mergeconflict289 === [00:00:00] James: Frank. I know that you're trying to be like me and trying to release an app way too quickly. What are you trying to do? Frank? Stop it. Don't don't be like me. It's only gonna end in disaster. Stop. Slow down. Take a breath. [00:00:24] Frank: You are just so gosh, darn inspiring, James. I, I just have to mimic you in my life and in my programming career, everything I do, I just want to mimic you. And for that, I want to actually finish a project because you know, I, your apps have a certain character to them. They're all named in my something, but importantly, they all get released. On multiple platforms too. It's really inspiring because I was looking at my app list on iOS and it's all apps I wrote many years ago. And I'm just wondering, I just want to be like you, James. I want to release something [00:00:59] James: new. Listen, Frank, you also did finally release. I surrogate 3d, which is a pretty big deal. Now I'm not going to say that I had anything to do with it because maybe I shamed you on the podcast for like a year, but. I may have shamed you on the podcast for a year. And, you know, the, the aspect of being cross-platform and releasing things quickly is, is a challenge, but also. A reward. I went out skiing funnel. We'll talk about skiing, episode 48 here with some friends. And, you know, I was talking about my awkward drinking coffee and he was like, oh, is that also on Android? He's like, oh, oh, you have iPhone. It's probably only on I found, I was like, damn, I'm a cross platform developer dude. Like, it's on, don't worry. It's on it. It's on your platform on your Android. You know, I'm still an Android Dyer at heart, but I think that maybe it was like, oh wow. You know, because I, I made it so quick and I've done a lot of updates since, but, um, I wouldn't say that. I want to give you credit because my apps, they all start with the word, my, for a reason, because they're, they're, they're real apps, but they're not I circuit or I circuit 3d. Like you make real substantial apps minor, like, um, their apps. I don't want to discredit myself, but they are. Not technically groundbreaking per se. [00:02:15] Frank: Well, see, that's where I'm trying to mimic you. Also, I am trying to release an app that is not technically groundbreaking. So this is yes, it's an app that is just so dumb. I'm almost too embarrassed to talk about it. Here's here's the quick pitch, uh, 3d graphics. They come in multiple file formats and it turns out the 3d file you have is never in the format that you want it to be. There are a million ways that. 3d file formats. If you know, it takes this app to go to that file format, to go to that file format, to go to that file format. I just want one app that does them all and that I can just easily get things in and out. It's a beautiful James inspired app. It doesn't, it's not quite like just displays one number level, but it just displays one option. You know, you bring up the object and you say, what format would you like that object to be in? And maybe, you know, turn it right side up or something like that. Fix fix the little things like that. Scale and orientation are the little things you always want to fix. Um, and output it. That's the whole app pitch. It's simple. I'm like, that's the simplest app in the world, data and data out. Of course I've complicated it, but trying to finish it, trying to be inspired. Nice. [00:03:31] James: Well, I, I appreciate it because we call these applications utility applications, right? And utility applications, little do people know are some of the most fun applications to write that. Usually don't take that much time and are something that you probably created because you needed it and wanted it. And you will continue to find joy with that application many years to come. That utility applications are some of the best ways to get started with app development, because you have a problem, you figure out how to solve it, and then you use it because Frank, how many years have I been using my stream timer? [00:04:14] Frank: Uh, PR as many years as I have been using it, I don't know you how you developed it pretty quickly. So it's probably, we're probably only off by a couple of weeks. It feels like. I want to say one, but it's probably been two to [00:04:27] James: two and a half years, three years. I think it was done at core. Three, maybe wow. [00:04:33] Frank: Two and a half. How does that feel? So old? That's only three years ago, but I feel so old when you say three. [00:04:38] James: I know, right? Cause we're on six. It's like literally double it's a big number. [00:04:43] Frank: Yeah. So, um, I've been going through the, uh, reminders of why I don't release apps that often of how much extra meta work there is associated with releasing an app. Uh, I'm, I'm trying to be inspired by you. So for like the. What are you going to do? Like normally I would spend a day or two or a year drawing different icons that decide what I want, but you know what I did, I went to Fiverr. I found a designer. I searched fiver probably way too long. It's really fun. It's fun to see what everyone's capable of. Gosh, everyone's got such great work on there. If you work on Fiverr, congratulations. Um, pick someone somewhat at random gave them. Disgusting, you know? Okay. They give you 2000 words to describe what you want and the icon. Do you use five or do you type into that text [00:05:37] James: field? Yeah. And, and yeah, I've