Friends and Family Apps

When the App Store first launched, mere presence was enough to ensure at least some small amount of success. Today, things are much different. A great idea with good execution will still struggle to make a splash in the App Store, unless the stars are perfectly aligned. Even then, it’s usually more about who you know and the press you can drum up.

Here’s a conversation I had with Kevin Harwood last week:

Kevin: “How was the [Pactola] launch?”

Me: “Eh… I knew it was going to be light. It’s pretty niche.”

Kevin: “Friends and family?”

Me: “Yep.”

I wasn’t kidding; I knew full-well going into the project that I was going to have a hard time selling an application that provides a rest API for sending push notifications. There are similar free apps, and the target market is pretty specific. To make matters worse, I spent no time marketing or reaching out to press folks who might want to do a review. These are pretty basic things, right? You’re probably asking why I bothered to build the app.

Here’s a secret for anybody interested in iOS development: employers don’t care how many units you’ve sold on the App Store. They care about what you’ve built: how you did it, what you learned, the extra attention to detail you gave, and how all of those things can help their team.

So why did I build Pactola?

• The server is built in Go. This was my first experience with the language.
• Jenkins deploys the server automatically when I push to master. The iOS build is also on Jenkins to ensure I’m building from reproducible sources, and not just a point-in-time on my local workstation.
• The deployment script relies only on SSH and bash, minimizing VPS setup time and overall dependencies.^[1]
• The iOS app uses Storyboards and Auto Layout (I’m coming off of two years where I was primarily focused on OS X development targeting 10.6 and up; no ARC, no Auto Layout, and no Storyboards)
• Screenshots are automated, thanks to ui-screen-shooter. I had to learn about UI Automation and come up with a strategy for creating real data in the screenshots.^[2]
• I disciplined myself to write out tasks and issues, and then tracked them on a Trello board. When the tickets were all in the Done column, I shipped. I also have a nice backlog of future ideas and nitpicks.
• I used Apple’s TestFlight system for the beta. This was my first chance to use it, and I got a good feel for how it compares to the legacy TestFlight system.^[3]
• I’ve now shipped an application that uses APNS and have a strong working knowledge of the system, its capabilities, and have some ideas for leveraging it in other apps.
• I tried to stick to a Ninety Days rule, though I didn’t account for changing jobs.

So while I may not ship very many copies of Pactola, I’d say there are a few interesting things I could talk about in an interview. I’d highly recommend finding something you’re unfamiliar with and building your own Friends and Family app.