mergeconflict326-1 === [00:00:00] James: Frank Kruger, I am ready to go pro. In all of your applications, are you ready to let you more money, Frank? Is that the 2022 goals? [00:00:18] Frank: Yeah. Yes. My goal is to get as much money from you, James, as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Yep. That's my new life goal. Now, , uh, you've inspired me. This, this is your fault. Uh, I've decided to add pro versions to my apps. Wow. And this is, this is all your fault, . [00:00:38] James: I, I, I don't, you know, I blame Apple at the end of the day because they started with the iPhones and then just did the S'S and the Max, and then they did the pros. And then I wanna, I mean, why am I not gonna buy the Pro? It's only a hundred dollars more. Why would I not buy the Pro Pro? What am I not a pro? I'm definitely a pro. Come on now. [00:00:58] Frank: So how many, how, how many people are like you? We did the math for yours. It's, it's one out of a thousand people are kind of like you . I do. [00:01:06] James: Yeah. I I think it's a, the thing is about one or 2%. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. [00:01:11] Frank: That's not bad. Yeah. Well, okay. So, um, what I decided was, and I've actually heard from customers in the past that my apps have been out for a while. I released ice Circuit in 2010, and there are people who bought it in 2010 and been happi using it ever since. And it's just been a little. Bad of me that I've never released like a version two and capitalized on like an existing market or anything like that. Meanwhile, I do spend, um, time into effort and monies, uh, to maintain it and update it and all that kind of stuff. And I generally rely on new sales for all of that, which is a tiny bit crazy given that all the world's forces are subscriptions and all of that. But I've decided not to. All in on subscriptions, as in make a free app and then, um, pay for it to you make it not free. Apple really should offer trials like the Windows store does and all that. But I decided, um, the pro version's kind of perfect for this app, um, because I have a large parts library and it's really easy for me to just kind of pick and choose which parts are and which, uh, possible available version and all that kind of stuff. I'd like to talk about this too. Attempted with the idea of adding a tip jar to the app, and I decided after some contemplation that I much prefer a pro feature over a tip jar. Um, we can get into that [00:02:40] James: too, so people are paying for your applic. So this, I mean, this is a little bit different than what I did because I decided to go from the paid version. Or even think about doing a paid version and just have only free versions of my applications. And then additionally, any of my free versions remain free. And then I gave people the option to get new functionality to upgrade to pro. Like I, I kind of thought of it in my mind was if I was a user of this app and I read it on the app store and it says, Here's what it is, and if I installed it, I would get that. And anything above and beyond that would really be for people that are pro users at the end of the day. You know, a good example of this would be back in my day when I would install id, there would be extensions. Some of those extensions are free, some of those are paid. Now I can decide. I have the base. That's pretty good. Is working pretty good? Are there stuff over there? Maybe I wanna, I wanna pay a little bit more money for . That's good. Now the funny part about that is that, you know, your IDs could also be paid and then they could also be paid things on top of it, which is kind of the route that you're going for. You're like, Hey, this is a, uh, this is more than an application that shows a number. Yeah. Do I did there just dug, Dug right in deep. Just really, I just twist out, twist, twisted. Deep, deep cut. Um, in there. Now people are paying. and they're paying like what? Two and a half coffees. Or sell for you? Two and a half. Coffee. [00:04:15] Frank: Two. Two coffees. Yeah. Two. Two fancy coffee. [00:04:18] James: Two fancy. Yeah. [00:04:20] Frank: Plus coffee. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Throwing that tip. Yeah. And that, that, that's been the tricky part with all of this. Um, so basically I just don't have the. Guts to make a free version. . . Yeah. Uh, this is my livelihood. I pay the rent based on this and all that, and I just don't have the guts to do such a dramatic experiment as throw out a free version and then rely on the sales. But of course, if you're gonna. Engineer in the ability to have different skews, you know, standard versus pro. Then I've also taken the time to throw in a free version. So it really just comes down to the point of, um, where would I be comfortable releasing a free version? But I think what I'm doing, um, is fair and it took me a while to decide if it was fair. Is it a just payment system? ? So I'm still asking people to pay for two coffees, uh, in order to buy the app and you. Honestly getting. The majority of the features, the huge majority, the pro features are gonna be really those nerdy things. So all the varieties of different kinds of chips, not just the four or five chips that you use most often, but a much larger library of those things. I decide, I'm still gonna put in the ones that you use, uh, the four or five most common ones that you put in, that kind of stuff, because people are paying for the app. I wanna make sure the app is still very functional when they're paying for it. But it's been kind of silly for me to not have some kind of subscription option in the app, and so I just finding that line. What awesome killer features can I get people to buy the pro version for, but still not feel bad charging, uh, the base version [00:05:59] James: for, You're in a great situation right now because unlike me, who introduce a pro feature and then introduced a pro subscription like an idiot , uh, you're in, you're in a blank slate, so you have this one. This is your one opportunity. You got one shot to make your decision. So I, it sounds like you're going with a subscription monthly based system. Are you gonna go with, you know, buy more, do a year, get a reduction? Are you gonna do a free trial? You know, there's free trials of subscriptions by the way too, that you can do. Well, [00:06:28] Frank: yeah, so I, that was a big contemplation because in the past, you and I have talked about, you have the buyout feature mm-hmm. , where, um, in general you're a subscription, but you have a buyout, so don't have to do them. I decided to keep it even simpler than that. Ooh. Um. Because it is, I'm billing it as a pro feature for an app that you already have and an app that's already very functional without that pro feature. The pro feature really is for those one out of Heather House and one out of, Well, hopefully it's not that bad. Maybe it's, hopefully it's like a one out of a hundred people. Good. Willing to get like, yeah, all those detailed elements and things like that. One of a one out of a thousand would be bad. That wouldn't be worth it. Um, but yeah, one out of a hundred would be pretty good. What do you think? Uh, do, do you think it's kind of crazy asking for a pay upfront app and an app purchase, but obviously other people do that too? [00:07:24] James: No, no, no. You're totally fine. I mean, this is how my refrigerator works, Frank. Um, my refrigerator, I purchased my refrigerator and I was like, Wow, I have a brand new refrigerator is fantastic. Do you know what a refrigerator needs every six month? Electricity. No, no, no. That's, that's just a, that's just an ongoing forever. Am [00:07:43] Frank: I not doing something to my refrigerator that I should be [00:07:46] James: doing? James? Well, not all refrigerators have this, cuz you know, I've got those fancier refrigerators that have no life saving water filtration built into them. Not, not, well, one, not all. Not all refrigerators have a water system built in and not all of them have filtration built in. I got that fancy filtration. Plus. And you know how they even got me even further when I went to go buy the water replacement, you know, filtration system. It's like 30 [00:08:14] Frank: bucks. Wait, let me guess. You got the gold filters. There's literally gold in the filter. No. Okay. [00:08:19] James: Surprisingly not. Um, there, uh, Cause I bought, we bought the refrigerator from Best Buy. And Best Buy was like, hey. Did you know that you can also, you know, buy more filters? You're gonna need to do this every six months because it's programmed just to go red every six months. It doesn't match. It doesn't matter how much water you use, it's just gonna go red. You need to replace it. And it's like, why don't you just sign up for a subscription every six months? We'll just send you a filter, Say 5%. Oh, Best Buy. You know, I'm gonna get that new filter every six months and it just shows up, Frank. So your application is just like my refrigerator that always gets $30 from me every six months and it's kind of ridiculous. No, but I mean, there's other apps out there that