mergeconflict239 James: [00:00:00] all right. Frank has happened. I'm releasing an app update. You are releasing apps to the app store. Let me just get the final, final chapter of Island tracker out of the way, Frank, because it's last weekend. I did it. I hit the go live button and I submitted the app for approval on both iOS and Android and iOS was butter, smooth, oo, butter, smooth, you know, Apple, there's a proven apps left and right Google. No, sir. They do not like to approve apps. And in fact, I got a Google rejection. Frank: [00:00:42] Oh, that's kind of unheard of I'm. I'm S I'm staggered. I'm falling backwards here, James. Uh, did you text me about, this was I had asked that I specifically want to be able to watch you, uh, do this deployment. Did you do it at 2:00 AM? Was it exciting to do? I don't know, do any. I don't know, tricks or something to make sure it happened James: [00:01:05] correctly. Well, I did a little bit further testing throughout the week. I did the iOS submission because my, my favorite part of iOS submission is you can just do manual release. You can say, Hey, hold this. And when I'm ready, I'll push it out. So I was like, okay, that's plenty of time on Google play years now, a manual. Push process that you can do, but it staggers, like all of your changes that you do, including like beta testing. It's super annoying. It's just like, it's, it's the incorrect way of doing it. Um, at least they have some mechanism in place, but I was like, okay, let me, you know, make it, make the changes to the store listing, which then go into review. Let me make changes to the app so I can submit it. And that sits in review and it sits in review. For four days. And it was kind of mind boggling because I waited until the weekend. I was like, I'm going to wait until to try to publish it on Saturday because I don't want to do it at the beginning of the week in case something happens, I'm working, I've got a nine to five job, you know, I'm trying to plan this out. So I'm like, well, you know, I've released my cadence many times over and over again. And once it was in the app store, it took, you know, an hour or two to, to do this. And in fact, I submitted an update, both to my cadence and to Island tracker. At the same time, my cadence went through review and one hour was good to go. Ireland tracker didn't get reviewed in quotes here because it did get reviewed by a real person. And I'm really excited to talk about this for four days. Frank: [00:02:41] Now. Okay. So the, I said, this is staggering because number one, this is episode 35 of the turnip trilogy. Um, but also because a, I didn't know, Google had any human reviewers and that's how I find that a little bit striking, but B I think I say that every episode too, where we talk about Google reviews, I'm like, I did not know there were humans there. Um, do you think it had anything to do with. It being a monetizations, which are Ru that you were doing, was that obvious from their software's perspective? Like, were you adding an app purchases within the Google James: [00:03:18] UI? So funny that you mentioned that, and I believe that this is where the human interaction sort of flag gets thrown and I have to blame. Epic. I'm going to blame Epic here for, for this, of course, Frank: [00:03:36] Queenie we're coming after you James: [00:03:37] because I've submitted apps with an app purchases to Google play before no issues at all. And it was super fast and somebody told me maybe it was early 2000. Or mid 2020, 20, 20. I'm not really sure when it went in, but someone said that this is when Google kicked in actual live reviews doing it. And I think you're right. The reason my cadence I'm assuming took so long to review is because I had in-app purchases. And then this one was a switch. I didn't have an in-app purchase. I haven't an that purchase. Now it's clear as day because you have to actually add a permission to your Android manifest file to say that you are having the billing library. And of course I added an in-app purchase in there. And my rejection that I got funny that you ask is, um, that there is a way to purchase something outside of in-app purchases. Frank: [00:04:30] You totally Epic that. Oh my goodness. James w what were you thinking? Um, wait a minute. When does Google care about that? Is that? So is this, I mean, is it, I thought you were just joking about the Epic thing, because I didn't think Google care, like they care can Amazon. Okay. So like all the same problems on iOS, where the big merchants have to give Apple, they're cut that same thing as being applied on Google. James: [00:05:00] Yeah. I mean, there's certain categories, right? Where if you're Amazon and you're, you're buying or target and you're selling stuff through the app, you're not giving, you're not giving them 30% of the, uh, the DVD that someone bought. Um, but, um, What the, what I got flagged for funny enough was the same thing that originally got my app rejected on iOS a year ago. Frank: [00:05:24] Oh. I feel like this is a quiz for me. Um, okay. Rejected on iOS a year ago. Oh, just James: [00:05:30] don't even, don't even, don't even try to guess. I had a button Frank that said, buy me a coffee and it linked to buy me a coffee and goodness. Frank: [00:05:38] Really? Yeah. They James: [00:05:40] don't allow that no tipping allowed. And in fact, iOS, they have it where you're not allowed to use outside tipping services. You have to put it in a purchase to do it. And, you know, I already had this in the app for Android and I literally had a flag in Xamarin forms that said, if iOS don't show this button, if Android show it. So I just had to flip it to false or remove the entire line of XAML funny enough. But so it was really, really, really