Blue Lemon bits – Page 10

Why I will not ship a Catalyst port of NewsWave

When Catalyst was announced at WWDC I was very excited about the possibilities that it created for NewsWave. Even though NewsWave launched as an iOS-only app, bringing it to the Mac has always been a priority.

A couple of months ago I started woking on porting it. As it turns out, and as you probably figured out based on the title, there were complications…

I got the app working on the Mac with little work, almost none really. However, when I started to change it to make it more Mac-like is when I started to face difficulties. It became clear this would not be a relatively easy undertaking: missing APIs, non-Mac behaviors and bugs meant I would need to invest a lot of time to, at most, end up with a barely decent Mac port. If you look at the best Catalyst ports out there you’ll see what I mean, they’re not bad but they are certainly not great either…

When I look at how I spend my time (remember I’m doing this part time), I don’t believe using it to create something decent makes sense. Here’s the Catalyst port of NewsWave running on the Mac for your reference:

Screen Shot 2019 10 27 at 22 32 50

So, what am I doing in the end? Well, I’m building a native Mac app! I’m considering experimenting with SwiftUI but based on what fellow developers said, I’ll likely will stick to Storyboards for now.

It’ll take a bit more than a Catalyst port but certainly will be a significantly better app for the Mac and for my users.

Until next time,

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi

NewsWave iOS13 Feature Update – 2019.8

About a week ago I released NewsWave 2019.8, the iOS13 feature update. The objectives were to simplify the onboarding experience, add Dark Mode support and strengthen the app. Here’s a summary of what has changed and the impact it has had so far:

a) Simplifying & clarifying the onboarding experience to avoid the poor conversion rate.

This was a big deal, as mentioned in my previous post, conversion rate -users downloading the app vs. users creating an account- was roughly 20%. This meant, that about 80% of users who downloaded NewsWave never ended up using it.

To solve this issue I believe I’ll need to completely redo the onboarding experience. However, I did a couple of changes hoping to mitigate the issue. First, I renamed ’START FREE TRIAL’ with ‘CREATE ACCOUNT’ to avoid having users incorrectly assume they were getting into an auto-renewable subscription. Second, I changed the description that appears immediately below to clarify any questions the user may have. It now reads: “Create your private account and try all features for free. After 30 days you can subscribe or continue using the app in free mode.”.

IMG 4850 copy

Even though it’s too early to tell, after two weeks I can confirm a very significant jump on conversion rate: from 20% to 50%.

b) Adding Dark Mode

This was quite fun, it involved creating new colors in the Assets for every group of non-standard text, button or background color that should change… Screen Shot 2019 09 22 at 15 48 08

It also meant changing the way colors were called in code…

Screen Shot 2019 09 22 at 15 48 49

And finally, creating a new dark-version of all the icons and images… One of the benefits of not having a designer is that I can do this changes myself and relatively fast. Here’s the example of the dark gray vs. light gray.

Screen Shot 2019 09 22 at 15 48 26

(the dark appearance color of the icon is almost the same color as the background which is why you don’t see it)

c) Under the hood & other minor changes:

On the under the hood area this involved replacing iOS13 deprecated APIs with their newer counterparts and further strengthening of back-end processes to (hopefully) fix a bug that I can’t reproduce.

As for other changes worth highlighting: improvements to the Export OPML process, improvements to how onboarding and renew windows are drawn and tweaks to some NavigationBar titles. For instance, the main timeline is now called ‘Your Timeline’.

Screen Shot 2019 09 22 at 15 47 23

d) Bonus: Changing App Store Keywords & Screenshot:

Something I also tried to improve is discoverability. My ranking is not stellar, if I search for ‘RSS Reader’ NewsWave appears at the 120th position, and if I search for ‘Feed Reader’ the position is 107th… So, not good.

Following advice from ’the web’ I’ve changed the app name in the store to ‘NewsWave: RSS Feed Reader’ and the subtitle is ‘Feeds, Blogs, RSS & News’. After two weeks, not measurable improvement…

I’ll continue to investigate what I can do better, discoverability is by far the key challenge I -and probably many other developers- face. Ah, almost forgot, I also added new ‘Dark Mode’ screenshots to make the app more appealing.

IMG F180EB835D8B 1

Until next week,

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi

iOS 13 & macOS Catalina updates

As October gets underway and leaves are starting to fall in the Bay Area, with the recent launch of iOS13 and the upcoming macOS Catalina release, it’s back to iOS development time.

