mergeconflict240
James: [00:00:00] Oh, my goodness. We are back episode 240 of merge conflict. I cannot believe that it's already been 15 years of doing this podcast. I 
Frank: [00:00:17] thought it was 25. It feels like 25. Well, now the time doesn't exist, it's just been March, 2020 for the last a hundred 
James: [00:00:25] episodes. I believe. So that sounds about right. Um, time is energy and energy is time and time is money and.
Stocks. And there's a whole lot of craziness going on in the world. Uh, Frank, and, uh, we're here to talk about it. Cause episode two 40, that is divided by 10 that's, 24. This is our 24th lightening topics episode. Oh my goodness. Quick math in my head. That means we're going to cover. Four or five or six topics, five minutes each.
And some of them are from you, our listeners. Cause you went to merge conflict out. FM, you hit our discord up. You emailed us, you tweeted us. He did a thing. Um, some of them, we just decided to talk about Frank and these are my favorite episodes. This is my favorite episodes are my favorite episodes. 
Frank: [00:01:07] Yeah.
You know, sometimes we kind of stress out about the topics, but today we were just chatting. We we're like, well, let's just talk about that. And let's just talk about that. So this one came kind of naturally, it's a funny, eclectic set today. James, I have to admit now that I'm actually reading through the titles, but I'm sure everyone will have fun because I know we will have fun staring at the clock.
Trying to get this 
James: [00:01:27] right? Yes. All right. Well, let's go into the first one from Alexander who wrote in via email. This I'm going to summarize it because it's long, but he basically writes in and says, Hey, I have an app and I want to do cross-platform in-app purchases. How do I do this? Like, you know, do I need to have user accounts?
Can I have a micro user accounts? Like basically, you know, without social off, how does this work? Is this allowed? Is this a good idea? Terrible idea. What are your thoughts? 
Frank: [00:01:59] Oh, I think it's an excellent idea. If you're willing to take on the server responsibilities, it's a responsibility that I really try to shake.
I really don't want them myself, but if you don't mind babysitting a server and I mean, honestly, these days, life is pretty good with all the cloud providers. They all have API front ends. They all have data stores. I think designing cross-platform. Accounts is much easier than it's been in the past much more reliable than it's been in the past.
And it gives you a lot more opportunities, kind of like we've been discussing with the turnips this whole time is this is a continuation of the turnip thing. Did you get turnips into this episode? I brought them in it's my fault. Anyway, uh, I, it really gives you a lot of flexibility. Uh, James was able to change his entire pricing model.
Uh, thanks to his account system. So I think if you're willing to take on the little hassle. Yeah. It's totally a good thing to do. 
James: [00:02:58] Yeah. I mean, this is how tons of applications work. They're usually tied to some form of login. Um, you know, that is the biggest thing is normally what would happen is you have an account.
You may have created that on the website and. The first thing your users are going to do is log in, um, like Netflix, right? You can log in on Netflix, you already pay for Netflix. It's your subscription. You log in on your iOS or Android device. You don't have to pay again. That would be crazy. Imagine if that was a thing that would boggle the mind, but.
You know, they have their entire accounts. There is a backend system. There's receipt validation. You have to do your due diligence in that form, um, to, to make sure that's correct. And you of course have to then pick, are you going to store usernames and passwords? Are you only going to do social auth? That to me is the trickier part, right?
It's it's not necessarily making a web request to. Say does this, you get the user account it's or how am I going to blow? What are my users and the, even what Alexander said here was mini user account. And you're right. This is the Encore of Island tracker. Um, for Island tracker. Every device is a unique user.
Um, so the, the user has generated, uh, tokens when they install the application. Now little do all of my users know that they can easily, you know, game the system, which is they can export their, their account. And re-import it on another phone. And this is of course brilliant because, um, If I have two devices and iOS and Android device, I can easily go between them.
And I can have my same account on both and see everything. This also means that somebody could export the account and I could give my credentials to Frank, but why would I give my credentials to Frank? And then Frank is going to see my friends. Like, you know, there has to be some, you know, way of revalidating that, so what my app does is whenever somebody imports an account or signs in.