done it many a times. I've done it for animations. I've done it for icons. I've done it for, um, transitions for streaming, things like that. And it's usually very short. Like I believe that I made one for this old social media app. I had. My application is called post-it and not like the post-it, but the idea is that you post something to Twitter from this thing. And the person came back with like this very nice P with like this drop shadow and had like a little feather in its cap or whatever. And I'm like, perfect. You nailed it. Like, I didn't even send them, like, I didn't even send them like screenshots of the application or what it did. Yeah, it just a thing. He does his thing and I did, I usually pick like three people and pay them, you know, I don't know, 10 to 20 bucks. Yeah. [00:06:30] Frank: I'm so jealous of you because that's what I want to say because I don't care. I'm going to a designer because I just want a nice icon and I'm not that into it, you know? Surprise. Make it look good? That's all I want to say. I mean, Frank, [00:06:44] James: you already, you already said what you should have written, which was a made, it's an app that converts one file format for a 3d model to another done. And just go, that's all you got to give. Oh, you got to get them done and they will come back their mind. They're like, Ooh, look at how little information I have to work with, but I'm a creative. So I'm going to make something that looks way better than you could ever make ever, because you know that that's why you came to Fiverr, right? So that's, that's hopefully the. [00:07:14] Frank: Uh, tactical error then, because at first I was appalled that the textbox gave you 2000 characters to type in. And then when I was done with my Opus, I had seen that I had written something like 1300 characters and I was just so embarrassed for myself. I should have just deleted it all and said, surprise. But oops, I didn't. I sent them the Opus. Hopefully they don't hate me too much. Uh, [00:07:39] James: well, I'm excited to see what you come back [00:07:41] Frank: like when you gave opinions. Now it's all, now that I'm saying it out loud, it all just sounds so ridiculous. Thank you, James. I'm going to emulate you better in the future on this regard [00:07:51] James: too. Now let me tell you a little bit there's five design versus. I do not want to discredit any Fiverr artists because they're all super talented, like you just said, but versus doing like brand design, putting packages together when I work with cinder my design team. So I actually have a design team that I work with my good friends at center. Um, when I worked with them for like my own branding for the YouTube and Twitch branding, uh, you know, I did a whole questionnaire and we talked about color palettes and what resonates and what's what it's trying to do, like this whole thing. And. From that they crafted this beautiful story with multiple options and this and that. And, and to the font selection, they did all this research and what really resonates and all of these things. So that the stuff is, is really cool. But if you're like, oh, I just, I need an alibi combat. Like tomorrow. Like you don't got time for that, Frank, you just need to be like the apps I would even be. I would love to do this. You should go on there right now. Find one that's like five to $10. Yeah. And say this, like you had your Opus, would you gave this person? You probably didn't more, but do the one that's like $10 and literally say that it's an app called boom. It converts one file format to another file format for 3d images. Go, just see what they come back with. Just see what they come back with. And just, I wondering which one will be better. Probably probably the one that you gave the Opus, but maybe not. [00:09:14] Frank: I I'm game I'm game. Um, I actually, I should have mentioned this before. I was surprised when you said you hire three people. I was considering two. It never even occurred to me three, but, um, I don't know, like you say, kind of cheap, but also at the same time, if I find an artist, I like, I don't mind giving them more and more money. Cause they usually have interesting upsells. Like I'll make you an icon for this or that, or, you know, this kind of variation or something like that. And so I don't mind working with them. I was actually a little bit sad because I went on there and the artist I worked with last time, uh, was not taking orders anymore. It's like, darn it. Okay. New relationships, all that stuff. But I like your idea of. [00:09:55] James: Yeah, you got to spread it. Yeah. Spread it out because you don't know what you're going to get. And what I like, what I did is I did a bunch of different price ranges too. I was like, okay, I'm going to do, there's always like the $5 app, which is like, you're probably like, this is going to be garbage, but who knows? So you do the $5 one, you do the $10 one to do the $20 one. I've seen it. I've seen other videos before, um, where they do these design challenges on Fiverr. And you go back and forth with them. Cause some of them offer multiple revisions and whatnot, but there was one definitely where he did like a $20, a $50 for like branding. And it was for like all this like icon, all this stuff. And he's like, I'm going to do the $500 one. Like what does that get me? And sure enough, the $500 one. Pretty legit. He's like, yeah, this is probably like hours upon hours of someone's time. Like at least