If not, you definitely should - he has some fantastic stories to tell. Did you know he once ran into Steve Jobs at a Sushi takeout restaurant which later led to a fairly in-depth email exchange between the two of them about the Newton? Or, that he organized a Newton protest outside of Apple? I learned all this from this recent talk at Deep Dish Swift 26’, and it was a delight.

Or, how about our favorite neighborhood alternative App Store developer Riley? He has battled Apple tooth and nail, and somehow came out on the other side. Armed with the wit and determination only found in a man who has the patience to actually make another App Store, his recount of how it was all finally approved is simply hilarious. In short, he basically gave Apple an ultimatum on which of his two apps they should accept during a long notarization process. I won’t spoil it, you should just watch the talk. Especially if you’ve ever been burned by App Review, you’ll find a little poetic justice somewhere in there.

…and I, of course, could go on. So many great talks, and even better people.

This week, I began to realize I’ve…kinda been around the iOS scene awhile now? Ya know? Like, I’m not new here anymore. If you will allow it, here’s how my oldest looked when I first started on Spend Stack, and what he looks like now:

Tiny Benny

Not-Tiny Benny

🥹 They grow up so fast!

And, as the years tick on, as they do for all of us, life thankfully starts to arm you with more wisdom, perspectives on life, and new angles to look at things. In an industry where, currently, everything is changing, we tend to forget the best part of any app — it’s the person behind it.

This is the primary reason I lament Apple’s modern approach to W.W.D.C. — the community is fractured at the one single time during the year when it should be united most. Going to Apple Park, I’m sure, is a fantastic experience for the few who win the lottery. Though, it’s nothing compared to when seemingly every single person in this industry was in one central place.

AltConf going on next door, running down the halls of San Jose convention center, packed with iOS developers, designers, and Apple employees — you just can’t beat it. Every year, I plead with Apple on the developer survey to go back to this. I don’t think they ever will, though. And that’s a shame, because the relationships you formed, the people you met, the kind folks at Apple you could network with, all of those things could change the trajectory of your career. The best parts I’m talking about.

And, it’s the same still with social media. Twitter, in the before times, was a community and it felt like we were all there. Now, that’s obviously fractured too. Some are on Mastodon, others on Threads, a few kicking around on BlueSky, more still on X, etc. It’s changed quite a bit. For me? It was surreal to realize how others associate me with certain chapters of my career. Some personally know me from Spend Stack. Others, it’s the book series. Yet again, there’s more who associate me with Alyx or Elite Hoops. And, yeah, some hotshot bros know me as a vibe coder noob apparently. And honestly? I enjoy meeting every single one of them.

Where was I going with this again?

Oh yes — the people! The relationships. Events, social media, the places we can go, the way dub dub is held — all of that stuff will always change. No matter the landscape, though, I would encourage you to get around your people at least once a year if you can. Your other indie friends, the ones who work at giant companies, new kids on the scene eager to learn and show off their app. We don’t wake up and decide to start in this career just to met new people, it’s not why we do this, but it is certainly the best part.

Until next time ✌️

Click clack, clack clack, click click….boom, I made something. An app appears, and now they are at the age where they can comprehend that. And, well, they think that is amazing.

And thus, I’ve started to dip into the realm of kids and vibe coding. At first, I had an outline with something to say on this topic. But, you know what, I just threw it out. Both of my oldest kiddos, Benny (12) and Remy (9), have asked me to help them “make an app”, and we’ve had a blast.

What follows are just random observations in no particular order.

They have no idea what they’re doing

What even is an app to a kid? To them, anything entirely web-based for the whole experience is not an app (I raised them right!), and they were even surprised you could charge money on the web!

But, we all start somewhere. And, to that end, they’ve both taken completely different approaches to deciding where they should start. Remy, ever the analytical thinker among my kids, opted to spec it out. Benny? Two sheets to the wind, he just opened up Codex and let it rip. Which leads me to my first observation…

The prompts are just brutal

…and it’s somewhat endearing at the same time. Seeing Remy hunched over the keyboard, pecking away on one hand:

…just tossing Codex the most open-ended instructions imaginable:

So many questions! What kind of app? Which platform? FIVE BUCKS? We using StoreKit for this, what about paywalls? The seasoned engineer in me reeled, but I wanted them to hit as many bumps and learn how to work around them as they could. Even then, though, they do get “Dad Assists” here and there. And, Remy used his to kickstart his project:

In this case, I mentioned he might want to say what kind of app it is, punt the money stuff for now, and hint to the LLM which general direction we’re taking things (iOS, minimum target is likely iOS 26).