easy to fix. But I was like, wow, like, this is crazy because I've already had this app in the app store for a year. I've had that button in there for a year. Obviously previously there was no human intervention. Now there is bingo Bango, boom. And now we're in a holding pattern, Frank, because I've submitted the app yet again. In fact, this morning I got the rejection at 3:40 AM and I resubmitted and let's take a peek into the app store. Frank: [00:06:33] Ooh, this is real time. Podcasting breaking news, breaking news still nothing's happened still in her life. Uh, yeah. So you said four days last time. Yeah, it'll probably be that again. Right? If it's going to go through a human again, though, I guess, uh, at least on the Apple side, when you were rejected and you wrote your pitiful response, please don't reject me. Please. Don't reject me. They usually got back to me pretty fast. So this will be another good test case for Google. Uh, that's frustrating. I hate. Especially, you were already stressed out about all the changes and everything. So it, it, it stinks to do that. Just going back to the coffee thing though. Uh, I haven't done well with, uh, adding tips into my apps, so I haven't done, I don't do it anymore. Do you still like that? Did you make lots of coffee money? James: [00:07:26] No, I did not make lots of coffee money at all. No, the, I, I think that it was. It's like anything, like I have that stuff on, you know, I have that stuff on some of my pages and some people do buy me coffees. It's super nice. I really appreciate it. Cause I do. Spend money every month on coffee. So it is a nice tip. And if you're using libraries that people put on there, that's cool. I now use, like for code, I use get hub sponsorship. So like there's a lot of libraries I use from individuals. I'll do the, the sponsorship stuff. Cause I think that's a nice, it's just built in, it's kinda like a patron. We were talking about, you know, our Patriot on how we're going to fix it up and make it better and improve things a lot. And you know, some more details about that, but. It's it's like anything, if people aren't getting something out of it, there it is. Like, I kind of find this pro scenario a better way of getting money from people in general. Cause like, if they're going to tip. They might as well get something out of it. So like buying me a coffee for three 99 or whatever the is doing in that purchase for three 99. And then, you know, and that's my new standard of in-app purchase. What should the price be? How much does it cost for a cup of coffee? Like a good cup of coffee, about three 99. So that's what it's going to cost you for every purchase going forward. Frank: [00:08:43] You know, um, uh, I think it's called P calc had a cute one where he wanted the same thing, the author of the app, but didn't know what to give because it's a calculator. He's not going to disable any functions on it. He left. Uh, so his answer to it was, if you do the tip jar, then you can change the icon color. Oh yeah. It's kind of cute because yeah. Uh, we don't get those options on iOS, so you might miss fall throw it in. So if you're looking for something like that, think of the icon color. James: [00:09:12] It's kind of like a pro mode, right? Yeah. It's like a pro slash chipping, you know, scenario. Um, and someone just wrote a good, good blog post on how to do that. Even, you know, really easily in a Xamarin app. And like the iOS app changing the app icon is really easy to do. And that's why, like, when I first did my cadence, I was like, well, just, you can change the background, color of the app, right? Like for me, it's two lines of code. I mean, it's going to take me a lot longer to put in the in-app purchase for you to like, test that. But I was like, well, you might as well. Yeah, put it out there and see what happens. And I've had good success with that so far. I really have, uh, really enjoyed it. I mean, I just rewrote the settings page last weekend because I thought I wasn't like my, my, my, some of my screens weren't pretty enough. And I thought if I spent a little time investing in making my screens prettier, that more people would upgrade. Too, like if it was clear, like what benefits you're getting. So I kept adding more benefits. Like I just added a few new features and like, I really needed to describe like what you're getting out of this thing. And I'm hoping that that drives it up right now that I'm like, Oh, people will pay me. Like I had the worst terrible UI for it. Right. I'm like, this is terrible UI. Like I put very little effort into it, like a table view. And I was like, I wonder if I put just a little bit of effort into it if people will upgrade and find it advantageous and hopefully they do, we'll find out. Frank: [00:10:32] Don't you wish we could AB test on iOS. I wish that was built into the app store because it'd be fun. Do people react better to the gold screen background or the black screen background? That kind of stuff. Yeah, but we never get to do that. You're I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about the, um, the rejection and you're freaking me out a little, because I think he said, I'm hoping this week to finally release ice circuit 3d, I've been talking about it on the podcast for ever. Um, I try not to talk about it anymore, so I don't have any time pressure, but, um, I think I'm finally fine. We're going to upload it to the store and I've been assuming. Uh, it okay. Reviewed and accepted and a day. And that way it'll be out by the time this podcast comes out. But now after listening to you, I'm like, Oh boy, maybe, maybe it won't even be approved after a week. You're James: [00:11:23] scaring me, James. I mean, don't plan anything too much. I