Yeah. That we use every single day. I mean, if I look at, you know, if you were to even look at Visual Studio, you know, pro and enterprise, those are paid skews, Right? That are out. Very expensive people pay for them. Right. Um, I would say that, well, interestingly enough, some of the Photoshop stuff have, have moved over, but you can buy some and not buy some. Um, well, they're, [00:09:19] Frank: they're mostly subscription now. Every time I've gone for a Photoshop, it seems very difficult to buy a version, if not impossible at this point. They seem all subscription. [00:09:28] James: I'm actually trying to think of an app that I use that I paid for that I then bought a subscription for. [00:09:37] Frank: Huh. Hmm. Well, this will be a fun experiment, , we will find out. I am very tempted to do the free version, but I, I've kind of come to terms with this is gonna be good. So in the code I created a little EEU called App sku, which is free standard or pro. And so in the future I can mess around and move things around very easily and kind of keep the same ui. I think again, I'd be a little bit afraid to do it, uh, on the App store. Cause then I would have a free version competing with my main version and then I would probably should just take the main version down, but then I lose all the SEO and permanent links to it. So, no, don't do that. I am in a little bit of a, Yeah, I think, I think I found a happy medium, I'm pretty sure, but I still have a few more problems. You ready to hear my [00:10:26] James: problems? Hold on. Hold that thought because Frank, I just thought of it, you know, an. You actually pay for is, isn't, um, what's that podcast app that we use? Zencaster? No. The podcast app, . On iPhone, [00:10:45] Frank: I use Mo Cast. Hi everyone. Download Mo Cast the best podcast player for iOS. What's [00:10:52] James: that? What's overcast? Overcast. . [00:10:55] Frank: Yeah, Overcast. I just wanted to put it late in the list [00:10:59] James: cause. Is Overcast paid? [00:11:01] Frank: Is that a paid app? Yes, it is. Okay. Uh, but, uh, there is a free version and you pay for a pro version or something? Pro version. [00:11:08] James: Yeah. I used to pay for po finally, if I paid for Pocket ca and then I paid them more once they decided that they needed more money and then they turned into a subscription or like a lifetime subscription. Mm-hmm. , Same with Plex, same thing. Like people have always like changed over the, over the time. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I remember now. Overcast, I think, had the ads and then, and then they like had an ad to, to gi. It was funny, like you could give him more money and then, Turn back on the ads cuz if you like the ads that much. Oh, okay. Yeah. Which is [00:11:38] Frank: funny. Yeah. Oh, so it actually takes away the ads. Interesting. Correct. I've, I've had softwares in the past go from a one time purchase to a subscription. I stopped using 'em, but my anecdote there, um, it used to be an app store. Sales downloader. Yeah. The joke there was they radically changed their UI at the same time they changed their pricing model. I was actually okay with the pricing model, but they went and changed the ui. So I was like, Oh gosh, you took what was a beautiful, simple app and made it all complicated and you wanna charge me a sub. And so that just frustrated me and I was out. Um, in this case, I'm not changing the UI people. People have gotten very used to the UI and they hate it when I change anything too radically. [00:12:25] James: Yeah. What I like about your approach, and I think it's a totally valid approach, I'm gonna be interested to see how it shakes out for you and see what it looks like, you know, six months from now, 12 months from now, and how you introduce it and how you advertise it gracefully, which I know you will, is I think of, um, there's like, you know, coffee machines, like espressos or whatever we talked about before where you, you buy the machine and. You can, You gotta buy the pods right now. Yeah. You gotta keep the subscription going. Now you could buy a one time pod and fill it with your own coffee yourself, X, y, Z as an option, for example. But I do think it's kind of, uh, yeah, it's kind interesting. It's all interesting. [00:13:07] Frank: Yeah, and again, I, I kind of feel good about it because I don't think it's gonna hurt the normal app sales. Like I, maybe there'll be a tiny dip, but it's probably gonna be imme immeasurable cuz maybe you'll see the within app purchases and you're like, What? I'm gonna spend this money