I, I say, you have to go re get your in-app purchases. So this would, this would, um, fix the issue, which is I give my tokens to Frank. Frank gets the upgrade and then re-import his credentials. And then still has the upgrade because I'm like, no, no, no. Frank, you have to revalidate and restore your purchases.
I think the trickier part though, is this, and I'm not sure Frank how to handle this. I didn't think about this as, you know, my in-app purchases are on the family account, which means, you know, you technically can restore purchases on multiple devices. And I think. You would then have to allow that and then say, Hey, you know, Frank and I are on the family account.
We have different usernames and logins. You need to allow then, you know, the shared subscription. If you allow that, I guess. 
Frank: [00:05:55] Yeah, I guess that comes down to the granularity of what you're storing for your security model. All of this comes down to what is your security model for a year accounts? Um, so if what you're doing, when you do restore purchases, if you're then sending that flag to the server and the server's storing that flag, then I think you'll have a pretty natural time with the family.
It's all. When the server is the pure source of truth, that. Oh, no, you got to figure out how family plans work with the receipt validation and all that kind of stuff. Uh, I assume that's all in the receipt, but no, I take that back, right. Cause you could have bought the app and then joined a family. So yeah.
Um, I think that there are, there's definitely that benefit to restoring within the app and then communicating that back to 
James: [00:06:43] the server. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a good idea. And at some point, you know, you're going to have to figure that out. I mean, people can, you always have to have a restore mechanism in your app.
So a user could install with their Apple account on 25 devices and restore the purchase and their purchase would be on 25 devices. The question is, do you want cross-platform across iOS and Android? And I would say a subscription probably. Yes. But if you have actually, I would say this though, before we get over this one is if you have today, no user accounts, like the user has no user accounts, anything like that.
Um, I would probably wait and see how many people, you know, because then what you would do is I think over overcast does this where you options. Emily can like log into an account and then synchronize your data between your browser and your, you know, your mobile device, but it's optional, right? So you can say, Hey, if you want cross-platform, then you can optionally log into this thing, but then you got to decide what you want to support.
Frank: [00:07:49] Yeah. Uh, absolutely. You can have that logged out state, too. That's up to you to design the app. You can just make the anonymous experience good, or you can require the login. That's kind of up to you and how you're going to monetize the app. But enough about that, we got to move on to another topic, or should I say speaking across platform apps that have accounts?
I use an app called Robinhood and I've been getting a whole. A bunch of weird notifications this week because the internet is doing a thing. And again, that thing is crouching in on the real world and it's hitting the news sources. I think even BBC is covering it. That's my, that's my high water Mark for if it's real or not.
It's whether the BBC covers it. Uh, the stocks, the game, the game stocks, the game stocks, the game stopped stocks, the game stopped stocks, stocks. We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it, James. Why did I have to introduce this one? 
James: [00:08:45] Uh, okay, well, let's, let's get into the stocks, right?
Because. You know, it's funny enough that Island tracker is like the stock market of turnips. 
Frank: [00:08:54] That's a way better segue. You should have done it. 
James: [00:08:58] Well, you know, too late now that, I mean, that's why I'm the co-host Frank, because you know, sometimes I come up with good ones, but sometimes you come up with great ones.
So. Um, well, I wanted to, we're late to this game because, you know, we record the podcast early in real life. I was long on, on a few GameStop shares for awhile. I did sell them, um, and make a little bit of okay. Money. Uh, it's not necessarily a company. I believe you have paper hands. I have paper hands. Yeah.
That's what that means. There we go. I have no idea. Uh, 
Frank: [00:09:25] paper hands means you don't, you, you sold it for a profit diamond hands means you held it to stick it to the man James. 
James: [00:09:32] Oh yeah. I'm definitely paper. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing is with stocks. I get very, uh, worried, even though it's like, I have 15 shares.
Like it's not, that's not a lot, you know, I bought them for like $5 each, but, um, I don't have a, I didn't have a big investment in that. And then what's the disclaimer we're supposed to give Frank. 
Frank: [00:09:50] Uh, neither of us are financial advisors. Uh, past performance does not predict future expectations. Uh, God, I'm not rich.