three to four hours, which if you have a run rate of like a hundred dollars an hour, then you know, that's, that's pretty good. Whereas the $20 one, like, boom, it's like, okay, you could tell, you can tell the difference for sure. But, uh, I'm excited to see what happens, but definitely get like two. The mistake I made one time was I did, I did three at like the 20 or $30 level, and I did get varying quality levels. So I said, okay, I'm never going to do that again. I'm going to do multiple price levels and kind of just see what happens, because if you'd like someone at the $10 ones, there are those operators, you can go back and you can do this other stuff. So it's, it's a, it's a great little, very little way. [00:11:24] Frank: Yeah. And not to make a whole episode of it, but I was, I, yeah, I'm realizing I was doing it. I love your approach because I was doing it a little wrong. I was just looking at ones that were in a certain price range, you know, like up to 20 bucks up to 30 bucks, something like that. But I like your way of spread that money out, [00:11:40] James: get more options, so many more options. [00:11:44] Frank: Awesome. Awesome. Uh, do you know what the next hardest part of releasing an app is for me? Can you. Uh, [00:11:52] James: testing it. [00:11:54] Frank: No, you have to name it. [00:11:57] James: My 3d birder. You have [00:12:00] Frank: such I, yeah. Uh, I'm a little jealous of you. I make fun of you, but it's great to have a brand like that. The, my brand [00:12:07] James: let's convert it. [00:12:09] Frank: Is that the namespace in VB? Is that the mean namespace or the, my name space? [00:12:16] James: My me, yeah, me, me. Which one is it? My. Mita. I wish [00:12:21] Frank: I was a VB programmer. Yeah. Anyway. [00:12:24] James: Yeah. Like I have an app. That's the H I S H H E I C converter. And it's called I amazing. Cause that's the name of the company. I amazing H E I C converter cause that's SEO. Um, yeah, I think, I think my 3d file converter sounds [00:12:45] Frank: like. Yeah, exactly. So I was on the SEO bandwagon too, because this is such like a niche product that the only people that are ever going to want it are people who want this kind of app. And so, um, I'm actually, we're going to rely a lot on just having a lot of file formats listed in it because maca west does a nice job of, um, have you ever done that? Where you like, right. Click on a file and they're like find an app to open this file on and it'll actually search the. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, but it's surprising a lot of 3d format it's are on the app store. So that's failed for me anyway, uh, trying to get all that work. I've totally lost my train of thought. What were we talking [00:13:24] James: about, James naming? I think that this one doesn't need a name. I think, I think you're on the right path, which is, this is a utility. It should be very, very distinct in what it does. Yeah. A hundred percent because it's not an it's, it's an app, but it's not a app. Yeah. Like it's not Snapchat, you know what I mean? It's not [00:13:47] Frank: branded, I'm not t-shirts, [00:13:51] James: it's not a brand. That's the differential, right? Like it's not a brand. It is utility. Just go. Cause what's going to happen is if you were going to go find this app, this is how I put it. This is how I put my thinking cap on. If I was going to go find that. And maybe you did this and why, this is why you created the app. What did you type into the app store name, your app that, you know what I mean? Like I named my cadence, um, colon bike, cadence, or whatever bike, cadence display, because, um, I went in and I said, bike, cadence, and I wanted it to come up as the very first thing, you know, Now there was already an app called cadence in the app store. So I named it my cadence because it is my Cape. Oh God. [00:14:38] Frank: I love your logic. Um, I, I found a middle road between, I, I think I found a middle road. Maybe I'll bounce it off of you. It's always good to do this live on air. So I'm bouncing it off of everyone all at once. Um, so yeah, it should be called, um, convert 3d file format pro plus that that's what it's name. Obviously. You [00:15:01] James: gotta put pro it [00:15:04] Frank: to make it yeah, the icons should be blue shades of blue. Yep. I know that that was in the Opus that I gave to the fiber. I need shades of blue. Um, but no, I went with a more whimsical name. Uh, this is compliments to my friend, uh, Flint. Uh, this is now called mesh castor mesh [00:15:24] James: caster. No, no, I love it now. That's kind of cute. Cause there's 3d meshes. I see what you did there. You, do you do mesh cast or colon 3d file convert? Yes. [00:15:35] Frank: Yes. Fortunately we have subtitles on the app. Yeah. So you have 30 characters for your name. So it's a real choice if you want to do like hyphenated or something like that. But I like that that app actually has a Google-able name because. You know if you know, okay. I'll debate. I have, I haven't released it yet. Well, we'll see if you convince me otherwise, but I kinda like the semi branded. [00:16:01] James: Are you doing the mistake? I'm no shade. Zencaster who or what we're recording is on. Are you putting the E in the caster? Are you leaving it CAS? [00:16:15] Frank: Oh, you've known me for all these years. I'm putting the E in, of course the IES there. All right. Mesh caster, two words by the way. [00:16:25] James: Ooh, interesting. I