mergeconflict271
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[00:00:00] James: Frank, Frank, Frank Krueger. I, um, it's a crazy week. Uh, last week we were talking on one of the lightning topics about phased releases. You remember this topic? 

[00:00:21] Frank: Oh, do I, I was staring at that radio button for probably an hour, James with all the indecision. I was releasing just an update to I circuit and I had your voice in my head just being like, do it, Frank, do it, do the phased release.

And I, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't do the face. 

[00:00:43] James: Well, I wrote an entire blog post that'll put in the, in the show notes. My experience with phase releases or as Google calls them stage rollouts. I don't know. What's better stage rollouts or phased releases. 

[00:00:55] Frank: Um, which one would stores do? False grand openings, all that kind of stuff.

I don't know. Hm. W what's the equivalent? Does the movie industry do this? Do they do like pre shows? 

[00:01:07] James: They do like early releases, but 

[00:01:11] Frank: I like early release. That was a program on steam, that early release program. Remember that 

[00:01:16] James: one? It was kind of like a bait. That's the thing that apple is missing on the app store is like a beta program.

That's not open yet. You know, the here's the thing, how this works is Google kind of has this, right? If you're in a closed beta and you make an in-app purchase, then it's not charged to you. But, uh, but if you're on an open beta and you buy an in-app purchase, it, it is charged you because that makes sense.

It's an open beta. Whereas apple, if you're test flight or there are the in-app purchases that you make, aren't charged to you either. 

[00:01:45] Frank: Oh, a pro tip. Thank you for that. I was just about to ask. And so you've tested that out or is that something that you. Well, 

[00:01:53] James: no, I tested it out. I tested it out on my system.

[00:01:55] Frank: So yeah, it's funny. I just don't do enough in-app purchases where I know those little details like that. Either that or all my beta testers are cheap. I'm going to have to figure out which one that. 

[00:02:06] James: Yeah. I mean, I can, someone could write in and tell me that I'm wrong. So it did do it with my account and my account.

So I did test it with a few different accounts, but I'm like 99% sure. That's how that, that works in general, but I didn't do it, Frank. So here here's the here's. My breakdown is stage rollouts phase releases from Google and apple. Pros and cons, let me just break this down and we'll talk about my experiments.

We'll talk about stuff. Okay. So we talked about the apple app store that one's very clear. You get seven days, you get 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100. That that's it. That's how it rolls out to your users. 

[00:02:42] Frank: Programmed. You have no choice. You, you select the radio button. Unlike me, I still have a choice. I can still swap.

So I'm, I'm, I'm excited for you to convince me to change the radio button choice, but, um, okay. Yeah. So apple puts you on a fixed schedule kugel. On the other hand, you said what you just type in any old random percentage. 

[00:03:02] James: That's correct. So it is up to you. That's why it's a stage rollout because you're in control of the staging.

Whereas the phase release, like it literally is a failure at GU apple is facing the release end for you. So yeah, you get to put any day, anytime what percentage you want continuously increased till you hit 100. So that is actually really nice because imagine. That you are at 5% and you're like, I think something's going wrong, but I'm not really sure.

I'm just going to leave it at 5%. Like I'm not gonna allow anybody else to get the new version. You can do that on Google play, but on apple, you can only pause. You can pause. And I don't know if that stops it forever. It must just pause and then resume so you can pause. And then continue on, but you can't like slowly release it.

You can't be like, okay, now I'm at 20%. I just, I need some, I need a little bit more sample data. You know, that that's the problem, right? You can't just be like, I just need some more users. You can't increase it, but you can. 

[00:04:03] Frank: That's interesting. I completely made the opposite assumption. I assume that if they let you type in a percentage, once you can change that percentage anytime, but that's not the case.

Once you've decided 25% or whatever, you're kind of locked into that for that, uh, not phased, whatever they call it. Staged 

[00:04:23] James: Google, Sage rollouts. You can change it any time you like one minute apart. If you. 

[00:04:29] Frank: Great. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So what is it, uh, Andrew composite, you said? Yup. Um, and this is all kind of relying on what we were saying before, where a lot of this depends on you kind of watching your analytics or whatever to detect, whether there's an anomaly coming up.

So this would be your clue that I need to go from 25% of 25.1, two, 5% to get that one extra user. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So have you been. Doing that cause you're doing the apple one and you're doing the Google one. Where did you start at the Google? I 

[00:05:03] James: started at 5%, you know, which is actually day three of, of, of apple, you know?

And I wrote this down. I said, cause here's the problem. I said, if I was to roll out 1%, that's like 30 years. I my app, right? Cause I have, I have like 3,500 users. So it's like 35 users. So wouldn't be until day four, which is halfway through the release where I get 350 users. And my app people updated apps all the time.