So don't listen to me. The stock market is for rich, lucky people. 
James: [00:10:05] This is not advice and we do not recommend it. Okay. So here's what, here's what I want to do. Explain Johnny Harris is one of my favorite YouTubers. I'll put a link in the show notes to his video talking about this, but he had a great analogy of.
Um, of how this short squeeze works and how shorts work. And this was the issue with that. To me, it was a great learning opportunity. This whole thing was an amazing thing. I learned how options worked. I learned how, um, um, shorting works. I learned all of this stuff, but here's how it works. Frank, Frank, let's say you have.
Uh, one wheel. Okay. And you're you have a one wheel, right? And there's you just have, we're going to keep it simple. You have one, one wheel. Okay. Got it. And here's what here's, what's going to happen is, um, I'm going to come to you and I'm going to say Frank, um, I would like to borrow your one wheel and I will give it back to you in two months.
How does that sound? 
Frank: [00:11:01] You say yes, I say it, but okay. Okay. Okay, James, you can have my borrow my one wheel for one 
James: [00:11:06] month because you're not using it using it. So I'm going to find them. I'm going to borrow it. I'm going to give it back to you. So I take your one wheel. Okay. And I go onto eBay and I sell your one wheel and now let's make it easy.
And let's say a one wheel is worth $1,000. Okay. And, um, for fair price, it's a fair price. Now let's say I go on to, um, you know, I go onto eBay and I sell your, um, your one wheel and I sell it for $500. That's pretty good. How much money did I meant? Just make Frank $500. Right? I just, I just made $500. All right.
I take your one wheel. I borrow it. Right. And I say, Frank, I'm going to give this back to you in. One month. And obviously we had 
Frank: [00:11:56] a very bad contract. I should not have allowed you to sell it. 
James: [00:12:01] I didn't know that cause I'm going to, no matter what my contract says, I will give this one wheel back. I will give you a one wheel back to you.
Right. Um, so I go and I sit and I go and I, and I sell it. Now I sell it for this. Now one month comes up and there's one of two things that can happen. Okay. I can. Then, you know, I have to give you back your one. You're like, it's been a month. You have to give me back your one. Well, now one of two things has happened.
Now, the reason I did this is because I thought that. The price of one wheels were going to drop a lot. Right. I thought that in one month time, they were going to go down to 200 bucks and I would be able to buy back the one wheel for $200 and give it back to you. And I've made $300, $500 minus $200, $300 profit.
Now the opposite of this could happen. What if the one wheel prices. Go up, let's say they're $2,000, $3,000, $5,000. Frank, what I've done is I've shorted one wheels. Cause I've said, I believe that one wheels and one month will be cheaper than they are now. Okay. And. At one month, the issue will become either.
We'll have to buy them back at a lower price or a higher site price. So the problem that happened with game stock, which I used to work for by the way, for many years. Oh, does assistant manager. Thank you very much. Um, um, you had lots of stocks. Yes. I didn't know. They don't give us any, so. Um, what happened is, is one over 100% of the shares of GameStop were shorted, which means that everybody was basically borrowing shares and selling that, you know, and selling them to people and imagining were the sock was going to go down to zero and all these wall street bets people said, well, you know what, it's not going to go.
We believe in this stuff, we've done our due diligence. We're going to buy all the GameStop stock and all these other options, and we're going to drive the price up and all of those hedge funds who had all of these shorts. Got caught in this mix, because guess what? They had to return those GameStop shares at a certain price.
And sure enough, when that price goes up to 500, 300, whatever dollars, they lose a bunch of money in the tunes of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. And that is stock shorting. 
Frank: [00:14:26] Yeah. I remember once I really wanted to get into the mathematics of finance and I was working for a bank. So I was around a bunch of financial walks and I had to keep up with them.
And so I bought a book and I read it, I got all up to date on finance and I showed the book to one of the bankers and he laughed at me. He says, Oh, that's nice that it has nothing to do with how the stock market works. It's all a game. It's all game theory kind of game. And it's, it's honestly, for me, entertaining to see the internet have that much, uh, control over something that is normally not under control, unless you are a very rich hedge fund or something like that.
