheated and repurposed my IG stories into TikTok videos. But I didn’t want to give up on my mission, so I fell back on cold messaging studios and trainers.

Getting any response is a nice feeling, but this message back from new studio Hold Fitness was incredible! She saw my original post on Reddit from 6 months ago!

Day 5 || Friday, August 29th

I am absolutely ITCHING to get back to the code!!

But I am trying to stick to my mission for the week and am racking my brain on what content to come up without sounding repetitive or spammy. Thank goodness I went to class yesterday and took a bunch of b-roll footage because an idea quickly formed that felt different enough from everything before it this week.

This might have been the hardest day to stick to this challenge. Because everything inside of me was screaming:

“CAN WE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OFF OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE LIKE BUILD MORE FEATURES.”

But the thing that I had to constantly remind myself of is that this is productive.

Build it and they will come is a fallacy.

You have to tell people about the damn thing. It just doesn’t feel productive because you’re over here churning and burning things that feel like they have a shelf-life of 24 hours (if even that). And sending out cold DM’s and hoping for 1 or 2 responses.

Day 6 || Saturday, August 30th

Day of rest.
Sorry, not sorry.
But I did not code, so the challenge is still intact.

Day 7 || Sunday August 31th

Sebastian Lagree day!!

I drove to Brentwood to take a class from SEBASTIAN LAGREE himself. I was pretty nervous because I wasn’t sure if he was going to think my app was stupid or if it was weird, but he honestly couldn’t have been nicer.

He’s also an insanely good instructor, which seems obvious, but when you only see someone on IG as an “influencer”, you’re not entirely sure what to expect.

But his class was f-ing legit. But be warned, it may or may not be 60 minutes long 😂. Most classes I’ve taken are 45 minutes, but if you like to get there early (like I do), he will start the class early and end the class late and have you BURNING. My max HR hit 172, and I was sore for a week.

It was excellent.

I also had an entire plan of going home and editing/posting the content from this day, but like I said, I was sore for a week. So, the immediate aftermath of this class was me just lying down on the couch. No content was edited, posted, or thought about for the rest of the day loll.

Footnote: Because I’m always looking at people’s wrists for Apple Watches in class now, I couldn’t help but notice the lady next to me. Most people wear a fitness tracker in class or nothing at all. But this lady next to me was rocking this:

End of Week Results & Takeaways

Cold DMs actually work (sometimes). I sent maybe 30-40 messages total and got 4-5 meaningful responses. That's not amazing, but it's infinitely better than the zero responses you get when you never reach out at all.

Marketing opens doors that code never could. Sebastian seeing my app in person matters more than any feature I could have shipped that week. You can't build your way into someone's awareness - you have to actually show up.

You can't analytics your way to relationships. The numbers didn't move (see chart below), but the connections did. Having Lagreeing at Home and Sebastian Lagree be aware of the app and the person behind the app should pay dividends in the future.

Content creation is way harder than I thought. As an engineer, I assumed making an Instagram story would take 10 minutes. Turns out creating something that doesn't look like garbage takes a couple of hours. And doing it daily? Forget about it. I planned a whole week of content on Monday and ended up creating everything day-of because I completely underestimated the work involved.

What followed was a few weeks of hard, eye-opening conversations that got the core team back on track and reduced his burn. I went into it happy to do a favor for a friend. But he ended up paying me a consulting fee for my services! And that’s the first time I realized this accidental knowledge I’ve built up over seven startups in ten years could be useful to others.

So if one founder found it useful enough to pay me, I figured other founders might need it too. So here are five red flags to keep on your radar.

🚩 Red Flag #1: Big titles that don’t build

Looks good on LinkedIn. Useless in the trenches.

Early-stage startups need leaders in the codebase, not managers of managers. A VP “ready to become CTO” who hasn’t touched code in years might be useful later, but it’s not useful now, especially if you are pre-product. You need someone who can help you make the thing, not just manage the thing.

🚩 Red Flag #2: The wrong specialty in the top seat

QA leadership ≠ Engineering leadership.

QA (quality assurance) is critical, but QA doesn’t design systems or ship features. If your VP of Engineering comes from QA, you don’t have engineering leadership; you have a tester in charge of builders. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

During the audit, I realized the VP of Engineering was from QA, the PM was from QA, and a third of the offshore team were QA too! The result? Nobody was building any product. Just testing and re-testing!

🚩 Red Flag #3: The small signs of not caring

They won’t tell you they’re bad engineers, but there will be signs.

The best engineers (aka the ones that care) sweat the details. They add thoughtful UI/UX touches you never asked for but take for granted. Things like:

• Auto-fill for 2FA codes

• Auto-fill your name and address

• Clean error states

Bad engineers, on the other hand, do the bare minimum. You’ll be forced to micromanage them every step of the way.

Case in point: my friend’s engineering team was stacked with QA, yet the bugs were nonstop! And the worst part was that the founders had to report every issue themselves because no one on the engineering team was checking their own work. Absolute micromanagement hell.

Another example: one developer I worked with introduced a bug into production1. I flagged it to him directly and stressed we needed an urgent hotfix. Two hours later, I came back to check on his progress. But instead of nearing a solution, he was scrolling through bikini models on Instagram2.

So once more for the people in the back:

They won’t tell you they’re bad engineers, but there will be signs.

🚩 Red Flag #4: Over-architected on purpose

Because the more they build, the more you owe.

Some offshore teams aren’t incentivized to move fast or keep things simple. They’re incentivized to build more. More services. More moving parts. More reasons you’ll need them forever.

I’ve seen dev groups spin up a custom authentication service instead of plugging in Auth0 or Okta. A SaaS vendor is cheap and predictable. But building it custom means more code to maintain, more hours to bill, and more engineers to justify.

It looks like progress, but it’s just technical debt dressed up as “innovation.”

🚩 Red Flag #5: Don’t play company dress-up

Skip the VP/Director alphabet soup until you’ve earned it.

A lot of founders copy what they see at big companies: Hierarchy. Titles. Layers.

But without product-market fit, that org chart is just cosplay.

The “Director of Product” I reviewed had never talked to a single user. He brought no ideas of his own to meetings, and he started every sentence with “No, we can’t do that”. His only role was acting as a go-between for the founders and the engineers. And because he was part of the offshore team, his incentives were to slow things down. Just overhead with a fancy email signature.

And speaking of email signatures. At one startup I was at, we were pre-launch and under ten employees, but someone spent time crafting a style guide for email signatures. That was the moment I knew this was just a cosplay startup.

The takeaway

Unfortunately, these problems creep up slowly. They start quietly but end up being fairly expensive. But if you’re paying attention, you can catch the red flags before it’s too late.

And if you’re a non-technical founder looking for a second opinion on your engineering org, book a call with me on GrowthMentor. It’s free!

630am - wake up & walk frank

730am - voli, peloton & podcast (WTF w/ Sarah Sherman)

900am - coding prototype features for Lagree Buddy

1200pm - drive to Lagree213 for class & app testing

This is how I make sure I don’t ship junk.

I QA everything in a real class. At the end of class, before I’m even off my Megaformer (sorry to the instructors), I’m furiously dumping every thought I can remember from the last 45 minutes into my phone about what broke, what I want to tweak, and any new directions worth exploring.

There are bugs that cannot be found at the computer and only in a real 45-minute class. For instance, today I noticed that there is a half-second lag when ending my workout. That bug can’t be found at my computer because there are over 10,000 accelerometer samples taken during a 45-minute workout! Running mathmetical calculations on 10k samples will slow an app down if you don’t put it on a background thread! Oops!

So that’s one of the notes I take and hope I can fix by my next class.

300pm - bug fixes & write

730pm - neighborhood walk w/ ali & frank

800pm - tv

900pm - hit send

We (engineers) think onboarding is boring.
It’s unsexy.
It’s not real engineering.