mean, I really think the new strategy of releasing applications or up app updates is too. You know, put that manual release on, you know, get everything all stage. And then that gives you a week or two to go through. And then even, you know, plan to, even if it's approved, like my Island tracker has been there for like a week and a half now on iOS. Like, I can't do anything until Android, but even if it was just iOS, it's like, well, I get, I get a week and a half breathing time. Like, nothing is nothing is, is a, there's no flames going on, I think is happening. Okay. Gives me a week and a half to think about stuff and really. Think about the release and if there was anything else I want to change and test other things, I think I'm okay. But I wa well, let's talk about your app because I think you're in a very different scenario than me, where I was, you know, both of these were in app purchases. And as we know, Frank doesn't do in app purchases, he only does. Paid applications or apps. So what's the, what's the situation. I have this beautiful trailer in front of me, 27 seconds long. It's great. It's perfect. Also, I'm very proud of you. It seems like you have your ducks in a row because normally the, the promo video is something that I don't even do until the second or third update. I'm like, Oh, I should've done a promo video. I'm an idiot. Frank: [00:12:47] Yeah. Um, I decided that this is definitely an app that you kind of need to see in action. I always, you know, ever since the early days you make screenshots, right. And you're just like working on them, working on them, but they never really capture the app. And I don't know. Screenshots don't work, but then again, making a video, that's a lot of effort. So, um, I was actually putting a lot of the stuff off. Um, w we talk about releasing apps all the time and how I hate doing it, because it's, it turns out there's tons of promotional material. You have to create for the app. And I'm a developer and I prefer to do the development stuff, but I think I'm going to have a much more chill. Released than you because yeah, I'm getting my ducks in order. The app's been stable for a long time, so I'm not too worried about giant bugs or anything like that. And yes, I've picked a much simpler pricing model called give me some money and you get an app. James: [00:13:46] We have gone back and forth on this. Me and you after the podcast, before the podcast. For months now, uh, talking about monetary. Cause I was trying out different things. You were, I mean, I literally, for the first time tried to make a paid app, right? I mean, that was something that was brand new to me. We taught the reasons why back and forth. I thought you were going to go the route of the subscription or in-app purchase, but nah, I am wrong. Frank: [00:14:12] Yeah, you are wrong. And I could not have predicted that either because you gave very convincing arguments during all the podcasts. And I think back to them constantly, and it ended up being a few criteria that I ended up making this decision on. So to be clear, what we're talking about is I'm going to charge an upfront price for the app, probably something like 12 or $13. Um, and it's going to be full featured when you get it. No, in that purchases. So. What really happened was I had fall intentions of implementing the in-app purchase system kind of along the lines of we've been discussing in many past podcasts, probably like you, a pro mode, uh, whether it be subscription or a one-time purchase, I'd leave myself some flexibility. The trouble I was having was splitting out the features between the free version and the pro mode. And I just did not enjoy that experience. So I was going through different parts, going through different features, adding all those flags, and it just felt so dirty to be. Um, removing features that I've worked very hard on that. I'm very proud of. And I hate to like tr you know, this is where you have to like, choose your favorite children kind of thing. And I really disliked that process. And I got to this mental state where I was just like, you know, pay for apps, although are not the most popular thing right now. Um, definitely. I think users do prefer a free trial apps and things like that. But the fact is I've been using that pricing model for 10 years now, and it works for me. I'm able to make a living off of that pricing model. So I may be leaving some money on the table, especially in terms of subscriptions versus anything else. Uh, but at the same time, the simplicity of it. I love and I don't have to tear my app apart into pieces. James: [00:16:14] Yeah. And you also have a very different, you know, I like to think that your applications, I don't want to belittle my own applications, but your applications have some real heft to them. Like they are applications that users. Um, I mean, I mean, what, I mean half, I mean, not only if the amount of time and energy that you put into the application construction. But also the amount of features. And then additionally, you want to talk about, I mean, is the usage of the application. Like it is a real app in which you spend a lot of time and energy building and constructing something, right? If you look at, I circuit in an IMR, we can compare and contrast this to some of your other apps that aren't this way. But I think of this as I circuit continuous and now I surrogate 3d as these applications or apps that you're kind of. You may be in for hours. Working on, and this is something more reminiscent of what I'm doing in a browser and visual studio or Camtasia. Like these are applications that are, are hefty in functionality, but also hefty in functionality in which I am doing for a long period of time that I'm willing to pay money