That. And so I think it's a blip. I'm curious what legislation will come out of it, not legislation, but SEEC stuff. Um, but overall it is a reminder that the internet is dangerous. I'm a little bit worried about propaganda campaigns because what's the next stock that we mess with and is that for other reasons, et cetera, et cetera.
But I've always assumed that we're going to have a dystopian cyberpunk future. So this is 
James: [00:15:32] just a part of it. Well, as we all know, I am long on dose and, um, you know, dose gets, they call dose getting pumped, right. As they do that big thing where they buy and then a few people sell at the top pumping is the same is very similar thing that we hear all the time.
And I, I will say, you know, But I'm long on dose. I will. I got the, what is it? Diamond hands on dos diamond, hands on dish, 
Frank: [00:15:54] diamond, hands on hold in order to raise the price. The problem is that if everyone's holding then market demand, there's more demand. So the price goes up. Well, I believe they call 
James: [00:16:03] it huddling.
That's 
Frank: [00:16:06] the term. That's a new one for me. 
James: [00:16:08] So huddle do, Joseph told me what huddling is because I was talking about doge. And then I guess in the crypto speak, instead of holding, they say you got a huddle. Oh, God, I don't know. I have no idea. 
Frank: [00:16:20] Anyways. Hello. Hello fellow teenagers. We got the leaks meet, speak down.
James: [00:16:26] So Frank, we talked about the one wheel, but apparently you're about to get two wheels and I'm not talking about a bicycle. 
Frank: [00:16:32] Yeah. Yeah. Knock on wood James. I'm buying a robot. 
James: [00:16:36] This is the first robot I bought handy. 
Frank: [00:16:39] No, I'm not getting bought handy. We still don't know if bot handy is for sale. You failed me there.
Cause I asked a few bought, bought handy and no nothing. Is it handy. Bought her, bought handy, bought handy. Okay. Fine. That's not what we're talking about today. We are talking about Lumo Lumo. Cool. Is a yeah. Yeah. It's a segway without the handlebars. So imagine a segue. And instead of handlebars, just a little robot that sits between your legs.
It's a little awkward if I'm honest, but, um, knock on wood because I actually don't have it yet, but it is a coming. And so I've been reading manuals and watching YouTube videos. The very neat thing about this is it's not just a transport device, but it is actually a robot. It's a self-balancing robot without a human on it.
That's something a one wheel can't do. It also has a whole big sensor array. And it's basically an Android with wheels. I'm so excited. 
James: [00:17:40] Well, and this thing has it's, it's run, it's like running Android and Android there's apps and that's, there's a bunch of stuff. It says customize open platform based on Android iOS.
And it has an Intel. Adam X seven processor inside, and it has iOS and Android devices. And I've seen these things by the way, because it has built in motion tracking and there's a Twitch streamer, the sushi dragon, who does, I don't even can't even describe what a stream is, um, fun, but he has a bunch of Lumos that like follow him around and record him and then he'll hop on them and do a bunch of stuff.
And he, you can program them like you can. Program, give them skills. There's OTA updates, a whole bunch of stuff, but this thing has like object tracking and maps a world, like in real time. It's I didn't, he was, he's just using it as a follow me around camera. But when you go to the website, which we'll put in the show notes, of course, like it's kinda crazy.
Frank: [00:18:40] Yeah, and this is something I generally resist. I prefer to build my own robotics. You know, me, I like building drones and all that kind of stuff. But the fact of the matter is there are much better technicians out there than me, and they can build much better hardware. And so it's. Kind of exciting for me to buy this kind of device that is also programmable.
I'm really curious to see exactly what the API is. You can go to the website and inspect it, but I haven't gotten that deep yet, but this is how robots seem to be at the commercial level. Being released to the world here is a programmable device and here is a kind of API sec. Good luck with it. Um, It's just going to be more of that in the future.