Why do we need onboarding anyways?
The app should just speak for itself!

We build features.
We don’t just push pixels.

Oh hey, that’s the name of this publication!

So I always ignored the onboarding and put all my effort into the features.

I shipped. I coded. I shipped some more.
But life is different as an indie dev.
Because a few downloads came, but not many stayed.

So I went looking for marketing advice and found it in the AppMasters Podcast.
I was hesitant because all the advice went against my “artist” instincts.
Onboarding? Paywalls? Ads?
I wanted ZERO part of that.

But I’m not a salaried engineer anymore.
And this is the way of the indie dev life.
So I swallowed my pride and threw myself into the deep end at MAU.

MAU opened my eyes.
I finally understood why onboarding was important.
But unfortunately, I still did not know what it was supposed to look like.

Am I supposed to demo core features?
Am I supposed to build out a tutorial?
If so, how many steps to this tutorial?
3 screens? 5 screens? Double-digit screens??

UGH. That couldn’t sound more boring.
And then I saw this tweet:

Just like a movie trailer.

🤯

That was it.
That made sense to me.
Less tutorial, more movie trailer.

This could be fun if I used that as my guiding principle.
And so this is what I came up with for spf.today & Lagree Buddy:

And for comparison, here’s what they used to look like:
(No video needed for these because there were no animations involved 😅)

✅ Animations.
✅ Vertical scrolling1.
✅ And a little storytelling.

No longer just spewing features.
But (hopefully) building anticipation.

I also made one more change:
A hard paywall.

The era of giving away free shit is over (because we all gotta eat).

A hard paywall is a paywall that forces you to start a trial or make a purchase.
No free tier. No poking around. You’re either in or you’re blocked.

The “artist” in me hated it.
Like I said, I want my apps to speak for themselves.
I wanted people to try it, see the value, and then pay.

But this is probably also where the term “starving artist” comes from.
And the podcast states that most purchase conversions happen early in the funnel, not later. Because if users don’t see the value or offer immediately, they bounce and rarely return.

Yuck. I hate that I just used the word “funnel” unironically —
but such is the intersection of art and commerce2.

Ok, but did it make a difference?

I’m glad you asked.

spf.today’s onboarding overhaul shipped in late June.
Since then, there’s been a 5x bump in subscribers.
Plus, more than a handful of lifetime purchases.
🥳

Lagree Buddy’s new onboarding went live the first week of August.
That was only a week ago, but we are already at two-thirds of July’s total purchases.
🎉

Childish Folly did NOT get an onboarding overhaul, nor did it even get an onboarding because that app does speak for itself! If you watch Severance, you’ll get it. If you don’t, then go watch it!
🍉

I, like many others, am completely addicted to Severance.

After every episode, it’s straight to Reddit for the fan theories and WTF recaps—then I spend the rest of the night quoting “YESS. DO IT, SETH!!” at anyone or anything (including my dog Frank) who’ll sit still long enough.

The next day at lunch, it’s straight to YouTube to see what I missed from my initial viewing. I’m partial to Erik Voss and the New Rockstars because he brings the energy without being annoying about it. You know what I mean? He also doesn’t just recap. He contextualizes. He points out the deep-cut things I missed and that’s what I’m watching for!! Not just to hear some rando repeat story points minute-by-minute. Smh.

Anyway, I digress.

On one of those days, I came across the below post on IG where someone had 3D-printed (‼️) a real-life version of Miss Huang’s ring toss game:

Which, come on. Amazing. But that got me thinking… has anyone made an app version of this?

We’ve got art. We’ve got merch. Hell, we’ve even got CAKE!
But no iOS app? For a show that airs on Apple TV+ ???
That didn’t seem right!

So yeah. I went full-nerd and built an app—for all of us who can’t stop thinking about goats, waffle parties, and what the hell Lumon is really up to. A silly little tribute for the Severance faithful.

It’s FREE to download and I’ve placed ZERO ads in it.

Could I have? Definitely.
Should I have? Perhaps.
Have I taken my fandom too far? Most definitely.

But I left out the ads and the in-app purchases because I wanted this to be a proper homage—something pure and unsullied by sponsorship (I’ve always wanted to say that).

It’s just a weird little gift for a weird little show that we all love.

HAVING SAID THAT, if this app brings you a stupid amount of joy like it has for me, you can support the efforts (and the developer) behind it in one of four ways:

• Buy my outtie a coffee ☕️

• Buy yourself an O&D-sanctioned indulgence
  (via an Amazon affiliate link)

• Rate & review one of my other apps
  (seriously—ratings matter and they’re free to do!)

Or, if you work on the show and somehow see this, let me know how I can sneak onto that coveted AF official Severance swag list 😅.

And with that,

PLEASE ENJOY ALL RINGS EQUALLY!!

A little easter egg for those of you who made it to the end:
Hold down on the game screen to see the below bonus feature 🗿📱!

I have flirted with making one of these things since Apple announced them in 2020.

And it took me five years to find a legitimate reason to finally spend time on one. Why the delay? Because they’re not often seen in the real world, so what was the point? Much like my Vision Pro — womp womp womp.

But then I saw this post by Andrew Yates on Dave Verwer’s iOS Dev Weekly Newsletter and that’s when I knew I had to make one. And, it too, had to be a pin!

Why? Because a pin is very Apple-like (see my WWDC pins from WWDC24). Plus, it finally gave me a chance to make a “business card” with a slightly higher chance of not ending up in the trash can.

But why for Lagree Buddy?

Lagree Buddy is a hard app to demo to people.

You can’t tell people before class about it because they’re getting their mind right to survive 45-minutes on a Megaformer.

You can’t tell people after class either because they just spent 45-minutes on a torture device Megaformer and are now having trouble thinking straight (or are busy taking mirror selfies).

On top of that, if you do tell people after class, telling a stranger, “Touch the Apple Watch on my sweaty wrist” is a pretty creepy sell.

But with a pin and an App Clip, I can give them something to take home and try on their own time. Plus, no download required!

So, if you see me on the Megaformer next to you and want a pin, let me know! Or, hopefully, I can leave some pins at the front desk of Lagree Studios 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 !!

Okay, this next section is for developers who may be interested in creating an App Clip for their apps. So, for the general reader, go ahead and stop now and maybe read about why I made this app in the first place:

But if you want to continue and see how the sausage gets made, continue on!

Steps to creating the App Clip Code

App Clips can work without an App Clip Code (Apple’s special QR-looking-code), but it’s so much cooler with one of these codes.

The Swift/SwiftUI part is essentially the same workflow as your normal app. So I’m not going to dive into that. I will, however, be diving into the “what hurdles do I need to jump to get one of these special App Clip Codes” to scan and open my app because that’s what I struggled mightily with.

Here are the Cliff Notes to the full flow:

1. Xcode Setup (new but easy)

2. Web Setup (new but easy with ChatGPT)

3. Release a new version of your app with an App Clip (normal)

4. In App Store Connect, set up an advanced App Clip Experience & generate an App Clip Code (new)

5. Use the Settings app on your iPhone to see that it’s live with the Developer Diagnostics tool (new)

1. Xcode Setup

Only two things you need in Xcode (besides the Swift — which I leave to you):

1. Add an App Clip Target

2. Add Associated Domains capabilities to both your iOS and AppClip target with appclips:yourwebsite.com

2. Web Setup

I know nothing about web development — I just do iOS (self-taught), so deploying outside of Xcode is a foreign adventure for me. But I asked ChatGPT to walk me through it step-by-step, and I was good to go!

