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Crowdfund iPad Dev

nathanwinkleplecknathanwinklepleck
in The Archive

Like many before me, I love "The Archive" Mac app and am lusting for an iPad/iPhone version. I understand the limitations of small developers, but I was wondering if there would be additional incentives to create this if we were to get a "crowdfund" amount going on Kickstarter or something; if financial backing were high enough (you name the amount you need), we could collectively "hire" you guys to develop the iPad app.

I suspect the addition of AI-backed tools could start to reduce the hours required to achieve such a task, so perhaps an additional financial commitment from the community would make it worthwhile and eliminate any financial risks on your end, Sascha & Christian.

Straw Poll
  1. Would you be willing to "crowdfund" a "The Archive" iPad app?16 votes
    1. Yes, for sure.
      37.50%
    2. Depends on what was needed.
      50.00%
    3. No, I wouldn't.
      12.50%

Comments

  • ctietzectietze
    edited April 10

    Wow, I really appreciate this: it shows you care so much that you want to take things further. Showing this kind of proactivity is a great idea. It heralds a time where pulling this off could be possible. (Opposed to: someone wanting to make a thing doing a crowdfunding campaign but not having a community of backers, yet.)

    Well, I voted for "depends" :)

    I don't want to bore with technical details, the short version is: I believe it'd be possible to create a rough app that would work for me, but it's hard to create one that's polished.


    Boring stuff

    • I know of platform limitations and how to live with them. A mobile app that works for everyone else is much more difficult than it is on a Mac. Partly because Apple doesn't fix a bug/remove a limitation where apps can open ~2000 files, but the 2001st just silently fails and users rightly become confused. (I have 9000 notes.)

    • It's not all doom and gloom, though. I know that and how other developers worked around these limitations. The devices aren't meant to hold lots of small files, so they need to go somewhere else. But to me it is sad that upward of 80% of the time will be allocated to cater to the closed platform's limitations instead of making anything cool that the user can see or feel. It's all work back-stage.

    • On the plus side: I don't even need costly AI companions since I know the other Apple platforms really well, too :)

    Today is meeting-with-Sascha day and we'll be talking about this. As the solo dev on the Mac app I just wanted to say thank you (so much!) for this, and spread a few cautionary words about the hidden details of the iPad app iceberg. (If you processed the recent post, this is another application of the model to flesh out :))

    Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/

  • LeoLeo

    An iPad version would be useful indeed and preferably it would be able to read the files from OneDrive in my case :smile:

    I thought about offering some help, but last time I coded something for an Apple device was 14 years in ObjectiveC :smiley:

  • SaschaSascha

    I feel very honored, too! Many thanks. Christian talked about some ideas yesterday. ;)

    I am a Zettler

  • nathanwinkleplecknathanwinklepleck

    Any updates on this @Sascha @ctietze ?

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