would make it one personally. My [00:16:27] Frank: one word. Okay. I don't like doing case changes in Mac. [00:16:33] James: What fun, fun fact for you? Zencaster they also own. The ER, version of the domain name, by the way, it just really addresses Ancaster. So you've got to do that. Yeah. [00:16:48] Frank: Okay. Okay. This is a good debate though. Um, I can totally unbranded. Um, [00:16:54] James: no, no, no. I think you're fine. I think mesh casters fine. Colon 3d file converter. I don't know if you have that many characters, but I think it's fine. That's [00:17:04] Frank: it shows a subtitle. It's there. [00:17:06] James: It's a cute name. It's a cute name. I like it. I approve it. My mesh caster, even though I'm just kidding. That's that's cute. Cause I think you're casting it into different things. Yeah, you're fine. I approve now. Here's what would have been funny? Your friend's name is Flynn. [00:17:20] Frank: Yes. Thank you Flynn. Here's [00:17:22] James: what I would have done. Flynn comes up with this great. He's like, man, Frank, best thing ever. Um, you should really call it a mesh castor, then here's what you say. Wow. Flynn. That's really amazing, but here's one better. Flynn three, you just name it after the person that gives you, [00:17:41] Frank: you know what I mean? Okay. It's, it's pushing at fit, but I see what you're saying. You're still Flynn mesh [00:17:50] James: Glenn, 3d Flynn, like, and then what you do even better. Okay. Here it is. You take a picture of Flynn's face. All right. And you give it to the, the icon artists as it. Can you make a 3d. No rendering of Flynn's face. And that's the app icon. Boom. [00:18:09] Frank: I think you are on PM overload. This is all crazy talk. I love it. It's hilarious, but oh my God. No, I could never do any of this. Flint is not the worst name for an app though. That's great name. That's what I'm saying while it's still available. [00:18:24] James: len.app. I'm just thinking Gwen. Sometimes when you, when you meet people like, oh, that's a great name, like name. Subpar James and Frank they're great names. I love my name. If you're a James out there, you have a funny fantastical name for your Frank fantastic name, but it's not a Flynn. You know what I mean? Like that's a pretty cool name. Flint. There's like a Y in there there's like ELLs and ends. I'm just say. [00:18:50] Frank: Flynn 3d and fun. 3d is born, but maybe that's the name of my CAD program, not my 3d converter [00:18:58] James: living up lens, 3d pro [00:19:01] Frank: oh, this is Lynn converter [00:19:03] James: Glenn converter, which is a compliment to Flynn 3d pro. I [00:19:07] Frank: love our episodes where we just create hypothetical's. All right. So you got released this thing. I need [00:19:12] James: fundamentals app named Don mash, Casper. I love it. And you've registered the domain name before this episode went out. Of course not, of [00:19:20] Frank: course not. Before the episode came out. Of course I have, of course I have registered. Sorry. Ty. Time is hard for me. Everyone. [00:19:28] James: You got to do. This is important stuff. Uh, yeah, you've registered to me. As Frank types into namecheap.com currently. Alright, so he does that. How could he [00:19:38] Frank: clack [00:19:38] James: all right. You have the app [00:19:40] Frank: on the way, play back classic merge conflict episodes, where we enumerate all the things they're supposed to do when you release an app. And I forget about just how many of them got [00:19:50] James: you got screenshots of light and dark mode because Frank called me out for that on the last part. On two platforms on two platforms. Cause this is iOS and Mac. Oh, what am I saying? [00:20:01] Frank: Three platforms. iPad, iPhone. [00:20:04] James: Ah, it's the same platform, Frank. [00:20:08] Frank: Oh, if the same platform, if only I did [00:20:12] James: shots. Yeah. I had [00:20:14] Frank: to learn me some, a Mac catalyst stuff. You want to know a little bit of a joke in Mac catalyst, which is a little off. [00:20:21] James: I believe that the joke is. And now tell me if I'm wrong is that Matt catalyst is just, you're just take your existing iOS app. And now it's on the Mac and you have to do no work at all and not even care about it. Am I correct? Is that the. I [00:20:36] Frank: mean, that's true. Honestly, it is true. Um, but there are things to do if you want to take advantage of Mac features. So Mac catalysts, so little if deaths in your code, if running on Mac, uh, do that, maybe this other fancy thing. So yeah. So you should be able to take your iOS app and move it over. Continents X changes aside. Um, but, uh, to get the full advantage. So I want a proper Mac toolbar. So if you bring your iOS app over to Mac, it's going to get the iOS toolbar at the bottom of the screen of the window, which is not really where toolbars belong on Mac. So what you're supposed to do, and Mac catalyst apps has have a little bit of an F code and your code. And you say if running on Mac than enable NS toolbar, which is an app kit toolbar, which is a very Mac thing. Um, but you do that in your otherwise UI. Code. It's very weird. It requires if deaths and things like that, but you end up embedding this little pizza app kit, and this isn't a hack or anything. This is what apple tells you to do. It's in their documentation. They have samples that do this, you know, this is just how it's done. Um, it's. Little oddity, but I see their perspective. They didn't want to like take this toolbar, which forever for Everett, since the beginning of iOS, the toolbar is, have been at the bottom of the screen or the window in this case and not move it to the top so I can see their [00:22:10] James: problem. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So there's a few , but what about like the. Is that for the, the, the, the top file toolbar you, in other words, like file and menu and there's other. Oh, that's [00:22:27] Frank: a windows. That's a windows thing. We don't have a file toolbar on [00:22:31] James: file operations. Or when you open a Mac app and there's, it's integrated into the Mac, the menu, the menu, the main menu. That's the thing you're talking about or no. [00:22:39] Frank: Yeah, well that required learning to on my part. So this is a feature in UI kit, though. Oddly enough, if you put all this work into your iOS iPad app, it's not revealed anywhere. There's no, it's not shown anywhere, but you can create, um, it's called the system menus and it's a little bit weird. Uh, you have to turn your app delegate into a UI responder. I'm sorry, everyone. We just went deep. We're calling the, a whole spectrum on this episode. Um, James and Xamarin iOS, your app delegate, you inherit from UI app delegate like everyone else, right? Yes, or Xamarin forms to, okay. Whatever you're using, it's all the same thing in the end, uh, that does not inherit from UI responder, but in order to have menus and a Mac catalyst app or PR in the future of iPad, who knows if menus are ever added to it. Uh, the way to do that is you have to change around your app, yoga to be a UI responder. You have to respond to this event that asks you to build the main system menu. And then you build the main system menu. Ooh, that took a long time on apple and reading docs to figure out it's not the worst bit of code to write. It's actually pretty simple code, but figuring out that whole system was quite a journey. And again, this is just to make it feel more like a Mac app by having a menus. Commands up in the menu. [00:24:11] James: Got it. Yeah. It's like, you don't have to, but it makes it a more delightful native experience. Right. [00:24:18] Frank: Yeah. And I should say I actually started this project a because I want it be, I'm doing it in crazy.net six Mac catalyst, where normally I would just do this in app kit and move on with my life using Zimmerman Mac. But I wanted a small app to get a better feel for trying to write a Mac app in Mac catalyst, because for as much as. We talked about and worked with Matt catalyst. I haven't actually spent the time learning all the UI kit changes that you're supposed to make in order to do all this. For instance, uh, I always write everything in the app. Doga you're supposed to use seen delegates now, of course. And it turns out, I don't know, I know very little about how the scene system works and I've found, I've found, I've just kind of fallen behind in my, uh, UIQ. Native development stuff. And so I wanted to refresher and what better to do that on, but a little utility app. [00:25:14] James: Yeah, I agree. I recently I was playing around with the seen delegate because the latest preview, Donna Maui introduces multi windows support, which uses the scene delegates stuff. You have to light that, those, those things up. So it sounds like what you're doing is that. Claire differential, besides trying to get this app out, but in your rush to get the app out. And you've decided to slow yourself down to make your Mac app more Mackie, because there really is the two approaches. And this is the approach that people take is, is like, how close do you want your apps to look? And how many features of the native platforms you want to use? Blah, blah, blah. It's Hey, I made this app and it looks really great on iOS option one. Just recompiling and at worst grade on Mac, right then there is recompile it, but then also do all this work because I care really deeply about this platform. And I know that the users of this application will appreciate that. So in that rush, there's also that Polish that you wanted to add on us. This is a polishing step of this Mac house up, which, you know, I think all apple sells in. The Maya said that that was a joke earlier is because apple. Try to kind of sell it in that way that it's like, Hey, this is bundling a Mac catalyst happened. You're good to go. I mean, it's kind of what they said. No. [00:26:34] Frank: Yeah, it is. I mean, especially in excode, it's literally a checkbox in your project settings. Now that checkbox does a lot of stuff and creates a whole bunch of messy targets and things actually do get complicated, but you can tell just from the way they implemented it in their IDE, it's a checkbox. It should be that simple to add this as a plan. And it is. It is, it is well, uh, so th that's what you're saying about the Polish on the Mac side. It's because in my head, this is a Mac app. It's kind of a Mac first app. And I have a very clear picture in my head of how I want it to work on a Mac and the iOS part. I was even honestly debating whether I would release it for iOS, but. Taking it. So now I'm realizing I'm really not pushing myself to release this app as fast as possible, but I'm taking it again as a learning opportunity to get a feel for writing one of these multi-platform apps, which I've wanted to do for a very long time, have a nice Mac catalyst version and an iOS version, and one project file. That's all