Cliff Notes for this flow:

1. Host your AASA file on Vercel (free)

2. Make sure it’s a json file

3. Create index.html to redirect to app link

If that confused you, don’t worry.
Here’s the prompt I used that walked me through all of that:

I am an ios developer with very limited web knowledge. I want to add an app clip for my app. I have the domain name for lagreebuddy.com on godaddy.com but right now i am forwarding it to http://apple.co/4bBKzYt. Can you tell me how to set up this apple-app-site-association file?

3. Release a new version of your app with an App Clip

This step is essentially the same as any other time you’ve shipped an app, so I’m not going to talk about it.

4. In App Store Connect, set up an advanced App Clip Experience & generate an App Clip Code

Apple provides a straightforward step-by-step process in App Store Connect to follow, allowing you to obtain your App Clip Code. Here’s the rest of the flow in screenshots:

5. Use the Settings app on your iPhone to see that it’s live with the Developer Diagnostics tool

At this point, if you’re like me, you’re chomping at the bit to scan this thing and give it a go.

But if you’re also a fool like me, you didn’t give your app enough time to “go live”. So now you’re sitting there scanning this thing and it’s reading:

“no usable data found” (see below)

This is when you should go into your phone’s Settings App > Developer > Diagnostics.

If you’re getting “No usable data found”, you’ve got some version of the middle screen. But once you’ve got all green (like the far right screen), you’ll be good to go!

Now, go make your pin (I used Gemnote — a friend of mine owns this company), throw the App Clip Code on the back of it, and scan away!1

I wasn’t entirely sure it was for me — it’s a marketing conference, not a developer conference.

But then the MAU team gifted me a ticket (shoutout to the abandoned cart gods), and Steve P. Young (aka AppMasters) announced he was hosting a Day 0 event and next thing I knew, I was booking a hotel.

But because I decided so late, flights from Burbank to Vegas were $500. Hard pass.

So I got up at 6am, hopped in my car and drove the four hours instead. The event started at 11:00am and I pulled into the parking lot at 10:58am. Perfect 😅.

Day 0 - AppMasters Event

Let me just say, if this had been the only thing I did all week, it would’ve already been worth it. And that’s because the night before, I got an email from Alexus Diaz at Paddle asking if I wanted my app audited live during the event.

That was a nervous but instantaneous yes.

Nervous because that means you have to make yourself vulnerable to others opinions while being in the same room with them. But instant yes because, well, that’s why I came. To learn and to get help!

So my turn came and my onboarding flows and App Store screenshots rightfully got picked apart in front of (what felt like) some wildly successful indie app veterans.

Incredibly insightful. Brutally helpful (but in a nice way).

The main takeaways:

• When I talk about why I built the app, it lands.

• But my onboarding and screenshots don’t sound like me at all.

• The story doesn’t resonate because I’m just listing a bunch of features.

• I should lean harder into the cancer prevention and anti-aging angle — that’s what resonated!

Thank you Steve, Nathan, and the Paddle team for organizing that event! You made this trip immediately worth it!

So that event wrapped at 4pm and there was a happy hour back at the main site… or I could double-down, drag myself to a Lagree studio, and find a way to promote my other app Lagree Buddy (aka tell the instructor and anyone wearing an Apple Watch in class about the app).

I looked at the sad state of my activity rings for the day and knew my answer. I ended up at Lagree Lab and got my ass handed to me!

Sidenote: It’s always fun going to a new studio and the instructor sees me (a man) and goes, “oh this is your first time here … ? Is this your first time … to Lagree … ?”

@lagreebuddyLagree Lab Las Vegas! Vibey af. #lagree #lagreefitness #lagreemethod #megaformer #fyp #foryourpage #SlowCount #LagreeBuddy #LagreeLab #LasVegasFitness

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Day 1 & 2 - Networking & Talks

I’m not going to bore you with the details but I am going to leave you with my absolute #1 takeaway from this event as a dev moving from salaried to indie. And it’s kind of a hard one to swallow but …

The magic isn’t in the code. It’s in the marketing.

I mean, obviously, you still have to make a great product and know what you’re doing but not in the way I’ve made it my whole identity for the last 10 years.

I already knew build it and they will come was a fallacy. But it’s one thing to be told that and another to feel that. And that’s what I felt when I was at this conference. It broke my brain a little (in a good way).

I’ve been blocking myself by thinking that if I’m not writing code, I’m not making progress. Building more features hoping for more customers is not the solution.

And building the marketing arm of the indie business is still building — it’s just a different kind of building (shoutout Murphy for that gem).

So if you’re a developer making the leap to indie — or even just considering it — MAU Vegas is required attendance because it will force you out of your IDE and expose you to the entire non-technical aspect of building apps.

Small personal footnote:
There was a Top Golf event at the end of Day 1 that I selfishly loved.

Because I had just spent the entire day humbly introducing myself to everyone like, “Hi, I’m a developer. I know nothing about marketing. Please talk to me like I’m five.”

So being the “hot shot” at Top Golf was a nice way to end that day loll.

Someone even told me they stopped their conversation to watch my swing and even got asked to give swing tips. Mobrand team, if you’re reading this — please send me those videos!

I created a shareable asset for Lagree Buddy users to share their milestones, but ran into a weird bug.

The Bug

My purple badge (as seen below) would never render.

The Reason

SwiftUI’s new .containerRelativeFrame does not play nicely with SwiftUI’s new ImageRenderer. Using these two together will "disappear" whichever view it’s applied to.

The full (but still short) story

I enjoy using new APIs as much as I dislike using a GeometryReader.

So instead of going with the tried and true way of using a UIGraphicsImageRenderer to create my share asset, I went with the new ImageRenderer. And instead of just adding horizontal padding to my purple badge, I threw in a .containerRelativeFrame because, like I said,

“New APIs! Whee!”

And that is where things went sideways.

Because no matter what adjustments I made, my badge refused to render!

In hindsight, my problem was thinking it was an ImageRenderer problem and not a Text View Modifier problem. But it’s because I assumed the ImageRenderer was manipulating the layout like a GeoemetryReader.

This meant that my dodo-brain never dug into the view code, but instead, it kept futzing with how I constructed the view. So I tried all sorts of inconsequential things like converting the shareable view from a computed property to a function, but, of course, that didn’t work:

But once I deduced it was not the ImageRenderer’s fault, I finally took a closer look at the view code and all I had to do was replace that line of code with some basic padding:

So now, you are all free to share how obsessed you are with Lagree, like me 😂.

I’m pretty sure third (x2) is the charm, though, because SUNDAYS goes perfectly with the new tagline, which actually came first — “Turn every day into a sun(screen) day.”

SUNDAYS is an obvious play on “sun(☀️) days” but hopefully not in that idiotic Sun Day Red sort of way. Or damnit. Is it exactly that? Whatever. SUNDAYS is definitely vibey-er and more subtle than its five predecessors so I’m pretty into it!

More Vibey

Speaking of vibey-er, 1.0 was definitely not that. I mean, just look at this thing:

The UI is stale and the blue is too passive. It looks like an engineer designed it (which, oops, it was).

I’ve always known the design was not optimal, but I ignored it so I could focus on shipping features faster. But I knew it was finally time to address it because I was halfway through integrating UV indexes and I was confusing myself with my own UI:

What is this chart?
What are these numbers at the top?
What are these white squares with a random number in them?
They all look the same.

I hired a designer and these were my three big unlocks:

1. Finding an active blue that works with yellow without immediately triggering the question, “Why does the UC System have a sunscreen app?”

2. Larger & Bolder Titles

3. Friendlier UI

Two and three are a little vague, but let me paint the picture.

You’re me at a networking event. Which means your baseline anxiety level is a 6 out of 10. You start telling a stranger that you’ve built an app that gamifies a person’s sunscreen habits. Their first words to you with an unfriendly face and an even unfriendlier tone are, “What does that even mean?”

