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What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Compile Shift Podcast. This is the first episode of 2025. I'm your host, Peter, and Geoff is here with me as how are you doing, Geoff?
Geoff:Hey. I'm here, and I'm ready to get this New Year started. How's it going, Peter?
Peter:It's it's going okay. I feel like in Texas here, you know, I've I've had my snow and ice. That's it for another year. I had the 2 days. Man.
Geoff:I I started I started my year in rural Missouri, and we definitely got our share of ice as well. So
Peter:There you go. At least you hey. You got away on a vacation. Mia, I had a staycation. So basically, because I just decided I'm staying in.
Peter:That's how that went. Alright. So in this episode, we're gonna we're gonna do something a little different here. We're gonna look ahead and we're not making predictions for Apple or anything like that because, you know, we know Apple will release the fastest whatever it is this year and they'll be super excited about how we're gonna use it and can't wait to charge us for it or something along those lines. We are gonna be talking about our plans for this year in the hope that maybe it motivates all of you to think about this and if you've not thought about planning ahead for your year, maybe this will give you something to think about.
Peter:So we're gonna be touching on our own personal apps and and that kind of thing. So we're gonna get this started here. Stop bawpling, Peter. Go back to the document. So, Geoff, you got any plans this year to maybe retire old applications or do you think that this kind of there's some things in your archives that are like, okay, end of life now?
Geoff:Yeah. I think I I need to slim some things down a little bit. I've got a couple apps that I haven't worked on in quite a while to the extent that Apple is even, like, sending me emails and saying, hey, you're gonna keep working on these or not? And, I've I've actually, at this point, by the time people hear this podcast, have already pulled them off of the App Store. And this is my app, Scroll Notes, which was a simple note taking app.
Geoff:It had a single note, and all you could do is add to or remove from it, but had a lot of decent system integration back in its day. Haven't really touched it in quite a while. It had some fun syncing issues, and so really kinda killed momentum to work on it for a while. And there have been a couple decent competitors that have come out since then. I feel like that market's handled, and there's not really too much that I can do to put my own spin on it.
Geoff:Okay. And then additionally, I had an app that I had done a while back for a local museum here in Seattle, Washington, and that app never really went anywhere after its initial launch. And we really weren't able to contribute too much to it. And there had been some data issues with that as well. And so because not able to really continue contributing to it, I've also pulled that one off of the store.
Peter:Alright. So for me, I do have one that I'm I think I'm gonna retire because it never really I couldn't do everything I wanted because basically the API there were no APIs available. So I have a an app, FX Preset Manager, which was the first personal app I put in the Apple Store and it allowed me to store, the presets for Fuji cameras, the X system. It's kind of like a film simulation thing and you can only store a few on the on the camera itself. And so, you know, like like many things it's like, well, I got a bunch of presets.
Peter:So I wanted an app that would allow me to store those on the move so that I could, you know, put them in the camera anytime I wanted to and made that available to other folks as well and it's had downloads and users and everything, but unfortunately, Fuji still there's no way to, like, directly upload it to the camera or download it. There's just no access for that, which I was hoping maybe there would have been one day, but doesn't look like we're going that way. So I've decided that I'm gonna keep using that app personally, but no plans to to upgrade it or update it or anything like that. Haven't fully committed to either pulling
Geoff:it from the store because it still works and it's still completely usable, but there will come
Peter:a point where, like you say, it's like, okay, Apple's gonna say, hey, are you sure about this? So, you know, I'm sort of retiring that one, at least as far as continued development on those. Now what about is there any apps that you've did that you've got there that you're gonna sort of you thought, oh, I you know, I'm gonna pivot and take it in a new direction at all?
Geoff:I don't think so. I think I think my focus this year is on some brand new ideas, but we'll get into that a little bit later. But I think you have something that you're planning on pivoting. Right?
Peter:I do. So, you know, we we spoke about this, you know, my job finder tracker app got a update at the end of last year, with the resume support, and as I was doing that, it's kind of one of those, you know, how you when sometimes you're working on an app and and over time you realize the the greater potential that you didn't sort of fully see for it at the time, when you you started designing it from sort of day 1 and I'm gonna pivot it. It's it's gonna remain what it is, but I'm pivoting in the sense of doing, you know, more than just tracking job applications. I see value there in in looking at it and going, you know what, this really should be job applications and related, data slash sort of functionality and things like that, you know, things like, oh, you know, it should have calendar integration and those kind of things. Don't want to commit to too many things in it right now, so it's it's a pivot in the sense of expanding its usefulness.