Writing prompt cleanups have been fantastic learning and bonding moments. We get to briefly talk about why I wrote something the way I did, I try to gently explain how an LLM works, what they’re good at, what they’re not as good at, etc.

To that end, their prompts have improved. But even then…

Ohhhh my, the UX

…these apps are brutal right now. Remy’s has, like, three search functions - all doing different things. I mean, check this number out:

It’s easy for us to spot the issues. However, the bit that’s surprised me, though, is that they are…aware of it? Even as a 9 year old. Is this a potential byproduct of growing up in the digital age? They know it doesn’t feel right, and they can’t really say why yet, they just know it feels off.

That’s hardly surprising, as design and user experience are things that take years and years to develop.

Their imagination is on steroids

The fact that they now live in a world where they can type in a box and get something working has, quite literally, ignited their creativity, curiosity, and excitement. The boys are huge fans of neal.fun, especially his fantastic auction game:

Remy, unshackled with unimaginable power at his disposal, immediately u-turned on a bug fix and just threw that at Codex and instructed it to add a Pokemon card version in his app. And, it came pretty close one-shotting it:

This is the good stuff. Being able to think of something fun and have it come to life. It’s the same dopamine hit you get from building with legos, finishing a picture, or generally constructing a thought and turning it into something tangible. While it’s silly in this context, these are the moments that will inspire them to continue.

The skills still pay

The one ephiphany I’ve had with all of this (aside from how insane it is that my kids can get a functioning app working) is that the skills we have are magnified now, perhaps more than ever. We’ve all been so uneasy about the implication of “anyone can make an app”, we haven’t stopped much to consider that our hard-earned skills are still the thing that makes a good app.

You can throw all the skill files you want at an LLM (And you should! They’re great!), but they still have critical limitations. Take text, for example. What would you instinctively do if you have a view whose text was truncated, clipping, or otherwise not fitting into a container?

The layman would say, “Can you make this text not clip?” The hardened iOS veteran might say, “Apply a .minimumScaleFactor modifier to this text, and ensure you’re using a Text style and not hard coding the font size.”

Off the cuff? Visually, you may get the same result at first. But, well — if you know, you know. One is objectively better. And those of us who can speak the language will still be making the best apps. The same skills still win, as I mentioned before, the tools have simply changed. It does, however, highlight my one lingering worry: That the next generation my take an ignorance through obstinance stance towards coding. If the ease of it all could tempt a kid (or anyone) to never bother learning how something truly works, they’d be missing out on some required skills.

The sweet spot

While the kids have been using Codex, I think I’d opt to stick them in Bitrig’s nascent mac app. It’s a bit more harnessed, in a good way, and I think the results would be a little better. The app Anything spun something up quick, in Expo. With Codex, I have a ton of credits, so we’ve stuck with that. Personally? I prefer Codex for coding anyways, especially since they put a frontend on top of the CLI. If it becomes a native mac app, I’ll probably never close it.

But for them? I can’t stop thinking about how a Macbook Neo with Bitrig would be a fun addition to the Morgan family. You kinda sorta need to make sure these kids don’t blow up your house with this stuff, which, well, depending on your permissions — could certainly happen.

Wrapping up

Reflecting on the vibe coding experiences with the kids, I only have one prevailing thought: we are all having so much fun. The kids are becoming increasingly interested in what their dad actually does for a career now. Remy, especially, is getting into it. He’s developed the ineluctable urge to make something. The last two days he has come home from school, it’s “Dad, can I work on my app!?” He even stuck some post-it notes to his closet so he wouldn’t forget what to work on the next day:

Until next time ✌️

What was actually happening when I was typing in Visual Basic on some Windows desktop in a computer lab at Ozarks Technical Community College? How did the characters transform and…just…do stuff? I wanted to know, and that book went in on it all. I remember learning about how every computer begins with simple, basic physical states: on and off. Open, and closed. And, of course, 1 or 0.

From there, those binary states can be represented by all sorts of interesting modes: switches, relays, and then transistors. Building on that some more, wire enough of them together and now we get to the interesting stuff. Logic gates, adders, memory, clocks, and eventually down the line — a CPU that can read instructions from memory! And, execute them!

But in my day to day? That’s all abstracted away from me, as it should be. It’s just as well, though, since abstractions have long been a core part of our indsutry. In fact, who remembers interviews in the aughts when object orientated programming was king? We had to remember our favorite acronym, A.P.I.E. — abstraction, polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation. So, in that sense, code has long been an abstraction layer. It’s one that sits comfortably above the raw hardware, but it’s close enough that, after enough of said translation, it can still make silicon do something real and tangible in the world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about abstraction layers lately.