and there's an app purchases, so maybe there's some percentage of the population that would turn off from it. But in general, um, it should be mostly additive. I'm hoping cross my fingers, I'll report back. And so, you know, even if at the first month I only get one subscriber, uh, again, going back to you, you were pretty inspiring. You had. To to, to be a little blunt of low number of subscribers, but as you put it, they add up. It's if you just get a couple subscribers a month, you know, after 12 months, that's actually an appreciable number of people and things like that. Exactly. And so it's not just pure greed either. A little bit of greed, , but inflation's on the rise. You know, I used to charge $20 for this app, and now I only charge $10 for the app. So already it's at a huge discount from what I used to sell it at. And so I'm thinking it's just been a little bit silly of me to leave a bit of money on the table for people who are willing to pay the subscription and get that cool pro badge. I gotta get, I do have to work on my iconography a little bit. People very happy they got the pro mark on there. [00:14:33] James: And did you decide to introduce monthly, three months, six months, 12 months ago? I, we did talk about this in my, always talking about subscriptions, but we talked about it and you know, I do, I always feel like there's this, there's this camp right out there and we, we sort of, even our amazing Paton supporters thinking Pat, patron supporters, they've, they've sometimes, very rarely, very rarely people say, How come I just can't give you more money? Oh, you know, and, uh, those are great people. Those are great people. Ah, well, you know, Well, thank you. Just jump in in there. It's just being there. So the interesting part is I'm very curious about, I mean, I'd be interested about all the pricing of all this stuff like that, but the very fascinating part would be like, Hey, what if there's an ultimate deluxe unlock lifetime subscription or like Lifetime Pro purchase? That's whatever the maximum is. What's that? A thousand dollars or like $200, like just gimme did Frank $200 and you get everything forever and you get a phone call with. [00:15:36] Frank: I, and I might even pick up little, little caveat there. Yeah, that's, that's a good idea. I like it a lot. Um, , [00:15:45] James: I don't know. I don't, I think it's maybe a bad idea. I don't know. I. [00:15:48] Frank: I'm trying to keep it simple. So we were talking about the subscriptions and you were talking about how they actually have free trials now. Mm-hmm. , it seems like Apple is just doubling, tripling down on subscriptions. Yeah. All the interesting features are going there and things like that. And so I'm trying to keep my side simple so I can take advantage of the Apple features. I don't know if I'm gonna throw in the, um, free trial period at the moment. Mostly because I already have a whole bunch of testing I need to do and I don't feel like throwing another monkey wrench in there. Um, but also, Um, it should be easy. I think I can just go to their web UI and be like a free trial available and as long as I'm checking for the right fields and everything in the code, that all should be very easy. So I'm hoping that by switching over to a subscription system, I can kind of keep up with Apple cuz they're, they're definitely playing in those waters. They want you there and I need to up my game. Stay in. [00:16:46] James: Yeah. And this is your first time implementing subscriptions in an app? Is that? [00:16:52] Frank: First time for subscriptions. I've done in-app purchases, and I even did the worst kind of in-app purchases where they acted like subscriptions . So you were buying like a month or you were buying a year, But then I would keep track of the dates, I'd verify the receipts myself. I've never done subscription subscriptions and so yeah, this is a tiny bit of new territory for me. I should probably go back and listen to the 20 part series of you implementing all this stuff. Because I still have some questions about what you are doing. Um, Yeah. Uh, overall, I, I have some experience here, but subscriptions are a bit new to me and I keep, I ha I've had to read a lot of Apple Docs lately to make sure I don't do anything stupidly [00:17:34] James: wrong. Yeah, there's, there's a few things that I would, I, you know, we're gonna have to retouch up this once you get out there and. And actually see what you do. The, the curious part is you're rolling your own, which is kind of what I do with my in a billing because I am