This immediately sends your anxiety up to an 11 as you fumble about for your phone to explain what you mean. Now, when you show them the demo, doesn’t the below look more inviting (and, dare I say, fun) than the version above?

Maybe “fun” is overstating it (we’ll get there), but the larger and bolder titles at least give your eyes (and brain) some context as to what it is you’re looking at! Plus, had to throw in a little SNL Five-Timers Club easter egg! See, fun!

New Spaces for Partnership Opportunities

Stats and numbers are great, but I have always wanted more space for educational and consumable content. So, I went ahead and added three new sections to the feed:

If you are one of these three things — a sunscreen brand, a skincare content creator, or a skincare professional — and are interested in what we are building, please reach out to us on Instagram @meet.sundays. I would love to chat with you and feature you and your content in the SUNDAYS app!

Monday, March 10th, was an incredible day for my little (still wannabe) company. A quick rundown of the good:

SUNDAYS (formerly Sun Patrol)

• The marketing campaign on AppAdvice went live on March 10th, and downloads skyrocketed from single digits to 4k+ in two days.

• I got emails about the app from people I didn’t know in Australia and Mexico.

LAGREE BUDDY

• That same weekend, I launched a hyper-specific mini-app targeted at the Lagree community to resoundingly positive feedback on Reddit.

• Someone in Germany spent money and bought the damn thing.

• The home studio (Lagree213) featured it in their newsletter.

Undisclosed Project

• I signed an NDA for this one, so I can’t talk about it quite yet, but I’m helping my friend’s startup make real progress on un-fucking itself out of a really bad engineering situation they got themselves into.

• Income is good. Helping a homie out is better.

So, yeah. Literally, EVERY project under my current umbrella hit a milestone on March 10th. So, why did it make me so damn depressed?

What goes up must come down?

I’ve never done drugs (not even weed, yes, sorry, I’m a square), but the only reasonable explanation I could come up with was — “because I let the high take over.”

I gave in to the excitement of seeing my user numbers climb at a 90-degree upwards angle, and I rode that adrenaline wave all the way up. But when the numbers started climbing at a more moderate 45-degree angle, I came crashing down. It felt like someone smacked me in the face with a shovel.

Which makes zero sense because the numbers were still climbing!! Why did I feel so bad?? It stayed at that 45-degree angle for two days but, yet, here I was feeling like absolute trash!

I apologize for this terrible analogy but is this how addicts feel? Even when things are good, they don’t feel good because you’re forever chasing that first high? That first 90-degree vertical jump? Like even the 60 or 70-degree bump won’t ever be satisfying because, well, both of those are not straight shots into the moon? I don’t know.

Is the solution for this to not let the highs completely take over? But then, how do you stay present and enjoy the good moments if you’re always holding back some of the joy? That doesn’t seem like the right answer, either.

If anyone has an actual answer, please let me know.

Again, I am fine now. But I still very much wanted to publish this because objectively-speaking, it was an incredible day. I hope I have more days like it! Just without the weird emotional turmoil lol.

So, if anyone knows how to navigate it better, please let me know. Thank you!

Some Highlights

I’ve been going to Lagree since 2019 and it has become my primary form of workout.

I go three to four times a week (if my legs can take it). I should probably vary it up a little, but the studio is directly across the street from me, and I purchased the unlimited plan. Therefore, as an Asian, I have a moral obligation to get my cost per class down to a respectable number. What can I say, sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason.

Anyway, while I’m usually “locked in” mentally when on the Megaformer (I live for the instructor shoutouts and the “Daniel’s going to demonstrate for us” even though I pretend to hate it — false modesty at its finest, also a very Asian trait), sometimes you get an instructor you’re just not vibing with! And when that happens, my mind begins to wander:

Did I lock the door?
What should I eat after class?
I wonder what Frank’s doing right now?

Wait, why is this person next me moving so damn fast?
Do you not know how to count to 4?
SLOW. THE F. DOWN.

Why isn’t there something that slow counts to 4 for us?
Like some sort of device you can wear that pulses.
OH WAIT, there is a device and it’s called an Apple Watch!

Sorry. My mind gets judgy when it wanders. But this is how the idea for Lagree Buddy was born. Here’s the initial proof-of-concept I hacked together:

The POC was rough around the edges but it did exactly what I needed to prove to myself that this was a valid idea:

• Pulse on a slow and steady 4 count

• Sync to my Apple Fitness app

From there, I spent a couple of weeks cleaning it up and adding features I thought of while testing the beta in class. Here’s what I added:

• The ability to sync your class as either Pilates, HIIT, or Strength Training

• Five different levels of haptics from Level 1 (lightest) to Level 5 (strongest)

• An intentionally minimal UI so that you’re not distracted by your watch screen, nor are you accidentally tapping any buttons if your cables touch your screen

• An easily-accessible Cooldown mode that also syncs with Apple Fitness

If you’ve ever tried to do this from the regular Apple Workout app, it’s a bit cumbersome because there are four steps to it: 1) swipe left, 2) tap start new, 3) scroll to find Cooldown, and finally 4) tap Cooldown. It’s about a 3 to 4 second process.

Lagree Buddy takes less than a second.

Pricing

Let’s get into it.

It’s a one-time purchase of $18.99 (less than a pair of grip socks).

HOWEVER, because I love this damn workout so much and there are instructors I am extremely loyal to (shoutout Eva and Liv), there are also instructors I would never ever want to see again. So, if you type in your favorite instructor and studio1, the price drops to $8.99.

I repeat, STILL LESS THAN A PAIR OF GRIP SOCKS.

Buy it once, use it forever. I agree that this type of product does not warrant subscription pricing, but it does warrant a price. And if you don’t like the price, I’m sorry. But to that, I leave you with this thought from one of my favorite TV attorneys:

So that’s Lagree Buddy! It’s going to keep you moving slow in class while still syncing to your Activity Rings. Happy Lagree’ing and I’ll see you on the death machine Megaformer!

So this time, I grabbed lunch with my good friend Tony Albor, who lives alllllll the way over in Santa Monica (anything west of the 405 is basically a different state for the non-Angelinos).

Tony and I worked together first at GOAT and then at Momento. We have a shared love for stew but, more importantly, a shared appreciation for therapy and mental health. Back in 2019, Tony and his friend Amar released an app called Worry Kit. Worry Kit is no longer on the App Store, but while it was (2019-2024), it housed a wide array of mental health activities and exercises, as seen below:

One of their most popular activities was an “anxious scratcher.” Scratch-art therapy has been around for years (see studies done at the NIH and the University of Illinois Chicago), but most of the products appear to be physical in nature (such as some products found on Amazon) and not app or software-based.

This conversation was conducted in person in Santa Monica.

It started out at Bread Head for sandwiches.
And then we made our way to LaLaLand for coffee.
Yes, seriously. It’s called LaLaLand.
Welcome to the Westside.

- Half a BLT
- Half a mozzarella
- 1 iced americano
- 1 iced green tea

How’d you guys team up on WorryKit?

My former co-worker (Amar Singh) and I started talking about it in 2018. He was a product designer and product manager, and he actually released two apps called Worry Breath and Worry Float. He then came to me with the idea of Worry Kit as a single app that would have an entire array of different activities. So we joined up together and then released the first version of WorryKit in 2019.

I knew you were proud of the app, but I distinctly remember you being disproportionately proud of the admin app (which you were the sole user of).

What was all that about?

Well, we were tracking all of our analytics in Fabric (free third-party software), but they ended up shutting down because they got bought by Google.

And around the same time, I remember flying to NYC for a Swift developer conference and one of the talks was about Server-side Swift (more on this at the break). I found that really intriguing, so I ended up buying a Server-side Swift book that was actually authored by one of the speakers, and I just got to work replacing Fabric with a custom backend solution built on top of Vapor.

