Excelling 2.8 (12 year anniversary update)

Time to update the 12-year veteran, Excelling!

TV gif. Steve Buscemi as Lenny in 30 Rock walks down a school hallway wearing a backwards cap and skateboard over his shoulder. He smiles as he approaches someone in the hall. Text, "How do you do, fellow kids?"

Excelling is the first app I ever worked on, it launched way back in 2012 🤯

That’s before the flat design aesthetic and large screens took over, here’s how the 1.0 version looked:

The icons had to have some depth, and I did not have money at the time, so I tough myself Cheetah3D and hand-crafted them. It was so much fun:

On the engineering side I wrote it all in Objective-C. 12 years later, I’m primarily coding in Swift, so opening the project is like seeing an old friend. I will always have a soft spot for Objective C.

Where was I going with this…? Oh yes – the update! Excelling 2.8 is a major update that improves compatibility with the latest devices, including:

Extensive improvements to dark mode support
Significantly increases database reliability
Addresses a rare scrolling bug seen in iOS 18 devices
Several enhancements for iOS 18 devices

Even though its a niche app, I love that users still find Excelling helpful after 12 years. Here’s to another year 🍻!

Excelling 2.8 is now available from the App Store, check it out!

Marc