What the “abstraction” layer is now, and how we define it, is changing. And, naturally, it has me wondering. With the rise of agentic engineering, I’ve started to consider something I thought impossible only a few years ago:

Is code going to be abstracted away, entirely, soon?

And, yeah, I realize the word “soon” is doing some heavy lifting here.

Once the frontier models improve, how soon until it matters if you read what it outputs? No, seriously, I’m wondering that lately. I know, I know — I KNOW — it’s not there yet. Today. But, I think eventually, it will be. And what does that mean for software engineering? Is it then prompt engineering? Will knowing how the all the pieces fit together matter even more, or less?

How much longer is understanding code a competitive advantage? I know it certainly is today. And, lest I’m not making my stance clear enough, you do need to understand code to succeed in my opinion. In 2026, most of us in this field grew up figuring out its intimate inner workings. That’s why those with years of experience are currently building software at a blistering pace. Though, how long will it keep us ahead of everyone else? Because when it becomes abstracted away, well — that’s a different world we’ll live in.

I’m pondering here, not panicking. We need to remember that abstraction layers are not inherently bad. In fact, by most measures, not only are they incredibly useful — they are necessary. I don’t want to manually tweak logic gates. I want to write code to do it. Years ago, there was undoubtedly a time where writing code woud seem as outlandish as using a chat interface to produce that same code for you.

Naturally, as the future progresses and technology advances, making software will look different, too. The future of software engineering versus “AI does it all” hopefully will not be a zero-sum game. More abstraction does not automatically mean we need less understanding, but I think it does most likely change “what” is important to understand.

I don’t know the answer, and to be honest — I’m not scared of the answer, either. I’ve made my way in this industry by being curious. People like to say it’s all changing so fast, and there’s an inordinate amount of AI tooling, advances, or models to learn. I say it’s always been that way. I’ve done well in this career because of adapting to changes. By wondering how logic gates, bits and bytes, and code eventually create a piece of software I made. And whatever the tools and technology become to keep creating those things well and with precision, I’ll keep learning.

When I went back to speak at my community college years ago, I told the prospective students that the only constant in our industry is change. Now, I suppose, never has that been more apt.

Until next time ✌️

As someone who is truly enjoying using agents to create software, I was ready to dive in. I’ve come to love using agents in Terminal, but I’m always up to try the shiny new thing. And if there’s something Apple does particularly well, it’s typically integrating new shiny things with a refined taste to them.

Here, I’ll share first impressions, and some important answers to questions I had. Also, I’ll be primarily chatting through the Codex lens.

The Critical Infrastructure

Ask three different people how they use agents, and somehow you’ll get sixteen different answers. Me? I rely on the “core pillars”:

1. agents.md: Projects I use all have a lightweight agents.md or claude.md file. Critical to how I work.
2. skills.md: The more nascent skills movement just keeps growing. Vercel, and its successful skills.sh initiative, has only strengthened it. I’ve come to use several skills, and not having those would be a quick stop for me.
3. MCPs: The model context protocol is amazing to interface with services. When they were first announced, I thought of them as nothing more than an API. And, in some ways, that is true. But they aren’t APIs for you or me, they are for agents. Supabase’s MCP has saved me tons of time, “Query all of the basketball drills for this User ID”, “Do I have cascade deletes in place for X or Y”, the list goes on. They are a requirement for my agent use.

If Xcode’s integration couldn’t leverage any one of these, I would personally have no reason to use it. I nearly moved on altogether since I realized the star of the show, Apple’s own Xcode MCP implementation, is available for other agents to use:

# CC:
claude mcp add --transport stdio xcode -- xcrun mcpbridge

# Codex:
codex mcp add xcode -- xcrun mcpbridge

Still, the allure of keeping things “in house” is strong. And, Apple is only going to improve their offering. As long as my core pillars were usable, I’d try it out. At first, I thought that wasn’t the case (my skills weren’t showing, for example) but I’m happy to report that it can, and does, use your existing “core pillars” with a little pageantry from your end.

New Codex

Here’s what made it all click for me. If you already have Codex installed, think of Xcode’s Codex usage as an entirely fresh install. That makes complete sense when you zoom out and think about it (this Codex is literally for Apple development and nothing else). You can confirm this for yourself by viewing the config.toml for each installation:

My own config

Apple's config

Apple has honed in their config.toml to supercharge iOS development. Notes on Liquid Glass, call outs for Foundation Models — the list goes on. Though Apple blasts the doors off of their “big” stuff at W.W.D.C., you’d be crazy to think they aren’t paying attention. How we develop software is changing, and internally, it’s clear they are humming along with it. The fact that Xcode 26.3 exists, right now, is proof. They didn’t just cut a new branch once Codex’s macOS app shipped.