One of the first things I learned as a part time developer is that you have limited time, prioritizing is critical to get things done. Here are the items I’m focusing on in the next few months:

1. Excelling iOS13 compatibility update (done!):

Even though it’s my oldest and simplest app it’s also the most profitable. Excelling continues to be downloaded frequently and brings regular income every month -typically between $50 to $200-. It’s starting to show its age and it would benefit from an internal makeover but for now I wanted to ensure it worked well in iOS13; this meant adding support for dark mode and fixing bugs and deprecated APIs. After roughly 4 hours of work I submitted the app to Apple and it’s already in the App Store.

2. NewsWave iOS13 feature update (wip):

NewsWave continues to gain users at a steady peace and feedback is at large very positive. There’s however room for improvement, one of the areas that need attention the most is “Onboarding”: data shows out of every 10 people that download the app only 2 end up signing up. I’m guessing this is due to two factors:

a) people are cautious of the $0 In App Purchase, they may incorrectly assume it will start charging them if they don’t unsubscribe.

b) the onboarding message does not convey enough value.

Therefore for the iOS13 feature update, in addition to dark mode support and API improvements I’m tweaking the onboarding experience to mitigate these problems. In addition this update will include many other improvements across the app: syncing, OPML export improvements, etc.

3. NewsWave for iPad / macOS (not started):

Once I ship the iOS13 feature update I’ll start working on a complete overhaul of the iPad (and potentially macOS Catalina) app. Not much to share just yet but I’ll be posting about the progress here.

I’ve loved the vacation break but at the same time I’m so happy to be back to coding on the side. Until next week,

Marc

2019 Holiday Learning Update

As I do every summer, this last few weeks I’ve been deep diving into a new subject: AI & Machine Learning.

Almost every day I pack my laptop, Aurélien Géron’s book -he has done a phenomenal job-, and walk to a coffee shop close by to study.

Yes, that’s an HP laptop right there! It’s great for ML on the go.

It’s been so much fun, not only because of how refreshing this change is: Python instead of Swift, Jupyter Notebooks instead of Xcode, cafeteria instead of home office… But also because of how interesting Machine Learning has turned out to be.

Not only deep diving into Machine Learning gives you many ideas on topics you could work on, but it also allows you to understand its pitfalls (hello YouTube video recommendations or Amazon suggestions). So far I’ve been focusing on everything but neural networks but that will change starting tomorrow. Can’t wait.

On other news, I likely won’t be able to post the following two weeks as I’ll be in Australia for holidays. I’ll pack my faithful HP Spectre and Aurélien’s book to keep at it during flights and during idle times though, so I’ll have plenty to report once back.

Hope you’re having a productive summer.

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi

2019 Holiday Learning

One of the things I deeply enjoyed from my middle & high school summer holidays was how I would, overnight, switch my school routine for almost 2 months of passion projects.

As I grew older and my interests changed I deep dived into different areas: I vividly remember one summer sitting for hours at a time devouring ‘The Three Investigators’ books or on another one discovering how to bring ideas to live with wood. There was no plan about it, just learning areas I was passionate about.

Nowadays I don’t have 2 months of holidays anymore but I like to apply the same concept for my “on the side” projects; for around 2 months I deep dive on a new area I am passionate about. This area must be different from what I work on the rest of the year thus helping me expand my knowledge to areas outside of my existing competencies and enabling me to recharge batteries.

This year I’m spending the time getting up to speed on the latest improvements to AI & Neural Networks and how they can be leveraged for everyday applications. I’ll likely post something more in the future as I work on it more.

Coincidently one of the YouTube channels I follow just posted an excellent high level overview of what AI & ML is. You don’t need to be an engineer nor to code to follow along, totally recommended.

Have you considered summer holiday for your ‘on the side’ projects? If not, I totally recommend it.

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi | Micro.blog -> @MarcMV

NewsWave 2019.7

And just like that, NewsWave 2019.7 is now available on the App Store.

OPML Import / Export

This was one of the most requested features from day one (and it retrospect a feature NewsWave should have shipped with):

-OPML Import: From any app that can export feeds (or using an OPML file) you’ll find an option called “Copy to NewsWave”. This will start the import process, feeds that no longer exist or that return an error will be skipped. Once the import finishes you’ll see the total number of feeds that were successfully added.

-OPML Export: When you trigger it you’ll get a prompt asking you what to do with the file: send via email, save in files, copy to another app… The choice is yours!