NOTE: My face went full “WTF” when Tony said this because even in 2019, Server-side Swift was still an experimental concept.

Server-side Swift refers to the ability to use the Swift programming language for server-side development. However, Swift is the programming language primarily used to create frontend applications and NOT server-side applications.

However, Tony here, heard one talk about how Swift could be used for the back-end and was like “Yeah, that sounds AWESOME. Let’s try it!”

Okay, continuing on (now you’ll understand my next question) …

What the hell? That’s insane. Why didn’t you just go with another third-party service or go with a language specifically made for the backend?

Well, you know me. I’m a huge Swift fanatic — I love everything there is about it. So it really just started out as “Let me just see if I can.”

Because all I need to do is switch out where I’m sending our analytics data. All the events are already defined. All I need to do is create a database table for each event.

Lol — famous last words. “All I need to do is…”

Lol, yeah. I ended up getting pretty deep into it.

It started out as me just wanting to view an activity breakdown by day. But then I wanted to see more specific time ranges. And because Apple did not have a native calendar picker (at the time) and because I typically do not like to use open-source UI libraries when I feel like I can just build it myself… I just built all of it myself.

Did you get stumped on anything?

No, but there's just a lot of little intricacies that keep adding on.

For instance, you create a user. But then, it's “Oh yeah. A user requires a forgot password flow”. So now I have to integrate with SendGrid to send an email. And I didn't really want to do that, but it’s kind of too late to turn back lol.

And so luckily the book was pretty thorough, so I just kind of followed their guidance. But what was also cool about Vapor (Server-Side Swift platform) was that it had all these different integrations that made things easier. So I was using Postgres as a database, and there was a Postgres-like package on Vapor. So I was able to just plug-in really easily.

Would you do it again?

Yeah, if I had a project where I needed a backend and I had to do it myself. Because I like Swift a lot, and I don't want to go to another language!

It's cool just to be able to do everything in Swift! It's such a good language!

BONUS: Inside the Developer’s Studio

James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actor’s Studio, would ask his guests a set series of questions at the end of each episode. And because I’m a dweeb and I fanatically loved that show, I’m going to do something similar but with developer-specific questions. Enjoy the nerdery.

What push notification brings you joy?

Testflight. When the “app is now ready to test” notification comes.

What push notification makes you angry?

I remember I downloaded the Domino's app a long time ago to order a pizza.

And then, well, I had push notifications on, and so everyday at 4pm, I would get a notification from them. And I would never turn them off! I don't know why, but I would get them and I'd be like, “Why are they sending me this every day?!”

… but I wouldn't turn them off.

Last app you downloaded?

One of the more recent ones I downloaded was Linear and they went bold with a back arrow on the bottom. So I'm like, “Okay, okay, they’re trying things and you know what? I respect it.”

But you know what's kind of weird? The whole tab bar on the bottom kind of changes and I'm not sure if I like that yet. Because I like to be able to tap around. It's nice looking when it happens but I don’t know if I like it. But they’re trying things. I respect it!

Last app you deleted?

Yeah, I don't know. Actually, I have a lot of apps on here that I don't use. I don’t delete anything lol.

A developer that you think is underappreciated?

Alvin Yu for single-handedly creating the GOAT AR experience.

One response in three months is a pretty demoralizing stat for something you thought would be making a bigger impact. But just before the holidays last year, I received a DM that flipped that script for me:

Holy cow, right?!

It was already exciting to hear from a complete stranger, but to hear from someone in the melanoma community? Incredible.

The odd thing is that it had never even crossed my mind to reach out to cancer survivors. I don’t know why that is, but thanks to Brianna and our ongoing conversations, I will definitely be making more of an effort there!

However, our conversations also made me realize that I needed to make some changes for this app to “grow up” and become a proper “big boi”1 app. So here were my three main takeaways.

Takeaway #1

Why the hell is Frank’s Instagram account the “contact” for the app?

Yes, the message you saw above was sent to @fomofrank—not to me or not to the @sunscreenr.app account, but to a dog. How unprofessional and embarrassing of me 🤦🏻‍♂️.

I guess my original thought process was that people are mean on the internet. And as a preemptive attempt to lessen the vitriol that would inevitably be hurled my way, I thought if I made everyone DM a dog, they would somehow be nicer (my therapist would be thrilled at how I have optimized for the worst-case scenario straight out of the gate).

Takeaway #2

I need to do a better job onboarding (and educating) users.

I have always believed in just dropping people into an app and letting them figure it out on their own (because that is what I want when I download a new app). But it appears I’m in the minority there, and people want their damn onboarding flows!

Or maybe they don’t, and it’s more just a necessary evil — I mean, people can’t use your app when they don’t know how to use the thing. So yea, this hacked-together flow isn’t going to cut it anymore:

Takeaway #3

I need to monetize this app.

Let me rephrase that because context matters:
I want to monetize this app because I would like to make my living from it.

To stay indie, I need to find a way to generate revenue. I have plenty of contract work that can cover living expenses, but it would be so cool if I could turn this into my primary business. So, I’m placing a higher priority on adding PRO-level features to test out a subscription model.

I know, I know. Subscriptions are not everyone’s favorite, but I promise that the app's core functionality will always be free, and the PRO-level features will also be worth your while.

What’s Next (for the app)?

A solution for takeaway #1 has already been implemented.
I still appreciate Instagram’s immediacy and directness, so I’m just going to have people message me. Customer support platforms like Intercom or Crisp always make me feel like you’re sending messages into the void (or to an AI Agent bot), so I’d like to avoid that for as long as possible.

A solution for takeaway #2 is in the works.
A non-finalized preview of a more educational (and colorful) onboarding flow:

A solution for takeaway #3 is also in the works.
A non-finalized preview of some of the PRO-level features coming in 2025:

• Dark mode!

• WatchOS app

• More Widgets

• Time Zone Support

• Earn points towards free sunscreen

What’s Next (for Pixel Pushers)?

You may or may not have noticed, but I did away with paid subscriptions.

I’m not a professional writer, so one should be paying me to read what I write loll. Plus, I’d rather you get some sort of physical good (like sunscreen or a p/p shirt). Or a digital good from one of my apps (discounted subscriptions, lifetime offers, and more). So I’ll do some sort of a shop instead. TBD.

But for now, here is a quick win-win with some sunscreen affiliate links:

My current daily: La Roche-Posay Double Repair Face Moisturizer with SPF 30

What I’m trying next: Beauty of Joseon SPF 40 Korean Sunscreen

Shipped Projects

Some of these you know, some you don’t.

⬆️ The project that kicked this whole writing adventure off.
You can download it here.
You can read about it here.

⬆️ WristCheck is a VisionOS only app. It was part of the old Pixelfits app (more on that in the Flops section) but I wanted it to live on its own so I re-released it as WristCheck.

To the good people at WristCheck.com, please don’t David Chang me for using “Wrist Check”. Thanks in advance.

⬆️ Daylight, LUX, Sunscreend, Sunblockd, Sunscreenr. I’ve gone through so many names and I’m still not sure “Sunscreenr” is the final name. But one thing is for certain, this is the project that finally gave me some purpose again so here’s to finding its userbase in 2025 🤞🏻.

You can download it here.
You can read about it here.

⬆️ A new written interview series I started with developers where we wax nostalgic over the favorite thing they’ve ever brought to life. And all interviewees get some swaaaaag.

Talking w/ Todd Heaseley about building one of the App Store’s first big hits: Dark Sky.
Talking w/ Alvin Yu about making an app for his 3-year old.

⬆️ My friend Saki owns a coffee company based out of Redondo Beach. She’s incredible with coffee, terrible with technology. So I jumped in and gave their digital presence a facelift and improved her ordering system (subscriptions vs one-off text messages).