for. Where I think of other applications like email, which is, you know, what diamond does and there's, there's tons of them out there, but I feel like it's Snapchat, or I look at somebody, those are social media apps or some of these other smaller apps that I use, the apps that I use for, you know, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, you know what I mean? That they, not that they're not real apps, but they are apps that I'm in so quick that I'm like, well, of course I'm not going to pay any money for X, Y, Z. They're going to figure out some other monetization. Which is to keep you in the app for longer, but you know, your other applications with this, where I look at some of your other applications, obviously Mo CAS and I look at also, um, Calca. Right, which has gone through evolutions up and down in the price. There are some people that will use Calca heavily, but then others, that probably don't because it's, it's almost too feature rich and rich in a way for some people, but then the perfect amount of functionality for a lot of other ones, because it's kind of more broad, right? So I'm, I'm saying a whole bunch of words here, Frank, please either validate me or don't or invalidate me, please. Let me know what I'm saying here, but I'm trying to say, is that okay? These applications are targeted towards a demographic, right? Continuous towards eyes, eye circuit. Like these are pretty targeted applications. Like I'm not probably going to buy them except for, to support you because I love you. But they're targeted for these users that are going to use them for a long amount of time in which, Hey, they're looked at less as an app and more as a tool. Does that make sense, OODA? Is that a good analogy? I think that's better. Yes. Frank: [00:19:04] Apps are tools. Tools can be apps. Yeah. It's in the mobile world where things got weird because the distinction, I think of our creation apps versus consumption apps. Is this a YouTube app or is this a Twitter app where you're primarily consuming or is this something where you're creating something and for better, for worse, that's kind of the niche that I've. I kind of love, that's the kind of app that I want to write and I keep hoping I can find customers that want to use those kinds of apps. So, uh, I will toot my own horn and validate what you said. Yeah. I make, I make big apps, especially this one. Uh, I've been working on it for two years. It is the very definition of feature creep. Just there are features that I just run into in the app that I've just totally forgot about that I put in there, like over a year ago and I've just forgotten. Which came up when I was trying to write the user manual, I'm like, how do I describe two years worth of features in this app? But that was a conscientious decision I made after a couple years and the app store, I wasn't having success, writing small apps that did just a few things. I mean, I could sell a couple of 'em, but I couldn't make a lot of money. What I kind of concluded, which, you know, maybe true, maybe false, but whatever. It's the conclusion I came to was you have to charge bigger prices to make more money on the store. And in order for me to justify charging a larger price, I want to build bigger apps. I don't want to just charge $20 for hello world or something. I don't even know world's smallest violin app or something like that. And so I decided years ago that I was going to write big apps and it's kind of weird because I'm writing these bigger apps for mobile devices. But this time I was very conscientious of also writing a Mac version of the app, because it is definitely something that you can just sit in and I've had it running on this Mac with. Five windows open for the last couple of years, because it's just something fun to leave open in the background. And yeah, that puts it into a funny class of, you know, you were calling it a tool and for me, tools were always smaller. Kind of apps for me. I I'm trying to get into the realm of toolbox Photoshops or pro, uh, pro babababa. What's the word I'm looking, product productivity, tools, word, Excel, sketch, Photoshop, you know, I'd want to be in that realm of app. James: [00:21:45] That makes, that makes more sense. I mean, and, and I feel as though that's where if I was. Building Island tracker. Again, if I had the time in the world to put into it, I probably would have spent an, I would have planned it earlier to incorporate everything that you could possibly track on your Island. Inside this game, it would have had rich functionality would have turned. It, it would have had, it would have had the, you know, the Swiss army knife of all the things that you'd want. And you could be like, this is the ultimate. Animal crossing app, right? Like that's sort of what it would have been. And I think it would have then justify the price for it. Um, and it's, it's a trade off, right? Like if I look at my cadence, it's a very simple application that displays a number on the screen. Now displays a few more numbers on the screen if you're a pro user, but it's an app that I was able to build really quick, get out because I wanted it. Whereas if I was to make that a paid version, I would. Obviously put a lot more energy and effort into connecting to all sorts of different sensors and making it really customizable and doing X, Y, Z, and, you know, trying to compete with some other apps that are in the market that are out there, or just use something unique to justify it a paid cost. Whereas for me, and even for you, it's deciding between this paid model or this in-app purchase models, it's a trade-off, which is how many downloads versus conversions. Equate to, I just sold you a copy. Right. And it also becomes a support question