Peter:I'm I'm pretty interested in doing this. I think there's a lot of value there now, especially now that I've updated some of the code base as well. So so that's my pivot, for that one there. So the next obvious question, you know, is there any anything that you think is gonna be like a brand new app that you you wanna talk about?
Geoff:I think I'm gonna have quite a few this year. I I will kinda get into this a little bit later in terms of plans as a whole, but I think one thing that I want to try to do this year is expand more into having a lot of little apps and maybe maybe taking that in a slightly different direction, a slightly different, you know, almost more of a business pivot than an app pivot. Mhmm. And really kinda putting out a lot of smaller apps in a sense that, they take less time to develop and can kind of get more ideas out there and really see if I can build an app that hits in the market in a way that none of my apps have really done so far. I've spent a lot of time on apps where I spent a real long time on them, and I really want to polish the heck out of them.
Geoff:And I I wanna have, like, the perfect app before I ship it at all. And that hasn't really worked for me in the past, and really, I think what I need to do is get more ideas out there and expand on them from there. And, you know, kind of got to see this a little bit with the last 2 years' big projects. So 2 years ago, my big project that I spent forever and ever on was the Kineo release for VisionPRO. And spent a very very long time on that one.
Geoff:Over half a year on that one. And, if you've been in the Discord, you've seen that I've I've been posting about my single digits of users. Not not not really worth shipped Bark in 30 days or something like that. I think I even started I wanna say it was like 23 days or something. Yeah.
Geoff:Ship to Bark in just a handful of days, and that app did significantly better. And so I think I want to try and do things more like that. But Bark even to an extent was itself a bigger app, where I kind of did this land and expand type strategy where it's like, okay, yeah, I got that first app out in 23 days. But then I continued to, like, make Bark my main app. And I think I wanna do a lot more of, like, what can I do to get an app out in 30 days and then go on to the next app and and do that in 30 days and go on to that?
Geoff:And I'm not saying that I'm not gonna bug fix or I'm not gonna, you know, continue to improve things, but really more rather than having one app that I spend a ton of time on and if it flops then I've wasted all of that time.
Peter:I gotcha. And, you know, I mean, that's that's a I I can think of some developers, won't name them, but developers out there who do just that. Lots of
Dalton:Yeah.
Geoff:There's a lot of very successful developers who do.
Peter:Yeah. And I you know, it it's almost wrong to call it a small app. I would say dedicated app, right, to a particular task or Yeah. Whatever that may be.
Geoff:Small small app, not necessarily the right term, but, like, small development time frame.
Peter:Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and I think the advantage to that too is, yeah, it enables you to get more out there, right, and and see see what bites. Right?
Peter:And and then maybe something becomes bigger later on or like you say, it's like, oh, well, that didn't really work and and we can let that go, you know. And and interestingly, late last year when I was listening to some game development podcasts and that, they were saying the same thing about game development in 2025. It probably should really be about smaller games for those same reasons you just said. Right? Shorter shorter development cycles, get them out there, see how it goes, you know, the the big monolithic games, were not really working towards the end of the year regardless of how big the team or company or whatever behind it.
Peter:So so there's that as well and, you know, for my part, I I have 2 things that I want to do this year. One of them is one that continued to bite me over the holidays, which is, my subscription tracker. Now, yeah, again, you know, I know there's a lot of them out there but there's not one that is what I want it to be. Right? And this is something that we've spoken about before, you know, making an app for yourself is the best way to care about an app.
Peter:Right? At least in the early stages and to get it done. So, you know, I've got that that I wanna do and then make that available for folks as well because I had a bunch of subscriptions renewed that I thought I'd cancelled, turns out I didn't. So it's like, okay, remember that again for next year. So, I want to get that app done and I feel that's a pretty easy target.
Peter:It That's a dedicated to a particular thing and I don't think it'll take that long. It's it's pretty much another, CRUD app. Right? You know, so that's just fill in a form, store it, delete it, update it, whatever. Shouldn't take that long.