It doesn't mean they use the application. Right. My application, right. Somebody has to go and ride a bike. You know what I mean, 

[00:05:41] Frank: physical effort, they really got to want it. Yeah. Um, but it's also their schedule. Maybe they only ride their bike on Thursdays and you're released on a Sunday or something. Yeah.

Interesting. 

[00:05:53] James: That to me is a, is a bummer. 

[00:05:55] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little particular to you though. I, you have one of those kind of funny apps. Um, I think a lot of people are doing like corporate apps and things like that that are probably free and people are using them all the time to get their coupons or whatever it is.

And for those that makes the 1% makes a little more sense because they probably have a hundred thousand users or something 

[00:06:16] James: like that. Yeah. So what I ended up doing was 5% then the next day, 20%, 40%, then 100 on Google. And to me. I did enjoy that. I had complete control out of it. And by pausing just meant I didn't update the number at all.

Right. Um, whereas apple, if I, if I was to forget to pause or like I had something happen that day, it just going to keep going, unless I try to pause it manually and go into the portal. The thing with the Google one. You know, you got to go update it every day pretty much. Or will you got to figure it out?

And that, that felt like a little bit tedious to me to go do that. Um, but I think it, I think it's a nicer approach and my personal opinion only because the numbers that apple give you the one to 5% or whatever. Yeah. Just not enough. I just, I don't have that install base to give them. Data. I understand 1% is like, that means, that means like the application is crashing on startup and you need to like pause it to meet, you know what I mean?

But I've tested my application in test flight. I have a few tests, flight users, you know, and that's not the case. So to me, the apple one, I wish I could adjust it to be a little bit more aggressive, like be more aggressive, upfront type of type of deal. That's what I would have. 

[00:07:36] Frank: Yeah, it's interesting because you're saying it's annoying to update that number every day, but these phase releases, state releases aren't really beneficial unless you are watching every single day because you're trying to catch that crashing bug or whatever it is.

So I get that you say it's annoying to update that number, but at the same time, this whole process is a very manual involved kind of process to start with. 

[00:08:00] James: I will tell you this though, here is the benefit of doing it this way. Is that it made me check my apps or connect and my Google plus. Every single day, how many people were updating, if there were new reviews, if there was crash reports on them, I don't, I don't do that normally.

Like I do have the app store connect on my phone and I check it every once in a while, like every few days, but I literally would, would, you know, wake up at, you know, in the morning and check the statistics and look at stuff and like go into the portal. And it was kind of a daily ritual for me to go and do that.

And I think that was healthy when you're, you know, releasing an app. For several, you know, I guess this one, it was at least, you know, about 5,000 between both of, of them. And then I also did it from my stream timer, which I just updated, which we'll talk about here in a bit. Um, but that one's another five.

So, you know, 10,000 people or whatever, you know, you definitely want to be watching that release. That's that's quite a lot. 

[00:09:00] Frank: It absolutely is. And that's why when apple introduced, um, it used to be when they approved you, they would just throw it into the store. Remember that you would get approved at like 2:00 AM and then you get your first crash report at 3:00 AM and you totally miss it all.

So thankfully I've been on the menu. Rollout forever, but that's just an on-off zero to a hundred percent. Oh, there's no in between. Uh, but the benefit of that is I pick a day that's release day. I do the release, I do the manual release and then I'm watching my analytics like a Hawk. So it's really similar to the phased release.

It's just, I want to do it one day, not five days because I'm lazy. I don't know why, but, um, The problem with the manual approach of course, is if you have that nasty crashing bug, but aside from those nasty crashing bugs, I don't, I I'm not, you, you haven't a hundred percent sold me on the phase releases, but I still am kind of leaning on that side.

I'm just wondering in my own psychology, why I didn't do the face release. So please continue. 

[00:10:07] James: Um, you know, I mean, at this point, I mean, that's sort of my verdict is I don't think that there's a, uh, a yes or no. It's not a clear. Answer. I am like you though, when it comes to being inside the app store connect, I never do automatic release.

I just don't. I don't know when they're going to approve it. Why would I ever do that? I want to be in control of that at a minimum. Uh, so I agree with you that that is how I had it. And additionally, the nice part there, as I mentioned earlier, is if you do manual. You then have the choice of doing phased or, or not phased release.

That is up to you. You can opt to do that after it's been approved. So that is the nice thing. I will say 

[00:10:49] Frank: I was actually really curious about that because going into this conversation, I said, I didn't do it, but I was like, but I'd sent manual. And I was like, it's the wet form going to support it. So, uh, do you know that for sure on apple?

