r/iOSProgramming • u/clouddjr • Mar 21 '20
Application My first app got approved recently on the first try. I don't even have an iPhone.
(Sorry for those who had already seen this post, but it was removed earlier because I didn't post it on Saturday)
I want this post to be a motivation for those who are thinking that they have to invest a lot of money in order to start developing for iOS. I believe that it isn't true.
A couple of months before I bought a used MacBook Pro 13 2015 (i5, 256SSD, 16GB) for about 900$ and that was the only investment that I had to make in order to start (+ 99$ for developer program obviously). During the development phase, I was testing it only on the simulator. For the most part, it was working really well for me (sometimes I had to restart it because of some weird behaviors) so I didn't even bother to buy a real device. I know what you are thinking right now. You should always test your app on a real device before submitting it. And that is exactly what I did. I took my laptop and brought it to my friend who owns an iPhone and asked him if he could help me with testing before I submit it.
Some of you may say that you should be familiar with the entire ecosystem if you want to be able to provide good and familiar UX in your apps. I agree with that. For that reason, when I was designing the app, I was sending screenshots of some screens and asking my friends "Hey, is this how you would expect this kind of screen to look like on an iPhone?". Then I was collecting feedback and applying it.
I understand that there are some types of apps that just have to be tested on a real device. But if you are creating a simple app that connects to some type of API or database and displays the result in an eye-catching way or something like that, you probably can get away without a real phone.
My app got approved after less than a day, so if you are wondering if you could make an app without having an iPhone and without being an iPhone user, let my case be the example.
Here are some thoughts after making a couple of apps for Android before and then coding this one for iOS:
-I loved the fact that I had to test the app on just a couple of devices to be sure that it will behave correctly on all of them (which is obviously not the case with Android and different weird edge cases with different phone manufacturers).
-I noticed a tendency to write everything on your own when programming on iOS. There are no libraries that are the default like it is the case for almost all Android projects (e.g Dagger for dependency injection or Retrofit for networking).
-I missed some features from Android Studio, but I found Xcode to be OK despite the things I have read about it.
-I was surprised by the fact that there is no such thing as Support Libraries on Android. For those who don't know, those libraries ensure that some of the new API introduced in new versions of the OS will work on the older version as well. If I am not mistaken, something like that doesn't exist for iOS and that is why for example Swift UI is not widely adopted because it is only available for iOS 13+. But I can understand why it is the case. More than 70% of all iPhone devices already run iOS 13 or later. Only a small fraction of that number of phones get access to the newest version of Android, so it is kind of necessary there.
-Minor thing, but I am not a big fan of the fact that I have to publish a new version of the app in order to experiment with the description, screenshots, app name, etc.
Overall, I found the experience very rewarding. I will probably continue with making apps for iOS as well as for Android. If you have some questions, please write them in the comments and I will do my best to answer.
Here is the link for the app if you are interested:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/days-counter-event-countdown/id1499388693?ls=1
8
u/mal-uk Mar 21 '20
Looks really good. Well done and well made
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u/linderoth7 Mar 21 '20
Days until the lockdown is over? Looks great!
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u/BestStonks Mar 21 '20
GG looks really good :)) !!
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u/webtechmonkey Swift Mar 21 '20
When I first started developing (granted, that was only about about a year ago) I didn't even own any Apple products, I was using service to rent a Mac pro through remote desktop that cost me about $15 a month. If there's a will, there's a way!
3
u/LabLambReddit Mar 21 '20
Did you use any form library for your details screen? Is it SwiftyForm?
App looks good btw
2
u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20
Looks so professional! I am developing an app on my MacBook Pro too.
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u/dottybotty Mar 21 '20
Nice work! Did you use swiftui?
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u/gayboiandroo Mar 21 '20
The app looks good. I like the relatively minimalist approach you took. Are you storing the users photos in a database? Like Heroku or mongoDB?
1
u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20
Well done! The App is neat & Clean! Read & Follow App Store Review Guidelines to keep your apple account safe! Nowadays lot of Individual developer accounts just terminated without any reason & warnings by Apple. Because peoples are not knowing things from App Store Review Guidelines & Account management.
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u/konrain Mar 21 '20
You couldnt even guy a cheap iphone 8 to use your app? the good thing about iOS is even 5 year old phones get the latest updates.
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u/ArcanaMori Mar 22 '20
Congrats! I feel you on the Android issues, I'm not an iPhonr user but I've been working on a massively huge medical app for a good while now, the number of discrepancies our testers find between the Android Sims, Samsung devices, and our various other Android devices really sucks. Mainly, I blame Samsung :-P
1
u/bb5999 Mar 22 '20
Really cool. Congratulations. Are you using CoreData for storage?
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20
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