51: Crouton - Devin Davies
Transcript
Autogenerated by MacWhisper
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Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman, and today I'm excited to bring you the developer
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behind the wonderful recipe app, Crouton, Devin Davies.
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Devin, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me.
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I am super excited about this one. People who know me know that I spent a little while
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going through a lot of recipe apps. Probably a lot of people, I'm sure, will get into this. But
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I came off of one app that's been around for a very long time, and then maybe was ready to try
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some other things. And it turns out there's a bunch of really cool apps. I've interviewed some
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of them here. Crouton is one that I have fallen in love with. There's a lot of little details that
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that I'm sure we're going to get into that I just find very, very delightful in a way
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that's very satisfying.
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And so I'm really happy to have you on finally to kind of talk about this.
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I appreciate that.
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Thank you.
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So before we get into Crouton itself, though, I want to give everyone a background on who
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you are.
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So the first question or the questions I always ask everybody is, where are you from?
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Do you have a formal education related to what you do?
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And then we can talk about your career leading up to Crouton.
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Sure.
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I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand.
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You might be able to tell from the accent.
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I grew up in a smaller town outside of Christchurch called Kaiapoi, which probably no one's heard
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of, but they have more cafes per capita than any other town in the world, I'm sure.
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I'm just assuming it looks exactly like Lord of the Rings, but with more cafes and Taika
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Waititi running around.
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That's right.
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Yeah, and we take boat everywhere.
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I threw in all my knowledge, all just thrown in there at once.
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sheep. There's lots of sheep, right? Yeah, plenty of sheep. Yeah. So it's, it's a good place. It's
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pretty, I would like terrible holiday destination. Um, if you're coming to New Zealand, don't come
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to Christchurch. Um, but it's a great place to live. Oh, there's just nothing to do. It's very,
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it's flat and quiet. So if you want a relaxing chill holiday, then maybe it's a good place.
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And you like coffee. Yeah. If you want to see me, then it's, it's, it's literally the best
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place in the world for that. Yes, yeah, you'd be hard-pressed to find me anywhere else.
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But it's a good landing pad. We're pretty close to like Queenstown and Lake Tikapau and all these
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touristy destinations. So you normally fly into Christchurch and then drive out as quickly as you
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can. But then that gives you quick access to them for like a weekend trip or something like that.
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Yeah, that's true. Definitely very lucky to have lots of super nice spots close by.
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So it's not all bad. Nice. Let's talk about like your education then. Did you
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decide early on you wanted to get into app development or something like that?
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So originally I, when I was a teenager, I, my dad's work had an old CSX Photoshop license.
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They didn't need any more. So I got a legal copy of all of the creative suite. And so I started,
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I was kind of into photography originally. And then that kind of morphed into just using
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Photoshop to do a whole bunch of different vector things. And so, I thought for a while that I
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wanted to be a graphic designer. I don't know what it's like in the US though, but I think here that
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can be a tougher industry to get into. Oh, yeah.
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To do well in. Yeah. And so, my dad, who's a software developer, kind of, I guess, sort of
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suggested that maybe I give this a go. And I'd always been, I guess, like Apple obsessed.
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I remember unboxing an iMac, a pink iMac G3 at primary school. And I think that was my first
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kind of like interaction with an Apple product. And it's like, yep, I like whoever made this.
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And so I think kind of ever since then, I've like always before they used to live stream the events,
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me and my brother would, we'd stay up all night for some reason. And then at 5:00 AM,
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which is when they start in New Zealand, we'd watch the live blogs and then go to school.
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Oh, those were, those were good times. Those were fun ways to consume those keynotes. That
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sounds weird saying it like that, but it definitely had a different feel to it.
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Yeah, yeah, you're getting it, I guess, through someone else's perspective. I don't know,
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it was always good to have a few tabs open in case one of them went down and you needed to
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jump between different.
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Well, that's, I've probably said it here before, but that's the original reason I joined Twitter.
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Because of all places, Woot, if you've ever heard of Woot, that was probably an American thing.
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It was one of those like daily deals sites, but their whole shtick was,
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they wrote like really fun, like they had comedy art or comedians on staff to write these crazy
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descriptions of whatever their deal of the day was. And for some reason, Woot would live blog
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Apple keynotes on Twitter specifically. And on Twitter, you could sign up to have it,
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you know, send them as text messages to your phone. And when I learned that they did that,
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I was like, "Oh, while I'm in class," this was when I was in college, "I can get those on my
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phone and I can keep up with the live blog." But they're making jokes. Like, it's literally just
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jokes, but I could at least be like, oh, they announced a new laptop or they announced a new
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thing. You get a rough idea of what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like the weirdest way to
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keep up with the keynote, but, uh, but there you go. So that's, that's why I started out on Twitter.
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Yeah. I think it'd be hard to go back now, now that we've got the live streams and especially
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the super polished video events going back to just like a text feed. I think I'd probably struggle,
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but back in the day it was like highlight of the year. Oh yeah. Yeah. So you went into,
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Did you go to university then for this? Yeah. So, from after high school, I went to
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Canterbury University and did a computer science degree. In retrospect, I don't know that you
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definitely don't need to do that. There's a lot of stuff I think that I had to learn that hasn't
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been that useful, but it also gives you a good idea of, I guess, like the deeper levels of the
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way things work. So, you can make some better decisions, even though most of the time when
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we're programming, we're sort of at a much higher level these days than some of the things they
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teach you at university. I guess it's good to have an appreciation of those things,
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But I definitely felt like for the first two years of uni, when it was a lot of that theory that
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I really just didn't have a clue what I was doing. Like I could do enough to pass the
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papers and things, but it didn't really click. And I was sort of unsure if I'd made the right call.
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Yeah, it's sort of a weird thing with college versions of computer science where it's like,
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and maybe this is just people like us who are more into the, well, like you said,
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the graphic design side of things. But like, building apps is like fun. Like, I know people
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who do like those Swift UI tutorial things and they're not planning to make a career out of it.
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They just like, it's kind of an addicting fun thing. But I never once in college until maybe
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like later when I was doing senior project type stuff, got into that like addicting flow with,
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because it was all like, learn how to, you know, do this database query and make it, you know,
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this time, this amount faster, deal with big O notation or whatever. And it's like,
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those are probably good to have, but it would be nice, especially in the early
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stages for it to have that like addicting piece. And then you love on the necessary, you know,
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your vegetables to go with the candy, I guess.
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That's right. Yeah. Cause I, like, I just wanted to make buttons look nice. And so when you're
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having to do all this extra stuff, it's a bit, bit much. But in my third year, we had this like
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full year group project, uh, where we built an app to view the America's cup, um, feed,
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cause they had, it's like a live API. So you could pull in the boats where they were and
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plot them on a map, the America's cup. And then you said boats. See, I don't,
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I don't even know what that is. Or maybe I do. Should I know what that is?
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It's got America in the title. I know. I wasn't aware of what it was until the group project,
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but now I'm vaguely aware that it involves boats and competition.
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Okay. Some kind of race then, I guess. Yeah. They race boats, particular kind of boats around
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lakes. I'm going to do a terrible job of explaining what it is because I just wanted to
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make buttons look pretty. In typical fashion, I've already derailed this into the least important
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part of this story. So you're making it up about the boats. Yes, that's right. Luckily,
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this will save it. In the middle of the year, we pivoted and turned it into a game because
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because the America's Cup finished so the feeds stopped.
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So then we changed it to be more of like a,
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you know, the Jackbox games?
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- Yeah, yeah.
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- Yeah, so we pretty much took that idea
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and made it so you could log into a room from your phone
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and that would give you a control pad
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and then you could pilot a boat around on the main screen
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and kind of race against your friends.
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- Ah, very nice. - Which was pretty cool.
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- Wait, so that was, was that an iPhone app then?
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- It was just a web page on the phone itself.
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Yeah, yeah, not an app.
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The actual application itself was just like a Java.
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It was written in Java and ran on the Mac.
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- Nice.
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- Yeah, it was really that group project
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where I got very fortunate with the people
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who was on the team with me
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and learned like a whole bunch from that.
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And that was where it kind of,
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everything kind of fell into place.
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Like I had all the pieces from the previous years,
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but working on that with those people
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was when I kind of clicked.
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I was like, oh, this is what I want to be doing.
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And I got to do a lot of the design work on that project too,
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which was pretty cool.
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- Nice.
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So you graduated with a computer science degree then.
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Coming out of that, what was your, like, did you go straight into app development or were
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there some, you know, twists through some other languages or something?
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I think I've been very fortunate with kind of the way things have fallen into place for
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me.
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Basically, I finished my degree and then I spent, I think I downloaded Xcode in my sort
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of gap between finding a job and sort of spent a week or two just mucking around.
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I still didn't really know what I was doing then either.
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I just remember dragging buttons from the storyboard into the view controller and
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making it print out things when you tapped on them.
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There's a through line with buttons here.
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You like buttons.
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Just love buttons.
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Big, big button fan.
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Well, they're just good to fidget with.
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Like, I'm like, I still miss 3d touch.
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Cause it was just a great kind of fidget when you were sitting there, just sort of
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pressing on things.