rolling the billing plugin myself, and I'm learning as we go. So this is, you know, pretty raw api. and yeah, the real difference ends up becoming how you have to manage the expiration date and how you check them and when you check them, how often you're querying the store and finishing transactions and doing all this stuff. So that'll be fascinating. And it works very different on Android versus iOS, but you're perhaps certainly iOS, so you're okay. The other real thing that I'm, I would, I would love for one of us to do it, and it's not gonna be me because I use my own plugin, but I do think. It could be interesting for you, which is the revenue cat. You about revenue, [00:18:30] Frank: Cat. Yes. This is the alternative to all the stuff, alternative to the Android store, alternative to the iOS store, or does it just integrate with the iOS store? Which one has it? [00:18:41] James: It, it integrates into the iOS and Android app stores. Mm-hmm. . And it enables you to. It basically provides a backend and wrapper around store kit and Google Play billing to managing, to manage in-app purchases and subscriptions easier, so you don't have to worry about service side validation, backend code requirements. And it also gives you dashboard analytics, all sorts of different things. I know there's, there's folks that swear by this, uh, in general. Um, but. [00:19:15] Frank: Glad you brought it up because since I haven't released yet, I should definitely take a look first and at least get a feel for it and decide if it's, uh, for me because I do have a problem. Um, I have an iOS version, a Mac version, an Android version, and a Windows version that I support. and I've, one of the big stumbling blocks to me doing in-app purchases was I didn't have a unified way to handle all of those. And so I'm not sure those revenue can't handle their own database and everything, but it might be something I, I want to look at. So I appreciate that. [00:19:51] James: Yeah, it's, it's as a lot of people recommended it to me and they said, Hey James, you should probably stop trying to do this yourself and just do revenue cad xyz, and I don't think they actually have an official. Zin sdk, but they have like iOS and Android SDKs and Mac Catalyst SDKs and stuff like that. [00:20:10] Frank: Well, that is excellent. And now you're making me wonder, can I tell you my initial lazy plan for handling the Android in the Windows? Because I didn't feel like writing a cross platform purchasing system. [00:20:24] James: Oh yeah. Go for it. [00:20:26] Frank: Those platforms traditionally for me have ac have been lower selling, excuse me, lo uh, lower profits, Lower everything. Yeah, lower margin. All, all lower . So I was thinking for those ones, um, I would just sell the pro version and maybe even up on a dollar or two or I think the Window store actually makes it. Easier than that. Um, but I was thinking it would be a little bit of a bump for those other platforms too. If I could say, this is Ice Circuit Pro over here and make people feel good about, uh, their purchase there. And that way I can keep the iOS price low, have subscriptions, but, um, That might be a bad idea now that you've reminded me about Revenue Cat, but just wanted to put it out there. That was my original idea. [00:21:12] James: Interesting. So you would have a separate version of your app on the app store? [00:21:16] Frank: No, no. I'm sorry, for iOS we're doing what we were just talking about. I'm just talking about for Android and Windows. What am I gonna do for Android and Windows? Oh, a [00:21:26] James: one time purchase. Yeah, exactly. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. What Revenue Cat could do is they, They could, they can have a backend for you that I think would Yeah. Be like, Oh, I'm logged in off whatever, blah, blah, blah. And they can tie it devices between the two together. That's the other only bummer on it. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, you can at least start there, right? And give people a one app purchase and you could always add a subscription later. Uh, as well, I don't actually offer, uh, subscriptions on Windows cause I'd never implemented the code. So if you ever implement the code, you can share it with me and then I. I will go ahead and actually do it [00:22:04] Frank: so well then. The reason I never had to do it on Windows was the, the Windows Store had that beautiful free trial period Yeah. That you could set in your app. And again, I just wish Apple would get back to that, but I've, I'm so tired of saying that, that I don't even bring it up anymore, but I wish I could just have a checkbox for free trials on the app store. Okay. Uh, you know, now that I've said it out loud, I actually don't like my idea of having the pro version, cuz then I could, then, I could never add the subscription to those. So I think I would have to stick with the standard version on Windows and Android until I add the Pro feature and then it comes up. If you buy, if you'd subscribe to pro. On Android, sh you get pro on iOS. And again, that's where a third party might be very useful to me. So we might have an episode on Revenue Cat. [00:22:56] James: So yeah, that is the, that is the conundrum I would say. Because then what we need is that we need a, we need a, and well then the, the other crazy part at that point is that what if you cut out the middle? Store and you just have a, Hey buy, buy. Buy your subscription from me, right? I'd log into your account, then you can sync it to your account once you log in X, Y, Z, and then you don't have to give up your 30% cut. [00:23:26] Frank: It's very tempting. Um, honestly, one big roadblock is I really don't know what the Apple rules are. I forget how they work. Like, do you offer the exact same price? Is that the idea? [00:23:37] James: You, um, you it's the same price. Mm-hmm. and you can't like talk about it in your app, I think, or something. Right. It's [00:23:44] Frank: so bad. It's so bad. Um, right. So that's an option. I just don't like messing with Apple that much. But I, I do have a user account system already because I have the Ice Circuit Gallery where people can upload circuits. And so I was thinking about, uh, asking people to log into that so I could synchronize, uh, the data. And that way they could restore from different operating systems. And I could use my server not as the actual payment system, but as a mirror, as something that can be updated from the different payment systems. There you go. But that's sounding off a complex versus [00:24:28] James: a third party. And you'd also have to support Apple. Sign in with Apple. Oh, [00:24:33] Frank: right, right. , I haven't added that yet. Oh, why is this so bad? , [00:24:40] James: welcome to being a developer in 2022. Also though, signing with Apple is maybe my favorite feature. I use it if, if there's a, if I have to sign up, even if it's on the web and there's a sign in with Apple button, I always sign in with Apple. Always. It's my number one. I do not wanna sign in with anything else but Apple. Not gonna lie. Fair [00:25:02] Frank: enough. And I can't imagine that login system's that complicated. Yeah, I'm sure it's just like an hour programming. Unfortunately, my website's just an ASP net website. Super easy to add things to it and modify, uh, and get it going. So, out of all those alternatives, James, what, what do you think? Synchronize to my own server. Run my own payment system, pay for revenue, cat, or give away the pro version on the other operating systems. I [00:25:29] James: think that you roll it out on iOS and iPad os because that's your, your number one. And see what the reception is. See how it goes, see how it's blah, blah, blah, Right? And then see if people complain. And then additionally, if you ever, What I would do is on Android, it'd be easy for you to do in a purchase. In a, enough Subscriptions on Android are easy. In fact, they're even easier than iOS because, When you on Android, when you ask for your purchases back, we talked about this before. Yeah. On iOS, when you ask for your purchases back, Apple gives you all of the purchases back . So you have to then calculate what's the most recent purchase and then calculate the the next date from that. Not app. Not Google, not Google's, like, Hey, we're gonna return to you the current subscription. Yeah. So like, here it is, and they return it to you until it expires. So, It's really, really easy to, to implement. I would say that the, if you looked at my code, you'd be surprised on how easy it is to implement on Android. I think that the Android billing system for all what I just talked about, the negativity is I gotta update, I gotta do this and that. It's way better than the original store kit. Now that. Is saying a lot cause I haven't used the North New store kit store kit too, because that's Swift only and I would really like to use that. Cause I do think it probably brings it up to par with, with Android. So I would probably, if you know, do that next mm-hmm. and, and see how that looks. And then what I would say beyond that is see if people complain. Yeah. Because