Or is that a Google thing? Yeah. Okay. 100, two, 

[00:11:03] James: 100% on apple. And the reason I did that, because it was, I did it for my stream timer. I had it approve sitting there and it was the same thing. And I only, I really decided to do it also on my Mac app because, um, There is no task flight. There is a test flight, but not a test flight because there's a test flight button.

And then all my builds say not available for testing. And I don't know why, or if there is ever going to be a test flight or maybe because I'm not building against X code 13 or something, I don't know. But that's the news on those. 

[00:11:35] Frank: I think we're in the beta site. So number one. Yeah, I think you need the newest X code for apple.

Number two, you need the newest operating system and no one's installing the newest operating system. People, Mac S is one of those ones. People definitely wait for the 0.1 release and things like that. And so. I think for beta testers, um, it's going to work out the Mac test flight, going to work out it's annoying, but new X codes come with.

We adopt them new operating systems. Come. If people want to be beta testers, you can tell them you have to be on the new operating system. But right now, like you said, it don't work. It's useless. None of my apps, uh, seem to be. Which is annoying because I'm still sending out unsigned copies of the app that the operating system quarantines and says, you know, you're going to catch a disease if you use this app.

It's really scary, honestly. Yeah. 

[00:12:30] James: I don't like that. I do not like that. Yeah. I mean, I've done a few tasks where I am both of my machines. I try to install and do this other stuff and I can test it a little bit. Yeah, th that's the scary part. Like I like on windows that when you bundle up a UWP app, there's actually a PowerShell script that you can run that lets you install it on your machine.

So you can then test the final install. And that's the same as test flighting for all intents and purposes, you could give that bundle to someone and it's going to work. And you're going to feel confident about putting that bundle into the app store. Um, and, uh, I would say out of all of the, all of the things, I feel least confident in my Mac applications.

[00:13:15] Frank: Is, um, that's funny because I'm always very confident in my Mac applications, because if I have a Mac version, I tend to use it for development because the debugger is so good and, you know, compilation is really fast on the Mac. And so I usually feel pretty confident about those w where those fall down is any time you need any entitlements.

On apple, any special little provisions or anything because I very rarely, very rarely sign my development apps. Do you sign like your debug build so that all your entitlements and everything are working? 

[00:13:54] James: Um, I just do whatever I have to do for the app. 

[00:13:59] Frank: So you don't want, I don't think because what you have to do for the Mac, much like the iPhone, you have to register your device, your Mac, you have to download a profile, you have to install it into the operating system.

This is to get all the iCloud and everything working. Yeah. And because of those little hurdles, A lot of us just don't do it. And so all of those features that are sandbox dependent, you know, if you're accessing files on the driver, things like that, those are the ones that can bite you. Those are the ones that become crashing bugs.

Like one crashing bug. I had an ice circuit was that tried to talk to the iCloud servers. But it had the wrong entitlement to talk to the iCloud server. The operating system said naughty, naughty, and killed the process. So it's a crashing bug, but it's not exactly in my code. It's just in the configuration of the app.

And so it's, it's those ones I'm always paranoid about. And so I've learned to actually start signing all my Mac versions, just to build that confidence in the release. One, but that's sorry. That's, that's cool about windows, because like you said, it's always that final, final build. It's amazing. That little things that can change between what you think is the final build and the one that you actually upload to the stores.

[00:15:17] James: Yeah. And I, and I test everything I do uninstalls. I test all my in-app purchases. Again. I test scenarios like restore functionality. I, I got, I go a little bit nuts and you know, I think now for Mac, I feel more comfortable because the Mac that I build on, um, I've frozen it in time. We've talked about, it's a Mac 2013.

It's getting no more updates. I'm just going to snapshot it in time. Be very happy. And then all I need to do is test it on, you know, my, my Mac book to make sure it's working. Just in case things change there, but I probably won't build against iOS or X code 13 until they force me to, which will be at some point.

I'm not sure when, but, uh, I feel pretty good about it. I'm still using Xamarin forms and doing all this stuff. I'm just going to be like, all right, it's good to go. Um, but yeah, anyway. I don't think 

[00:16:12] Frank: you frozen time. So is that a recommendation to everyone? I can't remember if you recommended that. I know you did it because you were just getting annoyed.

Uh, what is the situation report for that one? Would you, would you still recommend freezing yourself in time 

[00:16:26] James: that Mac is frozen in time? No. No more updates of anything? No more visual city back. No more dinette updates. No, no more anything hilarious. And that machine only because it's pretty old, too. Uh, it is going to be my building Mac apps and that's it.