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I can hear Jordan Morgan, uh, like just sighing through the, through the podcast,
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the pipes. The old podcast pipes. Yep. And so I, I interviewed for a few jobs and there
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was this company I'd randomly come across online called smudge, but they didn't have
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any like applications at the time. And so I applied for this other job and sort of went
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through the process of that, but then didn't end up getting that role. And the recruiter
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that was helping me was like, Oh, why don't you apply at this company? And it just happened
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be Smudge, the company that I looked at online and thought, "Oh, it'd be cool to work there."
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And so I interviewed there and got the job and started that after my summer break. And that was
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doing iOS development. So I just landed straight into iOS development without any real experience.
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But then, yeah, just very fortunate to learn as I was working.
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Okay. So you've been doing this pretty much your whole professional career then?
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Yeah, I've done a little bit of Android and web, but iOS is definitely the one I find the most
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exciting. So then what is what got you and you still work there then, right? Is that correct?
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What if you want to talk about that? Yeah. So I still work there, mostly full time.
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And then, yeah, just do crouton on the side. So it can be quite a good, like, I think,
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relationship when you've got a side project and a work project that are the same technologies.
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You can learn things at home that are really helpful at work and vice versa.
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So you can almost like hack your, I don't know, like the whole 10,000 hours thing.
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You can kind of like fast track that if you're passionate about doing it in your
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spare time.
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That was, I, again, I've probably said this before on this podcast, but with dark
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noise, that was the whole point of it is I switched, you know, from web react side
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of things to, uh, to an iOS team, but I didn't, I didn't know iOS development.
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So I'm like, I need to start a side project.
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And part of that too was all the people on my team are not all, but a lot of them also had side apps.
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And the amount of times we'd be in a meeting and we'd be like, can we do this with app store connect?
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And everybody would be like, well, I've done this here.
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Oh, I've used this over here.
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Like everybody could kind of pull in this experience with these little side apps that they had.
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Um, and I definitely found the same thing for me.
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It was like almost addicting when, uh, you could pull out your laptop, like your personal laptop and be like, I
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solve this problem earlier and you can find some old code. Totally. I never really had that doing,
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you know, dotnet enterprise apps because I wasn't usually building those and deploying them to,
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you know, local enterprise apps. Not how you want to spend your evenings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Yeah. I think as well, especially around like dub dub, when all the new APIs and things come out,
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you don't always get an opportunity straight away through like a day job to use those things. But
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like when you're just on your own projects, you can do whatever you want and you don't have to
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sort of, I guess, justify it or have a reason to. And so, you can pick up those things really
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quickly and then often they do come in useful later on down the line.
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So, is that why you started building stuff on the side?
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I think once I started doing iOS development at work, I just found that I enjoyed it
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so much that I just wanted to keep doing it when I got home. And I guess I've always had like,
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I know there's like pain points of the way that you might be doing something. And so,
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So when you suddenly develop a skill where you can solve those pain points yourself,
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it's sort of hard not to at least give it a go.
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Yeah.
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It's the, uh, like I'm having a small problem with my garage door and I like raspberry pies.
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Therefore I need some giant Rubic Goldberg machine that attaches a raspberry pie to my
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garage door.
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Uh, it's the same kind of problem, but with apps, I think the problem is having someone,
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not having someone there to tell you that you should just stop and just enjoy some peace
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and quiet.
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I guess you had a full-time job and you were just kind of like making apps for fun, I guess, on the side.
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Were you doing apps like pushing them to the store and trying to make kind of a business out of them or were most of them sort of personal side project kind of things before Crew Town?
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Yeah, it was mostly personal, I guess you would say.
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It was so the first app I built was for my youth group just as a way to keep track of the different events we had on.
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'cause often you'd have like a printed plan,
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but then things would change
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and the printed plan would be kind of useless.
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And so the first app I built was just something
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you could open up and see what was happening that week.
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And there were changes as things updated.
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I think in retrospect,
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that could have probably just been a Google calendar,
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but it was a good opportunity to practice
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sort of building my own thing
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and seeing what that might look like.
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- So then what led you up to Kuru Town itself then?
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- I guess kind of similar.
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When my wife and I got married,
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We started meal planning just as a way to keep groceries cheap.
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And it also just makes it easy when you're working out
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what you want to cook.
00:14:55.360 --> 00:14:57.180
I'd always enjoyed cooking.
00:14:57.180 --> 00:14:59.140
I don't think I'm particularly amazing at it,
00:14:59.140 --> 00:15:01.100
but it's something I've always sort of enjoyed.
00:15:01.100 --> 00:15:03.700
So I was the chief meal planner in the house,
00:15:03.700 --> 00:15:04.700
that's my official title.
00:15:04.700 --> 00:15:07.260
And to start with, I was just using the Notes app.
00:15:07.260 --> 00:15:09.220
So at the top, I just had the days of the week.
00:15:09.220 --> 00:15:14.100
And then underneath that, I had just a massive list of URLs
00:15:14.100 --> 00:15:16.260
and even some typed out recipes.
00:15:16.260 --> 00:15:19.340
So you kind of just infinite scroll, find something that looks good and then
00:15:19.340 --> 00:15:23.780
paste it up the top, which works surprisingly well for a while.
00:15:23.780 --> 00:15:27.180
Like you get iCloud sharing and a note, so you can share it with your family.
00:15:27.180 --> 00:15:27.540
Yeah.
00:15:27.540 --> 00:15:27.900
Yeah.
00:15:27.900 --> 00:15:30.180
I think the notes app in general is great.
00:15:30.180 --> 00:15:33.980
There's a lot of like app ideas that you can kind of manage for a while, just as a
00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:36.220
note, um, until they get unwieldy.
00:15:36.220 --> 00:15:41.340
If we get links, uh, like links to other notes inside of Apple notes,
00:15:41.340 --> 00:15:42.460
it's going to be a killer app.
00:15:42.460 --> 00:15:45.820
I mean, it's, it's a killer app now, but like, I feel like that's kind of the
00:15:45.820 --> 00:15:51.260
one piece missing. It'll put us all out of a job. Yeah. Yeah. You just use notes for that. Uh, and
00:15:51.260 --> 00:15:55.420
so I don't really remember making a conscious decision to start making crouton. I think it
00:15:55.420 --> 00:16:00.940
was just one Saturday. I had some spare time and just sort of started putting something together
00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:05.820
to see what it, what it might look like. Uh, and originally it was really focused around,
00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:10.380
I guess, coming from the note where I just had links and, and recipes, it was actually
00:16:10.380 --> 00:16:14.780
really focused on the meal planning and less about being able to view recipes in the app.
00:16:14.780 --> 00:16:19.580
And so originally it really was just like a, you would just paste links in and then you could
00:16:19.580 --> 00:16:23.740
attach those links to the days of the week. So I guess the benefit was that you could search it
00:16:23.740 --> 00:16:27.500
and things like that, but it really didn't have any focus on being able to do anything
00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:30.300
interesting with the recipes. Like when you wanted to use one,
00:16:30.300 --> 00:16:35.180
you're just opening up that page in the browser. Basically, yeah. Just like Safari view controller.
00:16:35.180 --> 00:16:39.260
And then there it was, um, which I don't, I don't, like, I don't think I shipped that version of it,
00:16:39.260 --> 00:16:43.820
but that's what it was for quite a while. And then I think as I went on, it was like, okay,
00:16:43.820 --> 00:16:48.300
I'm going to have to actually display ingredients and steps and figure out how to make these things
00:16:48.300 --> 00:16:53.100
look sensible and all the sort of, I guess, complications that you don't think will be
00:16:53.100 --> 00:16:59.340
issues until you start trying to build it. And like at this point in the story, it's more or less
00:16:59.340 --> 00:17:05.740
for you still then, right? Like when did you kind of transition to like, oh, this is going to be
00:17:05.740 --> 00:17:11.020
like a product I'm going to try and sell? That was probably definitely after it
00:17:11.020 --> 00:17:13.540
launched, I think, um, after it launched.
00:17:13.540 --> 00:17:18.020
Well, I guess we can get into the launch soon, but yeah, while I was building it,
00:17:18.020 --> 00:17:20.860
it was definitely like, this is going to make things easier for me.
00:17:20.860 --> 00:17:23.620
I guess always you're sort of thinking like, Oh, it'd be nice if other people
00:17:23.620 --> 00:17:26.780
use this, but I don't think I had really like thought about that too much.
00:17:26.780 --> 00:17:27.540
Okay.
00:17:27.540 --> 00:17:33.900
It wasn't like grand plans about, you know, taking over the recipe app space and
00:17:33.900 --> 00:17:36.180
doing market research and you know, all that.
00:17:36.180 --> 00:17:41.000
It was really like, this is a thing that will be nice for me and it'll be cool.
00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:44.920
like a lot of projects to put it out there. Like if it was a website, it'd be cool to put it out
00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:48.920
there and tweet about it or something. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely didn't do any
00:17:48.920 --> 00:17:52.920
like product market fit or anything like that. I was just like, this would be good for me. And I
00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:58.600
had done a search of the app store just to kind of see what was around. Obviously,
00:17:58.600 --> 00:18:04.600
like Paprika kind of owns the space did and still does in a lot of ways. And I think at the time,
00:18:04.600 --> 00:18:08.760
I just didn't want to pay $8. In retrospect, that probably would have been a good deal.
00:18:08.760 --> 00:18:11.960
It would have saved me a lot of stress and heartbreak.
