SWS Snippet #0040: 9 years of Apple text editor solo dev by Mihhail Lapushkin

Mihhail goes in depth into his decision to create a similar writing app like iA Writer. Coming from a web development background, he learned the languages and frameworks necessary to develop for Apple devices on the fly.

His goal was to create a writing app as minimal as possible. One sentence especially caught my eye: „But it was my app so I could do whatever I wanted“. This is one of the main points I enjoy creating software by myself, as those applications can be considered a blank canvas you as the programmer can fill as one wants to. It feels like being as creative as a painter (just a little more technical).

Even though there were already lots of writing apps on the app store, he gave it a shot. And it seems like he was right: his niche (extremely minimal text editor) earns him some real money now. He also got into detail on choosing monetisation options. Starting with one-time purchases, he later decided to also offer a subscription-based payment method. This part of the article is especially useful for new developers who are not yet sure how much their app can be worth.

Most of the key decisions he took during development are laid out in detail, e.g., why he went native when there was also the possibility to just use the web stack he already knew and use something like Electron. This would have made development easier, but came at the cost of having a not as-performant as possible text editor, which was no option for him.

There are also some pretty niche topics like the feedback chat he has programmed natively into his app to avoid using external dependencies or some mail forms. This really pushed his customer interactions to another level, as he explained in the article.

As it is a very minimal app, Mihhail also goes into detail on how, when and where he shows nudges in his app, e.g. hints for better using the app, asking for an app store rating or purchasing of the pro features.
This is one area nearly every developer should look at, as paper really solves those challenges well.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable read and I took with me some important lessons and notes! Please read the article for yourself in the following link:

Source: https://papereditor.app/dev