magically happening, working together. And it's worse than that. I have a native code in this app, a giant C plus plus library that I have to bind to. Ah, I know it's the worst. So like just getting that to work. But anyway, um, I, so it's not that I just want the challenge it's I think it would be a useful iOS app. Definitely. It's a smaller market, but, um, I tend to make more money on iOS. So a really interesting to see actually how the performance goes with between the different platforms, but I'm also taking it again as a learning opportunity for this is how I actually want to write. Yeah. In the future. So this is kind of like in my head, my first future app. Yeah. Like the way I want it. Right. Apps from now on [00:28:19] James: that checks out, that checks out. Uh, I mean, and that's a good experiment. If you're going to start off smaller, get it out faster, you can learn those intricacies bank this out better, and then pick the next app even better or whatever. You're going to migrate other apps possibly to. Now that you've named the app, you've got to work in everywhere. You got some Polish. Did you price the app? Is it a free app? Is it a in-app purchase? What's going on here? That's the next thing. [00:28:45] Frank: This is where I always felt. Okay. You're right. This is the hardest part of releasing an app. Isn't it? Yeah. Um, I think, I think I need to adopt the modern way of giving all your stuff away for free and begging for money within the app. But correct me if I'm wrong, but here's the impulse buy. I need an app that converts a file. It does that. And yeah, so now I like the app. So the question is. Uh, would they have done that if the app was priced at a dollar $5, $10, $15, or where they have only done it, if it was free and if it is free, what limitations do I add? What I'm currently thinking is I have to adopt the modern practice of the free app with limitations. But again, as always, I'm stumbling on what the limitations for B should be. Traditionally, what you do is you limit the side. Of the mesh that can be translated. What I don't want to do. And I'm a little more nervous about are, is like time limits apple really doesn't like it when you do time limits or anything like that. Um, but I I'm open to ideas, uh, convinced me again to do an app purchases. I don't do them enough and I really should do it more and join [00:30:01] James: the modern world. This is a tricky one because I would say. In recent years, I've done like pro upgrades or like tip jars or things like that. And those have worked well when people use the application a lot. Uh, for example, the, my stream timer, people use that in stream multiple times a week, and I believe that they see that. Big thing open that peop that I had features too. And they're like, Hey, I want more of that. Or this is very useful. And I've, I made $8 billion on my stream today. I can give this the schmuck over here, um, you know, $3 and, uh, I think that's. You have [00:30:50] Frank: great branding by the way, because you're still, the window is still, always on top, even though I think we've actually fixed it in your code where the window doesn't always have to be on top of. It's true. It's true. [00:31:00] James: It's I now make it not on top, but it's recommended that you keep it on top. I think there's a toggle for, I forget it's been so long now. My cadence is the same. Like my hope is that people are enjoying it and working out and they're on there multiple times a week. So it's oh, I'm getting value out of this. When I was looking at the converters, like the converter or whatever, I was in a see where I Googled, you know, I need an HIC converter. I was like, here's 25 free tools. And this is the top one. I had no ads, no anything. And I was like, cool. This company has an entire products. We like I'm amazing is iOS backup, archival calls, IMS. It's like a whole product suite for, for backing up your iOS device and ringtones and all the books and all those other stuff. So they sell that. And what they do is they have an advertisement. There are other apps in the app like, Hey, did you know, we make all this other cool stuff and you're you're you have an iPhone? Cause you're converting this thing. You know what I mean? Um, so this is a hard one. I feel like if there's no other apps that are doing this and if you're really, really good and you're confident that it's going to be like awesome, because if you charge five or $10, it better work. You know? Um, the other thing you can do is credits. I like this idea actually personally, If I were you, um, this is how, um, BG remove works or no, remove that BG. There we go. Um, this is my favorite website removed RBG background. So what'd you do is you give them a file. You give them any file, any file that you've ideally a file that has like a human in it. Um, and you give it to them and then. This is amazing. I mean, I just gave them this ready player, one image of like to do like reaching out or whatever. It was one of our thumbnails and it is like the absolute perfect, um, image that has no background in it at all. You know what I mean? I think I can give you the URL and you can actually see it work right there. Now what they do is you can get the free version. The the, the like lower reservoirs and for free, or you can get the HD version, but you need to use a credit. And how do you get a credit? You get, you sign up for an account and you get one credit a month for free, or you can buy a