Bug fixes & improvements

Many! Thanks to all of the users who shared feedback, here are some of the key fixes / improvements:

-Fixed an issue that could show the “Today” button under incorrect circumstances.

-Added a validation step to know if the user can send email before triggering the “Send Feedback” action.

-Improved the way cleanup is handled if the app has not been opened for a long time.

-Improved the process of syncing deleted feeds between devices.

-Improved link handling of Daring Fireball articles.

-Fixed an issue preventing some of the “Delete Read Articles After” options from being displayed.

-Added an option to manually refresh feed list.

-Fixed an issue that could result in inconsistent scrolling in the feeds view.

-Addressed an issue that could result in views not showing the latest information.

-New subscriptions based on a url search will now grab the latest articles from that feed instead of only future ones.

-Many other tweaks and minor improvements.

What it does not include

It does not include a “Default mix of feeds for new users”. And the reason is that I’m still not sure on the best way to implement it. Should it suggest only 1 recommended mix of feeds, should I recommend a couple? Should I ask new users if they want to subscribe to them or should I just subscribe them by default?

It needs more work and I did not want to delay all the other improvements. I’ll most likely be posting about this soon, it will be one of the main focus areas of 2019.8.

You may have spotted that I just shipped 2019.7 but in previous posts I was referring to 2019.6. You would be right, I released a quick fix for the Import OPML feature.

Until next week,

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi

Using DispatchSemaphore to control async execution

I’ve been debugging the upcoming OPML Import functionality of NewsWave and this bug was driving me nuts: in some cases and for no apparent reason URLSessions would fail without a callback.

At first the bug seemed random, but after a bit of testing I realized the more feeds I tried to import, the more likely the bug would materialize.

After looking at error codes from Xcode, the issue seemed to be related to having too many URLSessions opened in parallel. What can I do to fix this? Well, DispatchSemaphore of course!

Transit

DispatchSemaphore works by allowing certain execution cycles to go through and holding the rest until you signal its time to continue. Here’s an example of how it works, in this case I’m allowing up to 20 simultaneous queries:

let semaphoreOfImportQueries = DispatchSemaphore(value: 20) //Starting
with 20 “credits”.

for iteratorOfFeeds in feedImportQueries{

//Wait reduces semaphoreOfImportQueries by
1, if it reaches 0 the execution will wait here

semaphoreOfImportQueries.wait()

self.functionThatCallsAnAPIAndExecutesAsync(completionHandler: { _ in

//Signal allows the next process to start by adding 1 to semaphoreOfImportQueries

semaphoreOfImportQueries.signal()

})

}

This is a great tool to have in your toolbox when dealing with URL Sessions. Important though, this should always be executed on a background thread else you’ll block the main queue.

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi | Micro.blog -> @MarcMV

NewsWave 2019.6 Progress – 4th of July Holiday

With July 4th landing on a Thursday my wife and I decided to take Friday off and go on a motorcycle trip to Santa Barbara. It’s a 4 hour drive from Palo Alto, 7 it you take the scenic route, and it’s totally worth it. The city is charming, the food is great and the beach is perfect for long walks.

The key to shipping apps on the side is to always put in the hours, so I worked extra hard the previous weekend, during the week and when returning from the trip today (Sunday). Overall I’m quite happy with how the planning turned out.

Enough rambling, where am I on the NewsWave 2019.6 key features?

OPML Export works like a charm, it’s ready to ship. When you trigger it you’ll get a UIDocumentInteractionController asking what you’d like to do with the file: mail, save to file, open in another app…

OPML Import functionality is there but there’s a couple of things that need fine tuning.

Progress indicator: in its current form you see a message saying it’s importing feeds but not how many have already been processed vs. total (specially relevant if you’re importing hundreds of feeds).
Incorrect states: in some rare cases one of the URLSessions fails without a callback, this leads to the UIAlertController “Importing Feeds…” never disappearing as the app believes a feed is still being processed.
Result logs: I’m conflicted about showing it or not, most apps don’t seem to do it. I’m erring on the side of showing how many have been imported successfully which is what most apps do.

On the “Performance Improvements & Bug Fixes” front, I’ve done several changes that result in reduced peak CPU consumption and tweaked the way saving happens to avoid multithreading racing conditions, now all saving is done in a specific synchronized queue. This will hopefully address a rare bug that could lead to old content mysteriously disappearing from a user device.