00:18:11.960 --> 00:18:18.280
But yeah, a lot of the meal planning apps, because that was kind of my angle,
00:18:18.280 --> 00:18:22.200
were really focused on health and that side of it, rather than just the,
00:18:22.200 --> 00:18:26.760
I just want to cook something tomorrow and I'm going to organize that at the start of the week.
00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:28.760
And so, like, originally in Crouton as well, you could only,
00:18:28.760 --> 00:18:33.240
you weren't assigning recipes to dates, you were just assigning them to the day of the week.
00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:37.240
So, it was like really, really basic. Basically, at the start of the next week,
00:18:37.240 --> 00:18:40.280
you'd have to clear the list and then add in the recipes again.
00:18:40.280 --> 00:18:42.520
Oh, yeah. Interesting.
00:18:42.520 --> 00:18:46.440
So there's like a lot of decisions I made that I think made it clear that it was built just for the
00:18:46.440 --> 00:18:52.360
way that I used recipe apps. And then over time, as people have actually started using it, then I've
00:18:52.360 --> 00:18:57.160
sort of tried to, I guess, soften some of those things, like still have an opinion and the way
00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:00.040
things should be done, but also take feedback and sort of refine things a bit.
00:19:00.040 --> 00:19:06.520
So based on how you are describing it, I'm guessing there wasn't a big beta test group
00:19:06.520 --> 00:19:08.640
or anything like that.
00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:10.720
What was the state of the app?
00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:13.080
And then like, what was the actual launch itself like then?
00:19:13.080 --> 00:19:14.440
The initial launch?
00:19:14.440 --> 00:19:16.480
- Yeah, I don't even know if I'm allowed to be on this show
00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:18.200
'cause I don't know if you can really call it a launch,
00:19:18.200 --> 00:19:19.040
but I--
00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:21.280
- Well, it went from existing to not existing.
00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:23.440
So the boat ended up in the water.
00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:24.280
I think that's--
00:19:24.280 --> 00:19:26.000
- Yes, yeah.
00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:27.080
So at that point, I really,
00:19:27.080 --> 00:19:28.840
I'd been on Twitter for a long time,
00:19:28.840 --> 00:19:30.800
but I actually didn't follow a lot of people
00:19:30.800 --> 00:19:33.900
in like the iOS developer space.
00:19:33.900 --> 00:19:38.700
And so I'd started tweeting about it a little bit, but I actually, I checked earlier today
00:19:38.700 --> 00:19:41.260
before coming on to see like what I had done leading up to it.
00:19:41.260 --> 00:19:46.200
And I think I tweeted once showing a little video of it automatically detecting something
00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:50.560
on your clipboard popping up another screenshot of it running on Catalyst.
00:19:50.560 --> 00:19:53.560
And then the post after that was the launch tweet.
00:19:53.560 --> 00:19:56.780
And so there was really like no kind of, I guess, like, you know, trying to build up
00:19:56.780 --> 00:19:58.260
hype or see if there's any interest.
00:19:58.260 --> 00:20:01.220
It was kind of just like, Hey everyone, I made a recipe app.
00:20:01.220 --> 00:20:02.320
And that was kind of it.
00:20:02.320 --> 00:20:07.760
screenshot of it was not very thought through. It was like a recipe that I just quickly typed up
00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:13.040
which had like the ingredients was a chicken breast and two tablespoons of curry powder
00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:19.200
and that was like the screenshot. Yeah, I clearly was not thinking at all about how to sort of
00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:22.160
present this as something that other people might want to use.
00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:27.120
It's so interesting because I came into understanding or knowledge of this later but
00:20:28.080 --> 00:20:33.840
Everything you do now feels like very thought through and there's little jokes hidden in places
00:20:33.840 --> 00:20:39.280
and I feel like you do really think through that. So I'm curious how you, like, what,
00:20:39.280 --> 00:20:41.440
how'd you get from there to where you are right now then?
00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:49.040
Yeah, I think I'm making up for lost time. Because basically, I launched in 2019 and it got,
00:20:49.040 --> 00:20:55.600
I think, two downloads on the first day, which was me and my mom. So it went very well. She
00:20:55.600 --> 00:21:00.240
thought it was a good app. A small but very loyal user base, I think is what you're saying.
00:21:00.240 --> 00:21:03.360
Yeah, well she still uses it. So it's... That's awesome.
00:21:03.360 --> 00:21:08.160
Must have done all right. So it was actually, I think, almost a whole year or at least six to
00:21:08.160 --> 00:21:11.840
eight months when no one was really using it. But I was still working on it. It was
00:21:11.840 --> 00:21:15.360
good at least that it had solved a problem for me and was legitimately useful.
00:21:15.360 --> 00:21:20.640
Was it paid up front or one-time purchase, in-app purchase, which is what I think it is today?
00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:26.080
Yeah, I think when I launched it was free and then there was a net purchase to unlock iCloud
00:21:26.080 --> 00:21:31.040
syncing. Okay. That did not do very well. And so then after a few months, I changed it to paid up
00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:34.560
front, which also just made it easier to develop because I didn't have to worry about.
00:21:34.560 --> 00:21:37.840
Yeah. You get through app reviews so much faster and.
00:21:37.840 --> 00:21:39.120
Exactly.
00:21:39.120 --> 00:21:43.600
It's funny. I mean, by the time this comes out, it'll be old, but I've been tweeting,
00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:49.120
I think today or last night, I don't remember about thinking about changing things with dark
00:21:49.120 --> 00:21:55.040
noise. And, uh, it's one of those where it's like, it's exciting thinking about it, but man, paid up
00:21:55.040 --> 00:21:59.600
front is so much easier. Like as much as there's a reason why everybody says not to do it. I
00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:07.200
understand that from a business sense, but you avoid so much work. Definitely. Surprisingly.
00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:11.360
There's definitely a lot of positives about paid up front, but it's hard to get people to convince
00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:17.200
people to download it. Yeah. You're asking people to put a lot of money down on something or not a
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:23.280
lot. But you know what I mean? Put money down on something based on no real reputation,
00:22:23.280 --> 00:22:26.880
just what they can see in screenshots. And you're up against a bunch of things that usually
00:22:26.880 --> 00:22:32.160
they have to put no money down to try it out. Yeah. So, and I think so switching to paid up
00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:36.560
front was also not the right move because then I was basically like direct comparison to Paprika
00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:44.320
and other apps where I just like, I'm amazed at how little the app did when I shipped it that I,
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:48.880
like in retrospect, I probably should have, I think, held off for a few extra months and just
00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:53.840
like tidied up a few extra things and launched it then. I think it was just good to get something
00:22:53.840 --> 00:22:57.920
out the door and start using it. And I think what happened after that was I started really getting
00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:02.080
into the developer community a lot more and realizing that there's a lot of other people
00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:07.760
trying to do very similar things. And so, I just started getting really inspired about all the
00:23:07.760 --> 00:23:12.240
different things you see people working on on Twitter and also looking at how they, I guess,
00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:17.200
market their new features and their updates and post about things and, I guess, try and analyze
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:20.800
what works and what doesn't work. And so, I think, yeah, now when I post things, I'm definitely
00:23:20.800 --> 00:23:27.280
thinking about that a lot more, probably too much at this point, but just around, like, I don't know,
00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:31.440
trying to get the perfect screen recording of a feature or exactly how something's going to look
00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:34.800
when someone else views it without any context and things like that.
00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:39.040
So, a lot of that, I think I've just built up from looking at how other people do things and kind of
00:23:39.760 --> 00:23:45.040
trying to, I guess, copy what I think works well and trying to do it, I guess, in my own way too.
00:23:45.040 --> 00:23:47.600
But yeah, just looking at how other people are doing it.
00:23:47.600 --> 00:23:55.840
So I feel like, I mean, I don't know the reality, so maybe my perception is way off here. But I feel
00:23:55.840 --> 00:24:00.400
like there's more than two users. Well, three, because I'm one of them using the app now. So
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:06.320
what sort of changed the tide on something that was another app in the store wasn't getting a lot
00:24:06.320 --> 00:24:11.120
attention to something that's seems like at least a genuine like business.
00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:18.400
I think there was a release I put out in early 2020 was like kind of after COVID hit and I was
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:24.320
at home a lot more. And I think I just focused on all the sort of key points that I was getting.
00:24:24.320 --> 00:24:28.560
Like I was sort of getting a few users over time. And so I started to get a little bit of feedback.
00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:33.680
And so there's a release I put out that added like grocery planning and it made the meal plan
00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:38.480
infinite so you could plan into the future as much as you want. And a few extra things in that
00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:42.720
release that I think kind of took it from being just something that solved my problem to being
00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:47.280
legitimately useful for other people. And I definitely kind of see that as kind of a marker
00:24:47.280 --> 00:24:55.200
of where it established itself as an app. Was there like a notable, maybe not jump is the
00:24:55.200 --> 00:25:00.240
wrong word, but growth that happened after that? I think most of Crouton's growth has been pretty
00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:06.560
gradual. There's definitely been some spikes. I got picked up by Max Stories
00:25:06.560 --> 00:25:14.480
late 2020, I think. And that also was a really great way to just get out in front of other people
00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:18.080
and be seen. And so there's definitely been some spikes where different things have happened,
00:25:18.080 --> 00:25:20.640
like app store features and things like that. But I would say on the whole,
00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:27.680
Crouton's growth has been really progressive over time, which is good and bad. Sometimes those big
00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:31.360
spikes can be a little bit, I guess, depressing when you come back down from them.