too, because me, so for example, let's say you sell, I circuit 3d for $10. I don't know what you're selling it for. We haven't told anyone yet. I have no idea actually, but let's say you sell it for $10 and that's, you know, and you're selling them. It's good. Right? And you have your first a hundred customers. You have a hundred customers you've made. What's that thousand dollars. Wow. What a great day for, for Frank, right? That's one day, I'm going to say one week, how many are selling a day? Frank? Now the difference is if you make it for free, you may get, you know, not 100 downloads. Maybe you're getting 10,000 downloads and let's say you get 100 in app purchases. So here's the conundrum, right? That conversions very small as that 1%. Um, I guess it'd be 10%. That'd be pretty good. You probably would not get 10% by the way. No one it's crazy. I got like zero, zero, but let's just say you do right. Oh, that's 1%. I said 10,000 downloads. Yeah. So now you have 10,000 users with 100 paid users, but you're still supporting 10,000 users. Right? So actually the, the difference is your cost per user is. Pennies to be honest with you compared to like, Hey, every single user is, I'm getting $10 from they're getting the same level of support they paid for it. I feel really good for it. It's a classic tried and true approach. In the box software, if you will, that has worked for decades. And there's that other part of trade off to think about you're then going to have, by the way, possibly 10,000 reviews versus 100 reviews in which you can hand craft people that use it more. That may be better than maybe worse. Who knows. Maybe people are like, this isn't worth $10, but I bet that if they're spending $10 on it, And it's of the quality you say it is. It's probably going to be a little bit better in that regard of getting higher quality reviews at the end of the day, this is all hearsay, but these are some of the other things that I've been thinking about in your situation with ice circuit 3d and all of the things that I've happened to all of my applications over the last year. In general, is that risk verse for workers? Um, again, we talked last year, last week. I'm terrified about putting out this app for free. What if I do get a hundred thousand users, like, is my backend going to scale? Am I going to be able to support all these people? Do I just, I have no idea. I won't know until I do it, but that's the conundrum at the end of the day. Frank: [00:26:00] Yeah. And that is argument that it's been bouncing around in my head for the last year, at least, no, I even, even when I began the project, because I think that's, it's, our pastime is to debate pricing models. It's just what we do for fun. Um, but I want to rewind a bit back, uh, going back to what you're talking about with your features and including all the sensors and that kind of stuff. I think if I was to summarize my long ramp before that it would have been quite simply, people pay for features and people review your app for its features. Uh, there are minimum criteria you have to hit your app has to not crash and it has to not look like garbage and it has to be somewhat usable. But aside from that, that'll get you up to three or four stars. It's features that get you from three to five stars and gets you all the reviews and allows you to justify the price and that kind of stuff. But you're absolutely right. That. Debate, you break it down to that one magical conversion number. And if you knew that conversion number at all the different price points, then this would be an easy decision to make. You would just optimize the curve. You would plot it out and pick the right one and just do that. The tragedy is none of us have that data. Because every app is different. Every market is different. And by market, I mean the user base, the people that are interested in your app, everyone's promotional materials are different. Like a queue icon at the right price point can probably sell an app. Um, it probably can't sell a $10 app, but you know, it can, it can sell a $2 app. Uh it's. I I'm looking forward to you finding that conversion number because isn't that the great question in terms of not having a free version, there are other downsides to like, um, getting pressed for it is a little bit easier because you can just say, Hey, go download this app. I don't have to send out a promo code. Uh, you know, doing all that kind of press tour East stuff that you do when you launch an app, there's, there's that huge benefit to it. But again, I think my market is small enough niche enough that, um, any reviewer reviewing this type of app is going to have to get it somehow. So hopefully I'll send them a code or they'll just pay for it. Something along those James: [00:28:26] lines. Yeah, I, you know, we talked about other app releases and rollouts and promotional plans and some of the complexity with that, and previous episodes, I don't want to do all too much on it because it was it, but it does become part of it. Right. It becomes part of your plan. Even for me, I, I, I emailed, uh, kind of one of my more favorite YouTubers that does spin bike reviews, kind of this guy, um, kind of. Promoting the app, but I wanted to wait until a few weeks or whatever, you know? So like my promotional plans for it kind of waited a few weeks until the app came out. I had a few reviews, you know, I, you know, got over the, a few bugs that I had and, and that went, that went pretty well. And there was at advantage, which was like, Hey, this dude could just download it and install it and just like, tell me what he thought. Right. Or this case, I sent him a video and like checked it out. I was like, cool. That's a great, and it gave me a few feature ideas and I