Sharing My Work
A week ago, I released a big update for Frame Grabber.
Version 1.1 brings support for Live Photos, a big redesign and a streamlined user experience. It’s also the first time I announced the app outside of this blog. It was received overwhelmingly well, which is what I want to write about today.
Recap
I started Frame Grabber to learn iOS development. It’s a little app that lets you export full-sized frames from videos and Live Photos. I use it save quality stills of the coolest moments in my 4k videos.
I made it just for myself. I didn’t think other people had much need for such an app. So when I published the first version, I told friends and family and that was it.
With 1.1, my goal was to polish the app and get feedback.
Sharing
I submitted it to the Apple forum on reddit.
The post quickly became the forum’s top post. It received over 4,000 votes and 9,000 downloads. People really liked the app.
They noted three main things:
It’s a good app. It hits a sweet-spot as a clean, easy-to-use utility that does one thing really well without any rough edges.
It’s open. The app is completely free without any gotchas. It’s open-source. It respects the user’s privacy. People felt they can trust the app.
It’s authentic: Or rather me as the developer. I wasn’t trying to sell something, I really wanted to get some feedback. I also told a little bit about my story and what challenges I faced.
Feedback
What I loved the most was hearing about how people use the app.
There were people who use Frame Grabber for extracting stills from their scuba diving videos, or concerts, or car racing videos. Or those who use it to save their favorite moments of their children playing. Some used it to find the best poses in their selfie videos for social media.
I had never thought about these use cases before.
It feels incredibly humbling that I can enable people all over the world in doing all these amazing things they were not able to do before. With something that I created.
This is what I want to do in the future.
Reviews
Shortly after the forum post, App Store reviews started coming in. Right now, Frame Grabber has an average rating of 4,9 out of 202 reviews. In the US, it even has a perfect 5 star rating out of 80 ratings.
What I Learned
Most importantly, I will share my work much earlier.
Getting feedback early is a gift. It validates your idea and shows risks and new opportunities.
There were feature requests I had not anticipated. People were using the app in exciting new ways. With that in mind, I can plan features that cater to those use cases much better. For example, I’m planning to add an in-app video recording for taking selfie videos.
On the technical side, I learned how to polish things and make hard things appear easy. I finally got to implement complex custom interactive transition. I also got to learn a bunch of new APIs. The in-app purchase you see in the app? It’s mostly there so I could learn StoreKit.
In closing, one of my favourite reviews:
Being an iOS developer myself since 2008, I see in you great potential of becoming an awesome iOS developer. It is so well executed and polished and itself a testament.