00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:36.480
You just want to chase like the feeling of like, I don't know, massive growth overnight again.
00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:39.520
Whereas when it's just sort of gradual over time, it's a bit more like sustainable. And it's like,
00:25:39.520 --> 00:25:43.360
okay, if I just keep doing this and focusing on what I think makes a good product, then,
00:25:43.360 --> 00:25:45.760
you know, hopefully it'll continue down that path.
00:25:45.760 --> 00:25:51.760
That's interesting. So did you find that after those spikes, the tail sort of continued,
00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:58.080
Like you got some growth out of that? Or were those really just like, if you just got rid of
00:25:58.080 --> 00:26:01.840
those, yes, you'd lose the money from those spikes, but they didn't necessarily affect
00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:06.880
the overall trajectory of the app. Like how, or was most of the growth, I guess, coming from
00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:12.160
the sort of day to day grinding or were those spikes, the things that were kind of driving some
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:16.800
of that growth, I guess is what I'm really asking. Yeah, I guess it's hard to know exactly my,
00:26:16.800 --> 00:26:21.360
I definitely be interested to see what other people, what their experience has been, but
00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:26.240
But typically after those, I found that it levels off sort of a little bit above where
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:29.760
it was before, but certainly not like while it's happening, you're like, oh, this is awesome.
00:26:29.760 --> 00:26:32.320
I'm going to be like, you know, number one forever.
00:26:32.320 --> 00:26:33.320
Yeah.
00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:36.840
James Thompson, he was talking about when they released, like when the app store first
00:26:36.840 --> 00:26:38.240
came out.
00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:41.720
So there was no, no stories or history to go with.
00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:46.240
They all were projecting out like these numbers over the next however many years.
00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:48.720
And they're like, oh my gosh, we're going to be like millionaires.
00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:49.720
Exactly.
00:26:49.720 --> 00:26:50.720
Yeah.
00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:55.920
Yeah. Yeah. So I think in my experience has been that after that it levels off somewhere
00:26:55.920 --> 00:27:01.480
slightly above where it was previously, but not anything significant. And so I think for
00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:07.080
me what's worked has been just over time, I think building up like a presence on Twitter
00:27:07.080 --> 00:27:11.320
and kind of just sharing what I'm working on and then just the consistency of delivering
00:27:11.320 --> 00:27:13.600
and trying to add new things that will be helpful.
00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:18.440
I think then over time, then like kind of the word of mouth of your product spreads
00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:20.920
and then it kind of builds up that way.
00:27:20.920 --> 00:27:22.960
At least that's been my experience.
00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:24.600
- Yeah, that makes sense.
00:27:24.600 --> 00:27:26.120
I wanna talk about a couple of those features.
00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:30.280
So like, I guess one of the more standout ones
00:27:30.280 --> 00:27:34.240
is the blink, what do you actually call the feature?
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.560
It's like blink detection for how you actually navigate
00:27:37.560 --> 00:27:39.960
while you're running through your steps.
00:27:39.960 --> 00:27:41.640
- Yeah, I think it's just called like wink mode
00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:42.760
or hands-free. - Wink mode.
00:27:42.760 --> 00:27:44.320
That's, yeah, that's the word.
00:27:44.320 --> 00:27:45.920
How'd that come about?
00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:48.160
- That one was interesting because,
00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:51.200
I didn't have a step-by-step mode in Crouton at all before that.
00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:55.760
And then I think I was just driving home from work one day and I don't know, daydreaming or
00:27:55.760 --> 00:27:59.120
something. I thought, "Oh, it'd be cool if I could move through the recipe without having
00:27:59.120 --> 00:28:04.560
to touch the screen. That'll be kind of fun." And then I guess just thought, "Oh, how could
00:28:04.560 --> 00:28:09.120
I do that?" And then, yeah, just thought about the TrueDepth camera. Oh, you don't even need
00:28:09.120 --> 00:28:14.160
the TrueDepth now. You just the front camera with the face detection. And then I just thought,
00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:18.000
"Oh, yeah, maybe I could detect if you're winking or opening your mouth and that could be a way to
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:21.520
to move through the steps, but I really thought it was kind of like a gimmick.
00:28:21.520 --> 00:28:23.120
I wasn't sure if I was actually going to ship it.
00:28:23.120 --> 00:28:26.840
And it took like a week to get it through app review as well, because they kept
00:28:26.840 --> 00:28:30.120
sending back feedback, like, where are you using true depth in your app?
00:28:30.120 --> 00:28:32.720
And it just took a very long time to explain, like
00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:34.600
some check boxes checked in.
00:28:34.600 --> 00:28:38.720
They need to actually go find that, which makes your app review slower, I guess.
00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:40.040
Probably every time now.
00:28:40.040 --> 00:28:44.200
I think at this point I've gotten on that feature specifically, I've worked out
00:28:44.200 --> 00:28:48.600
exactly what I need to include to kind of avoid having to answer questions about that one.
00:28:48.600 --> 00:28:51.720
But yeah, there's definitely some good videos of me like late at night,
00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:54.280
winking at my phone to sort of submit as a proof.
00:28:54.280 --> 00:28:57.800
But those will never be distributed.
00:28:57.800 --> 00:29:01.400
So you were saying you weren't sure if that was going to be,
00:29:01.400 --> 00:29:03.320
if you thought it was going to be a gimmick, but then.
00:29:03.320 --> 00:29:07.240
Yeah, I mean, I think it probably is still a gimmick.
00:29:07.240 --> 00:29:10.120
I do use it occasionally, but it's got, it was a lot more,
00:29:10.120 --> 00:29:12.520
it landed a lot better than I thought it was going to.
00:29:12.520 --> 00:29:15.720
because I just thought it was kind of like a goofy thing that'd be fun to put together and
00:29:15.720 --> 00:29:20.360
see if I could make it work. But then almost every time now when it gets picked up by
00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:26.840
someone, they often mention that as a key feature, which I just find amusing because to me,
00:29:26.840 --> 00:29:30.760
it was just like a little thing I kind of threw in as something fun that I could do.
00:29:30.760 --> 00:29:35.320
We've talked outside of this podcast a couple of times and you sometimes make fun of me for
00:29:35.320 --> 00:29:37.600
for not using step-by-step mode.
00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:42.600
I will say, I do find myself now with using crouton.
00:29:42.600 --> 00:29:44.600
If I'm cooking certain things,
00:29:44.600 --> 00:29:46.040
like if I'm chopping vegetables or whatever,
00:29:46.040 --> 00:29:49.000
and it's a recipe I don't know as well,
00:29:49.000 --> 00:29:50.840
I will set up my phone,
00:29:50.840 --> 00:29:52.640
'cause I don't use a kitchen iPad,
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:55.320
which I know you're also a big proponent of.
00:29:55.320 --> 00:29:56.400
- Big believer in the kitchen iPad.
00:29:56.400 --> 00:29:57.400
- Yeah, yeah.
00:29:57.400 --> 00:29:59.840
I'll grab one of, I have this little,
00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:01.120
nobody can see this except for you,
00:30:01.120 --> 00:30:03.360
but I have one of these little phone stand things
00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:05.460
that every iOS developer probably has.
00:30:05.460 --> 00:30:07.160
And I'll grab that from my office
00:30:07.160 --> 00:30:09.960
and bring it down to my kitchen and set my phone up
00:30:09.960 --> 00:30:13.080
just so that I can blink through the,
00:30:13.080 --> 00:30:14.680
it sounds weird saying it out loud,
00:30:14.680 --> 00:30:16.060
blink through the steps.
00:30:16.060 --> 00:30:18.760
Because I'm like, I'm the worst,
00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:21.840
I'm a horrible cook in terms of time.
00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:25.960
Like, I'm just a very slow person in general
00:30:25.960 --> 00:30:28.520
as, you know, dark noise development can attest.
00:30:28.520 --> 00:30:30.320
And this applies to cooking as well.
00:30:30.320 --> 00:30:33.360
I will like double, triple check recipes.
00:30:33.360 --> 00:30:38.720
Like I will look at the number of ounces or whatever, the actual
00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:43.620
scale I need for something, and then I'll go grab the thing and then I'll look again to see what the number is.
00:30:43.620 --> 00:30:48.920
And then I'll unscrew the cap and then I'll look again at what the number is because I just instantly forget it.
00:30:48.920 --> 00:30:50.640
I don't think that's a you problem.
00:30:50.640 --> 00:30:52.040
I do exactly the same thing.
00:30:52.040 --> 00:30:54.800
Yeah. It's like, oh, I better check that again in case I did it wrong.
00:30:54.800 --> 00:30:59.840
Yeah. Like I've probably messed up one time, you know, early in my life
00:30:59.840 --> 00:31:03.480
And now every single time I have to check a thousand times because I don't want to-
00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:04.480
Some childhood trauma.
00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:07.360
Yeah, double the amount of, you know, chili powder or whatever.
00:31:07.360 --> 00:31:17.120
And so with that, like, I won't do this if my family's home because I know I look really goofy.
00:31:17.120 --> 00:31:21.760
I like I genuinely really, really love it for that because it's-
00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:22.840
Is it opening your mouth?