A few thoughts on the core pillars:

In Apple’s documentation, they hint that each agentic option is customizable. But to what end, it’s not entirely clear:

However, opening that up reveals a lot:

A skills folder! I simply copied what I had in my existing ~/.codex/skills over there, and I could confirm that Xcode’s Codex could now see them:

Since we know where the config.toml is at, moving over MCPs should not be a problem, either. Just add them in Apple’s config.toml and you’ll be good to go. What I’m not entirely sure about is how to kick off authentication for some MCPs that may require it. For example, to get Supabase working in Codex, I’d run codex mcp login supabase — but it needs to be ran out of session. But, there is no “out of session” in this case. It may just work, but I’ve not tried it yet.

There’s nothing to say here, it just works.

Odds and ends

So, how is the actual experience? Well, pretty nice! This is such a tiny thing, but in Terminal — removing a chunk of text sucks. I’m sure there is some keyboard shortcut I’m missing, or some other app I could use like iTerm or what have you, but not being able to use Command+A and then delete a text selection hurts. In Xcode, that’s easily done because the input is no longer running through Terminal, it’s just an AppKit text entry control.

Oh, and it’s pretty! Apple has leaned into a bit of a bolder text for prompt creation, and the colorful “ribbon”, synonymous with Apple Intelligence, is always a joy to look at. It’s also so beautifully native. Codex’s app, while packed full of goodies, just feels…a little ugh, ya know? This surprised me, since their flagship ChatGPT is native and feels incredible to use (complete with Liquid Glass on Tahoe).

But there are no free lunches in life. Another Codex installation, another agent to use, another spot you have to maintain skills and MCPs. Surely, the developers behind these agentic tool chains will adopt an open standard so we don’t have to worry about this. In fact, this has already been proposed by OpenAI developers for skills at least (I lost the tweet, but it’s out there).

We don’t know which model will “win”, or if one ever will. Personally, I find the competition necessary and good for their target market, developers. I personally hope none of them win and keep pushing each other to be better. But, open standards to control all of the core pillars would be welcome. When I update one skill, I now update it in three different places.

Wrapping up

This is a fantastic start for Xcode. If you’re late to the Claude Code or Codex scene, this is a wonderful place to start. There’s simply no going back once you learn how to use these tools. Ideas that you wanted to hack on become doable, those dusty side project folders come alive a bit more, and you get ideas out of your head much faster. These are all good things.

Plus, it makes you wonder what Apple will have for us at this year’s W.W.D.C. — this release is the kind of thing you typically see there. Maybe they felt they had to respond earlier? Maybe it was just ready to go? Maybe they have #EvenMoreCoolThings coming? I dunno, but I’m eager to see.

It’s all moving quickly. All the way back in 2020, Mattt sort of saw some of this coming. It’s fun to read that post back, and see how so much of it is happening today. What a time to build!

Until next time ✌️

The Best-in-Class iOS App Book Series is now pay what you want! Pick it up for a minimum of $10 to…whatever you want. Live now!

So, Why?

I debuted this book series many years ago now, back in 2021!

I had just sold my first somewhat successful app, and figured I’d set out to do what I always wanted to do: write a book series of all that I knew about making iOS apps. The craft, the APIs, the design, the “don’t sleep on this little tweak” kind of stuff.

And, so, I did — though it was a bit grueling.

It took over two and a half years, and I released updates every two weeks during that time. But, like I would imagine those who finished a PhD or something, I was (and still am) extremely proud of the effort even though the effort basically swallowed me whole. I wrote over a thousand pages, hundreds of code samples, just as many image assets, kept the mailing list informed of progress, the whole gig. And since then, I’ve kept it up to date with free content drops.

What I couldn’t have imagined, at the time, was where we are today. Right now. The way we learn and do things, and most importantly — develop software, is changing at an unprecedented pace. AI and LLMs are changing our industry in real time. While there is certainly a place for books, YouTube tutorials, and similar content (I don’t think anybody wants those to go away) - I think the desire for a giant reference like mine is reducing a bit.

And that’s okay, but I also want to be realistic about things. And so, with updates slowing, I want to make it’s accessible to anyone who might want it.

What’s Next?

I’ve also had several ideas floating around on what I could do with this content. With five, giant books full of iOS wisdom, plugging it into an LLM, custom GPT, maybe even an MCP, or putting it online digitally to highlight things, even edit it, etc — that could be fun. By far, the largest pain point is updating this thing. It takes hours to do for several reasons. An online-first home for it, with the option to download it still as it is today, would make the barrier to entry for updates much, much more doable for me.