It doesn't do much, basically. That's all it's going to do. And on that one, I'll do all my new modern development and Dunham Maui development and all that jazz going forward. But that one's just going to be snuggled up in time. Good to go. I'm going to be very good. 

[00:16:58] Frank: This is a great time to have a micro and one update.

I've been using the M one for proper development for an entire week now, while I'm still not at home. And it has been, I have been impressed by it. you're still doing good. I think we will all be happy to get the . Proper proper proper development machine, but, uh, the M one's still rocking it. So my micro and one update right there, everyone.

Nice, nice. 

[00:17:27] James: So I did some other things in these app updates besides do the phase rollout that I wanted to talk about, and that comes down to inept purchases because Frank frankly love to talk about it. And I purchases a monetization on this podcast, but if it's not AI, then we're talking about monetization.

And I think of. A bad part, a bad job, then done bad job of 

[00:17:50] Frank: everything. From what perspective have you made the user's life worse? Are you a bad marketer? Did you make the UI really ugly? Are you using the hotdog theme again? I keep telling you not to use the hotdog theme. 

[00:18:03] James: No. It's hamburger time. Uh, no. Um, no, it is.

I think it's the marketing aspect of it. So here's what I'm thinking, Frank. There's two aspects of it. Okay. Let's first let's first talk about my Keenan's my bicycle app. Okay. Cause that one's done fairly well, a hundred and as easy as of that app, nearly 3,600 people have installed it. And 160 people have given me money for a pro optic upgrade, which is pretty good.

Thank you everyone. Thank you. 160 people, at least on iOS on Android, then it would be more so just double those numbers. The thing is I wanted to add more pro features. So we talked about last week, your SQL Lite update, and me putting history into this application. I added a more customization and I released it and I, and I added, you know, screenshots of the app store.

I added, you know, new things and I was like, you know what? I think this is a great update that anyone using the app, this is going to be worth it totally worth $4. I just think it's like definitely worth $4. And. To be clear. 

[00:19:07] Frank: Uh, oh yeah. Okay. Um, but let's be clear. Uh, so this was not a new in-app purchase.

This was like the pro version of the app you just have. Yeah. You have free and pro okay. 

[00:19:20] James: So. Here's the thing. And I already know what I did when I messed up, so, okay. Is that I didn't do anything like I did. That's all I did Frank and I, you know, my favorite part of this app is that I have that little star in the top left.

Yeah. Yeah. And the Prostar Prostar. And when you tap on that star, it tells you, you can remove this star and get a bunch of other features by upgrading the pro. I think it's a good, I think it's good. And I updated that with the new features, but I didn't. I didn't like, I didn't tell the users that there are these new features.

Like why didn't I do a pop up or something else? Or, you know, have a, uh, you know, a new page that talks about the new features and what you can get an upgraded pro. Maybe that'd be hassling people. But I was like, no, I failed to market all the new features in the time and effort that I put in. 

[00:20:12] Frank: Correct.

Let's rename the podcast, um, marketing conflict. Cause we were both terrible at, um, we've talked about it in the past mayor when we were doing the onboarding or something, but I've noticed a lot of apps, especially Apple's own apps. They are so into the what's new screen when you do an update and I have been throughout my career 10, 11 years.

Mobile app development. I have resisted putting those screens in, but I think I've finally turn the corner where you have to tell the user, especially if it's a pro feature that you want them to buy. So I'll say that much. I definitely think that. I, I I'm speaking to myself right now and I'll of, you can listen in on this conversation, but I really need to start putting those what's new screens on the app, especially for big features.

Now that said I was using an app on my mother's iPad. I loaded it up a what's new came up and it said, buck, bug fixes and various improvements. Don't, don't pop that dialogue up people. If that's all you got to say, don't pop up the what's new dialogue, get it gets smarter software for that. But, okay, so let's put that aside.

You definitely need to tell people about it, but there's a bigger issue here that maybe I'm not fully prepared to talk about, but features don't always sell apps. You know, I, if I have an app, uh, let's go with a circuit and I'm selling it. It's selling X amount of copies a day. And then I throw in an amazing new company.

Let's say an Arduino simulator that took me literally years to write and perfect and get a good, it's not perfect. I'm joking. Um, I'm working on it, everyone. It's hard. Um, uh, you know how my sales channel. Zero went 

[00:22:05] James: down. They went 

[00:22:06] Frank: down, it went down. Yeah, sure. Let's go with that. But it certainly didn't go up by any dramatic number.

So that is to get back to marketing, you know, um, as much as I love satisfying. Existing users, because that's usually how I add features. People mail in. They say, I love your app. Here's something I would like to see. So you throw that feature and you think if I just keep throwing in this feature and that feature and that feature, then obviously my, my sales will go up 5% each time.