00:31:22.840 --> 00:31:25.760
Is that what it is to pull down the ingredients?
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:30.160
Yeah, if you're on an iPhone or like a compact view, yeah, then opening your mouth will pop up.
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:35.520
Okay. Yeah. And that's, that's the one I use very frequently, actually, surprisingly.
00:31:35.520 --> 00:31:40.000
It's interesting. I thought what your story was going to be for that was going to be
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:47.520
the typical iOS developer. I was watching WWDC videos about VisionKit and I wanted to workshop
00:31:47.520 --> 00:31:52.320
this in, but it sounds like you actually came at that from the solving a problem perspective,
00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:54.800
even though you thought it was going to be a gimmick.
00:31:54.800 --> 00:31:57.280
Yeah, that one just kind of, yeah, came out of nowhere and then
00:31:57.280 --> 00:32:01.520
sort of had all the right pieces to put it together, which was cool.
00:32:01.520 --> 00:32:06.400
It's interesting. I feel like I've seen other apps do similar things,
00:32:06.400 --> 00:32:10.160
maybe not the exact same method, but like the idea of a,
00:32:10.160 --> 00:32:16.720
I have messy hands way of navigating through steps. I've seen other people do that. So
00:32:16.720 --> 00:32:22.400
I'm guessing that is like a feature that lots of people probably use. I can't be the only one.
00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:27.200
Now I'm wishing that there's like a video compilation of all the users just like opening
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:30.080
their mouth and winking at their phone to move through the steps.
00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:33.120
Yeah, there's another business opportunity for you.
00:32:33.120 --> 00:32:43.200
You can secretly capture the video and then, you know, have a $9.99 unlock to not tweet it to all
00:32:43.200 --> 00:32:48.800
your friends or, you know, message it to all your friends or something. Blackmail as a service.
00:32:48.800 --> 00:32:49.280
Yeah, yeah.
00:32:49.280 --> 00:32:58.240
Back to your point quickly about DubDub, sort of, and using that as like a catalyst for
00:32:58.240 --> 00:33:02.320
features. I have worked on a few different variations of the hands-free mode as a result
00:33:02.320 --> 00:33:06.160
of seeing stuff at DubDub. Like, they brought out the, like, hand pose detection and things
00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:10.480
like that. So I have played around with being able to navigate the recipe just using your
00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:14.520
hands instead, because I think, and part of why I guess I think I thought it was a gimmick,
00:33:14.520 --> 00:33:18.040
like, winking left and right can be kind of a fatiguing exercise if you want to move through
00:33:18.040 --> 00:33:22.440
lot of steps. And so, I think there's definitely some, probably some other interesting sort of
00:33:22.440 --> 00:33:26.360
ways that, yeah, you could add a layer of interaction without having to actually touch the
00:33:26.360 --> 00:33:31.400
screen. It seems like there would be a accessibility angle to that, even though that wasn't
00:33:31.400 --> 00:33:35.960
necessarily your original intent. Have you heard from people who use it in that kind of context,
00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:41.560
or have requests for a similar kind of context? I don't think so. I have mostly had the opposite
00:33:41.560 --> 00:33:45.960
where people let me know that it's quite hard to wink left and right over and over again. Yeah.
00:33:45.960 --> 00:33:49.560
Yeah, it'd be quite interesting to know if that is actually useful or not.
00:33:49.560 --> 00:33:53.400
I guess in that case, like voiceover is kind of more the answer there.
00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:56.440
Yeah, that's true. You've got like the system layer. So there's not necessarily,
00:33:56.440 --> 00:33:59.640
and as long as you conform to the platform conventions for accessibility,
00:33:59.640 --> 00:34:01.320
you're kind of getting a lot of that for free.
00:34:01.320 --> 00:34:06.600
So like another thing, this isn't really a specific feature, but this is more or less
00:34:06.600 --> 00:34:10.600
the thing that really makes me love this app. I feel like there's a lot of just
00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:15.560
Delightful custom controls. Like in particular, if you're like in the grocery app,
00:34:15.560 --> 00:34:21.160
or I guess it's when you're inputting a recipe to the like custom, you know, scale,
00:34:21.160 --> 00:34:25.800
what do you call that? The like card view that comes up for putting in the number of...
00:34:25.800 --> 00:34:27.720
Like the ingredient keypad.
00:34:27.720 --> 00:34:31.960
There you go. That's the word I'm looking for. The ingredient keypad.
00:34:31.960 --> 00:34:37.880
That thing is amazing. What led you to building a custom like control like that?
00:34:37.880 --> 00:34:40.760
Yeah, that one's kind of a little bit funny because I spent-
00:34:40.760 --> 00:34:46.200
Or actually, so originally the inspiration for that kind of like layout actually came from
00:34:46.200 --> 00:34:52.520
Daniel Gauthier's Obother app. He kind of has those kind of little cards that pop up.
00:34:52.520 --> 00:34:57.880
And I had been for a while trying to work out like, "Oh, how can I make the ingredient input
00:34:57.880 --> 00:35:03.320
better?" Because like typing out things like fractions and stuff on a keypad can sometimes
00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:07.720
be a pain, especially if you're modifying a recipe ingredient. It's nice to kind of
00:35:07.720 --> 00:35:12.040
have something that's aware that it's a recipe and not just the default keypad.
00:35:12.040 --> 00:35:16.600
And so I actually spent like a whole weekend building something quite different where it was
00:35:16.600 --> 00:35:23.000
more like steppers where you could like quickly add and remove like amounts sort of in stepping
00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:28.360
increments and sunk like quite a lot of time into trying to make that good and solving a lot of
00:35:28.360 --> 00:35:32.520
challenges that came with that approach. And then I think by the end of the weekend, I was just like,
00:35:32.520 --> 00:35:38.520
"This is not good. This is definitely worse than the normal keypad." And so, I scrapped the whole
00:35:38.520 --> 00:35:42.440
thing and then really quickly, or at least comparably to the amount of time I spent on
00:35:42.440 --> 00:35:47.880
the first version, built out what it looks like now, where it's more of just a keypad where you
00:35:47.880 --> 00:35:50.840
type it out and you can choose the quantities and things like that.
00:35:50.840 --> 00:35:55.080
But yeah, it's always interesting when you sink a lot of time into something,
00:35:55.080 --> 00:35:57.960
it can be quite easy just to be like, "Okay, well, this is what I'm going to go with because
00:35:58.520 --> 00:36:03.240
I've spent so much time on it, but I'm glad with that, that I didn't and that I,
00:36:03.240 --> 00:36:05.960
yeah, was able to come up with something that I guess kind of still has the same,
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:09.000
the essence of what I was going for with the other thing, but ends up being
00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:15.400
a much more obvious solution, I think. Yeah, I think the thing is like, there is the easy
00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:21.320
answer to develop, which is use the keypad that Apple built and you know, that's going to work.
00:36:21.320 --> 00:36:26.040
And you know, that's that and that's what most other apps I use. There's also some that do like
00:36:27.400 --> 00:36:33.080
little extra buttons that float above the keypad. And those work okay. But this is like,
00:36:33.080 --> 00:36:38.760
there's a bunch of examples in the app. But this is the one that I remember the first time I used
00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:44.920
the app is the thing that made the whole thing really stand out as a high quality experience,
00:36:44.920 --> 00:36:49.560
which is like, this is an action I'm going to do frequently. And there's a way to do it that's
00:36:49.560 --> 00:36:54.600
dedicated specifically to this task. And it's going to do it really smooth and easily and quickly.
00:36:55.880 --> 00:36:59.560
And once you do that, it sort of like lets you know what you're about to experience with
00:36:59.560 --> 00:37:04.920
everything else, which is like expect everything to have this level of like polish around it.
00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:10.680
I'm glad you think so. I remember actually, I don't know. Another thing that actually did
00:37:10.680 --> 00:37:16.920
help with croutons growth was when you discovered the app and you because I had made like a launch
00:37:16.920 --> 00:37:21.240
style icon of the app and then just sort of tweeted it out. Like, please, notice me.
00:37:21.240 --> 00:37:26.520
Was that back when I was trying to fill my whole screen with all launched app icons?
00:37:26.520 --> 00:37:30.760
Yeah. And I think you must have installed it because it was going to help fill the screen.
00:37:30.760 --> 00:37:34.120
And then you obviously opened it and started using it. And you posted a video of like,
00:37:34.120 --> 00:37:37.720
"Oh, look at this ingredient keypad." And I was like, "Oh, no, please don't show everyone what
00:37:37.720 --> 00:37:42.280
I've been doing." It's kind of like a, I don't know if you feel this, but it's really bizarre
00:37:42.280 --> 00:37:47.320
seeing people actually use your app. And I always find that it's a very uncomfortable experience of
00:37:47.320 --> 00:37:49.800
of like, please don't break, please don't break.
00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:52.800
- It doesn't help that for me,
00:37:52.800 --> 00:37:55.080
like you built Crouton and you were the main user
00:37:55.080 --> 00:37:58.360
'cause you said you were the person who cooked all the time.
00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:01.560
I built Dark Noise because my wife
00:38:01.560 --> 00:38:03.560
uses a white noise app every night.
00:38:03.560 --> 00:38:06.920
And I very occasionally do, but not very often.
