
Show HN: PencilCase – an iOS app studio that transforms designs into apps - metatation
http://www.pencilcase.io/
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ssewell
This is an interesting concept. But I can't help but think it looks like it's
focused on UI design interaction, and not necessarily full app design. What
provisions are in place for persistent storage, push notifications, or access
to an external API?

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crayment
Our goal is definitely to allow full app design. Currently we unlock most of
these more powerful features by allowing you to write JavaScript. For example
we expose a key value store and web request API. Our goal is to liberate these
things so that they can be used by anyone though. Our unique Behaviours
feature gives good insight of how we are starting to unlock things that would
normally be very difficult for non developers. Hope you give it a chance and
see the potential!

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sbashyal
This looks great! Does it allow access to the native APIs?

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crayment
Devs here. We use JavaScriptCore to expose native Objective-C APIs. This gives
you access to any API we expose right in PencilCase: Studio. To go beyond that
we allow exporting to Xcode.

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fit2rule
Can you justify the subscription model? To me this is a major turnoff.

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crayment
The advantage of subscription is that everyone is always running the latest
and greatest. Typically software will instead charge for major version
releases in the future which segregates your users and increases support
costs. This is not good for anyone. Interested why this is a turnoff for you
though. What would you like to see instead?

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fit2rule
I'd like to buy it once for a fixed price, use the heck out of it, and
purchase an upgrade offered to me as a loyal customer, when it happens, if I
want to.

Milking money out of me on a regular basis, adding to a line-item in my
budget, feels predatory - as a developer, this turns me off because it doesn't
actually benefit me in any way - I'm paying for your inability to fund
yourself through multiple iterations of software development cycles. Put a
fixed price on the product, charge for upgrades when - and most importantly:
if - they happen, and it would be a done deal in my case. But right now, I
don't want to have to deal with your regular charge against my credit card.
Too much hassle, and you haven't been in business/released enough software,
long enough for me to believe its going to be worth a year of charges.

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xenophon
When you buy software for a fixed price, you've just bought a depreciating
asset (relative to upgrades) with no way to adjust spend and fine-tune your
ROI based on anticipated or unanticipated changes to your usage.

What I'm trying to say is that your "return" from this product is obviously
contingent on how much you use it/what you make with it. If you have 95%
confidence that you'll produce enough to net a positive ROI over and above the
fixed price, then yeah it's more convenient to buy it once. But especially for
a new product like this, I much prefer a subscription model because I have
more control over my costs and I can't yet anticipate my true benefit. It's a
win-win: software maker gets to push frequent updates and ensure a constantly
improving experience, and user gets to check-in frequently and re-consider if
they're not getting enough value.

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fit2rule
So you can buy this software for 24.99, and then after a month of use, decide
not to use it - cancel your subscription - and the software then becomes
useless to you. You've just lost 24.99 and end up with nothing to show for it.

If you buy this software for 299.00, you can use it for a month and then
decide its not for you - you've lost 299, but you've still got the software on
your system, and can change your mind 3 months later, if you need to, and
still have a valid, working tool.

I dunno, I just don't like the idea of having to be beholden to a company,
every month, for the right to use a developer tool that I'd be happier having
a permanent installation of .. it reeks of the trappings of a walled garden,
and even if the bells and whistles are worth the hassle, the politics of the
situation just rubs me up the wrong way.

I'd be much happier buying a tool I'm going to use, at my own discretion
either regularly, irregularly, or not at all (my choice), than have to ask
permission to use it every month. Its the asking-of-permission, expressed as a
subscription model, which is the core of my disinterest.

(I've signed up for a 14-day trial, anyway, because the tool interests me
enough to warrant further investigation, but unless I find some serious bells
and whistles, I'm quite sure I'll be throwing it away after the trial..)

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xenophon
In your example, you've just paid for 3 unnecessary months of use between when
you "decided it wasn't for you" and "changed your mind." In a subscription
model, you'd just resubscribe.