I’m not really sure what I’ll do with it, but with over 100 updates since 2021, I’ve given this project a lot of me. I’m proud of it, and I’m also happy that whoever wanted it but couldn’t afford it, can do so now.

Until next time ✌️

Why haven’t I written about any of it yet?

Well, because as a once ancient tweet once said, everything just happens so much. And in our industry, I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed so much happening.

I’ve known AI was helpful and it’s been a daily driver for me for some time now (ever the early adopter). But after seeing good ol’ Steipete and Thomas share more and more about their adventures, I started to dig in some more.

Skills, rules, plugins, MCPs, different models — I went in. And, coming out the other side, I’m not entirely certain what to think anymore. Excitement? Nervous? Pumped? All of it?

It’s all different now, but I do know that if you were already an engineer with experience before this AI boom, there has never been a better time in human history to build stuff.

If you knew a little about a tech stack? Well, now you know a lot.

I’ve been wondering what I am now with AI specifically. How would I describe myself? I don’t fancy myself as a vibe coder, I think we’ve attached a pejorative mindset to that term — one that won’t be shaken anytime soon. I think “Agentic Engineering” fits? Someone who knows what these things can do, and equally as important — how they could bring your house down if you don’t pay attention.

At work, I’ve been committing more code to our monorepo, our marketing site, cruising through Next.JS and Astro codebases, all the while doing a bunch of other stuff. And, it’s simply because…now I can.

Not even a year ago, Xcode stayed open while I cherry picked work over to chatGPT. Now, I have four terminals open - managing my little LLM minions to do my bidding. Sometimes, it feels like I code review for a living. But, I’m enjoying it?

My role has even been…impacted…if that’s the best word?, by AI. Developers are watching less YouTube tutorials and are relying on MCP servers for docs. The world is absolutely changing, and it is mind-boggling to be in it while it’s happening.

Wrapping Up

When your industry shifts seemingly overnight, where does that put you? You either change with it, or open a coffee bar (Dude, I would love to open a coffee bar by the way).

I think we’re all a bit on edge, to some degree. The thought that, eventually, anybody will be able to make an app is exciting and a bit scary.

The barrier used to be building, and that barrier is diminishing. That means, logically, that the best idea, and its execution, its design and UX, how well it solves the problem - those will win more and more. That’s kinda, sorta, mostly true today, but the build aspect is still there right now. You could have the best taste, ideas on superior execution - but you might not be able to build the thing right now. That will change.

As such, where does that leave us?

I can’t say, but I do know that this is true, right now:

• If you know how to code, then you are an absolute machine now. You can find the dumb stuff AI does, and you don’t treat it as a loose cannon. You guide it with tact, thinking, poise and a plan. It’s a force multiplier, not fertile ground for bugs.
• If you can design and code? Well, the world is yours…for now. All of these things will become more accessible in due time.

In short? Go build, and do it now! We’ve got a major head start.

Until next time ✌️

Subscribers: 1,988
MRR: $7,633
Trials: 175

Subscribers: 2,220
MRR: $8,775
Trials: 193

So, looks good, right? Well, yeah. But also, I didn’t really do much of anything that I planned to do over the month 😅. The idea was to spend an inordinate of time posting things, engaging the community, writing blogs, and other similar growth stuff.

Elite Hoops is in-season, so I can just leave it alone right now and it’ll (thankfully!) grow. However, life happened over that month. Not to get too T.M.I., but I started seeing a therapist to help me work through some personal things, and that has been both incredibly helpful (good 😌!) and mentally exhausting (blah 😖!).

Regardless, I was able to do two impactful things:

• I worked with EVO Marketing and they did fantastic work. You can check them out here. Not a sponsored post or anything, I just feel it was money well spent.
• I shipped a lead gen tool called The Thompson Twin project. It’s live right here.

EVO

EVO did a few things with me, and after reaching a price I felt good about — we all hopped into a shared Slack channel and went to work. This was my first time using a marketing agency, and I was pleasantly surprised. A few Superwall clients had used them for much larger projects, so I was initially thinking that indies probably weren’t their ideal customer. But, it worked out, and here’s what they did:

• They made a banger Notion doc that summarized Elite Hoops as a product better than I could! I’ve been working on Elite Hoops since October 2023, and it’s insane seeing someone else whose mind works differently be able to articulate what you couldn’t (at least, articulate well). Who is my ICP? What kind of marketing speaks to them? How can you reach them?
• They made 20 video creatives for me.
• They taught me how to run paid ads.
• And, more importantly, they showed me how my current Meta campaign setup is, well, just very, very unoptimized.
• What’s my cost per install? Which ad works the best? LTV? When I was asked this stuff I just waved my hands and said I go on vibes bro.
• And while vibes got me to $9k MRR, it’s time to buckle up a bit more.