So I only have to do that 20 times and I'll have doubled my sales, you know, it's perfect. This is perfect. Simple logic. That doesn't work at all that is completely false. Um, it turns out the thing that drives sales is marketing and sales. That's what drives sales and the quality of the product that said E I mean, you can, with new features now you have new key words and things like that, but.

Did you change your keywords? Did you change your description so that people searching for like maybe they want RPM history, you know, are, are you a new search term? Did you do any of that? At least 

[00:23:16] James: it's a great question. Um, 

[00:23:21] Frank: Did you even met? You know, I never know how to market an app purchases either, because like, what if all your work went into that pro version?

I've seen apps where, um, if you want the pro version, they show you. A historical change list. So kind of like the what's new screen that I was talking about before, but only the pro features. So you can see what's been added to the pro version over the free version. 

[00:23:46] James: Right? So what I did is in the description, I said more with there's this thing, it's a section called more with pro upgrade to pro to unlock full ride history with stats and charts, custom themes, display, average cadence, blah, blah, blah, doing or rides.

And then I added. I add a new images that said go pro full ride history, historical ride charts. And I added the charts and graphs, and I did that for all the different ones. And then in the what's new in this version, which nobody reads besides me in the app store, it says, thanks for everyone for great feedback.

This release includes several bug fixes and optimizations for everyone in many new pro features, including full ride history and details with grafts from rod. Adjust font sizes on metrics, resume ride, or start a new one. Thanks for the feedback. So I think, I think I marketed that. Okay. 

[00:24:32] Frank: Okay. By that people will 

[00:24:35] James: see the people already have the app.

Yeah. That's the problem that these people already have the app. So what I failed to do is that beautiful. Slide up from the bottom. Uh you're right. That's what apple does on all their apps. Only for significant features. Like if you just do a bug fixes, you don't need to do that. But I would almost say that that should just be a screen of your app and you decide if it needs to be shown or not like with a bully and a preference.

Right. And you change it based on the feature. So it's, here's, what's new and here's this one thing that you want to say. And there would be a button that says like, you know, upgrade to pro or whatever. Right. And it takes you into the thing that would be an ideal scenario to go. Yeah. 

[00:25:19] Frank: We're, we're like sharing a brain because that's exactly what I was thinking.

Your, your what's new, especially if you say in the pro version, here are the new features in the pro version. The what's new should definitely have a GoPro button right on it. Wow. We should talk to each other more so we can each do slightly better app sales and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, that makes sense because, okay, so you're trying to attract to new kinds of clients with these features, uh, someone who overlooked your app previously, because it was lacking these features or someone who specifically wants a history feature, and then you're.

So you're targeting them. Number two are your existing users who have not gone pro because this is not an additional one. Uh, so you want to try to capture that market for that market? I think that's where the what's new a GoPro button would work out really well for the other market. Well, you did the minimum.

That's good. You got the screenshots and you modified that description. Do you do any of those extra status lines? Apple allows, uh, promotional text now on things, did you say now with history or something like that? 

[00:26:36] James: Uh, no, I should do that though. Um, yeah, I mean, I have zero characters left. I think that's the other thing that I could do.

And then I think in app info, you can do a subtitle. And I could change that. That's very minimal. You only get like 20 characters or 30 characters there. I did not do that though. Um, that might be good too, but I do think that the winner is what we were just talking about with, even for people that already got pro show them the new feature, but adjust the button to, and from basically here's the cool that I programmed into this by the way, is if people have been cycling for like a month and then.

They upgrade to pro all their history is still there. I still record it all. I just don't shut the button to navigate to it. 

[00:27:22] Frank: Okay. I like that. I hope you have a good privacy policy. Um, that's awesome. Uh, yeah. Wow. That's interesting. I hadn't even considered that histories are weird like that. Right. Uh, the one I use pedometer plus, plus I think from David Smith.

Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. Let's go with it. Uh, that was like a tip jar based app for a long time. And it's been, I've been using it for just years and years and years. And it's been collecting a history through that whole time. And I always wonder, like, where's that history being saved and all that, because I've gone from device to device, everything from everything.

And that history seems to follow me along and it's been great. And I think that that's where you really. I mean, I love the app because it has a history going back to who knows 2016 or something like that. That's where you get locked in. You got to lock these users in and you know, if they have RPMs going back to 2016, why would you ever give up that app?

Yeah, the trick then is, uh, you need a, you need a double pro feature pro squared 

[00:28:35] James: for plus gosh, I think there's a few things too. I'm thinking about this is, imagine if someone is now and you can do this in your app too. Right? Imagine if someone is using your app for a bunch of times, like if someone does 20 or 30 or 50 spins, why don't I just tell them like, Hey, look, I love that you're enjoying the app.

