

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

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=1&#38;mt=8<p>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.
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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.

~~~
wushupork
I basically scoured the web and picked the most popular quotes - quite
arbitrarily. It wasn't my idea to offend anyone

~~~
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.

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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

~~~
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?

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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!

~~~
xuki
Shameless plug: I built PicStamp <http://picsta.mp/download>. It does more
than just putting text on photo. And with 99c you can remove the watermark
that comes by default :-).

Sample photos can be found on our instagram account:
<http://instagram.com/picstamp>

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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.

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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.

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gw666
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=...](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.

------
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

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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.

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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.

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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

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gw666
Link:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quotestagram/id592666165?ls=1&mt=8)

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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.

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deafeye
what kinda techs did you choose to build it with? XCode out of the box?
Phonegap?

~~~
wushupork
No phonegap - this is 100% native