Peter:Make it look reasonable. So that's number 1. Something else that I'm not gonna go into too much detail at the moment, but we we hope to soon is a project actually. It's not so much it's an app, but it's more of an online service that I'm I'm helping and and being a big part of and, I'm basically responsible for the engineering and technology on this, which is, a project called Upcoast Leaders. I'll put a link in the show notes.
Peter:We're not talking about it too much yet because we are in the process of putting it all together, but I'm I'm sort of essentially the the technology head on that. And so that's gonna take a lot of my time and I'm I'm pretty pumped about working on that as well. I'm bound to talk about that more in the future, so I'm gonna leave that one there.
Geoff:I I guess the next question going forward is, is there anything that we're looking for in terms of education and learning this year? Any any sort of new, things that you were going on to above and beyond the typical iOS, macOS development that we've done so far. I know for me, I really wanna get more into the business and marketing sides of my business and really kind of expanding that, beyond the the amounts of development that I'm going to do. But then also in development, you know, I think I might be looking into if I'm making a lot of these smaller apps, maybe I should be making some of them on other platforms as well. So getting into some maybe some Android development and maybe even some front end web development and just being able to have some of these things available, not just on iOS, but being able to expand their reach no matter what device they're using them on, no matter where they're at, what they're trying to do at any given point, really expand these out so that there can be a wider market for them.
Peter:So you don't have to commit to this, but I feel compelled to ask the question then. Write once, cross platform, or native platforms on both?
Geoff:That that's tricky. I I I think I'm gonna have to do some investigation of that myself.
Peter:Okay. Alright.
Geoff:Fine. I've definitely done some work with cross platform tools before. I actually wrote a app over the holiday, not public in any way, shape, or form, using skip tools, which I know you've had them on this podcast before. Yep. Wrote it.
Geoff:Wrote it. Wrote it.
Peter:Wrote it. Wrote it.
Geoff:Wrote an Android app, with that. And it was, an interesting experience. I don't know that I've learned enough to really have a full opinion on it yet, but it was definitely, another option that's out there. And I think that I would have to get into truly building with a tool, truly building a full project in something before I can commit to saying, oh, yeah. This is definitely the way that I'm going to do it.
Peter:Yeah. And and thanks to the the live chat room here. Someone said try skip tools. Yep. We'll put links in the show notes to the 2 episodes where where I interviewed them, the guys behind it.
Peter:We did one when they were still sort of working on it and then we did another one when they reached their major milestone, which was essentially the first release. And, yeah, I certainly tried it, in the early days and and found that it was, you know, surprisingly easy for me as a Swift developer to to do that. So I have no doubt that that it's even better now, and and that is certainly one that I, you know, would recommend, not just because, you know, because they've been on the show but because, hey, you're you're writing in Swift. Right? I mean, it doesn't get better than that.
Peter:So yeah. So there's that and and we'll talk about this no doubt in the future. You know, you're you're free to change your commitment at at any stage
Geoff:at this point. Of course. Yeah.
Peter:Yeah. For me, I I'm I'm with you. So, you know, number 1, I'm interested in as I have spent less time coding in sort of the latter half or latter quarter of of 2024, it gave me time to go look at some other things and I'm I'm definitely interested in the marketing and and and like you say, stepping up that side of it and and understanding that more and, you know, so I think it's once you get a couple of apps out in the stores, you look at things and you go, okay, now it's time to see how I play with the the marketing side and promotion and and and learn some of that. Right? I don't anticipate to become a, you know, overnight genius on this, but I've certainly neglected in the past.
Peter:So that that is one for me. Another thing though, actually we were talking about in the in the pre show here, as as I'd mentioned, you know, I finally have released the Android version, built with Godot of my Ender's Hurdles app and the the iOS one is ready. I just haven't released it. So that essentially has has moved me on from SpriteKit to a cross cross platform game tech right there, and there is Swift available in in some flavor for, Godot. And the reason I say it like that is because I have not looked at it in a long time at this point, and I think that it sounds like it's time for me to revisit that and see see how much of an option Swift really is.