The final key feature of 2019.6 is creating a “Default mix of feeds for new users”: I’m not sure if I should automatically subscribe new users to the default mix of feeds -ala NetNewsWire– or give users the option during the on-boarding process. If I show them the option during the on-boarding process a follow up question is, should I give them one “NewsWave” default mix, or a couple of mixes to choose from? Questions, questions…

Until next week,

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi | Micro.blog -> @MarcMV

NewsWave 2019.6 Plans

After a couple of releases focused on bug fixes and usability improvements I’m pumped to be working on the first feature update.

2019.6 will focus on adding two of the most requested features:
– OPML Import / Export.
– Default mix of feeds for new users.

In retrospect I should have absolutely shipped with OPML support from the start. At the time I believed most new subscribers would also be new to RSS… WRONG assumption!

I suspect OPML Import/Export to be a bit tricky to implement, still debating if I should develop a new server API or leverage the existing subscription one and call it multiple times… For now I’m more inclined to go with the latter approach as its less code to maintain.

As for the “default” mix of feeds for new users, I’ll be using some of the top subscribed feeds across several subjects. I expect this “default” mix to be used by newcomers to RSS so ideally the user should get around 30 posts a day, not too few, not too many.

Screen Shot 2019 06 28 at 18 08 18
Most Subscribed Feeds in NewsWave. Interesting fact, Daring Fireball has twice the number of subscribers than the second most subscribed feed btw.

In addition to the features above there will be several fine tuning changes as well, to mention a few:
-Optimized feed article management.
-Sync improvements when cascade deleting feeds.
-Improved “Today” behavior.

If all goes well I expect 2019.6* to ship at the end of July, will be sharing more on the import OPML process soon.

Until next week,

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi | Micro.blog -> @MarcMV

*As Castro, Slopes and Overcast I’ve adopted a date-based version-numbering scheme — 2019.6 is the sixth update released in 2019.

Choosing the Right App to Develop

Over the course of my 8 years developing apps on the side I’ve shipped 5 apps.

Deciding what to work on and creating a new project in Xcode is about one of the best feelings in the development world. Everything seems possible, there’s so many ideas to test and none of the complexity is yet visible.

It becomes harder once you start to work on the complex pieces, when you start working on bug fixing, when you focus on polish… Even more when you work on it when you’re not at your best: after a 9 to 5 day of hard work, after your wife/girlfriend goes to bed, in between running errands on a weekend, etc.

To me, the key to overcome the hardships that come with developing on the side is to have passion for what you are creating. Yes, you should think about the monetary angle up front, but if you’re not passionate about what you’re building, if you only think about the monetary angle, it will be very difficult to avoid saying “I’ll do it tomorrow” and go to bed, grab a drink, go for a walk…

Here’s an example of two of the apps I’ve developed for reference: the first one I ever build and the last one I recently shipped.

EXCELLING

Excelling is a reference guide for Excel Users. Yes, you read that right. How could I be motivated by a reference guide? Two reasons:
1. I worked as a Business Analyst at the time, Excel has a lot of functions but discoverability was awful. I really wanted an app like Excelling to exist.
2. It seemed a reasonably easy app to build as my first app.

I will cover it in more length in another post, it is a niche app, but is still performing well today (800 downloads/month).

NEWSWAVE

NewsWave is a twitter style RSS reader. All articles appear in a chronological timeline and you can easily discover & follow feeds thanks to its growing directory.

Why I’m passionate about it? The internet is a huge positive force if used correctly: vast amounts of knowledge, diversity of opinions… However, as companies monopolize content and optimize for clicks we are inadvertently reinforcing biases and creating an increasingly polarized society.

With this project I intent to:
1. Contribute to the open web by making RSS easier to use for the average user.
2. Making discoverability of great content easier (WIP).
3. Create a ML model geared toward providing other points of view for the news you read (WIP).

There’s a lot coming next which I’m extremely excited about, will be posting about it in upcoming posts.

When thinking about your next project on the side, you might want to work on something you care about. That’s what will make it easier to overcome the inevitable difficulties that appear on the path to shipping.

Marc

—-

Twitter -> @MarcMasVi | Micro.blog -> @MarcMV

//Brent Simmons recently re-released NetNewsWire, hands down one of the best Readers out there for the Mac. As an aside, he is also one of the inspirations behind NewsWave.

//David Smith summarized the stages of developing an app very well:
1) Curiosity
2) Excitement
3) Productivity
4) Dispair
5) Polish
6) Ship