don't know if it's going to go anywhere, but it's like, Hey, you know, it, that even that is, was, I was sorta thinking even in my app that was available for free. So either way you go, there's complexity in it because, you know, do you want to wait a little bit to get some users, get some feedback as, or of something. Really missing from the application. Um, I dunno, it's all of this stuff is really tricky and that's the hardest part of it is if application development is easy and rollout would be easy, it would be, you know, it'd be, it'd be awesome. But I think there is some complexity when you're talking about real dollars at the end of the day. Frank: [00:29:59] Yeah, and I could be living in a fantasy world where I said the app is pretty good and stable. It, I could very well get 10, one star reviews the day I release it and make, you know, $1 on the entire app. I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for the most tragic scenario so that you know, anything more than tragedy will make me happy. These are the mental games you have to go through when releasing something aside from like all that technical complexity we talk about, um, there's quite simply. A bunch of people are going to see this app. And if I'm asking for a bunch of money for it and they get it, and it's a piece of garbage, you know, they might be justified to give a one star review. So, um, hopefully though that won't happen. And I'm, I am curious about, uh, going back to the very beginning, I'm probably gonna do a manual release so I can, you know, pick a nice morning to release it, but, um, I was also thinking about doing a soft, quiet launch, which is not something I've done before, where I just release it to the app store. But I don't say a word on a Twitter. I don't reply to anyone on Twitter. Wait a week, make sure I'm not getting one star reviews and then, you know, go for a whole press tour. We'll see. We'll see if people just discover it online though. And then I can't control it. James: [00:31:23] Yeah. That's also a tricky one too. I, I kind of went that route. Well, I mean, I definitely. Promoted the, the, my cadence stuff I've felt really good about it. And people downloaded it and people are continuously downloading it. But I do feel as though had, I just kind of made it a quieter rollout and improved it. I think I would have been able to get the updates out faster and it would have like impacted less people. Like that's the trade off, like a quiet roll out is like this. And you make the, you make the release whenever and ideally. If you do get some downloads and sales, the cool part is, is most likely, I assume Frank and your application after so many uses, there's a little pop-up that comes up that says, please review my application. Please tell me you put that in your app. Frank: [00:32:08] Uh, yes, sir. Well, uh, okay. Wait, I'm full honesty here. It's on the list for today. Literally today James: [00:32:16] to one line of code Frank, Frank: [00:32:17] it's not one line you got to track the numbers. James: [00:32:21] Few lines of code. Yeah. I will say this. I. I I think with the paid app, it's better to do it sooner than later. This is my new thinking. I should've done this. I messed up in my app. I actually had it like in the Island tracker app. I like waited a long time to ask people for it where, and then now I'm like doing it faster. So. I probably messed that up. I think when it's a paid app, you want to ask for the review earlier than you would, if it was a free app, because the free apps, you want to make sure that like people are using it and having a good time. So I'll probably adjust that number in the future. Now that I'm thinking about this, that's why we do this podcast because I'm fixing my mistakes too bad. All the apps are either in review or being approved and I'm almost out of app center. Bill time, minutes this month. So we got to wait until next month. So, um, Frank: [00:33:11] well, that's interesting. Cause I haven't thought about that as a difference between free and paid apps. That's not something I considered as the, um, the aggressiveness of that dialog box. I would say for my part, I. I don't do that many releases of the app. I definitely don't bump the minor version that often. And so I don't mind being pretty aggressive with that, Ty lockbox, because it has real beneficial effects for the app. Um, especially for an early app that has zero reviews. You re you really want to get that ball rolling. And I remember with the older, with, um, My previous apps when they introduced that feature. I, you know, my reviews quadrupled eight times five to, I don't remember, but a lot, I got a lot more reviews than ever. And then I remember once John Gruber said, uh, app shouldn't bug you. And so I removed it. Okay. And then I didn't get any reviews. And then one year I was just like, well, you know what, forget it. I'm putting it back. And then guess what? I got a whole bunch of reviews again. So I've definitely just gotten on the side of, I am so sorry everyone, if that dialogue bothers you, but just hit, cancel, and it'll go away. You'll never see it again. So, and I think most people using apps are just so used to that dialogue. Now they don't care that much James: [00:34:29] about it. No, I think as long as you do it at an appropriate time, Where for me, I do it in my cadence. And I think in the Island tracker to after, like, I think it's like five times of doing something. So like in the, my cadence it's, you've connected to a sensor successfully. And then you've disconnected. So you're finished with your ride and then it's like, Hey, do you want it? Maybe, you know, it can be maybe play around with it, which is like, Hey, you've done five rides. Then the next time