Did you know that you can upgrade, upgrade a pro and get these other features? You know what I mean? Maybe they don't even know there's a promo. 

[00:29:05] Frank: Yeah. You know, uh, were you ever a shareware user? Yeah. Everyone they have noxious. Yeah. They would pop that. You know, I keep thinking about that with an app purchases.

I'm like, oh, they're so gross. And I hate doing pop-ups and all that. But then I think back to my childhood, and those were terrible, those shareware apps, not only would they pop up, they would just like randomly crash, like on purpose being like, ha ha you're using a shareware version. And, uh, you know, so like, I feel like my position of an app purchases and annoying people.

Cause I mean, let's be blunt, you're annoying people. It's as simple as that, you're, you're begging for money. You're annoying people, but you don't why that's sometimes that's what it takes. The sale and I don't want to sound like, you know, we're, we're not fooling the user or anything, you know, they can click okay.

On the dialog box. It's not that big of an annoyance, especially compared to the duke Nukem one. Do you remember that one? 

[00:30:04] James: I don't know if I remember they'd do it too. I mean, I remember duke Nukem, but I don't remember the, the share wise. 

[00:30:10] Frank: Well, it was more like the levels would be incomplete and there would be, uh, textures and different places and things like that.

They were always gently reminding you that you are playing a free version. And although you are welcome to play the free version in perpetuity, it would be best if you would spend some dollar bills. So, um, yeah. Yeah. I still wouldn't have solved your problem of. No, it would've solved your problem, James, you've gotta do it.

You gotta do it. You put that amazing 

[00:30:40] James: feature in, okay, this is next for us. And we'll we'll report back. I will develop this feature over the next week or two and it be good. Cause I'll do two of them. I'll do the what's new, but I'll also do the, every 30th ride. If you're not a pro I'll do a pop-up that's easy.

That's just easy math. Just look at the remainder. And then 

[00:30:57] Frank: if people ride that much, you're all set. 

[00:31:00] James: Um, while, you know, maybe 20 times, I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to bug them too many times, but like if you've used the app for 30, 30 times, um, I would feel okay with, with, with doing it then.

And then again in 30, then again in 30 and they'll just dismiss it or whatever, but I mean, I ride my bike. It's a long play. Right? I don't need your $4 now, but I kind of want it eventually. That's what, that's what it is. Right. So I don't need it now, but I would like to get it eventually and go from there.

Cause like, if you've used it for 30, here's what I can say is I can say unlock all of your ride history. Your ride history is already there. Right. And then, and yeah. 

[00:31:45] Frank: And you are a one-time purchase pro user, not a subscription pro user. Is 

[00:31:50] James: that correct? One time. That's all you need. In fact, I've been pondering that it's too late now and I just don't want to manage subscriptions, but yeah, it's just $4 and you get everything well, 

[00:32:00] Frank: that's fine.

Pro pluses pro plus the subscription plus the subscription. 

[00:32:05] James: That would be, if I, if I was to do cross device sync or something like that, then I would get to give you the pro. 

[00:32:12] Frank: Yeah. That's where I run into issues because a lot of my apps are cross-platform and as much as I would love to do a subscription and apple.

Okay. So let's start with apple has fixed something. So at least a subscription on iOS can be shared with Mac it's not easy or anything, but you can accomplish it, but certainly it doesn't get shared with windows or Android or any of those others. And so if you want to do a. Platform pro version then.

Yeah, we, we, we get back into our creating account systems and all the stuff that we've talked about in the past episodes, CR 400 years of history for us to baiting on that topic. Yeah. Um, but you know, the more marketing people I talked to, the more, the more I'm convinced that that's actually the, kind of the correct way to go.

I like the simplicity of apples in app purchases, but oftentimes that simplicity can. Hmm be to the detriment, you know, it's worth building an account system so that you can control the subscriptions a little bit more and know about them. 

[00:33:20] James: Yeah, it is true. All right. So I have my task on that one. I'm good to go.

Let's talk about my other app, which you use, which is my stream timer. Love it, 

[00:33:30] Frank: love it. I use it every week, except for the weeks I failed to stream on Twitch. Sorry, everyone. 

[00:33:36] James: That's okay, because it's an app, that's there for you when you need it. And when you're ready to stream, and I did an update and update is out it's at 100%, I guess today would be the a hundred percent rollout.

So it's been for one week and it's been going good. And I I've had the features. It's not on Mac. I need to release on a windows still, but I was sitting coding the final bits and I actually, I was, I was about to do the final archive and I was like, okay, archives. And then I launched the app and we talked about it.