I can understand your unease given how subscriptions have been abused by
unscrupulous parties in the past, but there's much less friction in
cancellation these days. Ultimately I'm just finding it hard to understand why
you'd deliberately create a fixed cost for yourself. I'd rather have the
ability to consume a product when I need, and pay for that and no more.

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fit2rule
I'd rather have a fixed cost than a continuing cost. Why is it better to be
paying for a tool every month rather than to own the tool, outright? I'm not
seeing the argument _for_ having to keep paying for a tool that you'd be
using, if you choose to use it?

If your argument is that the subscription model allows uncertain developers to
get involved, I would argue that tools like this should be purchased by those
who are certain they are going to use them. Otherwise, the only benefit is to
the tool-maker - and that's the case here. The subscription model only really
benefits the producer of the product - not the user, who is ultimately only
able to keep using the tool as long as they are paying for it, on a regular
basis. Meh. No thanks!

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theGazzardian
Hi, another dev here. Thanks for sharing your views, I can see that
subscription is a big pain point for you and I understand your frustration.
There is always a trade-off when choosing between a subscription model versus
a fixed price model and when looking at where we wanted to take the app,
subscription made more sense to us. Thanks for taking the time to give the
free trial a go despite your reservations. If you like it, we're happy, if
not, we appreciate you taking the time to give it an evaluation and welcome
any feedback you may have :)

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fit2rule
My feedback: your subscription model has completely soured me to your product.

I get that you have your reasons for choosing the economic position to support
your own continued developments; I think you're passing the problem on to your
customers though, and that just makes me think less of your effort as a whole.

I'll enjoy checking PencilCase out, but I definitely won't be purchasing it.

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dandelany
...we get it. I agreed with you three comments ago but now you're just beating
a dead horse.

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buza
Question for the developers: It looks like the iOS app allows you to download
apps built with the desktop tool, which supports evaluation of Javascript
snippets. Isn't this against the App Store policy for the download and
execution of arbitrary code?

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interstateone
Hi, one of the devs here! You're correct, PencilCase: Player can evaluate
JavaScript using the JavaScriptCore framework included on the device. The App
Store already has a lot of apps available that allow exactly this or other
very similar options (Python, Lua, etc.) and we look forward to seeing how
people take advantage of this ability.

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buza
The difference I'm specifically curious about is the issue about 'downloading'
arbitrary code and evaluating it. Current app offerings don't have this
support because Apple has forbidden it in the past _unless_ the evaluation
goes through the Javascript context of a web view, which doesn't appear to be
the case for PencilCase. I guess I'm curious if they have relaxed their
restrictions in this case, are unaware of that feature, or something else.

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interstateone
Yeah, App Store guidelines can be ambiguous, and JavaScriptCore becoming a
public framework could be seen as an endorsement of this type of
functionality, but we don't have any information that you wouldn't.

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vermooten
The gif looks like it does some of what Xcode does...

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jlebrech
like flash studio right?

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crayment
I think that's a valid comparison. If Flash Studio was designed today for
mobile with some inspiration from HyperCard (specifically how it allowed non
developers to build great software). We think our When & Then system is
category defining.

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tapirl
new visual basic / Delphi?

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pavlov
Another tool for designing native iOS apps is Neonto Studio. It supports
Android too:

[http://neonto.com](http://neonto.com)

Neonto's generated code is "runtime-free" \-- there's no framework or other
intermediate runtime layer, so everything in the design is translated to the
platform's native concepts. There's also an elaborate plugin API for adding
new tools and capabilities.

(Full disclosure: I wrote most of the code in Neonto Studio.)

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duiker101
No pricing?

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pavlov
It's still in beta, so free download.

The plan is to keep 1.0 free as well, and focus on selling services and
plugins rather than traditional software licences. (Not 100% sure if that will
happen though, but it's what I'm personally pushing for.)