Peter:If I could use like Godot with Swift in a way that didn't require me to jump through too many hoops, that would be an interesting option. So I think there's some learning to be done there. That's kind of my learning goals for next year. If I can achieve even just better marketing, you know, sense and and promotion, that would be that would be a win that I'd be happy to walk away with. As far as like any certifications, I don't have any plans and and the reason for that is not that I don't value certifications or anything that people go for, but I think that personally I find that technologies still move so quickly.
Peter:By the time you're certified in something, it it it's not as useful as you might think. Right? Like, I remember when I got all of my certifications for Flash, and then it's like, well, that's dead.
Geoff:Yeah. I'm not planning on getting any certifications because there's not much use for them in an indie development world, but, sure. If somebody wants to pay for me to get certified in something, talk to me.
Peter:I I I can see value for it in, like, a freelancing contracting type scenario, but I think their endorsements are still more important than certifications. Right? Hearing what, you know, people you've worked with, clients or whatever actually, you know, think of your work and how useful it's been, that to me still means a lot more than, hey, I'm fully certified in all these things. Right? To me, a lot of certification stuff is, yes, I can pass tests, Right?
Peter:Which okay. That's great, but it's not really as beneficial as what I would say real world expertise. Right? Meaning, you know, we've said this before. Yeah.
Peter:Great. You can you can quote all of the foundation library and and how does that help you in life. Right?
Geoff:It used to be really good for free drinks at WWC.
Peter:Oh, I'm sure you were, you know, like, hey, tell us that one again about, you know, insert function name here. Yeah.
Geoff:So what about being out and about in the world? Are you planning on going to any conferences this year? And if not, why not?
Peter:Yes. Okay. So, folks are like, what's so funny? So I I still plan to to go to, a conference this year. I I do plan to try and make it to deep dish.
Peter:And I say the reason I say it like that is not because it's like, oh, I'm not gonna or I'm absolutely gonna. At the moment, work wise, there's a lot going on, way more than you would expect or had planned for at this point in the year. So, that's why you plan
Geoff:for the the conference now because it's
Peter:Well, I was
Geoff:like couple months until you say I
Peter:was I was gonna say
Geoff:You say now, hey. I'm gonna do this thing in 3 months, 4 months, I think.
Peter:Well, that that is how it started. Yeah. And then and then it became complicated.
Geoff:Because because if you wait until the last minute, then it's gonna be complicated last minute, or you say now.
Peter:Well, no. I know. So so at the end of the day, the problem is gonna be that it's gonna cost more than it should. No no question there. But I I I still want to find a way to make it, because I hear some other folks I know might be going.
Peter:What about you?
Geoff:Yes. I I also am planning on on making it to, DeepDishSwift. I do currently have a ticket. I have plans to be there. So,
Peter:so you planned ahead. You you you Exactly. You're like, well done. Oh, that's right. Because you don't have a day job.
Geoff:I mean, I have a day job. It's just I'm the person who I've asked to do stuff.
Peter:Yeah. Exactly. Your your your person is a lot more will will work with you.
Geoff:Right? Hey. Can can I can I just, like, sit here and talk about all of the benefits of sending your employees to to to to conferences so that your boss who's listening to this is like, I should totally send my my, employee
Peter:to this conference? You you
Geoff:you should, you should send Peter to the conference so that I can beat some sense into him, and he'll come back being a better developer.
Peter:So something else that I'm planning to do this year that I've actually already started okay. Granted I've only released 1 episode, but, some of you may be familiar that I I have another podcast, called PW Podcast. I'll put a link in the show notes. And over the Christmas holiday here, I had this idea of, taking basically all the questions we always get from folks about, I wanna make an app, I wanna start an app, and you know, how do I do that? And do I use this?
Peter:Do I use that? And I thought, you know what? I've never put together a small mini series. And so on that podcast, I'm putting together a small mini series of, you know, basically what you should do to as you want to make an app. Now it's gonna be, you know, I've released one episode, which is, out there and it's gonna be about all the things, related to the making of an app without diving into things like code in that because I think a lot of the times those are the areas people don't think about.