Buy some coffee here.

⬆️ Helping Saki with Azure led to another project with misc.coffee — a new coffee shop in Palos Verdes. Misc is a physical retail space so the priority for them was online ordering.

If you’re in PV, buy some coffee here.
Or follow them on IG here.

Flops

We talked about the good. Now, let’s talk about the flops!

⬆️ Pixelfits gave Alex and I something to do while our minds were in a dark place. It never went anywhere but this experience gave me the push to start writing. So even when projects failed, I could turn them into wins by turning them into content.

⬆️ The Surrogate (or Telepresence) app. This thing got a second life because I posted about it on Reddit four months after I made it 😂. I met the Belkin employee who sheparded this dock into production and his excitement upon hearing about Telepresence gave me the confidence to finally go public with it (even though it never shipped).

You can buy the dock here.
You can read about it here.

⬆️ Murphy. This is the project I referenced in the opening line. I went full nerd and tried to build the Robocop HUD in VisionOS. But without external camera access on the Vision Pro (prohibited by Apple for now), this project was dead in the water. I tried to fake it a few different ways using the new .hoverEffect API but had no luck.

Life in 2024

Switching away from work and to the stuff that actually matters.

⬆️ We adopted Frank in January 2024. I didn’t understand John Wick before, but I do now. Here are some of him with his favorite people. You can find more of Frank here.

⬆️ Croatia. There are not enough good things to say about this country. The food is incredible. The water is incredible. The people are incredible. And since my time at Hodinkee, I’ve been making a point of collecting microbrand watches from countries I’ve visited — like Marnaut Watches.

More on my time in Croatia: Hunting for Dragons at Klis Fortress.

⬆️ Amsterdam. I’ll try to find some nice things to say about this country… It was great to catch up with an old friend from UW and it was fun recognizing a location from Killing Eve? Yup. That’s all I got for Amsterdam.

⬆️ 10 years as an iOS developer but my first WWDC.
Read more about that experience here.

⬆️ And to cap it all off, a random assortment of photos from 2024:

1. Sorry, but I have to document this. It’s my first hole-in-one. Ever.

2. FRANK GOT AN IG LIKE FROM !!!
   See the post here.

3. Me in January 2024: “You (Frank) are not allowed on the couch.”
   Me in December 2024: “Let me tuck you in upstairs in our bed.”

I know Alvin from my illustrious infamous time at Acorns (I lasted 7 months there before I made my escape back to LA proper. Irvine is where your spirit goes to fade. If you ever find me living in that city, you won’t need to call the suicide hotline because my soul will already be dead).

Sorry, I digress.

I convinced Alvin to join me in LA a few months later, and that’s when the innovation truly began at GOAT. Alvin is the brain behind ALL of the breakthrough augmented reality try-on features at GOAT. The 3D modeling, sculpting, and proper sizing/scaling so the 3D model fits your feet. All those “holy shit!” moments from 2019?

Alvin. Alvin. Alvin.

Here are some highlights from Complex and YouTube for those not familiar:

But we’re not talking about GOAT (today). We’re talking about a side project he made for his 3-year-old called Mighty Movers! Here’s a little demo of it in action:

Enough exposition. Let’s get to it!

This conversation was conducted in person at Tartine in South Pasadena.
- Egg sandwich with smoked salmon
- Pressed turkey sandwich
- 1 loaf of country bread
- 2 iced americanos

I know you from your career at Ticketmaster, Acorns, and GOAT. None of these companies has ever made a “game.” So, where do you even start with this?

Yes, so it’s all new knowledge, but pretty much everything is on YouTube or things like Coursera or, uhm … what's the other one that I like?

**makes a U-shaped gesture with his hands**

dhour:
… Udemy?

Alvin continued:
UDEMY! Yes! There's a guy there who explains how to build a game using SceneKit1. So I’ll just take things I learned from there and then rewrite it. So that's a good starting point.

Why did your 3-year-old ask you to make this game?

He asked for it after we went to Monster Jam. Do you know what that is? Monster trucks! I didn't want to go because I was expecting it to be only truck enthusiasts, but it was all families! All kids! He had a blast!

Where are the 3D models from?

I bought them on TurboSquid and then had to learn about a thing called armature.

I don’t know what “armature” means.

Armature is like the bones of animation.

dhour:
Yup, still don’t know what that means.

Alvin continued:
Okay, imagine you're animating a human body. You can say, “Hey, move your hand and move your foot.” Well, cars have armatures, too: “Turn the wheels this way.” And in the case of construction vehicles, “Move the arm up and arm down.”

Ah, so the models come pre-animated?

Well, yes and no. You test the animations in Blender (a tool for 3D artists), and it works just fine. But when you export it, it becomes very painful. Because the animations don’t export relative to each other and so the behavior doesn’t match with what I expected it to do.

So, it’s back to square one. I watched a few more instructional videos, and I ended up learning a lot about this thing called NLA strips. I don't know how to explain it, but it's a way to animate things as a group.

dhour:
Please try 😅.

Alvin continued:
Hmm. Okay, so one example that I was watching is how you would do it for a flight simulator, where you're doing the landing scenario. There’s a set sequence of events/animations that are needed for landing, right? Opening the hatch, dropping the wheel, etc.

You do all that in something called an NLA strip. And if you don’t do it in an NLA strip and export it the wrong way, you get those painful issues. For instance, maybe only the wheel drops, but the hatch doesn't open.

And how did your 3-year-old react to it?

He loved it! But not at first because I would test it with him as I was building it.

He didn’t know what the D-pad was and he would get frustrated right away. He wanted to move it by touching the truck or just anywhere on the screen, really. And then he wanted the sound real loud, too: “Where’s the sound? What happened to the sound? Louder!”

So that part is annoying, but it’s still fun seeing him play with it!

Do you have any videos of him playing it?

Uhm, no, because I only have one phone.

Does he still play with it?

No! lol.

But this is why I want to rewrite the app. Because at some point, he’s going to get into dinosaurs and he’s going to ask me to build him a dinosaur game and I don’t want to spend my weekends working on boilerplate! I just want to just plug and play the assets!

There were too many things I didn't know when I started. But now that I do know, I want to try it in a formulaic way where there's a proper game engine. Then I can build more games for him!

Speaking of weekends, how long did this endeavor take?

It took maybe three solid weekends, maybe even four. But they were solid weekends. Just working all day and all night.

I highly recommend listening to the clip below for an extended (and more humorous version) of this part of the conversation:

You can download Mighty Movers on the App Store.

BONUS: Inside the Developer’s Studio

James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actor’s Studio, would ask his guests a set series of questions at the end of each episode. And because I’m a dweeb and I fanatically loved that show, I’m going to do something similar but with developer-specific questions. Enjoy the nerdery.

What push notification brings you joy?

Anything that says “your order has been delivered.”

What push notification makes you angry?

Slack.

Last app you downloaded?

Well, I tried to download yours, but it requires iOS 18 😂

Last app you deleted?

I can’t remember.

dhour:
Let’s delete something right now!

Alvin continued:
**After a few seconds of searching, sees the 7-minute workout app**
Why do I even have this? I don’t work out! Delete!

A developer or designer out there that you think deserves some shine?
Tony Albor (developer)
Matt Zelazo (designer)
Herson Rodriguez (designer)

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Why? Because the two favorite things I’ve published here, so far, have been about what other people have done. Like this experience in Croatia where a piece of technology worked flawlessly on top of a 2000-year-old fortress and this story about the pink shirt crew at WWDC who legitimately made WWDC so enjoyable.

What is Dark Sky?