I'll tell you this much, so far I haven't got one complaint about my cadence and people have purchased it on. Personal per other devices. That being said, you should offer, since this is your first time doing this, you should offer, and I recommend the Family, Family plan, the subscriptions and in a purchasing can be shared between family members, so I'd recommend that. [00:27:27] Frank: Aha. Yeah. Okay. So if I recall correctly, that one's just a checkbox, I believe checkbox in the's the subscription. Yeah. So just make sure that checkbox is, I saw that one and I was curious. Uh, so the, the normal thing is to just share it. That makes sense. [00:27:42] James: Just share it, it makes, it makes the most sense. Imagine you're, you know, a family and you got some kids and they all got eye circuits on their iPad. You want, you don't want them to have multiple subscriptions. You want them to buy once because that, that would be, that would be better. Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:58] Frank: Um, this, this is not sounding so bad now, would you say if you bought, I, I, I agree with you, Start on iOS. Let's not overdo it. Otherwise it's gonna take me months to release this thing. Yeah. Um, but would you say in the platonic ideal of all this stuff, if you buy a pro subscription on Android, would you get that [00:28:20] James: on io? Potato potato. Yeah. Can go either way. Huh? You're, you're not. Here's the thing. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be negative, Frank. I'm just, I'm [00:28:30] Frank: not, I'm just asking this in open forum. Everything, all ideas [00:28:33] James: are allowed. You're not, you're not creative cloud, you know, You're not at that level. You know what I mean? Where you're in, you know, where you have that many users. I think that's the thing. I mean, I know you have a lot of users, but how many of those users have multiple devices? You know, in general, like, in fact, I would say Creative Cloud strength is that I have Lightroom on my PC and on my iPhone, and they synchronize between them. Like that's why I subscribe to it, right? Mm-hmm. . Whereas I don't think necessarily, you know, you need. Need. Yeah. You know, need that to be in there. Okay. Cause I do feel like, especially in education, they're gonna have an iPad or an Android tablet, Separat. [00:29:17] Frank: Fair enough. But let me devil's advocate one more time. I actually kind of agree with you that that's a decent argument. Um, the exception to that I think would be iOS versus Mac. Uh, I think there are a lot of iOS people that also own a Mac and vice versa, and so probably wanna synchronize those two subscriptions, at least within the Apple ecosystem. Or what do you. Ah. Hmm. [00:29:44] James: Trickier. Mm. Are, are those not, those aren't the same app bundle. Oh, is I circuit 3D the same app bundle? [00:29:52] Frank: Uh, well, okay. I got a lot of app bundles out there. ? Mm-hmm. . So I have three app bundles. I circuit iOS and iPad. That's one app bundle. I Circuit Mac. That's a whole nother app id. And then I circuit three. iOS and Mac, that's a whole separate one. So, So I circuit 3D is actually almost easier. Yeah. Um, ICI has the unfortunate split between iOS and Mac, but that's more of a historical thing, I think. [00:30:20] James: Yeah. That's a bummer town. Uh, I don't know how to remedy that, because ideally, ideally you would want people to buy eye circuit on, I feel like you want them to buy it on Mac or iOS, get it everywhere and subscribe and get every, everything there. Yeah. [00:30:38] Frank: Hmm, it's tough. And would you share it between the 3D version and the non 3D version? So these are the decisions I have to come up with. I'm definitely leaning on within the Apple ecosystem to share them. Kind of for the same but reverse argument of what you gave. You said that Android people are not the same as iOS people. Um, but by counter iOS or Apple people tend to have both of those things. So same argument. [00:31:06] James: Hmm. Okay. Do they allow to share between apps or that aren't in the same app bundle? [00:31:15] Frank: I have been trying to figure that out. , as far as I can tell, no. Especially not between Mac and iOS, but everyone, if, if you know better than me, please write in and let me know. Um, Apple definitely recommends in their current documentation that you shut down your Mac version and put that under your iOS Apple id. And then, um, Then you only have one apple id, and then they can share subscriptions. So what they say is, kill your max skew and add the