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Show HN: I'm 36 years old and this iPhone app took me forever

22 points by wushupork ↗ HN
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=1&mt=8

Quotestagram is an iphone app that let's you easily turn memorable quotes into beautiful images to share on popular social networks. From concept to launch this app took 5 months. It was fraught with difficulties. I didn't know iOS programming. But the app is finally out and I would really love the community's feedback.

39 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 61.8 ms ] thread
deafeye
what kinda techs did you choose to build it with? XCode out of the box? Phonegap?
wushupork
No phonegap - this is 100% native
andygcook
I know this doesn't provide you feedback or any value to the conversation, but I wanted to say congratulations on launching your app. Five months is a long time and it's easy to give up at any point after the initial excitement of building wears off, so great work actually finishing the build.
wushupork
Thank you. Yeah at some point you put in so much that you just want to ship and get it out.
keiferski
Congrats on your first app. One suggestion: the Ayn Rand quote is a little off-putting. I'd suggest a quote by someone less polarizing.
fuzzywalrus
Seconded, perhaps a meta-quote, a quotation about quotes, would be more whimsical and inspiring.

Also, I'd suggest a seperate quote in each screenshot, to illustrate the purpose of the app.

Congrats on your first app!

jason_slack
Can you explain what you mean by "a little off-putting"?

I know this quote and I think it is perfectly fine. Motivational, powerful...

EDIT: Maybe this is because I read her quotes as words and I dont really think about her books.

xauronx
Just the name Ayn Rand is enough to piss people off.
jason_slack
can you elaborate? Her books?
xauronx
Yeah, her books are generally pretty dividing politically/ethical speaking. You'd have to read up on her yourself, but from what I understand, she takes capitalism to the extreme. The average person is lucky to have corporations, if you complain about being abused by them they can and should give the work to someone else, etc etc. Kind of the hero of the ultra rich, which most people have issues with for pretty obvious reasons.
boot
As a topic she is treated a little funny in our society. She becomes the face of all sorts of hate for a lot of ideas that aren't really hers to begin with. Such as the idea you can't complain about being abused by corporations. She never said that. Many corporations were evil in her books.

Anyway, I don't know exactly why, but you can't pick and choose interesting quotes from her like you can from other interesting figures. Like Nietzsche or Kaynes, or whoever. People start frothing at the mouth. Likely irrationally.

stusmall
Just earlier today I had posted something explaining her views on altruism and her moral code. There is so much to hate about her... but it seems a lot of her strongest critics have never read her work.

Also about GP's comment about heros being rich, a lot of the villains in her work are the rich and powerful too.

boot
Just for the sake of discussion. Even if you don't like something a dead person said, usually you just concentrate on the part you did like. Lincoln didn't think Black people should hold office. I still think he's pretty inspirational, mostly because I ignore that other stuff.

Was she a likable personality - No. Don't like her stance on politics? Fine. Her thoughts on individuals with new ideas being persecuted by society - still pretty interesting.

I guess I don't understand the wall of rage people get into with her. Who agrees with everything someone says? Why can't we collectively look at the interesting things she said?

jason_slack
Thanks for explaining. I can see where you are coming from.
27182818284
Seconding this. I came here to post something similar. It'd be like having a George W. Bush quote to start it off. Better off with something more classic. Maybe something really classical from Rome or from Lincoln or whatever, but Ayn Rand is that polarizing.
wushupork
I basically scoured the web and picked the most popular quotes - quite arbitrarily. It wasn't my idea to offend anyone
xauronx
I doubt you offended anyone (at least not here), I think he was just giving you a heads up as a generally politically correct thing.
humbyvaldes
Dont let the PC crowd imply that offering a position is some how offending. It's not like it's a hitler quote... Good job on the app, I just downloaded it.
wushupork
Thank you so much. Hearing so many people complain about something so simple to change - it's makes you inclined to just change it though, but I hear you as well.
gw666
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=... Quotestagram is an iphone app that let's you easily turn memorable quotes into beautiful images to share on popular social networks. From concept to launch this app took 5 months. It was fraught with difficulties. I didn't know iOS programming. But the app is finally out and I would really love the community's feedback.
ronyeh
Congrats on the launch! I know how hard it is to get something out the door... and 5 months isn't so bad at all, especially since you started from scratch.