I added this page patron mode, which is the chip jar. I've added the chip jar. Yeah. And that was cool. A few people gave me some money. I made 80 bucks free money for very, very little work, but I said, well, they're not getting anything. And it was a tip jar, but won't even knows that it's over there for no one's going to do it.

But I said, I've had it all these new features. I added some new features, which. Like all these new formats, like by default you in the app, you can specify like H H, M M S S and like different string formatting. And it will output that, but there's some people that want advance things. Like I have one now that's called auto, and it'll just output.

If there's hours, it'll put out hours and minutes and seconds, and it'll automatically do a countdown to zero, but I did another one. Uh, minutes and seconds only. So let's say you're doing a soccer match that goes up tonight. Boom. Right? Yeah. And then I put a lot of work in these and cause it was a lot of testing.

A lot of going back and forth in different UI 

[00:35:12] Frank: to string is so complicated. Yeah. 

[00:35:15] James: I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. Um, and then I was like, okay. Well, that's not enough for a pro feature. I was like, just formatting. 

[00:35:25] Frank: Is it? Oh, okay. Fine. It's not, it's not James. Not at all. You got to work harder. So how did you work harder?

[00:35:32] James: Well, because here's what my thinking is, everyone so far has been happy with it with these, but I was like, okay, if I have these other ones that are just pro like, oh, that's not $5. So I said, well, what else are they going to get? So what I did, it took me. Three minutes to put in is a vial. I have all these tabs, which is down one, down two, down three, and up, which is I have three countdown timers and one up timer.

So I said, I'm just going to add another down another app. And those will be pro only. You only get a countdown for and count up to if you're pro. So when you go to that tab, This is for pro members only please go to the pro tab and upgrade to pro. 

[00:36:10] Frank: Oh, see, I approve of that. Um, I think that again, along the shareware lines, and I'm sorry, I keep making an analogy it's back to it, but an apple doesn't allow this FYI, so don't do this exactly, but it would, I prefer disabled menu items that if you hovered over, it said this is a pro only feature.

Apple does not allow that you can't disable. If you have a, if you have a disabled menu item, it needs to be able to become enabled in that version of the software. It's in the human interface. I don't know how well their app store implements it, but, um, that's the general rule. But as a user, I actually prefer that.

Because I want to know what am I actually going to get out of the pro features? So I, as a user, I'm a hundred percent for it. Watch apple though. They may or may not allow it. James. I have been using your app for literally years now, and I don't think I've ever clicked on another tab. But I'm going to start now.

[00:37:12] James: Well, and that's the thing, cause I figure, I figured, as I was thinking through this problem with my cadence, I said, people can't see anything. Right. They don't, they can't see the pro features. That's the thing. Um, and, and that's the problem. I couldn't. Oh, this would be sneaky. Sneaky. Oh, wait, I 

[00:37:28] Frank: got it. I got it.

Oh, wait. Okay. So you're on your bike ride. It's showing you the RPMs. Maybe it's even showing you the graph and then you stop and it does a cute animation of like throwing away your history. When it goes into a garbage should have bought pro. 

[00:37:44] James: Well, what I could do is I could make it. So there's a history button shows up.

It shows you the history, but it doesn't show you any of the statistics. And you can't click on it. And like, until you it'll be all blurry, it's like a blur out the statistics and say, that's terrible. Don't do that. Um, actually 

[00:38:00] Frank: I almost didn't mind that one like that that's along the lines of disabling.

So Mike showing the history, but blurred, that is your way of saying, look, the state is here. Um, I just kinda want you to throw me some money first. It's really hard, right? We're we're salesmen in the end. We're we're trying to sell some apps here. Yeah. But we don't want to be creepy salesman. So there's this fine line of, I'm trying to make a living here, you know, I'm trying to earn some money and becoming a complete greedy creepo.

Right. So we're just trying to find that line and all of us. So if you're yelling at us over the podcast right now, please understand. We're just looking for that. Yeah. And you know, 

[00:38:43] James: a lot of these features too, came from people that are using the app and they want more out of it. So if they're power users, they're going to other people and one of them be willing to pay for the features.

And I'm the same. I mean, imagine if, imagine if, you know, I asked for you a feature and I circuit, and then I'm like, I'm never going to give you any money, but please do a bunch of development to go do that. Like it's almost, wow. Like I must feel special about this person. Did my feature requests like that's, that should be worth $5.