00:38:06.920 --> 00:38:11.920
And what I found is my wife is very good at finding bugs
00:38:11.920 --> 00:38:14.120
and they would come up at night
00:38:14.120 --> 00:38:16.440
'cause that's when she would hit play on the thing
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:21.700
And like constantly, like I would like get anxiety going to bed when she'd pull
00:38:21.700 --> 00:38:24.600
her phone out sometimes because, you know, she'd be like, "Oh."
00:38:24.600 --> 00:38:25.720
- "You're not just 3am."
00:38:25.720 --> 00:38:26.520
- Yeah.
00:38:26.520 --> 00:38:29.920
Or like it wouldn't fade up correctly or it would sound, even if she didn't say
00:38:29.920 --> 00:38:34.360
anything, it's just like this like, like tense feeling.
00:38:34.360 --> 00:38:35.840
So I very much know that.
00:38:35.840 --> 00:38:39.180
I've never seen anybody in the wild using it, even if it was super popular.
00:38:39.180 --> 00:38:43.000
I don't know that that's something that I would ever really expect to see, but I'm
00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:43.880
definitely not there either.
00:38:44.060 --> 00:38:48.560
But yeah, whenever people like tweet a screenshot of here's a mix I made or
00:38:48.560 --> 00:38:52.700
whatever, it's always that same feeling of like, I should be proud, but.
00:38:52.700 --> 00:38:54.900
It's like heart rate just goes straight up.
00:38:54.900 --> 00:38:56.240
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:38:56.240 --> 00:38:58.940
It's like, it's like doing a live demo somehow.
00:38:58.940 --> 00:39:00.420
It's the same kind of feeling, I guess.
00:39:00.420 --> 00:39:02.480
It's just very stressful.
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:03.440
Yeah, I think.
00:39:03.440 --> 00:39:06.860
And going back to your, um, about your wife giving feedback, I actually think like
00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:11.340
that's one of, been one of the key parts of Crouton success as well as actually
00:39:11.340 --> 00:39:13.500
like when I build something, I'll show it to my wife.
00:39:13.540 --> 00:39:17.300
"Oh, what do you think of this?" And because she's got no context of what I've been trying to achieve
00:39:17.300 --> 00:39:21.700
or sometimes you might spend ages on something and so you're just committed to it because you've put
00:39:21.700 --> 00:39:25.460
in the effort. And so having someone that can just look at it and be like, "Hmm, I think you can do
00:39:25.460 --> 00:39:29.940
better than this." Or she's always very nice about how she delivers the feedback, but she's also
00:39:29.940 --> 00:39:35.060
very good at pushing me on things that I probably should try harder on. She's also very good at
00:39:35.060 --> 00:39:39.380
finding bugs. So whenever she's cooking, she usually comes with a list of feedback afterwards
00:39:39.380 --> 00:39:46.180
on what I could do better. Oh man, yeah. It's, I mean, it really is like, that's the best thing,
00:39:46.180 --> 00:39:50.740
right? Is somebody, somebody who's not you. Cause like when I'm using my own software,
00:39:50.740 --> 00:39:56.420
I feel like I'm tiptoeing around it all the time anyway. So to me, everything I make feels like
00:39:56.420 --> 00:40:03.140
it's a house of cards that's about to fall apart. No, I mean, like, I feel like everything's going
00:40:03.140 --> 00:40:07.460
to break if I just touch it wrong. You know what I mean? And so I probably, or not probably,
00:40:07.460 --> 00:40:10.420
I definitely don't use it probably like a normal person would.
00:40:10.420 --> 00:40:15.300
Yeah, my wife is good about using it like a normal person.
00:40:15.300 --> 00:40:20.580
And same for, you know, it's like you're saying, you see it out like your mom was using it.
00:40:20.580 --> 00:40:27.860
And once you get users giving you feedback, it's amazing how they can represent the normal person
00:40:27.860 --> 00:40:32.100
for a lot of use cases where you never are going to be the normal person.
00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:38.900
We can start like ironing out those or rounding out those rough edges, the sharp corners, man,
00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:41.700
there's a there's a phrase there that I'm dancing around and I'm just...
00:40:41.700 --> 00:40:43.620
You hit all of the right words, I think.
00:40:43.620 --> 00:40:47.300
All right, perfect. I at least got all the right words at some point,
00:40:47.300 --> 00:40:50.260
maybe not in the right order all at once, but we got there.
00:40:50.260 --> 00:40:54.980
Yeah, I think user feedback has been really... It's great when you get an email or like a
00:40:54.980 --> 00:40:59.300
message from someone that you can tell they, I guess, have the same vision of the app or what
00:40:59.300 --> 00:41:03.460
it can be. And so you can tell that the feedback is sort of like really in line with your own,
00:41:03.460 --> 00:41:08.100
I guess, views of what you're trying to do. And yeah, I think it's just always really exciting
00:41:08.100 --> 00:41:12.100
when you find a user like that, that you can kind of like bounce ideas off of or get their feedback
00:41:12.100 --> 00:41:16.740
on how they sort of interpreted a feature when they first saw it. And yeah, I always try and
00:41:16.740 --> 00:41:20.100
when I get that kind of feedback, implement those changes as quickly as I can.
00:41:20.100 --> 00:41:27.300
Yeah, for sure. Especially when you're like, when you're in the earlier stage of building something
00:41:27.300 --> 00:41:33.220
and you're excited and you integrate that feedback quickly, you get into this really
00:41:33.220 --> 00:41:41.140
like addicting loop of making people happy. Like I don't know, there's nothing better than that.
00:41:41.140 --> 00:41:47.460
Somebody sending you an email and then you like... I would do this with test flights especially,
00:41:47.460 --> 00:41:52.100
getting a test flight out with it in there and then putting in the notes like, "Thanks, Bob."
00:41:52.740 --> 00:41:57.620
And you're just kind of like, "Yeah, like, maybe they don't care, but I feel like I made their day.
00:41:57.620 --> 00:41:59.380
Like, it just feels really special."
00:41:59.380 --> 00:42:00.980
Yeah, it's really, really satisfying.
00:42:00.980 --> 00:42:03.940
And then that encourages more people to want to send you that feedback.
00:42:03.940 --> 00:42:06.820
And that, like, cycle gets going again.
00:42:06.820 --> 00:42:07.540
Definitely.
00:42:07.540 --> 00:42:12.740
I haven't been in that in a while. And it's almost depressing when you're not because it's,
00:42:12.740 --> 00:42:18.980
I don't know, it's like, it makes it so much easier to kind of get into that flow, I feel like.
00:42:18.980 --> 00:42:21.780
Yeah, I think it's definitely one of the most helpful things when you're kind of in like a
00:42:21.780 --> 00:42:25.700
a slump of motivation. Yeah. If someone just sends through something like, oh, hey, it'd
00:42:25.700 --> 00:42:30.020
be cool if it did this, then you just can like jump in and smash it out. Whereas I find
00:42:30.020 --> 00:42:34.700
when I'm working on like bigger features, it's way easier just to sort of, I guess,
00:42:34.700 --> 00:42:37.740
not, not do any work on it because I know that if I do, I'm going to have to tackle
00:42:37.740 --> 00:42:42.180
this really big problem. And so those little things are great kind of like funnels where
00:42:42.180 --> 00:42:45.140
you, you do the little thing and then you suddenly find that you're working on the big
00:42:45.140 --> 00:42:48.820
challenging thing again without kind of noticing. And so it's just a good way of getting back
00:42:48.820 --> 00:42:49.820
into it.
00:42:49.820 --> 00:42:52.180
Those quality, it's nice to have like quality of life.
00:42:52.180 --> 00:42:57.180
Quick wins, I guess, would be the, uh, the corporate term for it, but it could,
00:42:57.180 --> 00:42:58.980
yeah, I can really kickstart things again.
00:42:58.980 --> 00:43:04.100
I guess, speaking of that, it feels like from the outside, at least you've been
00:43:04.100 --> 00:43:08.540
going through, or you just went through one of those with, with kind of the whole
00:43:08.540 --> 00:43:13.220
live activities, dynamic Island side of things, it felt like you got like into a
00:43:13.220 --> 00:43:17.900
frenzy of, uh, coming up with ideas and tweeting about it and getting a bunch of
00:43:17.900 --> 00:43:19.860
feedback and then getting those ideas in there.
00:43:19.860 --> 00:43:21.800
And it was really fun to watch from the outside.
00:43:21.800 --> 00:43:25.940
I'm curious what your experience was with that, the whole iOS 16 release cycle.
00:43:25.940 --> 00:43:31.780
Yeah, I feel like that one was some pretty ideal timing because I just released
00:43:31.780 --> 00:43:35.940
timer support, which was one of those features where I'd just been working on for
00:43:35.940 --> 00:43:39.300
ages. And, um, cause I work on it mostly in my spare time.
00:43:39.300 --> 00:43:43.580
I'd had, I guess, two kids over the last couple of years and was just not having the
00:43:43.580 --> 00:43:44.740
same evening time to work on it.
00:43:44.740 --> 00:43:47.180
So I had this feature, which I was working on trying to get time to support out.
00:43:47.220 --> 00:43:54.100
And then I think like maybe a month before iOS 16 or before like the Dynamic Island anyway,
00:43:54.100 --> 00:43:56.120
I got that out the door.
00:43:56.120 --> 00:43:59.340
And so once they showed the Dynamic Island at the keynote, it was almost like straight
00:43:59.340 --> 00:44:01.260
away like, "Oh, this is like perfect."