Dark Sky was a weather app that provided incredibly accurate weather forecasts. It was also visually stunning (for its time) and was one of the first stand-out hits on the App Store (500k monthly active users and was acquired by Apple in 2020). People LOVED this app. They loved it so much that they would, perhaps, send you death threats for “messing with their app.” More on that later.

How do I know Todd?

I know Todd from our time at Hodinkee together. But before he was my boss at Hodinkee, he was the iOS developer at Dark Sky from 2017-2018 and he was instrumental in its overhaul and redesign.

But ok, enough exposition. Let’s get to it.

When & how did you join Dark Sky?

I joined five years after they launched. I was a fan. I contributed to the Kickstarter and I was a religious user. It was my favorite app in the early days, and I was getting frustrated. I could tell that it was starting to die because they hadn't updated it in like three years. The design still had beveled corners and it looked very dated. And so I reached out to the company. I found Adam Grossman’s email address (the founder), I emailed him, and I said,  “Hey, what's up with your app? It needs a second life. You can't let it die like this, it's got legs. There's so much more it can do and this app has to live.”

And so I was basically just that annoying customer.

Wait, what loll. That worked? You told them that their app was dying, that it looked old, and that you were the guy that should freshen it up?

Yeah, he went for it. I don't know why. He was just like, “that sounds great”. And so phase one was just doing some work for the app to keep it in good standing with the App Store. But then phase two, after I'd already worked on the app a little bit, it was now, “we got to start over from scratch and totally rewrite this thing.”

And then you followed up on your original suggestions with a full rewrite, lol. This is why engineers love you and the C-suite hates you.

Well, we had to get off of contracts and third-party stuff that we didn't own, fast, for business reasons. And it had to be rewritten because it was still Objective-C, and it had grown organically so there was a lot of tech debt. It needed to be a new app with lots of new functionality. It was going to do a lot of stuff it didn't do when it first launched because it was four years of catching up technology-wise.

Was there any pushback from any of the OG team?

I think once I started showing prototypes and real code, everybody was sold. And that's when it got cool. That's when everybody else got sparked on the rewrite idea because who doesn't want to do a totally new coat of paint?

And it made a very big statement because it was so unlike anything else that was happening. Like, they built their own weather service. Of course, they were using standard models and data from all the various weather institutes. But they had an in-house guy who was, I don't know if this is relevant to what we're talking about here anymore, but he was a mathematician so he could do the actual math of everything. So it was, the idea was that we would just jump from the past into the future and get there ahead of everybody else.

I’m uniquely aware of this API because it was the GOAT interviewee take-home assignment: “Make a weather app with the Dark Sky API.”

The first new code I wrote at Dark Sky was a WeatherKit library, both for the new app to use and as a first-party integration for the API. It still seems bananas that there wasn't an SDK, given that the API was largely paying our salaries by the time I joined. I regretted how I left WeatherKit; I started down a GraphQL rabbit hole with the second version… I kept trying to get the interface right, even as a private citizen, until Apple turned off the Dark Sky API forever.

Ok, so a rewrite is a pretty big undertaking. Was there any point where you felt in over your head?

This was my third rewrite of a thing. And I was not scared. I was like, “I’m not going to be beaten by a weather app,” you know? I can totally rewrite. But it was longer than it should have been (it took a full year). I think we did seven full redesigns in a span of six to eight months. Like, full working prototype redesigns, and the one that eventually shipped was the third one we did.

Why so many redesigns?

One of the big challenges with Dark Sky was that the user base was so big already, and it was so passionate. And I don't want to say they were mean or bad, they were just so passionate, so devout, and it was important to them that you didn't change their thing.

But, at the same time, the app had stalled out because there was no new user base. So we had to make big changes to get new buyers (i.e. moving from one-time purchases to subscriptions). But we didn’t want to piss everybody off. So it was like trying to walk a tightrope.

But I'm attracted to difficult customers. Like at Urban Outfitters, I learned that, in retail, the Quebecois are the toughest customers on the planet. They're not negotiating. And Big Cartel was artists and they have really, really high expectations. Really high standards. But Dark Sky was a different kind of user than I've ever experienced. And so that’s how you get seven redesigns — when you're going from something that people already love but are trying to grow it and in some ways move on.

Here’s a fun piece from Mac Stories in 2018 discussing the redesign:
Dark Sky Update Consolidates Weather Data in a Single Vertical View

How did you guys celebrate when it finally shipped?

We went out and had two beers at the bar around the corner, and then went back to work. It was one of those things where we knew we were going to launch it, but we didn't know how it was going to go. And it actually took multiple weeks for things to roll out and for shit to hit the fan.

dhour:
How so?

Todd continued:
I got six death threats.

dhour:
What? Seriously?

Todd continued:
Yeah like, “What are you doing? What did you do? I'm gonna figure out where you live and come kill you because you changed the way these weather notifications work.”

dhour:
Get the fuck out of here. Seriously?

Todd continued:
And there were, I have a count somewhere, but there were somewhere between six to ten thousand customer support tickets and a lot of it was people writing in, “You ruined it” or “This isn't for me”.

Did anyone offer legitimate constructive criticism?

Yeah, a couple of people took the time to write multiple coherent paragraphs where they explained what they needed and I would write back and say, “Hey, would you be willing to give me a little more information about this? Or tell me how, how you would do it?” And so, taking that and getting educated — those were proud moments. Just taking those lessons and fixing it and making it work the way that people needed it to work.

What do you mean by “getting educated”?

So doctors and first responders were using our specific push notifications because the app ignored the silent switch. So they would put their phone on Do Not Disturb at night and still get extreme weather notifications. But that was a happy accident! And so a bunch of smoke jumpers in California wrote in and were like, “You caused a serious problem because our notification didn't go off. You wrecked our life.” And it's like, “Well yeah. Because it respects Do Not Disturb now.”

But we had no idea that anybody was using it anywhere near that technically. And, of course, we all had to be like, “disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer”. We are a weather app, not a 911 infrastructure tool. We never, never promised you that.

But at the same time, we did go back and listen and fix it for them.

What’s another proud moment for you?

I thought I did a really good job with the accessibility. I thought the voiceover was dialed, and then, again, I got an education and how people actually use VoiceOver, and then I dialed it some more. And so I can say today that Dark Sky had some of the best battle-tested voiceover work. I'm really proud of that.

From a cold email hire to death threats. What a wild story. Thanks for sharing it with me.

BONUS: Inside the Developer’s Studio

James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actor’s Studio, would ask his guests a set series of questions at the end of each episode. And because I’m a dweeb and I fanatically loved that show, I’m going to do something similar but with developer-specific questions. Enjoy the nerdery.

What push notification brings you joy?

That's a good one. Well, so this ties into Dark Sky because my favorite notifications of all the time were, “It's about to rain, starting in five minutes”. And there was an old Apple Watch ad where people were standing in a bus stop and a woman looks at her watch and it says, “Rain starting near you”. And she opens her umbrella, and the rain starts coming. The app worked like that for a number of years. So yeah, that's my favorite push notification of all time.

What push notification makes you angry?

Every time Apple is pushing some Apple TV show that I don't want to watch. I’m waiting for the notification that tells me about the show that I’m actually watching like John Oliver. But it's just again and again, “a new episode of Shrinking is up”. I'm not gonna ever watch that.

What’s the last app you downloaded?

Oh, it's not very exciting. I just got Fiber Internet so I need the app to configure it. That's the honest answer.

What’s the last app you deleted?

Probably this Fiber Internet app as soon as I'm done configuring the router. But the true answer is that I deleted the Microsoft Teams app from my phone minutes after I finished up my last gig.

Is there an app that brings you joy?

My favorite app of all time is Acorn by Gus Mueller. I needed an image editor (to replace Photoshop), and Gus Mueller wrote one all by himself, and it was amazing. It still doesn't have an animated GIF palette, you know, the timeline editor. But I've been bothering Gus about that for fifteen years now. I just used it right before this call actually.