Peter:You know, so for example, I'll I'll give you some quick highlighters. They are they are gonna be short episodes. My goal is to keep them all under 10 minutes, so they're quick bites and, you know, things like, okay. What's the first thing I should think of? You know, so in the first episode, I spoke about well, the very first thing you should think of is you should have an idea.
Peter:And by that, meaning have an idea, you know, commit to the core idea, think about your you what's your user gonna look like, those kind of things. And then in future episodes that I'm working on at the moment, you know, working through that process where and as I clearly state, you know, the important part is not picking the tools. Right? The important part is what is this app gonna do? How am I gonna do this app?
Peter:What are my time frames? You know, and then, okay, now I've got this idea. What are the features and committing that and and saying this is my one o release and and basically taking it through to the end of creating an app and getting it to to submit to a store. Now I'm also doing it in a way that it applies to mobile apps, and I'm saying mobile apps not necessarily platform because the process should be the same. And that's kind of part of what I wanna get across here, and web apps and that as well, which is don't focus on your selection of the importance of tools and languages and so on, focusing on the product itself.
Peter:Right? So I have a small series that I'm putting together on that. Again, I'll put a link in the show notes. The one episode that I've put out there, thank you to everybody, who gave me feedback on it already. Greatly appreciate that and and you've, you know I I asked folks, hey.
Peter:If you wanna hear this, tell me and I'll keep working on it, and they did. So that's what I'm gonna do. It is a podcast, but at some point I'm thinking there may well be a video version as well as we talk about some things. I'm still kicking that around, you know, I don't want it to just be a talking head, right, because I think at that point it should just be audio, but that's where I'm at as far as, all of those things. So as someone mentioned in our chat room here as we're recording this, yeah, other things, legal, right, internationalization, accessibility, all those other things that might not sound super cool to a developer, but at some point you have to deal with that.
Peter:Right? And so that's what I'm like if I if I tell you ahead of time, here's your checklist, you get to work on that over time while you're building the app. That's kind of the idea here. And for those of you who are wondering, the reason it's not on the CompileSwift podcast is, you know, we try to keep this to Apple orientated, development topics of which, yes, everything I just described does apply to Apple, but, again, I'm making this one generic enough to apply to other platforms including web and so on, and so I I decided, you know, this should probably exist by itself on my other pod.
Geoff:Peter regrets adding me and he, was like, I need to get a podcast that's away from that channel.
Peter:I didn't feel you needed to say that. I'm hoping that that subtext came through. And,
Geoff:of course, we couldn't have any of our years, much less 2025, without our lovely community, both from Twitch chat, from our developer Discord, all of the above. And so we're gonna leave you with some of the plans from some other people. We've asked for recordings of anybody's ideas for what they're doing in 2025, and you're gonna hear from them now.
Jared:Hey, everyone. My name is Jared Hall, and you can find me on the dev club discord as mono n zed. Last year, I realized that I often integrate with Slack to get important updates about my projects on the go. It was always a pain to load up those big analytics websites on mobile to see user growth and app activity. I wanted an app for it and be notified with push notifications.
Jared:I've been working on a SaaS platform called API alerts. It lets you easily send push notifications to your device from your various projects. You can find it at API alerts.com. With API alerts and its integrations, I can easily see on my device when I get a new user, a payment comes through, or a CI pipeline deployed, or failed. This has been incredibly useful in both my solo development and in my day job where I no longer need to check on things.
Jared:I'm notified quickly and can react to them. One of my favorite user stories is from a friend in sales who integrated the JavaScript library into his website's contact form. He gets a push notification whenever someone fills out the form. And by adding their phone number as a link, he can tap the notification on his phone and call the customer directly. Their users are pretty amazed to get a callback in sometimes just a few minutes.
Jared:A big goal of mine is to set up integrations with other services like Zapier. If they send that, home automation, Google Home, and more. I'd love to see it used by people other than just us developers. This year, I'm focusing on adding payments, teams, and integrations to API alerts. While spilling out my web panel using React, I'm also speaking out event destinations other than push notifications so you can receive high priority events as a text message, email, Slack or Discord, even a phone call.
Jared:Over the past 6 months, I reluctantly rebuilt my swift iOS app using Android's compose multi platform. Whilst there were initial challenges, it came together quite nicely and I can continue to call native swift code when needed. While it's still new, it's proven to be quite a time saver as I attempt to grow this platform. Looking ahead, my long term goal is to make my side hustle a reality. I'd love to go full time as an indie developer, so everything I do this year is working towards that goal.