Right? I would think it should be worth a coffee, but maybe it's not. And that's okay too. But I did do that. I'm very excited about those new tabs and then also added a picker dropdown. So now you can customize how you want the text. And this was a little bit tricky because of order of operations. And what I did is like, when you do the dropdown for like text format, It, it, it shows you the three other new options and this is pro next to them.

And then when you, cause they're enabled and then when you select one, it does a pop-up and it says this is a pro feature and then puts it back to the default custom that's non-pro it's great. Ah, 

[00:39:48] Frank: okay. You got close. Trixie, 

[00:39:50] James: you got close right there. If you could get into the shared preferences, you can change it manually.

[00:39:56] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's true on all Mac software. I'm pretty sure on all my apps. You can do that. Uh, yeah. Oh man. I love it. I kinda love it. Um, do you think that I don't want you to predict, but I want you to predict, is that going to double your sales? 

[00:40:19] James: I think it'll double myself. I did have one person reach out and maybe I need to make it more clear because here's what the thing is.

I just changed the word patron to pro and, but I had three patron. I had like bronze, silver, and gold. And what I did is I said, Hey, you can buy any of these tiers. You get every feature, just, you decide, you pick what you want to pay. That's what it was. So I did have someone reach out to me and he was like, Hey, I've used her app for like two years.

He's like, but I don't know which what should, what tier should I pick? Is there a different features? I go, no, you get all the features so marketed, correct. In that regard. So maybe I'll do an update that says that, but yeah. You know, 

[00:40:57] Frank: and, uh, going back to what you were saying about people requesting features.

I, I, in, in like a perfect iron Rand capitalist universe, yeah. Maybe we could charge them $5 or $10 per feature. Yeah, I, at least the customers talking to me have always said, love your app. I understand it is what it is. Here's a feature I love and I would be willing to pay for it. So it's kind of been my failure as an app developer, not giving them an opportunity.

To pay for it. And again, it's finding that line of, um, what should be included in the app for its normal free rate. Or for me, I'm probably still always have a base rate, you know? So you're still paying to get the app. And then what goes into the pro version that that's the real hard kind of decision to make, but from.

From all of the support emails I've ever gotten any time, especially if they're asking for a large feature, they're almost always willing to pay for it. It's just been my failure. Giving them away. 

[00:41:58] James: And then when you do do it, you got to notify them that you did it with that in-app pop-up that tells them what's new basically.

And then email them back and say, I just added the feature, blah, blah, blah. And that's one, if you follow up every it's every single thing as a possibility, um, on man, I'm, I'm super fascinated to know if any listeners are doing anything special in your app or doing a full guided tour each time. Like, how do you manage.

Race into the show, go to merge conflict out of fam. And there's a little contact button you can tweet at us. You can do all things, whatever it is, send us an email. We like those to go on the discord. You can become, you can become a page. People have other ways that people can operate. We have a Patriot look at that.

If we don't tell you, you all know you can go there when Frank's not on the road bonus episodes, but he is on the road or I'm on the road, not just a Frank thing. It's a, Jane's when we're on the road. Well, can we get it? But there's like hundreds and hundreds. I mean, at least 20 bonus episodes over there that you can go grab, which was super fun.

And, um, let us know. Maybe, maybe you are also fascinated, you know, apple has a new subscribe thing. I've been listening to bad blood, the final chapter. Uh, but Sarah knows and, uh, you know, at the end he was like, Hey, uh, if you want to subscribe. To the premium feed you can do so on apple podcasts. And he's like, you get a bonus podcast every week.

And I was like, dang. I was like, well, how much is that? And it's like four bucks a month. And I was like, I probably should do it. But, but I was like, I was like, that's interesting. So if people are like interested in not using Patrion, if you want like an exclusive fee that would really commit us to doing it, what would that take?

Let us know if you're really interested. In in that, or maybe not. I don't know. Maybe that was good enough. I don't know. 

[00:43:38] Frank: I don't know. I'm, I'm kind of hoping that people will say yes, we should do it because. Well, I don't know. I actually really love recording our little Patrion episodes that were kind of fun because we were just picking kind of random topics.

Um, but I like supporting podcasts and I think it's always good to give an extra episode. I am curious if this is going to work out for apple. Hi, we're getting a little meta here and everything, but I am curious. Now what we call those merge conflict pro users or merge conflict pro plus users 

[00:44:10] James: deluxe turbo edition.

[00:44:13] Frank: Okay. That's what it is. That's the deluxe turbo 

[00:44:16] James: edition. Okay. Super, super turbo deluxe XP plus. All right. Let's to, for this week's conflict, ready to get out of here and let us know what bonus deluxe edition that you want. But it's all next time. I'm Jason at the bank. 

[00:44:33] Frank: I'm Frank cruiser. Thanks for listening.