Here’s a preview of their Notion package:

Darren, Christian, and co. were great to work with and I’d recommend them to anyone trying to get things to the next level. A positive realization I had working through things with them was that I have clear traction, and people are converting. I just need to get the message out more to take things to that $40k MRR range.

Takeaway: Having someone who does marketing as a job, and breathes it like you do development, is like…kind of a life hack for indies? It seems so obvious, but I have a recalcitrant view on marketing. I don’t enjoy it, but I know it’s vital. They did the things I just don’t want to do.

The Thompson Twins Project

Next, I shipped the Thompson Twins project:

If you aren’t familiar with Amen and Asur Thompson, they are twin guards in the NBA who allegedly did this insane workout growing up. So, I thought it would be fun to codify it, and put it in Elite Hoops. It turned out looking like this:

• A web component, linked above.
• You give me an email, I give you the workout.
• Because the workout is insane, I decided to split it up into a 7 day progression - getting closer to the full routine each day.
• The .pdf turned out nice, I just designed it all in Sketch.
• And, it’s in the iOS app too (app review pending).

I haven’t started marketing this yet, but the email blast and socials will go out soon. The idea is to try and tap into some virality and bring people into the Elite Hoops ecosystem.

Takeaway: These little free tools as a marketing vehicle have worked well for me in the past. Plus. I just love working with next.js - it’s fun! It’s good to have fun, but time will tell if this was worth it or not.

Now What?

The last month was a learning lesson. Thankfully, I spent money on people to help me grow Elite Hoops. Those paid ads are about to start running next week, so that’ll be exciting to see how it plays out. Going forward, I’m going to try and just do a simple “Mon/Tue” marketing flow, then development on the other days. It may seem rigid, but for me, it simply reminds me to do it.

And, there’s plenty to do:

Until next time ✌️

Wednesday, November 5th

• Researched existing social formats to discover videos I could make for paid ads.
• I found about four or five that I think I could turn around fairly quick.
• One question I have on these - do I go with boosted posts, or actual paid ads?
• I’m also looking at blog posts that are evergreen to help with SEO efforts, the Elite Hoops website will be critical moving forward.

Thursday, November 6th

• One ephinany I had — my app is seasonal, and its season right now. So during my seasonal months, I need to triple down on marketing, and in the off-season I should triple down on feature development. I think not crossing those wires is smart.
• I have a meeting with a marketing agency Friday, exicted to see what that brings.
• One idea I have is to piggyback off of viral workouts that NBA stars used to do, maybe I could build those into Elite Hoops somehow.

Friday, November 7th

• Hired a marketing agency, a 30 day agreement. I’m excited about this - it takes the load off of me for creating content. They’re going to do it.
• That also means I’m a bit free to do other stuff, should it be content marketing? Blogs? Plays on YouTube? Where should I go?
• I’m excited about that viral NBA workout idea I had, that’s pulling me in — so I’m going to explore that starting tomorrow.

Saturday, November 8th

• Absolutely nothing, I was at kid’s sporting events all day.

Sunday, November 9th

• And nothing again, I watched football all day and it was great.

Monday, November 10th

• The marketing agency I’m working with is going to produce 20 videos for me, so content wise I’ll be posting those.
• Since that frees me up, I’m going with this “Thompson Twins” workout idea.
• That’ll include a blog post, another “free tool” I think on the Elite Hoops’ website, and I need to add the drills to the app itself.
• Then, I’m thinking an email marketing campaign, along with reels I have around this to promote. This is lead-gen, since it’ll be free.

Also, here’s how I’m kind of thinking about these 30 days in terms of marketing:

Tuesday, November 11th

• I’ve got the “Thompson Twins Workout” idea all fleshed out now. It’s a free tool on the website, and a template workout in the app.
• The website version will actually be a bit more fleshed out, the workout is insane. So I have a 7 day plan .pdf to work up to it (email gated).
• First up, I need to make the actual .pdf…and this is killing me. It’s soul crushing work making it myself, I would be faster doing it in SwiftUI.

Wednesday, November 12th

• I added some more quotes to the basketball quotes post.
• I’m slogging through this .pdf…I hate working on it and I have no idea why. I think because it’s hard for me to make it pretty, easily.
• But, it has to be done because the rest of the project hinges on it.

Thursday, November 13th

• If you were wondering, I still hate this .pdf.
• BUT also, I nailed down the design, and I’m almost done with it! It’s seven pages, so even though I had the content, I needed the design to, well, perfect. It’s the centerpiece of the whole package.
• The marketing agency has nailed down formats and creators, so that should start bearing fruit soon.