You know, the spot robot that I absolutely adore from Boston dynamics, I guess it's roughly the same thing. They give you an SDK and they're like, Spock can get through doors, but if you want like higher level functionality, you're going to kind of have to program it yourself. And I saw, 
James: [00:19:40] yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Well, I was going to say our friend spot. Did you see that spot? Got an arm now spot his spot handy. 
Frank: [00:19:47] This is Andy. Uh, that is really good. Uh, yeah, I remember it though. Early promos always had the arm and it looks like a dinosaur when it has an arm. So it's like dyno bought some, I'm very excited for that.
Uh, yeah, I totally did. And it's a great addition to the robot. We already discussed by handy, plenty. And, you know, I felt like bought Handy's becoming a mascot. Oh, the show. Anyway, um, a friend of the show Jacquelyn, uh, worked on this project and he said he was programming his to go inspect his plants in the garden and go see if they need watering every morning.
So the little robot is just programmed on a schedule to go out and check on the plants. And I think that's absolutely cute. And darling, and I can't wait to do stupid things like that too. 
James: [00:20:33] That's really neat. Yeah. I. The idea of having, uh, uh, a really sophisticated robot that you can then program and do other things with that.
You, you don't have to build the entire system. I believe that that looks that that's like a kind of. 
Frank: [00:20:48] Uh, and you can ride it. You can just get on top and ride it. I, I should not leave that off. This thing has like a 30 mile range. I don't probably not with a human on it, but, you know, um, so I'll, I'll never give up my prized one wheel, but I have no problem.
Uh, this is more, what are they called? Like the hoverboard style where the wheel to your left and your right two wheels, two wheels 
James: [00:21:12] got to. Wheels for me 
Frank: [00:21:17] and a cute little sensor pack. 
James: [00:21:21] All right, well, let's get into it, Frank. The big topic of the week I circuit 3d is out. We talked about it last week, but you released it and you.
You just did it out of nowhere. Oh, 
Frank: [00:21:31] heavens to Betsy. I totally forgot about that. It's been dominated my life for the last four days. Uh, yeah. I had a really great launch and I want to just take this time to thank everyone on Twitter for all the retweets. And I apologize dearly if you kept getting retweets in your timeline and I was sticking up your timeline there.
I apologize. But, um, everyone was really great. I was. James. I was so nervous about this release, not just because I spent a lot of time on the app, but it was also kind of a weird UI. I wasn't sure how people are going to react to it. It's an app that up to this point, I've kind of had to explain to people and I hate that about apps.
I like it when people just get it. And so I was really nervous about the release, but then I sent it out and I mean, within an hour, I was kind of. Uh, inundated kinda overwhelmed with tweets to deal with, but I kept texting you during it. I was very excited. It was, uh, it was a really great launch. Thanks 
James: [00:22:27] everyone.
Yeah, no, I think it was, it was really fun. I remember waking up, uh, I woke up in the morning really early that day. Cause I had something, some meeting or something going on and I didn't, I don't know if I was there. First person to buy it, but I would like to think I am, um, because I did search I circuit and then I circuit 3d was in the dropdown is before you tweeted or announced anything.
And as you remember, you know, it is sort of happening and, and it reminded me of, um, what's the David, uh, Dave Smith. 
Frank: [00:23:00] Yeah. Yeah. From, uh, like a pedometer plus plus, um, 
James: [00:23:06] yeah. He was releasing, I think sleep plus plus, and he did all to podcasts about him releasing the app and then waiting for people to be able to buy it.
So you could like tweet about it and do a whole thing. Um, you did something really cool though, that I thought was great is that you had these promo videos that you put out for iOS and Android on the app store. And you included that in the tweet. And I thought that was the most genius thing. That you could do, because it's like, here's the app, you know, that you made a promo video and you got multiple uses out of it.
I thought that was really nice. 
Frank: [00:23:42] Yeah. Um, it was a combination of things. One was, it's nice to control your own media on Twitter because I'm never quite sure how the embedded media pick her up. Her thing is going to work. So just in general, out there, if you want to guarantee you media with your tweet, you just gotta put that media in there.
Uh, so that was something that I sent about, but, uh, you had burned it into my head and I had decided that this was an app that you kind of needed to see moving. Because half of the joke of the app is how there's a physics engine running in a electronics app. It's a little bit weird, but like, you can't understand what that means unless you see things actually falling and moving in that kind of stuff.