binary to your [00:31:54] James: other one. Okay, so this says here, Hold on. This says, offering subscriptions to multiple apps. You can offer auto renewable subscriptions, which you always wanna auto renewable to access multiple apps. Each app must be approved to use auto, renewable, and app purchases and publish under the same developer account use apps where to connect to. Separate and equivalent auto renewable subscriptions for each app included in the multi app subscription so that people can subscribe from any app to help avoid paying multiple times for the same offering. Oh wow. This is cool. Make sure Mul to verify that they're active subscribers before showing any things. App bond. Okay. This is [00:32:35] Frank: cool. Multi app subscription. I think we both have to read some documentation. , I'm gonna link [00:32:40] James: it to you right now. Offering a subscription across multiple apps. Whoa, this is nto. [00:32:46] Frank: Oh boy. Now we're getting into it. [00:32:48] James: You should do this. This makes, I would, I would if I were you. Yeah, I would call this the. The, Well, the thing is you need it now an I circuit 3D Pro mode , but that's, You could, I can do it. You could, Yeah. You could at least start with the blah, blah, blah. But this could be the I Circuit Pro where it's like, Hey, across all of my, I Circuit suite of apps, right? So if you come out with I circuit meta, the Metaverse has a Metaverse version. [00:33:15] Frank: Okay. So the way this works is they want you to have an app bundle. And so you put it all under an app bundle and then you can do what it looks like. Mm. Interesting. Interesting. [00:33:32] James: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I dunno if it your possible, but it'd be cool. [00:33:37] Frank: Yeah. I've, I've avoided bundles and this is, Can I tell you about a neurosis? I have James . Yeah. I have this problem of the Mac version and the iOS version of the apps being split. Hmm. And I've never made an app bundle because I know from talking to other people, once you create an app bundle, you can never take down an app. It's kind of permanently there because it's been in an app bundle and you can't delete the app bundle. And so that would prevent me from ever merging the apps , even though I've in, in eight years of being able to, I've never merged the apps . Yeah. So it's a weird neurosis that I haven't created an app bundle already. Maybe I should just get over myself and create this app bundle and move on with life. [00:34:24] James: I will let you do the research and we will report back because there are many. things for you to consider is a very slippery slope. See what happened there. We just got real deep in the weeds. [00:34:35] Frank: Well, it's terrible. I, I, I had a very simple plan. I was executing on the plan. I talked to you, and now I have to read 2000 documents and think things through. But I appreciate that. I, I did need to talk this through a [00:34:47] James: little bit. You're welcome. I'm glad I could be there for you. Well, [00:34:51] Frank: you're making all the big bucks. I'm just jealous. I want in on that money. [00:34:55] James: Gotta get that sweet. Let me open up my, my app store connect application right now, making this sweet just overflowing with dollars. They come in on a very random, It's like you've made $3. [00:35:09] Frank: Do you think the end of summer will increase your sales or decrease your sales going into a winter [00:35:14] James: fall? Sales always a spike. [00:35:16] Frank: Nice. . Mm-hmm. . Cool. Everyone [00:35:19] James: going inside? Yeah. Yeah. I made $33 this week. Frank, No big deal. Gonna buy [00:35:26] Frank: another house. [00:35:30] James: Nope, I made $200 in the last five weeks. It's really weird. One day, seven days, two weeks, five weeks, 13 weeks, 26 weeks. These numbers don't make any sense. Apple . Anyways, [00:35:43] Frank: kinda. Reconciliation schedule to have [00:35:45] James: funny, apparently all I think that's gonna do for this week's podcast. What do you think, Frank? [00:35:50] Frank: I think I'm about to take a big gamble and I hope everyone wishes me luck. [00:35:54] James: Good luck. I'm excited for you and I'm excited to see what happens. If you're excited for Frank, let him know. Maybe you have some opinions right into the show. Merge conflict out, hit him up on Twitter at Proclaim. You can also hit me up on Twitter out James Bon. I was gonna do it for this week's podcast, so until next. I'm James Monte Magno. And I'm Frank [00:36:14] Frank: Kruger. Thanks for listening.