#0: The Setup
In which Ben invites you to view his "In Progress" list
Dear Reader,
Like many developers I have a lot of ideas that I start on only to see them go extinct as I move onto the next idea.
At the moment I’m:
Actively developing 5 iOS apps, one of which has been worked on periodically for over 6 years and one that just needs me to create screenshots and submit to Apple.
Slowly building 2 games along with a dice-based battle system I devised last week that I’m rapidly prototyping in SwiftUI.
Entering the final stages of porting the Ink language over to Swift… then building a “Choose your own Adventure” game on top of it.
Maintaining the popular Music Library Tracker app and expanding it to find all of your tracks that have been upgraded to Dolby Atmos (along with the Spatial Audio Finder, the largest database of Atmos tracks available on Apple Music).
Making minor updates and fixes to my other published apps like Browser Note and Chaise Longue to 5k.
Looking after my biggest side projects; a number of artwork finders such as iTunes Artwork Finder, Apple Music Artwork Finder, and Apple TV Shows & Music Artwork Finder.
Avoiding the 14 items sitting in my “💡 App Ideas” list.
This is in addition to my freelance work which pays my bills and takes up the majority of my time… until now! Going into 2023 I’ve decided I want to focus more on getting my own projects out the door and documenting the process that goes into turning vague ideas into actual apps.
For the past few months I’ve been meaning to start a newsletter as a way to motivate me to getting projects finished but also as a way of marketing new apps to my existing users. I’m terrible at marketing and have mostly just launched stuff by putting up a quick post on my blog and tweeting it; this isn’t great as whilst the people that follow me are more likely to be interested in my other apps, the Twitter algorithm1 is such that more often than not my followers aren’t even seeing those announcements.
I get a lot of email correspondence from users of my apps and websites so this feels like a more natural way to keep you updated as to what I’m working on. I’m aiming to send content every 2 weeks which will include roadmaps and details of my development process along with any links or media I’ve found interesting.
The first of these will be on Wednesday 30th November2 and will include an update on where I am with my Spatial Audio matching along with a preview of the dice-based battle system I’m currently prototyping.
Thank you in advance to those of you that subscribe; whether you know me for my apps, games, or artwork finders I’m sure there will be something in the upcoming issues that will be of interest to you!
- Ben
And Twitter may not be here in it’s current guise for much longer. I’m not as pessimistic as others about Twitter’s short-term future but I can’t ignore that there is a chance it just disappears overnight.
As I type this I realise that is my son’s birthday *makes mental note to complete newsletter the day before*