So I knew I needed to show a video. So I spent a good couple of days, uh, putting that video together and I. Thought the video came out good. You know, I'm not a video editor, but I was proud of it. And I thought it kind of captured the spirit of the app. So that's what I decided to throw into the tweet. And that seems to have been a good decision because kind of just at a glance within the first two seconds, you didn't even have to watch too much of the video.
I think you kind of understood what the app was just from the first 
couple 
James: [00:24:50] seconds. Yeah. Did you enjoy being featured on nine to five Mac? 
Frank: [00:24:55] Yeah, I love that. I mean, that never gets old. Like any time, like a proper media place kind of picks up your app that never gets old. Like I want wanna like, Take screenshots and sending them to my mom, like, look, I wish I lived in the era where I had a chance of being in print media.
I'll probably never get to be in print media, but you know, that would still be a nice little life goal. Uh, it was, it was great to get a lot of compliments from the Mac community, but they're always the people I kind of want to impress out there. And then I had a lot of people saying it was a good idea for education, which.
Really made me happy because I love the idea of working on education apps. 
James: [00:25:36] Yeah. I was, um, super impressed by it. I think that one of the big use cases that you've talked a lot about for ice circuit is in the educational space. And you know, for me, I wrote it, you know, wrote a review after. Playing around with it quite a bit.
I'm on my iPhone S E second gen, which it did hold up on. Okay. Can I 
Frank: [00:25:56] interject real quick? One of the biggest surprises of the launch it's how many people bought it on an iPhone? I was like, Oh gosh. Oh gosh, I really designed this for an iPad, but it works on an iPhone. I promise. I made sure the iPhone version was good, but.
It was really designed for an iPad. So that made me a little bit nervous when I saw the sales coming in. 
James: [00:26:15] One of my favorite things that you do in this app, that makes me feel like I can understand electrical engineering is that you put a lot of good samples in, uh, in, in, into the application. So when you go to create a new document, you can create what the blank app it's like visual studio is like, what type of app do you want to in a servo, uh, switch panel.
It's a good way of exploring. And you can tell that. Like, Oh, Frank made this thing because it's like, of course Frank would make. You know what he would, these are creations that he was building and testing the app and sure enough, it's like, Oh, here it is. And, and, um, yeah, I think it's, it's, it's really neat.
Just, I think, you know what I'm doing half the time. Totally 
Frank: [00:26:54] cool. Those aren't the ones I used to test the app, the ones I used to test the app are ridiculous. They're just, they make me laugh every time I open them. I'm like that circuit is ridiculous. And I just mean by, by that, I mean, like, Imagine a circuit and then hit copy and paste a thousand times and see what happens.
That's that was kind of, I love that kind of parts of, it's why it took me so long to write the app. I just liked using the app. Uh, yeah, I definitely got the feed back that. This is definitely just the simulator. So if you want to explore circuits, but you don't know circuits, I think it's great for exploring, but, um, if you don't know circuits at all, there's no guided education mode.
So definitely, definitely something I've heard from people, uh, to add to it. James, only two crashing buds on day one. That's what I'm proud of. And you found the first one. Congratulations, James. And your messed up email configuration. 
James: [00:27:53] Yeah. Yeah. Frank, there's a, there's an email support button and it's crashes, which is my favorite.
Like you don't get support today. 
Frank: [00:28:00] No, I told you though. It's always that it's always the most embarrassing thing. Like your bugs can't be like subtle little cute things. No, it has to be okay. Oh, I'm upset with your app and I need support. And then you click the button and the app crashes glorious.
Absolutely. I just want to be clear. That's what the app does right now. Everyone under certain email configurations, it's, it's embarrassing on every level, aside from the fact that the rest of the app is good. So it's like, of course, I'm going to screw something up. I should have used Amarin essentials. I was going 
James: [00:28:32] to say somebody didn't use Amarin essentials.
Cause you know, it wasn't fresh Xamarin essential doesn't crash because I. Have the same code, the MF male view thing inside of my cadence and Island tracker. And what it does is I don't know how you're at, why your app crashes, but what mine does is it pops up a little dialogue and it says the, you know, the.
This piece of code requires the mail app. Do you want to re-install the mail app? You know what I mean? Um, which is, again is not the best, but this is a, this is a, this is a fascinating one because this is, uh, something that Apple broke and they haven't fixed yet. And, uh, they don't have a good API for developers to really send email into other third party apps, which can now be.
Set as the default, but I've really found those defaults to be broken. Anyway, I was on a website yesterday. There was a mail too, and I clicked on it and it it's like, Hey, um, you gotta, you gotta install the mail app. And I was like, what the why? How is this the default mail app? If I can't open a mail to you in another app.
So I don't know. It's weird. 
Frank: [00:29:34] That's so funny because I was considering just switching to open your L mail too, because that has always traditionally worked also. And I would've said that would just pick up your app, but now you have me scared now. So it's all, bro. 
James: [00:29:47] Yeah, all of it. Anyways, last thing I want to talk about here that we put in you have ice or good 3d out.
Is it now you have multiple ice circuits and I was talking about. At bundles, it's one of the most kind of, really not Android app bundles, but app store, app bundles. It's funny that those are named the same thing. Yeah, I don't have, I don't have apps that are the same enough to warrant a bundle. You Frank also didn't up until this point.
You could have the Frank Kruger pack, but I feel like I circuit continuous and Moe cast. In Calca are different enough that an average person wouldn't want to get the Kruger pack. You know what I mean? But now you have I circuit and I get 3d and they both have different use cases. I want to make that very clear, like I've, I feel like they're, they're similar apps, but also completely different.
And I was like, you should do an app bundle. And I realized that I said that, and I don't actually know how app bundles work. 
Frank: [00:30:47] Yeah, kind of I'm in the same basket as you, because I've been on the app store for, since what, 2008. And unfortunately, my mental model of it is from 2008 and we didn't have app bundles.
Now these are not bundle IDs. This is where you can take multiple apps and put what might be a unique icon, a unique description, and make it a single purchase to get a bunch of your apps. And. I've been thinking about doing it for awhile? I don't think I would have called it. The Frank bundle, James, I would have called it like a tech bundle.
You know, I could have done like Coca and continuous are kind of naturally together and then throw in. I circuit, I don't know, call it a tech bundle or something like that. I've thought about it for quite a while. I haven't pulled the trigger on it mostly because I'm a terrible business person and I just haven't been sure if that was the right thing to do, but.
Uh, yeah, you nailed it. Now that I have apps that are most definitely a part of a family, it makes sense for me, I have to figure out exactly what the bundle is in terms of like Mac versions and iOS versions, because you know, the whole Mac iOS world has gotten very confusing in the app ecosystem. So I have to make a few decisions there, but I think you might be right.
And I think it's time I look into bundles and so I started to, to, yeah, 
James: [00:32:09] there's. You know, I was reading through the Apple documentation for it. And, and the whole concept is you can bundle up to 10 apps into a bundle and the user can buy all the, all the apps at once. Um, the, the, the coolest part I think of this though, is the complete, my bundle.
Okay. And this means that if someone buys an app, they'll get a credit towards the bundle. So if they bought high circuit at 1299 or whatever it is, And the bundle is 1999 or 24 99. They would get 1299 off the bundle. And I was like, wow, that's really cool. Like Apple did this, correct. Because there's a situation in this case where you, you, for example, Frank, you have, you know, X amount of users with I circuit.
You could literally be offering them. I circuit 3d at a discounted rate because you put it in that bundle. Like, it's almost like a, Hey, you supported me. Here's a nice little cake back and you can have the normal Appiah, uh, increased price. And the bundle obviously gets a discount. 
Frank: [00:33:15] Unless I charge more for the bundle than the, some of the apps.
Ha no, I would never do that. I'm just, no, it's a great idea because it it's a cool little reward too, to give people for supporting, you know, your previous apps and things like that. I dunno. I was just a little hesitant in the past because. Honestly, I didn't know they had complete my bundle. I guess this is the technology name that they're calling it.
It makes obvious sense. Of course they would support it, but just my own negativity. I didn't know. I was also worried. I had heard some nasty rumors of bad things that happens with bundles. Uh, one of the tricky ones I've heard is that you can't really delete an app once it's a part of a bundle. You're basically stuck selling that out basically for eternity.
Um, There's that there's. If you sell an app, You know, and these things can change. Apple's always changing. So, you know, check with Apple first, but there was a thing where, uh, people are having trouble transferring apps that were a part of a bundle. So if I, if you bought ice circuit from me, like you bought the business, I surrogate from me, um, I couldn't transfer it over to your company.
So keep in mind that there might be a few little future caveats like that, but if you're in a position like me, where you're mostly in control of your own company, then I think it makes a lot of sense and I'm definitely looking into it. 
James: [00:34:36] Yeah. I think it's a pretty decent, th there seems like there's a lot of customization.
Now you can use the default icon, which is like your other app icons bundled, or you can do a custom app icon. Um, Yeah, I don't know. It seems pretty cool. Again, I, I just have never been in the place. I don't see app bundles that often, um, putting them together because most of my apps are just like either free or, you know, the developer has like one app, um, you know, and.
To me. This is kind of cool. I see it in games a lot. I'd imagine there's a bunch of games that are bundled together, but I think also productivity. I think there's a bunch of Mac apps that are like, Hey, um, who's like, like fall Creek or whatever. Right? Frog Creek. Fuck Creek. Fuck. 
Frank: [00:35:17] Did they make apps? I mean, they make web stuff.
Yeah. No, 
James: [00:35:21] not, they're not the ones what's, the other ones are really popular. Mac developer. Um, 
Frank: [00:35:26] don't do this to me. Put me on the spot. Um, any of them, 
James: [00:35:30] any of them, we 
Frank: [00:35:31] just failed. We failed as makeovers. Yes. And I've heard of developers cooperating with each other where, okay. Let's just combine our apps. And one of them will take on the business responsibilities and, you know, just cut the other one, a check, which is kind of fun because doing that.
Cross-promotion like that, you know, you're introducing your app into maybe a new market, things like that. Uh, I'm not good at working together, so I haven't done that myself, but I always thought that was a clever use of the technology too. Yeah, 
James: [00:35:59] that's crazy. No, I want to say congratulations on your launch, Frank, and you have a very.
Fun road ahead, I guess, you know, on our Patrion feed, um, which we're doubling down on, uh, over at patrion.com/merge conflict FM, and also there's a support button on the top of merge conflict out of feminine in the show notes too. Um, you know, we have been doubling down on the Patrion. We are now putting out all of the episodes early.
So if you're like, man, I need Frank and James in my ears, even sooner than Monday at midnight. Pacific then you can totally get those podcasts. As soon as I am done editing them, I put them live. Then they're available immediately. The patron subscribers have a. Um, exclusive RSS feeds. So you don't even need to RSS feeds there's one RSS feed that you can get all the patriotic exclusive bonus episodes.
We just did one called James is deleting all of his apps from the app store. Um, so that's a good one to listen to, but clickbait clickbait or the show in, they come in at different tiers, you know, entry price, like $2 a month or whatever, how support the show, um, helps us keep our server costs going. Um, and also you get some really cool, um, bonus things on our discord and we'll have exclusive merch coming to the Patrion feeds as well.
Whenever I can figure out how to do that. But, um, yeah, I'm super excited about it. I think it's fun. We're gonna do some short episodes, but no matter what our Patrion subscribers will get it early and you can go figure that out at the link below. 
Frank: [00:37:35] I think that's a lot of fun. I think we have a really great release time.
Sunday at midnight, Monday mornings. I love that release time, but I also really love getting episodes early. So I'm excited for everyone. And I'm glad that we're doing this for all the Patrion people. So if you're like me and are very impatient, you'll love getting the episodes early. 
James: [00:37:55] Yeah. All right. I think that's going to do it for this week's merge conflicts.
So until next time, I'm James Monson Magnum 
Frank: [00:38:02] I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for this piece.