bunch of credits. So if I were you, this is how I would do it. I'd give them some credits. This, I mean, this is how I would do your app. I would [00:33:31] Frank: give him kind of me. I got to build an entire economy for my utility app. [00:33:36] James: You give them some credits, say, Hey, you get, you get here's five credits, so you can test it out and then you can buy a marker. This is how Zencaster works. This was end Kasser words. It's like, Hey, do you want to record a podcast? Record the podcast? Do you want all the, the conversion stuff and the up stuff, you gotta buy processing time. Right. And that's how we do the podcast. So the longer we use the bap, the better I said, what I would do if I were you, is, is ensure that you only use a credit on a successful conversion or whatever. Right. Which means when they save the file or something like that, what I would do is I would say you can buy one credit, five credits, 10 credits, 100 credits, and you give them discounts along the way based. [00:34:19] Frank: Um, amazing. I completely disagree, but I love it. Why? Uh, I, okay. I'm wrong? Great idea. Wrong app. I don't know what credits for doing 3d file format conversion. The whole reason you'd get an app is so you don't have to deal with that kind of stuff. [00:34:41] James: You're ready to convert files, get paid for it. It's the same thing I use. [00:34:45] Frank: Um, the old meeting, the new [00:34:48] James: what's the one file converter. I usually give [00:34:50] Frank: it, I gave it our, a soundbite FM mug, our soundbite FM mug, and it did a great job removing the background. Very quality service. Here you go. Right. [00:35:02] James: I do it is that's what your credits. I use cloud convert all the time. So if I let's say, and I have a account with CloudConvert, they gave me 25 conversions per day. That's another way you can do here's how you can do so many a day or unlock unlimited mode. That's maybe a better way of doing it. Yeah. That's the [00:35:20] Frank: one that, sorry. That's what actually what I was thinking when I said time unlimited. I was curious if apple even allows that, um, can you say like only two conversions per day? [00:35:30] James: Oh, they must be because you know, games do that stuff all the time. There's literally games where you can't progress unless you pay. They're like, oh, you've ran out of your, you've ran out of, uh, of, of chicken food for the day, but it'll come back in and out. Okay. [00:35:45] Frank: That's a pricing model, but I actually prefer to do them because I would say yeah, like two or one, one or two a day. And then you got to buy the pro package to get on limited, better [00:35:56] James: yet pro subscription for 99 a month, [00:36:02] Frank: $10 a year. [00:36:03] James: No, no five a month. Five bucks. Two bucks. I'll convert her three bucks a month. That a, I dunno, five bucks a month. You're insane. [00:36:15] Frank: I love you. [00:36:16] James: But I wouldn't, I would probably do a one-time purchase because there's literally no additional things that you need to do or pay for in the app. [00:36:23] Frank: Yeah, subscription feels a little sheepish. Um, but I do want to keep adding features to it because the, the more I work on it, the more formats I realize I actually want to throw in. [00:36:35] James: We've solved your we've. We've solved that I approve of you get so many conversions a day too, and then you got to upgrade to, Ooh, maybe there's tiers. Ooh. Even better. You have a, you have a bronze, gold and platinum. Bronze silver and gold tier. How many do you want to do a day? Do you wanna do five a day? 20 a day? Unlimited. Boom. That's your subscription even better, Frank. This is what I'm saying. You can do a year, right? $10 a year. That's what you want. That's your entry-level you get to do five a day. Who's doing more than five a day. Well, you gave me more money because now you're paying $20 a year. Oh, you want unlimited 30 bucks a year. And literally you just do that. Just do that. That's the way to do it. I'm just trying to get you paid Frank. And if anyone disagrees. Right. Is it a merge conflict? That event? There's a little contact button, like shown shownotes tweet us at merge conflict FM on sweater. Let us know what you think. I'm just saying Frank. I think this is a good idea. This is a good idea, because you got to give the, you give them, you give them some free ones and they're fine with it. Here's the thing. If I was using the HTIC tool that I had, and it was free and they gave me, I don't know, you can, do you have photos? Right? So you're converting like hundreds of photos. Hey, give me 50 free photos a day. Guess what I have. I have a thousand photos right here. I want to convert them all. I'm going to give you 10 bucks to convert them all. I would've done that. [00:37:58] Frank: I thought the platinum was 30. I just totally lost your pricing model. [00:38:02] James: I'm just saying whatever it doesn't matter. I got you. I got, I [00:38:05] Frank: mean, so you want, you want free is limited. You want pay to get a smaller or bigger limitation, whatever. And then some kind of infinite pack, obviously [00:38:17] James: unlimited. Uh, limit plus pro plus the Lux super edition HD remix. [00:38:25] Frank: I don't know. I feel like we have this discussion every time I release an app and then I backed down and make it a $10 [00:38:31] James: app. And Frank never listens to me. And that's a grand mistake nor do I ever listen