Black Friday 2023 Day 1
This is the first of the Black Friday features. I will publish a new issue every day for the duration of the Indie App Sales Event, which runs from the 24th to the 28th. All the apps featured here are currently discounted. Check Indie App Sales for the latest deals. You can also support the developers by sharing links to this issue and the apps themselves.
App Name : Bound
Developer : Timothy Bueno - Mastodon
What is Bound?
Bound is an audiobook app for iPhone. You can import DRM-free MP3 and M4A audio files into Bound from various cloud providers, Apple’s Files app, and even directly from your computer via a built in web server.
Bound will organize your files into books based on the metadata within each file. Of course, since this is an audiobook app, Bound will seamlessly play your audio files sequentially and save your playback location so that you never lose your place.
Where did the idea come from?
Bound was my first iOS application! I listened to many audiobooks on my way to work and figured it would be a fun project to learn iOS development. Bound solved a personal need of mine in that audiobooks I downloaded from Librivox and OverDrive weren’t easily playable on my phone in the subway. I had the itch to fix that.
What’s one stand out feature you’d like everyone to know about?
I’ve learned that my users aren’t always listening to audiobooks! Bound is very flexible with the types of audio it accepts. Use Bound to listen to any sort of audio you may want to pause and resume at a later date. Media like lectures, radio plays, interviews, and podcasts all work great with Bound.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
Make something that YOU want to use. Start with the smallest, simplest feature set and iterate, iterate, iterate. Getting that MVP out the door and into your daily rotation of apps is the best way for you to find bugs, features, and UI/UX flow improvements.
App Name : Tap Forms Organizer
Developer : Brendan Duddridge - Mastodon
What is Tap Forms Organizer?
Tap Forms Organizer 5 is a versatile and user-friendly database app designed to help individuals and businesses organize and manage their information effectively. Available on various platforms, including iOS and macOS, Tap Forms empowers users to create customized databases for a wide range of purposes, such as tracking inventory, managing contacts, and organizing project details. With its intuitive interface, users can easily design forms, input data, and visualize information through customizable views. The app also offers robust security features to protect sensitive data, along with the ability to sync across devices. Whether used for personal organization or professional tasks, Tap Forms Organizer 5 provides a comprehensive solution for efficiently storing and accessing data in a structured and streamlined manner.
Where did the idea come from?
Tap Forms originated as purely an iOS app and then for iPad and then for macOS. The original idea came from the need to organize all the little cards and bits of paper that I had in my wallet. I had this big fat wallet that had membership cards, loyalty cards, bank cards, health cards, and so on. I had always wanted to create a Mac app, but at the time, an iOS app seemed far more approachable due to its targeted focus and smaller screen size. Then the idea just ballooned from there into a much bigger app after being featured by Apple a few times over the years.
What's the one stand out feature you'd like everyone to know about?
I think there are two things actually. One is Tap Forms is super easy to get started with. Everyone in their life has seen a form that you have to fill out on paper. Those forms contain fields and the fields each hold different kinds of information such as your name, address, phone number, and email address. If you can imagine that, then you can create a form in Tap Forms simply by typing out the field names and choosing a field type. Tap Forms 5 has 28 different field types to choose from!
The second standout feature is for power users. I'm pretty proud of the built-in scripting engine that Tap Forms 5 has. For advanced users, you can write code using the built-in JavaScript editor that has special functionality for interacting with your data in ways that I could never have dreamed up myself. And even if you're new to JavaScript, Tap Forms has built-in code snippets you can double-click on to insert into the editor to get you started.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
Don't be intimidated by the sheer volume of apps on the App Store. There's always room for a better version of an existing app. But make sure you bring your own flair and uniqueness to the app. When I first started developing Tap Forms in 2008, there were a mere 63 apps in the Business category. But there were other organizer and database type apps even back then. But I knew that I could develop something better that I could be proud of and I knew would be useful to my customers. It's now 15 years later and I'm still working on improving Tap Forms. I don't think I'll ever be finished it. There's always ways to make an app better.
App Name : Daily Prompt
Developer : Ryan Lindsey - Twitter/X
What is Daily Prompt?
Daily Prompt is a creative writing app and community that gives you new writing prompts every day to help you improve as a writer.
Where did the idea come from?
A friend of mine wanted a way to come up with new story ideas and improve their creativity every day on their commute to their office, so I created this app to help them do it. As more people started to use it, people wanted to give feedback to each other to help them all improve their skills at the same time so we've continued to improve the community features.
What's the one stand out feature you'd like everyone to know about?
Users can write publicly or privately for their writings. And if they want to share publicly they can ask for a critique from other writers and be specific on whether they want it around character development, pacing, setting the scene, or any other main aspect of their writing. It's an amazing way to get specific feedback.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
Keep iterating on your idea. You'll initially have a hunch around what people want and that may or may not be right. So get your idea out early, make sure to get feedback from users through in-app support and keep iterating until you solve a real pain point for a user, because at the end of the day solving a pain point is what people are paying you to do.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoying reading as much I do putting it together. Please help support the newsletter by sharing it. The social links are below.
If you have an app, tool or service that would like to be included then please submit it here.
IndieAppSpotlight - Mastodon, Twitter/X
by Craig Osborne - Mastodon, Twitter/X