Friday, November 14th

• Game planned with my marketing agency, we should have videos next week.
• I updated some blog posts which are starting to rank and drive good SEO results.
• I had to rework some of the workouts for the Thompson Twins workout, but I’m happy with it now.

Saturday, November 15th

• Did nothing!

Sunday, November 16th

• And then I did nothing again!

Monday, November 17th

• Everyone, an announcement: I HAVE FINISHED THE .pdf! What a battle, seven whole pages. But it turned out nice, and I had to nail it.
• Met with the marketing agency, reviewed formats — we’re ready to record!
• Started in on the web dev side of things, which shouldn’t take too long to finish. Famous last words, I guess.

Tuesday, November 18th

• I put together the other assets for the landing page. Now just getting everything in place, and getting the design to look right.
• The copy is…not great, currently. I really need to sell this a bit better, so I’m working through that.
• Marketing agency has been great, they delivered a massive game plan on copy, types of videos, my ICP, just tons of stuff.

Wednesday, November 19th - November29th

• Well, not to get too personal, but…life stuff happened recently. I had to put things down since I had zero mental energy lately.
• But, the marketing agency is paying off! They’ve delivered over ten video ads, with copy, targeting advice and more for me to try.
• Next, they are delivering UGC content.
• Now that I’m back in the saddle, I’ve picked up The Thompson Twins project. Today, I’m getting the landing page design finished.

Sunday, November 30th

• The Thompson Twins project is live! Check it out here!
• Tomorrow, I meet with the marketing agency about posting strategies for the content they’ve made me.

Monday, December 1st - December 4th

• Wrapping up! The marketing agency and I had a wrap up call.
• I have clear next steps to try in terms of ads.
• And we’re done! Look for a wrap up post coming tomorrow.

Until next time ✌️

Ah, the time was right, but my code was not. I was using plain String types in a lot of places, and a String catalog won’t pick those up for translation:

enum AppTab: String, CaseIterable {
    case teams, drills, practices
}

// Later on, a simplified example...
ForEach(AppTab.allCases) { tab in 
    Text(tab.rawValue)
}

This is easy to miss, because SwiftUI does a fantastic job and opting you into using localizable String types, even if you don’t realize it:

Text("Make localizing your app easy!")

Under the hood, that string is a LocalizedStringKey, which means a String Catalog will pick it up for translation:

init(
    _ key: LocalizedStringKey,
    tableName: String? = nil,
    bundle: Bundle? = nil,
    comment: StaticString? = nil
)

Going forward, I’ve started writing String variables, parameters, and anything else that’ll show in a UI (which, well, Strings tend to do…all the time) using LocalizedStringKey — there’s no code changes you need to make when you swap this with a String type, plus you get the String Catalog support:

// From this
struct AnotherView: View {
    let headerText: String // <-- Won't show in String Catalog
    
    var body: some View {
        Text(headerText)
    }
}


// To this
struct AnotherView: View {
    let headerText: LocalizedStringKey // <-- Will show in String Catalog
    
    var body: some View {
        Text(headerText)
    }
}

To follow up on the first example:

enum AppTab: String, CaseIterable {
    case teams = String(localized: "Teams"), drills = String(localized: "Drills"), practices = String(localized: "Practices")
}

The same goes if you have interpolated Strings, using String(localized:comment:) does the trick:

// From this
let result = model.didGeneratePlan ? "Practice plan ready!" : "Failed to generate plan."

// To this
let result = model.didGeneratePlan ? String(localized: "Practice plan ready!") : String(localized: "Failed to generate plan.")

My Localization “Stack”

It took the better part of my side project time last week, but I was able to complete a full translation to three new languages in Elite Soccer Club. It’s rolling out in v1.2.0 once App Review gives it its blessing, along with lineup sharing, Elite Hoops’ popular practice planner but retooled for soccer, and quite a bit more.

Here’s what I used to get my “v1” of localizations done:

• I converted all String types to LocalizedStringKey, and any inline Strings to String(localized:).
• I created String Catalogs, and downloaded the on-device model to create comments.
• Following Daniel Saidi’s fantastic blog post, I used Cursor and Claude to translate over 3,000 items.
• Then, using ButterKit, I paid the easiest $30 of my life, plugged in my OpenAI key, and had it translate all of the screenshot text.

• Superwall automatically translated all of my paywalls to three languages in under 30 seconds. This feature is absolutely insane.

• And finally, I died inside while updating 6,000,000 things in App Store Connect — which would randomly lose images I uploaded constantly. This was not fun.