You can read more about Acorn here in an Apple feature:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/acorn-7/id1547371478

And lastly, is there a developer (or designer) out there that you think deserves more shine than what they’re getting?

I don't know the developer’s name (Silvio Rizzi), but I've been using this cooking app, Mela. I think the developer is a solo developer. But it's an ultra-minimalist cookbook app. All the other recipe apps try to structure the recipe and do a lot of auto conversions, magic, and all that stuff. This doesn't do any of that. It's just like you make a list of ingredients and you write a paragraph of text explaining what to do. It's not over-designed so it’s perfect for me.

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I had no idea Apple had so many tools to help iOS developers promote their apps.

Let me rephrase that — up until a week ago, I did not care to know or learn about any of the marketing tools they offered. I coded, I tested, I shipped. That was all I was asked to do and that was all I wanted to do. User acquisition was not my job. In the words of my human-resources-hero, Malcolm Tucker, “NOMFuP.”

Well, when you’re an indie developer, it is now one hundred percent your problem. And when all you’ve done is code and have intentionally ignored ASO (App Store Optimization) for the last ten years, it makes for a daunting task. But Apple offers a diverse set of tools to assist with this, so this is for all the other iOS developers who might be in the same boat.

Getting Featured on the App Store

Call it ignorance or call it naivety but I had no idea apps could apply to get featured. I thought the Apple gods just picked based on how they were feeling that morning.

Apparently, that’s not true and there is an online form you can fill out to throw your name in the ring! You don’t hear anything back if you’re not selected but I have been assured by a former insider at Apple that a real human does read all of these submissions so you just got to keep on sending updates.

Here’s a great piece from 2022 quoting real developers and how they got their apps featured in the App Store and the effect it had: https://nemecek.be/blog/169/how-to-get-featured-on-the-app-store.

WWDC Videos and Tech Talks

There is a whole-ass section dedicated to App Store Distribution & Marketing 🤦🏻‍♂️. Oops. I’ve ignored these videos for way too long. They’re great for watching when you’re on an elliptical or stationary bike.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/app-store-distribution-marketing/

App Store Marketing Tools

Speaking of stationary bikes, I almost fell off of one when I watched Get started with app discovery and marketing. Did you know Apple had a free toolbox dedicated to generating marketing assets, Apple-branded short links, and app-branded QR codes?! I sure as hell didn’t! Nothing groundbreaking but a definite nice to have.
https://toolbox.marketingtools.apple.com/en-us/app-store/us

Apple Search Ads

This is where I spent most of my time.

Apple offers $100 in free credit for Basic ads if you’re new to their Search Ads. However, everything I’ve read says to forget Basic (after the free credit) and spend your time on Advanced. I recommend doing the free Apple Search Ad Certification first. It’s laborious but it will save you money.

However, if you don’t like your money, the alternative is to just fire up some campaigns and learn through trial and error. This is what I initially did and it’s how I burned $87 in 24 hours 🔥🔥🔥. More on that later.

The Search Ad Certification gave me context for what Apple wants you to do. However, the textbook is never the same as the real world. So I found a podcast I could listen to while walking Frank 🐶. This was the one I found most helpful:

Marketing Your App More Efficiently with Apple Search Ads
— Dilip Reddy, Search Ads Optimization.

And here’s what I took away from it:

• Apple Method: Organize your keywords into four campaign types: Brand, category, competitor, and discovery. Elevate high-performing keywords you find in the discovery campaigns into your brand, category, or competitor ad groups.

• Dilip’s Recommendations: Discovery is for those with money to burn. Aggressive bids with the high-intent (and exact) keywords, and stupidly low bids with the low-intent keywords (instead of throwing them away in the negative keyword space).

3rd-Party Keyword App

So yeah. About that $87.

I made four campaigns and set a daily budget of $3 for each campaign. That translates to, “I am willing to spend approximately $91 per month per campaign ($3 x 30.4 days). But because I set this up at the end of the billing period (this is me guessing here), some voice on the ad-algorithm side screamed, “IT’S THE END OF THE MONTH AND WE’RE AT $0 SPEND. WE ARE 100% BEHIND. SPEND SPEND SPEND!”

The reason this section is titled “3rd-party Keyword App” and not “Daniel is a do-do brain” is because I should’ve spent that $87 (and twenty-two cents) on a tool to hand me the keywords, straight-up vs just pissing it away on “discovery”.

Think of it this way, if the goal of Apple’s suggested “Discovery Campaign” is to help you learn what your best keywords are but you have to spend money (and time) to unearth them, why not just pay that same amount of money (or less) to a tool that was made to do that for you instantaneously?

And so, having no desire to compound my mistake, I purchased an App Store Optimization tool called Astro (this is not a paid ad, I paid for Astro. But I am not opposed to a paid advertisement though so hit me up Astro loll). I did try some other tools first like Splitmetric, Appfigures, and Appfollow but all of them did too much for what I needed (for right now at least). Plus, Astro looks like it’s made by an indie developer and I’m making an effort to support more indie developers.

App Store Metadata

Without going through the Search Ads process, I wouldn’t have noticed how bad my current setup was. My app title, app subtitle, and app description’s first sentence do so little to draw any intrigue. I mean, it’s barely understandable!

Yes, these all seem like extremely elementary things for anyone who does this for a living but for the indie dev that has spent most of his career just heads down in the code — this is a bit of a revelation. I’m not claiming mine are any good right now but I’m finally paying attention to the non-code aspects of the app and putting effort into them. For instance, this thirty-second app trailer:

Epilogue

I do have to admit that it feels like I’m wasting time when I’m doing things in marketing land. It feels so ephemeral compared to when I’m coding. But I need to mentally reframe it as something that “will pay dividends” for my overall competency in iOS. Sure, it’s not code but all of this is technically part of the iOS ecosystem so it will make me better holistically. Especially if I’m looking to break out of the engineer-only mold.

What’s Next

• I need to put a system in place to keep the marketing arm moving forward yet sustainable. Because I really, really need to get back to coding 😂.

The past fourteen days have been uncomfortable. In fact, just writing this update has been uncomfortable because I’m writing about marketing my app while possessing ZERO marketing skills. Writing “spray and pray” emails (a road I went down for five emails before quickly stopping myself from further embarrassment) is not a skill. Vomiting out random words about sunscreen when asked, “What does your app do?” is also not a skill.

But the question I keep coming back to is:
Do you want this to be an art project or do you want to make a living from it?

And so if I want to make my living from it, then I’m going to have to be more than an iOS developer and learn some damn marketing skills. So after wasting a week, I took a couple of steps to educate myself:

• First, I started reading any marketing book I could find on Libby.

• Second, I reached out annoyed my friends who do this for a living to see if I could ask them as many n00b questions as humanly possible.

A tangential, yet related story: This is kind of how I taught myself how to code. The first person I pestered with the question, “How do I teach myself how to code?” was my buddy Vikas in Seattle. He looked at me like I was nuts. He knew I knew it was nuts. But yet, he still took the time to encourage me with realistic advice and I always appreciated it. We still talk about it and we still laugh about it.

I love that story.

It’s still TBD on how these steps are going to play out but at least there will be a plan vs the current “headless chicken” approach I’m going with right now. In the meantime, if you’ve got any marketing books you want to recommend or marketing Substacks, please drop them in the comments below. I am going to need them!

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What’s Next

There’s an entire marketing arm of the App Store that I’ve been completely ignoring throughout my career. So, I’m going to dive into that rabbit hole and report back on what it has to offer. Just to name a few of the tools, there are Apple Search Ads, App Store Feature Nominations, and App Store Marketing Tools. A brave new world!