Jared:Cheers.
Daniel:I want to like what I'm doing. I wanna like how I'm doing it. This will require me to slow down and raise my awareness. Hello, everyone, and thank you, Peter, for inviting me to have a little blurb on your podcast about 2025. I'm really excited about 2025 because 2024 was such a huge period of transition for me, and I feel like now I have the juice, now I have the tools to make 2025 something really special.
Daniel:So question 1, I'm a developer living in New York City, developer of all kinds, iOS, Android, web, back end, DevOps, and I also develop songs, videos, and myself. I currently have one client and one passion project. I'm turning that passion project into a business this year. You can find me on Twitch, Daniel Sincere. You can find me on the web, danielsincere.com.
Daniel:You can find me on YouTube, Daniel Sincere, or on the App Store by searching Underway. Question 2. Underway is my focus this year. I'm working on back end tasks in order to deliver some new features to users. I'm integrating with new third party tools like Adapti and Auth0.
Daniel:I don't like preannouncing user facing features until they're ready, but what I'm working on has been asked for by users, and I'm pretty sure they're gonna love it. I think, I think it's gonna be so good that it's gonna be worthy of going to the pro tier. Question 3. I'm learning how to turn Underway into a business this year, and I'm paying for coaching to help me get there. So far, she's been incredibly helpful.
Daniel:Having someone to verbalize my goals to, but also, they are cheering me on and keeping me on track with my goals. 10 out of 10 would recommend. Question 4. I am dropping adding more stuff to Android. Gonna focus on iOS till this business is a business.
Daniel:I am also dropping adding in more side projects as the years go on. This is something that I learned through the coaching is that just like our lives have a hero's journey, so do our ideas. And when an idea goes through the pit of despair, that's not the time to go find a different idea to start over with. That's the time to really commit and figure out how to make it work. That's the time to find a way to find a way, Or not.
Daniel:You can do whatever you want. For for me, I'm pretty sure that Underway resonates with me still because it is an app that I use every day because I ride the subway every single day of the week. Question 5. My goal is excellence. You can expect more videos from me this year and more features from Underway this year, in addition to polishing what I already have to make it even more excellent.
Daniel:And I'm starting to understand the idea of how expressing myself is of service to others.
Dalton:Hello. My name is Dalton Alexander. I've been a Swift developer since 2019. I released a few apps on the App Store. Symbol Grade is my most popular.
Dalton:It's a browser for SF Symbols that developers can use to plan out their projects, favorite some symbols, change some colors, kind of see how backgrounds work with them. It's a very nice app. I plan to add a few features, make it a little more robust. It began as an app to learn SwiftUI as well as the app store, but I've been enjoying, friends using it to learn more about SF Symbols. Currently, my role with Milk Group, which is a dairy software company, is writing UI tests.
Dalton:I'm using the Appium framework to do so. That interface is also using swift testing. I hope to have a package out soon that can explain more about the that as well as provide some UI automation for multi platform UI test written in Swift. My GitHub is dldashalexandre. You're welcome to fork any projects I've been working on.
Dalton:Contribute if you feel so kind as well. Just look around. It's some fun stuff I've found and love to share. Thank you.
Peter:Alright, folks. So that's kicking the year off here. That that is, our plans. Keep us honest. Come back.
Peter:Stay with us throughout the year. Right? And at the end of the year, let's see how well we did. And and for for anyone who has sent us a submission, right, we're gonna hold you all accountable. So, it's a matter of record at this point.
Peter:So thank you everybody for this. I think it's gonna be another good year. I'm I'm not gonna say it's gonna be the fastest year ever because Apple's probably gonna claim that but, thank you for joining us for this new year, this new episode. I am confident it's gonna be the same answer as last year. But just in case, Geoff, where can I find you?
Geoff:Yeah. You can find me at cocoatype.com and all of the various socials also as cocoatype or cocoatype.com.
Peter:You can find me at peterwitham.com and this podcast at Compileswift.com, of course. That's it folks. See you in the next one.
Geoff:Yeah. Bye.