you open the app, I was trying to be very conscious, which is like, Hey, when is a person just like, they're, they're in a good spot in which they could just hit five stars and like go and like, you just finished a ride. The app just worked. Great. I assume. So you're good to go. Right. And then same thing with Island dragon, like after you five or 10 times synchronizer data, it's like, well, you've used the app for five days, so that's pretty good. Um, but I don't like apps that do it, like on start-up that's the thing is like I just launched the app. Don't don't don't I think that's what Gruber to me probably was actually talking about it. I mean, I'm not going to tell Gruber what I think that he was talking about, but like, I don't want apps to tell me what to do or bug me a whole bunch. But I do want them, if they're going to, which they're all probably going to do at some point, do it at a graceful period. Like I remember when I installed the bank of America app, like I installed an open it, and then it asked me for a review. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, what are you, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Um, and I know app is good. Like, I know app is perfect. Like I was looking at test flight and the app center connect and they do do it at certain times. Like, again, you only get to see it once. Right. But, um, Um, it's sort of interesting, like when different app developers, including Apple decided to do it, but it is, I think it's super important. I wrote a whole blog post on it. I'm a blog that works. And, you know, I will say that, um, I put it in because you can do it on Mac too. You know that right? Frank: [00:36:29] Yeah. Yeah. It's the same API James: [00:36:32] says I have it. Um, I have it on my stream timer on Mac, and that application has 74 reviews, which is amazing. Awesome. On my cadence, which has, um, 600 installs. It has 20 reviews. Amazing. That's Frank: [00:36:50] good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The IC. James: [00:36:54] That's so many reviews that that's great. I mean, that's the thing. It doesn't sound like a lot. Like when you say like other apps have millions of thousands of reviews or they have millions of users, but comparatively, when I put out apps and I didn't have that dialogue, Frank would be the only Frank: [00:37:09] reviewer. Yeah. I mean, it's orders of magnitude. Do you have one review, 10 reviews? Hundred-ish reviews. Thousandish reviews, you know, that's just kinda how I think of it in those terms. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Um, so are they all five star reviews for you? James: [00:37:27] Um, no. We talked about this, so I have. So, Frank: [00:37:31] Oh, you had that one star. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up, James. I'm so sorry. James: [00:37:36] Yes, it's the, it's the bane of my existence, which is, uh, this, I, I don't know if this is a real person that use a real app or not. I'm going to say probably I'm going to say it's my Frank: [00:37:45] editor. Well, That, that timing thing is definitely an issue. Uh, there's really never a good time in my apps because they're all click. I mean, you're paying attention to things all the times all the time. So what I've kind of settled on is if you've created five new files while you're in the file, five to 10 seconds after you've opened the file, that's when I pop the dialogue up, which. Isn't great, but you know, I don't want to put the dialogue up when you first opened the file because you might be looking for something I don't want to wait too long or else it seems totally random, but what can you do? I mean, you're going to annoy someone somehow. Just try to annoy them as least as possible. James: [00:38:30] That's very true. That's good. It's going to happen. Frank: [00:38:32] That's my app design philosophy. Try don't know what the user is as possible. Oh boy, I'm excited. I'm excited. So this is the combination of many years. I'm hoping that by the time this podcast is out, that I will actually have the app in the store. I'm not going to have the Mac version. I was trying to do a simultaneous release, but it was just adding a little bit too much. Too much to my plate. So I think I'm going to have to stagger the release a little bit, but that'll be interesting too, because this is the first time I'm doing app store, Mac and iOS with the same bundle ID, which means if you buy it for iOS, you get it for Mac. If you buy for Mac, you get it for iOS. It's a good deal. So just trying to justify the high price, I'm going to charge. James: [00:39:17] That's buy one, get one free Frank. Frank: [00:39:19] So that's how I think of it. Yeah. Yeah. I should, I should, uh, label it as James: [00:39:23] such. Yes, should. Uh, I'm assuming they allow you to do that. I did recently my app update. It was very good because in the app update, they allowed me to put the word free in it, which is good, where previously I had put something like free or something like that. And they didn't like that. He said, you can't talk about pricing in your description, but I guess, because I was making the app free for everybody. I was allowed to put that I'm not a hundred percent sure how that works, but Frank: [00:39:54] there might be different rules between the, um, the release notes versus the general description. James: [00:40:00] True. True. And in fact, Google or Apple, that was, that was Apple. Yeah. Yeah. They rejected it because I said something about free something or something else. But I had like now I have it as like included in every version and then upgrade to pro to get whatever, right. Like, Something like that. I don't know. I forget exactly what it was, but that was fascinating. I'm assuming