to him. Also a grandma's like, I feel like your pricing structures work better in my apps and my pricing structures work better in your house. [00:38:46] Frank: That's hilarious. We should do a trading places. Got it. But I guess the theme of this episode has been on copying you. So I guess I should just give in and do the James pricing model. Yeah. At least there's probably a new guy out there that helps me with all this. There is for building an economy in my app. Everyone write in. And please let me know if you think this is a good idea, but I think you actually convinced me of [00:39:15] James: the subscription tier that you like now. I think that the subscription tier to unlock multiple tiers of unlocking more and more as a way to go, instead of credits, I feel like credits can be a little bit risky. I think I don't need credits. Cause what if a conversion goes wrong? Did you waste a credit? Yes. That happens on Zencaster sometimes it just gets stuck. I'm I guess I'm going to waste some credit right now, but that's credits that's how credits work. Uh, and that's a bummer. It's like, you go to an arcade and you put in a quarter for credit, but it didn't register it, but it definitely took your quarter and you're like, Aw, I'm going to put it in our quarter in. [00:39:50] Frank: Yeah. And I think I'll be super nice, like the day that you get it, just on limited, just because let him like. [00:39:58] James: Day one. Yeah. That's how you get around the apple, the apple. Oh, shoot. [00:40:03] Frank: I better explain that to the person too. Yeah. That, that could look bad, but I mean it, in a positive way of, you know yeah. Here's your free day of [00:40:14] James: yes. Ooh. How well can you do free on what you do even better. Frank, on the bottom of it, you put a banner that says free unlimited trial, and then you count down how much time is. I love it. Yep. And then click here to learn more. [00:40:32] Frank: I felt I'm going to spend two days just writing this payment UI and everything, [00:40:39] James: and you click on it to learn more. And then some people, if they use it and they're those upgrade right away and like, wow, this is amazing. Give me unlimited $30 a year. I'm totally in. [00:40:48] Frank: Yeah. It's actually not too hard. And the app, I can just put the banner at the bottom. Yeah. [00:40:56] James: I love it. And that's the cool part too, is like if apple complaints like, well, you know, the absol works after the first day. It just, you get it. You're getting this mode and apps also do that. Like when you download a game, it's like, oh, for years, all this free stuff you got because you just had installed the game. You get this cool thing and you registered from a friend. Boom. There you go. Frank [00:41:16] Frank: fun, fun. I got to fall through. Uh, so you, you were very competent. Thank you. I did release, I circuit 3d has been a year ago and not saying that I need to release an app every year. That's certainly not like a goal of mine. Yeah. But, um, you know, we're app developers and sometimes you just get the itch. You just want to release something and it's, it's a bad, it's probably bad. You know, if I had a proper boss, they'd probably tell me, you know, no only do maintenance your whole life, but, um, it's, it's a it's, uh, can't help myself. Just can't do [00:41:50] James: it. It's good. That's good. Especially when it's an app that you want, you know, I got, I use three of my apps almost every day, so that's, I think that's important. Yeah. So [00:41:59] Frank: all I use one of yours every day, [00:42:01] James: which one? I love my [00:42:03] Frank: street nightmare. Oh, it's always just running in the upper corner. I just like to know how long it is. That's a lie. That's not always there. No. It's like time. I love countdowns. I love it. [00:42:17] James: You know, surprisingly, it's not a terrible tool. If you're like, I want to do an hour's worth of work and you just say reset it to an hour done because you can open the apple one. You can do other stuff, things like that. I have [00:42:28] Frank: to hit the reset button and I don't like that. I wish after like, after like a few days, it just auto reset or auto turned off. Th th is there a use case where people can leave it running for multiple days? Are you doing the kids? I do count down. [00:42:44] James: What's going to stop at zero. What do you, what do you put it then? I have to hit [00:42:48] Frank: the reset button and, [00:42:49] James: uh, yeah. You want them [00:42:52] Frank: to know how your own app or I want to loop baby loop. Okay. I can do that. [00:42:58] James: Yeah. Now how do I, how do I notify them? [00:43:01] Frank: I want to say, say like loop after a day or something. Re reactive auto auto restart after a day. I don't know what to call the feature. Frank Frank, it's the Frank. All [00:43:15] James: right. We're not going to solve this on this one. So we're going to get outta here. That's going to do it for another emergent conflict. Thanks to all of our amazing listeners and our Patrion supporters who get an exclusive behind the scenes sneak preview of how we made it. Podcasts with exclusive podcasts every single week, you had a patrion.com/emerge, conflict of them, or click the Patrion button on merge conflict data FM, literally to search merge conflict event, and you will find us everywhere. So until next time I'm Jason. And I'm [00:43:43] Frank: Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening.