@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social
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_Davidsmith

@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social

Independent app developer. Independent in general. Maker of Widgetsmith, Pedometer++, Sleep++ and Watchsmith.

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Dreamwieber, to AppleVisionPro
@Dreamwieber@sigmoid.social avatar

Real world scans can add so much more depth to your immersive environments ✨

Here's my process for using photogrammetry in making Vibescape, my meditation app for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_WUfL_-3yc

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@Dreamwieber That’s super cool, thanks for sharing!

_Davidsmith, to random
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

The good news: You have found a way to reliably reproduce a hang you've seen intermittently and the new Xcode Hang detection helped you quickly narrow down its source. (🎉)

The bad news: It is caused by some very old Objective-C model logic which you haven't touched in years and are terrified of making any changes to. (😔)

_Davidsmith, to random
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Listening to this week's Connected discussion of Emoji++ (may it Rest in Sherlocked Peace) sent me down a rabbit hole thinking of the old days of Emoji. My goodness the old emoji keyboard was awkward.

https://www.relay.fm/connected/500

video/mp4

nickkohrn, to random
@nickkohrn@techhub.social avatar

@marcoarment @_Davidsmith I’ve been listening to podcasts for a long time (Smart Speed has saved me 507 hours so far). I have found Under the Radar to be invaluable. It’s the only show in my Starred playlist. Thanks so much for continuing to provide value. It’s helping to shape how I approach my personal project. Your Pillars series is so incredibly helpful.

_Davidsmith,
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@nickkohrn So glad to hear it.

_Davidsmith, to random
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The latest Under the Radar episode further elaborates on the YouTube video I posted last week about Inclusive Design and how focusing on the widest possible audience for your apps makes them just generally better.

https://www.relay.fm/radar/291

danielmunoz, to random
@danielmunoz@maly.io avatar

Dear Mr. @_Davidsmith, I have a doubt about this cute complication in Watchsmith. What does the circular gradient represent? I assume it is a visual representation of temperature (blue for cooler and green for warmer conditions). The colours may depend on today's temperature range. It is similar to the standard gauge used by Apple, but more complicated because it contains more information. Can you help me fully interpret it?

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@danielmunoz That’s a twenty four hour ring where the current hour is larger, and the other wedges represent the subsequent 23 hours. The color represents temperature with cooler colors bring blues and greeens, and warmer ones oranges and reds.

_Davidsmith,
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@danielmunoz Yup, the outer ring is rain probability and you're right midnight is top and noon is bottom.

_Davidsmith, to random
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Today is one of those classic development days where I had put off dealing with a tricky design/UX problem during the initial creation of a feature (offline maps in Pedometer++), which I now have to solve (deleting old maps).

I didn't address it the first time because I didn't have a great answer and I hoped that after using the feature for a while the solution would come to me [narrator: it did not], but now I really kinda need to find an answer.

So I am basically this meme now.

Tom Scott saying “That was a problem for future me, and now I am future me”.

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

One of the funny things about being a developer with a computer science degree is that my initial thought is that I should use a fancy algorithm to solve my problems...when in reality hardware is so fast now that more often a naive, brute force solution works great (and is easier to understand).

For my offline map problem I need to do some point clustering, there are lots of clever solutions for this, but since I'm only ever clustering a few thousand points a simple solutions works great.

_Davidsmith,
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@janl Exactly, I started to get clever then just tried the straightforward solution and it completed in 0.04seconds with a larger than usual dataset.

_Davidsmith, to random
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I don't really give conference talks anymore, but I had this idea bouncing around my head for a while which I thought would make a good one. So I recorded it as though I was giving a talk.

The idea is around how to develop An Inclusive Mindset as it relates to product design. How to build software which is comfortably useful to as wide a spectrum of your users as possible. I then illustrate this with a variety of concrete examples from my work building Pedometer++.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQDuBEtcAOc

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@joshdholtz Unfortunately the reason I gave up doing conference talks was that I found the travel associated with them to be too disruptive...so I stopped going to any conference other than WWDC. 😔

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@MuseumShuffle It’s a completely custom tab bar. I didn't like that the system one doesn't adjust at all, so I made one that does.

_Davidsmith, to random
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We just released an update to Widgetsmith which adds Background Sound widgets. These let you listen to a variety of ambient soundscapes directly from interactive widgets on your home screen. These can either be styled like a standard widget, or you can use a photo widget the basis.

They are also available on visionOS where they can augment the Environments to give you that extra sense of immersion.

All the sounds chosen are high quality, perfectly seamless loops.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/widgetsmith/id1523682319

A photo sound widget showing a flower image with a light rain sound playable.
A Vision Pro screenshot showing a rain on tent widget on mount hood.

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@GrantMeStrength There is a 'morning chorus' /‘forest at dawn' sound in the list. which might suit your needs.

mikethegoat, to random

@_Davidsmith I used Pedometer++ with OS maps for a walk in the highlands today and it did exactly what I needed. Thank you!

_Davidsmith,
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@mikethegoat Oh YAY! I'm so glad. That's awesome to hear.

_Davidsmith, to random
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While the App Store is far from perfect, seeing Delta sustain its position at the top of the App Store is a lovely reminder of its best feature.

That an indie developer can dedicate years honing their craft and then create something so compelling that it beats out apps from trillion-dollar companies, enriching the lives of millions of people along the way.

That’s beautiful. That’s inspiring. And just plain awesome.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have my career at a time when that is possible.

_Davidsmith, to random
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

For the next Widgetsmith update (releasing tomorrow), we're adding background sound widgets which play white noise and nature sounds.

While finishing up final testing today I was glad nobody else was home, my office was quite the cacophony all morning. Playing sounds on multiple devices at once to test things concurrently. 🙉

_Davidsmith, to random
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

A tricky part of being a solo developer is that there is nobody to review my code. So a trick I've developed is to do a review myself but in a different tool from my daily Git setup. The context switch helps me to pretend I’m analyzing someone else’s work.

Previously I'd export diffs into Kaleidoscope, but I recently discovered Juxtacode, which works better for me. It’s a Git-native Diff tool. I can easily pick any 2 commits to compare and navigate changes. Recommended.

https://juxtacode.app

_Davidsmith,
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@Blimundus Hehe, maybe I should change my git profile picture to someone else, my coding alter ego.

_Davidsmith,
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@zeitschlag I don't have a hard and fast process, but more of a general sense of when I've done 'enough coding’ I should do a check-in. And then the last thing I do before submitting an update to the App Store is to do a full comparison from the previous update.

rileytestut, to random
@rileytestut@mastodon.social avatar

Woke up to see @delta is now the #1 app in the entire App Store!! In less than 12 hours!!!

I feel like I’m dreaming 🥹

_Davidsmith,
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@rileytestut Oh man, that's fantastic. Congratulations!

The overnight success, many years in the making.

charliemchapman, to random
@charliemchapman@mastodon.social avatar

Last night I noticed some interesting trends in @darknoise analytics.

My MAUs and DAUs are remarkably flat outside of my big updates where they grow a little bit.

image/jpeg

_Davidsmith,
@_Davidsmith@mastodon.social avatar

@charliemchapman This seems like the same phenomenon I found for “Active Subscribers". After the initial period of growth, the number will eventually level off at roughly equaling your monthly new users rate / monthly churn rate. This is the point where your average new users equals your average leaving users.

So if you had (say) 5,000 new users and churned 20% per month you'd expect to end up with around 25,000 users (5000 / 0.2). At that level your churn equals your gains.

_Davidsmith, to random
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On this week's Under the Radar @marcoarment and I finish our 3-part series about the fundamentals of building a successful app. The last topic is Retention, how to keep your customers engaged and using the app: https://www.relay.fm/radar/290

_Davidsmith, to random
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It is kinda wild that you can clearly see the path of totality in Google Maps’ traffic map right now.

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