though, that you can put in there in the store description that this is part of the blah, blah, blah, blah. No. Which means that if you buy it on one, you know, on iOS and you also get it from Mac, I assume, but yeah. Who knows? Right? Who knows? Frank: [00:40:35] And you were showing me last week that the app store has improved how they're handling kind of the freemium scenario, especially with, was it just subscriptions or just, uh, any in-app purchase where it would actually show you on the app store search results. So it would show James's. My James app, which is free. And then right below it, my James app ad-on on. And that was a pretty nice improvement over the, I don't know. It's pretty clunky. The, the old style of UI there. James: [00:41:08] Yeah, there's a, what is it called? It's a, so I, the portal's gotten a lot better, although I did update, I did update the description and I couldn't save it over the weekend. I kept texting you. I was like, what's going on? Is the app store down? I had a, um, Greater than symbol or a less than symbol in the, in the description. And that caused an error in submitting that's crazy. Oh, really Frank: [00:41:33] good. On HTML, escaping a task again. James: [00:41:37] So this is called when you go to your in-app purchases, it is called app store promotion. That's of course it's called that right to the point. So this is a fascinating. It's you give it an app icon. And in this one, I gave it the same as my other one, but just a different color. Cause you can customize the three seam that customize the theme and get average cadence and more. Um, but what's cool here is that, um, few options. You give it an image you can promote up to 20 of these in-app purchases at a time. And you have the option to show them, show it to all apps or users, even if they don't have your app installed or only to your users that already have the app installed or something like that. I just have it on everyone. Cause I only have one in app purchase. It would be kind of annoying if I like 10, you know? Um, but I kind of wanted to make it very clear and it gives it like a nice section instead of the normal dropdown. The only thing you need to do is, uh, implement S K payment trying to transaction observer. And what that does is. When you do app store promotion, it allows your users to buy the in-app purchase in the app store. And then when your app opens the next time in your app, a delegate, you will get a call back that says, Hey, this user purchased this in-app purchase. Frank: [00:42:56] We are getting so close to what I just want, which is paid apps with a free trial. I know we're just the bullion flag. Just give it to us Apple. One of these times you said you knew who James: [00:43:07] had windows. Yeah. Had it back in the day they had their trials. It was like, you can say how long you wanted windows store and when Frank: [00:43:16] the Microsoft stores still have it. I James: [00:43:18] don't know. Maybe I think I have it enabled. They might be, it might be, it's gotta be doable. You know what I mean? Come on, Frank: [00:43:28] come on. Well, AB testing or trials or something, and I would still get into the problem of having to tear my app apart. But part of that tearing the app apart and you kind of hinted at it was when you have a freemium model, you gotta be careful how you talk in your description, because you're really only supposed to talk about the free version of the app. And you're technically supposed to leave the rest to the in-app purchases, but that would be dumb. So you have to find a way to talk about that was another part I just wasn't enjoying. So though I want free trials. I would still. No, I take it back. I still want free trials. Someone on Twitter was making a joke that, um, ever since all the APIC stuff, Apple's just been going through the app developer wishlist, trying to make us happy. So we don't, I don't know, do a class action lawsuit or something. Right. I don't know. And, uh, maybe trials or AB testing will be a part of that. Stay tuned for dub dub DC. Did you know it's a new year? James it's 2021 now. It's James: [00:44:30] a whole new year. It's a whole new Deb, Deb, a whole new bill, the whole new Google EO. I'm excited for all the things. Um, yeah. Well, I'm excited for you. Uh, we don't know if your Apple be out. We will give the. Um, update next week. Uh, next week of course, is our lightning topics, um, episode. And you can submit a topic, uh, for the lightning talks. You can go to merge conflict out of there's a little contact button. You can hop in discord. We are going to be doing better at checking that we promise you can tweet at us at merge conflict, FM or us individually. Let us know if there's certain things that you would like to hear. We definitely go through all those and come up with our list or we try to cover. Six different topics, five minutes each it's a good 30 plus minute episode. Um, and we will live stream that one who knows. We will see maybe because why not? Maybe we will, because, you know, episode 240 Frank, you know, we've been doing this for almost for four years Frank: [00:45:26] now. Ooh. Yeah, I totally forgot our calendar birthday. Is that like in the summer? I think. James: [00:45:33] Uh, July 11th, 2006, maybe five years this year. Frank: [00:45:38] Oh my goodness. Well, we'll do some merch for that. We have to do so much for that. We'll James: [00:45:43] get it done. We will get it done. All right. Well, I think he's going to do it for this week's episode. Frank, may the force be with you? Um, and, um, we'll see how it turns out. So until next week there's been merged conflict. I'm James Monte magnet and Frank: [00:45:58] I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for listening.