00:44:01.260 --> 00:44:04.860
Because one of the big problems with timer apps, the system time is great because it
00:44:04.860 --> 00:44:06.940
gets priority in the system.
00:44:06.940 --> 00:44:10.460
So when it goes off, you know that it's going off because it makes the noise and vibrates.
00:44:10.460 --> 00:44:14.640
But as a third-party app, all you can do is send a notification and the user has to go
00:44:14.640 --> 00:44:19.600
back to the app to see what's happening. And so with live activities, then you have an opportunity
00:44:19.600 --> 00:44:24.320
to kind of like break free from those bounds. And like, you can actually show the user that
00:44:24.320 --> 00:44:29.360
they've got a timer going and how long's left. And then you can't do as much when the time is
00:44:29.360 --> 00:44:33.680
finished, but I think it's still, yeah, that whole experience of like, yeah, you've got something
00:44:33.680 --> 00:44:36.640
running in the background and being able to present it to the user outside of the app was
00:44:36.640 --> 00:44:43.440
pretty awesome and yeah, perfect timing. And so yeah, pretty much as soon as the keynote finished,
00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:46.960
I quickly like mocked up what I thought it was going to look like, because I just felt like,
00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:51.200
I don't know, something about the bouncy animations just like got to me. I was like, I need to.
00:44:51.200 --> 00:44:52.960
Of the dynamic island itself?
00:44:52.960 --> 00:44:56.880
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think with live activities, I probably would have taken it a bit slower,
00:44:56.880 --> 00:45:00.000
but the dynamic island, I don't know, something about it just.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.320
I mean, it got everybody. It was one of those, it was one of those features where
00:45:04.320 --> 00:45:08.000
watching it in the keynote, you're like, oh man, they did it. Like,
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:13.520
they really knocked this out of the park. I think it's similar to like the iPad cursor support,
00:45:13.520 --> 00:45:19.680
where you were just like, "Whoa, this is different in a way that Apple's different on things,
00:45:19.680 --> 00:45:23.840
but also it feels like they nailed it in a way where sometimes they're just annoying with being
00:45:23.840 --> 00:45:28.960
different." I think I made like some audible noises when I played that sort of intro video.
00:45:28.960 --> 00:45:34.160
Yeah, so I mocked up what I thought that could look like because they hadn't even released the
00:45:34.160 --> 00:45:37.840
APIs at that point. So it was sort of, it wasn't really clear what you were going to be able to do.
00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:38.340
Right.
00:45:38.340 --> 00:45:41.440
But it just kind of took a stab at it based on what they'd shown.
00:45:41.440 --> 00:45:46.940
And then, yeah, once the APIs came out, I kind of just got stuck into trying to see what it would look like.
00:45:46.940 --> 00:45:49.400
And, um, yeah, it was quite a fun experience.
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:56.560
And then when I tweeted about it, there was a lot of sort of engagement and interest in the feature, which I think always helps when you get buy-in from other people.
00:45:56.560 --> 00:45:58.340
You're like, oh yeah, I should, I should keep going with this.
00:45:58.340 --> 00:45:59.920
Cause you know, people are going to use it.
00:45:59.920 --> 00:46:00.100
Yeah.
00:46:00.100 --> 00:46:06.920
Cause you were kind of one of the early like developers who jumped on it that kind of got a lot of people's attention.
00:46:06.920 --> 00:46:11.480
like, oh man, look at what this thing can be. Yeah. That was one of those times when I kind
00:46:11.480 --> 00:46:14.840
of actually hadn't really thought through what I was posting. I just did like a quick screen
00:46:14.840 --> 00:46:20.280
recording of it working and kind of threw it up. I'm thinking like, oh, you know, people might like
00:46:20.280 --> 00:46:25.640
to see this. And then it did surprisingly well. And I think like Mike Stern from Apple retweeted
00:46:25.640 --> 00:46:29.960
it, which was pretty cool. And yeah, it got a lot of interest, um, which just, yeah, helps with
00:46:29.960 --> 00:46:35.080
motivation and keeping going. So then between when that was announced and when they launched
00:46:35.080 --> 00:46:40.520
16.1, I was pretty flat out just trying to get it working. And there's a bunch of complications in
00:46:40.520 --> 00:46:44.600
the way the API works that you sort of have to work around. So, there's a lot of back and
00:46:44.600 --> 00:46:48.760
forwards and trying to figure out how to get... The constraints of the layout, I guess, are quite
00:46:48.760 --> 00:46:53.400
different to a normal UI view. So, you're just trying to work out how to build what you want
00:46:53.400 --> 00:47:00.040
within quite a constrained system was a good challenge. Now, do you feel like that excitement
00:47:00.040 --> 00:47:06.600
and engagement you were getting pre-release, did that translate into anything post-release?
00:47:06.600 --> 00:47:12.520
Like, do you think you got more write-ups included in some lists or anything from Apple?
00:47:12.520 --> 00:47:17.560
And did that make any impact on sales? Yeah, I guess it's hard to know whether the
00:47:17.560 --> 00:47:23.080
build-up before the launch was what caused it. I think one of the main things was I was fortunate
00:47:23.080 --> 00:47:28.200
enough to get featured in some of Apple's lists for the live activity support. And so,
00:47:28.920 --> 00:47:32.920
And in a few countries, it was quite high up on the list, which was awesome. And so, I think that
00:47:32.920 --> 00:47:36.440
was maybe where other publications and sites were looking to sort of build these lists.
00:47:36.440 --> 00:47:37.000
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:41.720
And so, yeah, it's pretty awesome being able to kind of, I don't know, you make like a splash
00:47:41.720 --> 00:47:44.840
across the internet, I guess, where you're just like popping up in a bunch of different places.
00:47:44.840 --> 00:47:51.000
It was definitely from that was the pretty significant spike in downloads and revenue.
00:47:51.000 --> 00:47:56.600
So, yeah, I think it was really made it worthwhile because I put quite a lot into it.
00:47:56.600 --> 00:48:00.200
And then I was sort of before release day was kind of just worried like,
00:48:00.200 --> 00:48:03.480
"Oh, maybe I've done all of this and no one's going to notice or it's not going to be that useful."
00:48:03.480 --> 00:48:09.240
And so it was validating, I guess, to see it land pretty well and get some good feedback on it.
00:48:09.240 --> 00:48:14.120
And also, it's always nice to get a little revenue bump from those kind of things. So,
00:48:14.120 --> 00:48:19.400
yeah, it was really cool. Yeah, no, that makes sense. This is an aside. I didn't want to interrupt
00:48:19.400 --> 00:48:25.080
that conversation. But if anybody at Apple is listening, these complaints about the alarms
00:48:25.720 --> 00:48:32.120
not working correctly. I just have to put this out in the world because at least once a week,
00:48:32.120 --> 00:48:38.040
my wife brings this up to me that I need to put this out into the world. We need an alarm kit,
00:48:38.040 --> 00:48:46.520
like some sort of way for developers to make alarms that are not the Apple alarm app, because
00:48:46.520 --> 00:48:53.480
they're really problematic for people who rely on them for their job. My wife is one of them.
00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:56.600
She has like all these alarms that are very important for the work that she does.
00:48:56.600 --> 00:49:01.640
When she has a day off or something like that, she can't just hit a button to say,
00:49:01.640 --> 00:49:05.080
"Turn off my alarm, my weekly alarms," or anything like that.
00:49:05.080 --> 00:49:08.440
And I know there's... And trust me, I've brought them up. There's like shortcuts you could build
00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:14.440
to try and make this. But this is the exact type of thing that I or somebody should be able to
00:49:14.440 --> 00:49:20.120
build an app that's like a nice wrapper around the system alarms. And I'm sure it's not the
00:49:20.120 --> 00:49:24.560
the most important problem Apple has, but it would be really, really nice.
00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:25.760
It would be awesome.
00:49:25.760 --> 00:49:29.080
If you could send them to like home pods as well, if you could create a timer and
00:49:29.080 --> 00:49:33.160
have it like ring on a home pod, that would be, that was the kind of stuff when I
00:49:33.160 --> 00:49:36.000
was building out the timer feature, it's like, this is great, but yeah, as soon as
00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:38.880
you leave the app, it's kind of not as useful.
00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:41.640
So yeah, if you could send something to like a home pod or have it, once it's
00:49:41.640 --> 00:49:44.160
finished respond the same way the system responds.
00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:45.000
Yeah.
00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:45.680
That would be awesome.
00:49:45.680 --> 00:49:49.240
And I get that's like, it's like a huge undertaking because of all the.
00:49:49.240 --> 00:50:04.840
Bad actors that you'd have to work around like it'd be like notifications right where you have to give people the power to turn them off because you know Uber is going to be somehow sending you ads through alarms like that's the inevitable thing that's going to happen with any.
00:50:04.840 --> 00:50:08.840
Your phone would just be like a grenade that just could go off at any time with a siren.
00:50:08.840 --> 00:50:12.200
Yeah, because alarms can break out of the silence feature.
00:50:12.200 --> 00:50:16.620
So I get it's just like a sacred cow and that's probably more important than anything.
00:50:16.620 --> 00:50:19.120
But you know, just throwing that out there.