Micro-suggestion regarding capitalization:

Did you consider Quotestagram vs. QuoteStagram? I feel like the first one looks a little better.

Also, I agree w/ the other commenter re: Ayn Rand quotes. Some folks love her writings, others do not. Maybe some inspirational quotes by Einstein or Edison?

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." ~Albert Einstein

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~Albert Einstein

wushupork
I think this is enough customer feedback to let me know I should do something about this because it's such a turn off for some people - so consider it done.
ronyeh
While shipping is a great feeling, your job is not yet complete. Now you'll need to market your app, and improve it based on customer feedback. Add more quotes. Add more themes. Polish, polish, polish! Optimize your conversions and distribution.

Tell everyone about your app, every chance you get. This will help you build your brand, slowly but surely. For example, my app is Tiny Piano: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id477014214

^ See what I did there?

voidlogic
>>I'm 36 years old

What does this have to do with anything? 36 is neither young, nor old. Is he saying it took forever because he is 36? I would guess someone's first real software on any new platform takes them "forever" compared to app 5 or 6...

wushupork
I guess this was a link-bait tongue-in-cheek response to all the Show HN posts that look like I'm 14 and this is my first iphone app etc etc.
voidlogic
I see. I guess with all the allegations of bias against programmers older than 28 (or whatever age) I was confused by the messaging here.
kohanz
Congratulations! I'd love to hear more background about the motivation for this app and the dev process. Are we talking 5 months of full-time development or 5-months as a side project? What motivated the project? What are your future plans?
wushupork
Thanks - this is definitely a side project. All of my projects start out as side projects. I'm not as fortunate as some to get funding for ideas.

I'm a huge Instagram user (I created Pinstagram) and I would see a lot of people posting quotes. Quotes is also another passion of mine. I love inspiring quotes and I see a lot of people sharing them so the idea of mashing 2 of my favorite passions - photos (instagram) and quotes seemed really natural.

Future plans include mostly refining the product - adding more quotes, improving the UX, providing more themes (as in app purchase as well as free).

Challenges include: marketing in the app store social media marketing getting users / downloads making sure I build something people want

longbloom
I think this is a great app. Congratulations on launching! Sometimes I want to post quotes to Instagram and have had a hard time finding apps that allow me to do a text overlay like yours. Tweegram is the only other one that I have really found to allow this, but they put an ugly water mark in the lower corner of all your images. I thought a really cool feature was the ability to move the text around to different positions. One feature I haven't ever seen implemented it the option to add your own photos to the background. I would definitely shell out 99c for that!
kriven
Congratulations on your launch! I like how simple it is to use. A suggestion would be to let the user include their own background.

It usually takes me months just to decide if I should work on something :). That's awesome that you were able to learn iOS programming and develop an app in just 5 months.

wushupork
Thanks kriven. Actually that's the #1 requested feature. So I definitely plan to add that.
askar
Congratulations on the launch...5 months is a long time and as a few said here it's easy to give up during this time.

I would suggest give it a little categories grouping and let people filter things through their preference. A way to filter through the person who quoted this wouldn't hurt too. More power to the people and they feel good.

wushupork
Hi

I'm not sure if you saw this, but you can search, filter by topics / authors so you don't have to search too much. However presenting that in the main UI is something I hadn't considered.

P

27182818284
Congratulations on getting something out there!

Out of my own curiosity, I've started trying to ask people who release a new app why they chose a particular platform first. In this case, is there any reason you chose iOS first? Do you ever plan to do an Android version?

wushupork
Anecdotally from people I talk to, Android users tend to be of the techy male (less likely to share quotes and use self expression tools). Also it seems that the Android crowd is used to free a lot. When Rovio charged for the iOS version of Angry Birds but released the Android version for free, I'm sure they looked at the numbers when deciding what made the most sense for them. Also I think the Instagram crowd is still much stronger in iOS. I could be totally wrong.
momop
Nicely done! Was this a full time effort ? Please do come back and share how it is doing.
wushupork
Definitely a part time effort. Will let you guys know how it's doing for sure.