I feel like that gave me an incredible start, and a sign of the times that I could even do all of this within a week. While I am completely sure some of the translations won’t land, it’s better than not having anything. I plan on iterating when I get feedback to make things better, but also - Xcode’s comment generation surely helped AI translation since it had the extra context. I augmented the prompt in the blog linked above to make sure they were considered.

Until next time ✌️

The barrier to entry is lower, but the risk for tomfoolery has scaled linearly.

Thankfully, Apple has done a phenomenal job of keeping these controls accessible. Most of it, true to form, “just works” — but some of it doesn’t. So here’s a quick guide to follow, should you consider a custom control. Our subject matter for this post? This little toggle-segment guy found in Alyx:

For custom controls, there are three rules I try to follow. Each custom control should be:

1. Learnable: If something is not obvious to use, people will not use it at all.

2. Memorable: If something has no obvious reason to be used in lieu of the system control, reconsider making it.

3. Accessible: If something can’t be used by everyone, then it probably shouldn’t be shipped to anyone.

So, back to my toggle guy.

Learnable

Is this learnable? I think so, because it passes the visual inspection test. If someone looks at it, they are likely to understand why it’s there and what it might do (regardless as to whether or not they are privy to the tech scene). Here, they are likely to think, “This seems like a toggle.” That’s not by accident, as a Picker with the segmented style is a prevalent SwiftUI control, whose roots go back to UISegmentedControl (a control that’s been around so long iOS wasn’t even called iOS when it first shipped, it was iPhoneOS).

Like other controls, if it works, then it inherently becomes more flexible, too. I have another similar variant of the same control I use to toggle dates, it’s mostly the same but just a smidge tinier:

There is a tolerance scale you have to weigh here, and finding the balance on it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. It’s easy to make a custom control because you can, it’s not exactly hard anymore. Always pump the brakes first, and ask yourself if the control will be understood at first glance. If the cognitive load to understand it is high, then the reason to ship it should be low.

Memorable

But (and there’s always a "but", isn’t there?)!

There is, of course, a spectrum here — because part of the joy of custom controls can be discovery. If the intent is to drive home some selective emphasis and joy, I tend to think that’s a completely legitimate reason to make a custom control. We can wax poetic about how boring software is now, but…actually — yeah, let’s keep doing that! Adding a little splash of creativity to your app can be endearing, and it can also make it memorable.

There are different ways to be memorable, though, and many of them have nothing (at least, directly) to do with jolts of pure creativity. For example, when Loren Brichter created the pull to refresh UX, I assume that it wasn’t exactly created to be splashy, nor was it the product of a need to express a creative outlet, it just made more sense than we had been doing. The rest, is of course, cemented in history on your phone right now. We all pull to refresh.

As such, my decision to make the custom toggle in Alyx was a creative one. I wanted to reinforce its branding, the roundy-ness, bouncy and playful tone of the app, that nothing is really that serious here. And, it was just a gut call to assume that this one was better than the stock one for my use case:

My version

Stock version

Accessible

Of course, if it’s not accessible then you’ll run into a whole host of issues. Empathy is the best teacher, and it wasn’t until I personally met someone who relied on accessibility features on their phone that I truly grasped how critical it is to consider. While you can easily say it’s the right thing to do, I think that’s an obvious argument to make. Of course it is!

Beyond that, custom controls that fully support all accessibility contexts also have an air of craftsmanship to them that not everyone is willing to achieve. And, it’s so easy to do that now! Apple has a killer API for custom controls and accessibility, .accessibilityRepresentation. This lets you vend an entirely different control to the accessibility engine in place of the one that you’ve made.

Why is that critical? Because you can pass off Apple’s controls! And guess what? They’ve thought about more accessibility edge cases than you or I have. So, here, that could look something like this:

HStack {
    theControl
        .accessibilityRepresentation {
            Picker("", selection: $inputMode) {
                ForEach(PresentationInput.allCases) { mode in
                    Button {
                        update(to: mode)
                    } label: {
                        Image(systemName: mode.glyph)
                    }
                }
            }
            .pickerStyle(.segmented)
    }
}

Now, the accessibility engine will see Apple’s far superior accessibility implementation. When Apple shipped this change, it became immediately obvious that this was the best way to handle similar situations — I couldn’t believe A) I had never thought of it, and B) it didn’t ship with SwiftUI 1.0. It’s a literal cheat code for a good accessibility outcome.

Even though I just mentioned there is a little hint of craftsmenship to fantastic accessibility support in custom controls, on second thought — the APIs, SwiftUI and UIKit have become so accessible by default that it’s almost harder to make something not accessible. That’s a good place to be.

So that’s my thought process. Learnable, memorable and accessible. If your custom control passes that smell test, then you’re probably heading down a good path.

Until next time ✌️