00:50:19.120 --> 00:50:24.480
If we're looking if you're looking for ideas for iOS 17, we'll take it just looking at
00:50:24.480 --> 00:50:27.200
an empty whiteboard like we got nothing.
00:50:27.200 --> 00:50:28.200
Here we go.
00:50:28.200 --> 00:50:30.960
It'll make at least one developer very happy.
00:50:30.960 --> 00:50:31.960
That's right.
00:50:31.960 --> 00:50:32.960
Yeah, there'll be two of us.
00:50:32.960 --> 00:50:33.960
Yeah.
00:50:33.960 --> 00:50:34.960
Oh, man.
00:50:34.960 --> 00:50:38.720
man. Is there anything else you want to talk about with, with crouton,
00:50:38.720 --> 00:50:43.440
any other fun, interesting secret stories you want to put out into the world?
00:50:43.440 --> 00:50:47.680
Uh, secret stories. Goodness. Um, I don't think so.
00:50:47.680 --> 00:50:51.680
No worries. I don't normally ask people that. I don't know why I went,
00:50:51.680 --> 00:50:54.200
went with that, but I wish I did have a secret story.
00:50:54.200 --> 00:50:57.560
I feel like that would be quite a good, like no to end on like this one time.
00:50:57.560 --> 00:50:58.880
You can just make something up.
00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:03.280
That's even more pressure. I'll come up as soon as this calls ended,
00:51:03.280 --> 00:51:04.400
I'll be like, I should have said that.
00:51:04.400 --> 00:51:05.240
- Perfect.
00:51:05.240 --> 00:51:06.720
Yeah, I just wanted to make sure
00:51:06.720 --> 00:51:09.020
that when you go to bed tonight,
00:51:09.020 --> 00:51:09.980
instead of sleeping,
00:51:09.980 --> 00:51:12.960
you can just rehash that question over and over
00:51:12.960 --> 00:51:14.640
and keep coming up with better answers.
00:51:14.640 --> 00:51:16.440
- You can guarantee that I'll be, yeah,
00:51:16.440 --> 00:51:17.920
replaying this whole conversation.
00:51:17.920 --> 00:51:18.760
- Yeah, yeah.
00:51:18.760 --> 00:51:20.160
That's really the goal here.
00:51:20.160 --> 00:51:23.500
To make people as uncomfortable as possible.
00:51:23.500 --> 00:51:26.080
Oh man.
00:51:26.080 --> 00:51:27.560
- You just make sure not to pitch that to them
00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:28.860
before they agree to come on.
00:51:28.860 --> 00:51:29.960
- Yeah, no, no.
00:51:29.960 --> 00:51:32.920
That's something once you get them stuck on a call
00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:37.800
they can't escape. Then you look on. Your personal enjoyment. Right, right. Exactly. Okay.
00:51:37.800 --> 00:51:45.880
I guess we can go ahead and wrap things up. But before we do, I'll ask you the question I ask
00:51:45.880 --> 00:51:50.760
everybody, which is, what's a person or people out there that have inspired you that you'd recommend
00:51:50.760 --> 00:51:56.680
others check out? Yeah. So I think I'm going to, I've got three, I think, three recommendations.
00:51:56.680 --> 00:52:01.800
The first one I've already mentioned was Daniel Gauthier with Upper Head and No Bother. I think
00:52:01.800 --> 00:52:05.640
if you use Crouton, you can definitely see that there's some inspiration there. And yeah, his
00:52:05.640 --> 00:52:13.880
apps just have a degree of polish that is quite rare these days. And he's also, yeah, really great
00:52:13.880 --> 00:52:18.760
on Twitter as well. Just, I don't know, keeps the feed a bit more lighthearted than it has been
00:52:18.760 --> 00:52:23.880
recently. And there's a little bit of, you know, cross pollination here because his,
00:52:23.880 --> 00:52:30.280
I interviewed him and his episode will be coming out as we record tomorrow. So yeah, go listen to
00:52:30.280 --> 00:52:34.280
the one before that's the thing I'm supposed to say, right? Like organic growth or something
00:52:34.280 --> 00:52:36.200
like that. Always plug. Yeah. Yeah.
00:52:36.200 --> 00:52:43.080
Second recommendation is Ryan Ashcraft, who you have had on as well. Yeah. Definitely around
00:52:43.080 --> 00:52:47.080
those early sort of days with Crouton, a lot of the work he was doing with food noms with like the,
00:52:47.080 --> 00:52:52.280
the scanning, the nutrition labels, and also just the way that he kind of like marketed food noms as
00:52:52.280 --> 00:52:56.680
well was really like, definitely inspired me with a lot of the things I've done on Crouton.
00:52:56.680 --> 00:53:03.080
Last one was Kyle Hughes, who I think is just a great, a great, a great follow on Twitter as well.
00:53:03.080 --> 00:53:05.720
Again, if you're just wanting something to like make the feed a bit more exciting,
00:53:05.720 --> 00:53:10.280
his tweets are always so, I don't know if he's crafting them, but they feel so well crafted.
00:53:10.280 --> 00:53:16.520
And so just on the point every time. And he also has a few apps as well that are really nice just
00:53:16.520 --> 00:53:20.200
in how simple they are. So I definitely recommend checking out some of his stuff.
00:53:21.080 --> 00:53:27.160
Kyle's somehow both nice, like he's not like one of these like incendiary, you know, Twitter
00:53:27.160 --> 00:53:33.480
commentators, but then somehow it feels like he's like making fun of just corporate developer life
00:53:33.480 --> 00:53:39.000
in an incredibly effective way without it punching down ever. Very, very entertaining. I can't tell
00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:45.000
you how many of his tweets I end up sharing to friends because they make me laugh so much.
00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:45.800
Definitely. Yeah.
00:53:46.520 --> 00:53:53.240
Thank you again for coming on. This is... It's been really fun watching Crouton grow over the
00:53:53.240 --> 00:53:59.320
last couple years. I guess I didn't mention it, but it's taken over mine. Like I said,
00:53:59.320 --> 00:54:05.240
we were Paprika users for forever because all my data was sitting in there. That's what the
00:54:05.240 --> 00:54:10.280
family used and it's hard to switch people over. And then I ended up trying a whole bunch of them
00:54:10.280 --> 00:54:13.880
because I just wanted to try something that was a little more modern.
00:54:14.600 --> 00:54:18.680
like you had mentioned, I've been playing with Crouton for a while and it's just,
00:54:18.680 --> 00:54:21.640
it just makes me happy to use. And finally I'm like, you know what, that's,
00:54:21.640 --> 00:54:23.560
that's it. That's why do I need,
00:54:23.560 --> 00:54:26.920
and iCloud syncing and all that. Like it,
00:54:26.920 --> 00:54:29.920
I think that was part of the thing originally was you didn't have iCloud syncing,
00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:34.720
right? Or not iCloud family sharing. And so all the pieces were in place.
00:54:34.720 --> 00:54:39.120
And so it's, it's been my go-to for, for a little bit now. And, uh,
00:54:39.120 --> 00:54:42.960
that's awesome. It makes me, it makes really happy to, uh,
00:54:43.320 --> 00:54:45.280
to like know the person who's made the thing
00:54:45.280 --> 00:54:47.000
that I'm using all the time.
00:54:47.000 --> 00:54:49.080
So thank you so much for coming on.
00:54:49.080 --> 00:54:50.160
- It's been great.
00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:53.160
- So where can people find you and your work?
00:54:53.160 --> 00:54:55.600
- That's a good question 'cause at the time of recording,
00:54:55.600 --> 00:54:58.000
you can find me on Twitter, but when this goes out,
00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:00.460
who knows where you'll be able to find me?
00:55:00.460 --> 00:55:02.520
In Christchurch, New Zealand for sure.
00:55:02.520 --> 00:55:06.040
- Yeah, as we've established, that's the place to go.
00:55:06.040 --> 00:55:08.360
- You can find me on Twitter with the handle
00:55:08.360 --> 00:55:10.200
justmedevin at the moment,
00:55:10.200 --> 00:55:12.240
and hopefully for a long time into the future,
00:55:12.240 --> 00:55:14.840
but we'll see what happens.
00:55:14.840 --> 00:55:16.120
- Do you have a website or something
00:55:16.120 --> 00:55:20.280
just in case we don't have that option?
00:55:20.280 --> 00:55:21.980
- I did start a blog recently,
00:55:21.980 --> 00:55:25.800
twominutenoodles.co.nz.
00:55:25.800 --> 00:55:27.200
You can find me there,
00:55:27.200 --> 00:55:30.160
but it probably won't be the most interesting thing
00:55:30.160 --> 00:55:32.560
that you'll look up, but I will be there.
00:55:32.560 --> 00:55:33.400
- Perfect.
00:55:33.400 --> 00:55:36.720
Thanks for listening.
00:55:36.720 --> 00:55:39.520
This episode was edited by Jonathan Ruiz.
00:55:39.520 --> 00:55:40.980
If you'd like to discuss the show,
00:55:40.980 --> 00:55:45.700
You can find me on Twitter @_chuckyc or tweet the show directly @LaunchedFM.
00:55:45.700 --> 00:55:50.060
I'd really appreciate a rating or review in your podcast app of choice.
00:55:50.060 --> 00:55:54.460
And you can find show notes and more at LaunchedFM.com.
00:55:54.460 --> 00:55:57.040
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