Black Friday 2023 Day 3
Day 3 of the Indie App Sales event. Please continue to show support to all the indie devs by sharing or reviewing their apps.
All the apps featured here are currently discounted. Check Indie App Sales for the latest deals.
App Name : Outside
Developer : Blake Folgado - Twitter/X
What is Outside?
Outside is a personal planner that helps you look forward to moments important to you. Your plans look beautiful, appear on the map and friends can join you.
Where did the idea come from?
We felt frustrated with the tools we had to plan our personal lives and even more frustrated with how tough it was to plan things with friends. We thought there needed to be something that made it radically easier.
What’s one stand out feature you’d like everyone to know about?
Calendar Sync: Connect your calendar and watch it turn from a boring calendar into a beautiful list that makes it incredibly clear what you've got coming up.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
To spend time understanding a problem you want to solve and try to get something basic out early to find out if it works. And then you're on your way!
App Name : Remote Buddy
Developer : Felix Schwarz - Mastodon, Twitter/X
What is Remote Buddy?
Remote Buddy allows you to control your Mac with the Siri Remote, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and many Bluetooth and IR remotes.
The control capabilities include tailored support for 100+ Mac apps, web video playback control, virtual mouse and keyboard and a presentation spotlight. It's also possible to record and send IR codes with a Flirc USB dongle to control other devices like f.ex. TV sets.
Building on this foundation, the companion app for iPhone and iPad offers a smart remote that adapts to the currently controlled app, providing the most important actions for the app together with a trackpad or D-pad in a single view. If needed, the app also allows seeing the Mac's screen via our own high-performance screen sharing engine, which delivers up to 60 fps with low latency.
Screen sharing is also at the core of the companion app for tvOS, which allows users to not only see their Mac's screen but also to interact with their Mac apps through their Apple TV.
Where did the idea come from?
Back in 2006, I bought one of the first Intel iMacs. It came with a media-center software called Front Row and a plastic Apple Remote that you could magnetically attach to the iMac's side. People loved it – and so did I.
One evening, I had friends over and had put the iMac in the living room, using Front Row and the Apple Remote to play music. It worked beautifully - until the point where we eventually decided to watch a DVD. I inserted the DVD, but instead of Front Row, the macOS DVD Player app opened, starting playback in a window. With no way for me to enter full screen, close the window, quit the app or eject the DVD using the Apple Remote, I had to fetch and connect keyboard and mouse to regain control.
That was a frustrating experience, but it made me realize how much more potential there was for the Apple Remote to control a Mac.
I wanted the Apple Remote to also be able to act as mouse and keyboard – and to invoke an overlay menu. From there, it should be possible to navigate between apps, trigger actions and see a chart of what action each button is currently mapped to.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to build it. And so, over the course of two weeks, I developed and released a first version - and the public echo was immense.
What’s one stand out feature you’d like everyone to know about?
One thing that's definitely worth highlighting is the broad hardware support:
Whether you use a button-based remote, a Siri Remote or your iPhone with it, Remote Buddy always works hard to offer you an experience that suits your device.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
Find a niche you're interested in that's big enough to sustain a small business, but also small enough to be unattractive for bigger players.
Because regardless of how much you can outperform bigger players in quality and execution, you will not be able to outspend them in marketing.
App Name : SharePal
Developer : Thomas Durand - Mastodon, Twitter/X
What is SharePal?
SharePal is a lovely snippet manager optimized to paste and share them at lightning speed. The interface and system integration have been thought to easily glance and access your info, whatever the context or app you're using. It enhance your productivity by providing your library of URLs, template messages, personal info like IBAN or Passport number always at hand in any textfield with a custom keyboard, and with the iMessage integration.
Where did the idea come from?
The idea of creating SharePal was born on my way to ski vacation last winter. My observation was that I regularly need to share the same information over and over again and often without having them on hand! It could be my address, entrance codes, bank details, URLs of my website or my social networks. And I also realized it was a fit for messages I often send to my relatives. How many time have you opened your bank app, requiring internet connexion and login, just to send your IBAN to someone?
What’s one stand out feature you’d like everyone to know about?
I think the most powerful feature of SharePal is the built-in system integration. You can use SharePal anywhere you need it with the custom keyboard, and it's even easier to reach in iMessage with the app extension there.
What's one tip you would give to someone starting out?
Scratch your own itch! Nothing better than solving a problem you have, because you'll know when your product is good enough to solve it! And it's even better if you have friends that share the same problem as well, because it means your app has a potential market, and you'll get friends to give your early beta for advices. And since most valuable insights are coming from the first minute of someone with the app, avoid giving too much details when someone test your app. Let them discover it, they'll help you make sure your future user base will onboard your app smoothly!
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IndieAppSpotlight - Mastodon, Twitter/X
by Craig Osborne - Mastodon, Twitter/X