[Grustaf]

I heard him say on some podcast that he thinks there is a possibility for him to make real money on this, but I would say there isn't. Very few people care about this, and almost none of that already small group will have heard of the app.

Plus I can't even see how this simplifies anything, if you're posting to instagram it's surely simpler to skip the extra step and just use instagram's built in editor, even if you have to place the emojis yourself?

Or you could just not post those photos. What's even the point of posting a photo of your child, with the face hidden? Seems very niche. Just post another photo.

Casey Liss is a very anxious person, there is nothing wrong with that but if you make apps for people like yourself, it's an advantage to be more mainstream!

[eddieroger]

Heard the same, thought the same. Casey succumbed to the struggle I find myself dealing with all the time - he found a problem with a technological solve and solved it with technology, which is only something other technologists do or want. Like you said, Instagram has a facility to already put stickers on images for people who wish to censor their pics. If they're not using Instagram, maybe the other program can do the same, if they user even cares at all. How do you convince someone with an existing workflow to change? "Why do I need another app," they will ask you. I wish him luck and applaud the nerve to go it alone in the tech world, but I'm not sure this is a diamond waiting to be found.

[samhw]

As one of our VCs once wisely said to us: "The hardest thing is to get a consumer to install a new app. Deliver your solution any way other than its own app."

[rchaud]

That doesn't sound like it's generalizable.

You may as well say, "the hardest thing is to get a consumer to sign up for yet another service". And it is hard. But that is precisely how a new consumer app would get traction. It's not like Buzzfeed where no login is required, and the only thing that matters is ad impressions.

[Grustaf]

The point is if you can avoid making an app, that's better. Obviously if it has to be an app, then make an app.

[rchaud]

That too doesn't sound right. Every consumer app I use begs me to use their dedicated native app on mobile. Even though I'm a signed up user on the web site. The only reason they do this is because app-level surveillance and telemetry is unblockable, whereas the web allows me to block what I want.

[Grustaf]

Of course it's better for them if the CAN make you install it. Just like it's better for a company if they can convince you to sign up for something, or at least give them your email. But the point is that if you can expose your clients to your service without all that, then you should avoid introducing the hurdle, you don't want to scare anyone off.

So: make it possible to use the service without any hurdles, but _try_ to get them to agree to as much as possible.

[Cthulhu_]

Yes and no; there are a few handfuls of apps that Made It in that they are only viable as apps, the ones that people will cycle through and open up multiple times a day. It is really hard to get to that point though. I mean the last ones I can think of that people installed were TikTok (similar appeal as Instagram, maybe Snapchat) and FaceApp (short lived gimmick).

[reaperducer]

I think the app gold rush is over. We've passed the time when every company "needs" an app.

Even marketing managers can look at their phones and realize, "Why do I have all of these apps? I don't even know what half of these things are for anymore?"

I recently moved, and my new building has separate apps for: Package notifications, dry cleaning pick up/drop off, paying rent, the speakers in the ceilings, building bulletin board, reserving a common space, reserving the freight elevators, maintenance requests, pet care service, doorman notifications, self-parking, valet parking, and probably a bunch more that I've forgotten because I'd rather let my wife deal with that stuff than overwhelm myself with apps.

And that's just the building. Nevermind grocery delivery, each individual utility, food delivery, restaurants, and on and on and on.

My wife is a big app person. Hates using mobile web sites. She has at least 200 apps on her phone, all obsessively organized in tiny folders. But even she has started using the web versions of things, just because having so many apps has finally become harder than clicking a bookmark in Safari.

[spoonjim]

I have hundreds or maybe even thousands of apps on my phone but don’t scroll through them. I always use search or Siri to open them

[freedomben]

I agree. I hesitate to use myself as a data point because I'm very sensitive to privacy and security issues (and thus often refuse to use apps that don't have a web version), but it seems like there are a lot more web options than there used to be.

Apps definitely have a place for some use cases, but for most they just have so many downsides, especially invasive privacy violations. I think of running an app as similar to running some unknown/close source binary as root on my machine. Why give an app access to a whole bunch of APIs that can be used to mine me for data when it isn't needed?

Cross platform usability is also a big thing. Any apps that require typing are much better done on a laptop or desktop with a keyboard. Why should I be forced to use my tiny phone screen and super awkward mobile keyboard to fill out a form when I have a perfectly good laptop right next to me? Why should I have to run a specific operating system (apple or android) in order to be able to fill out the form?

Few people I know still get excited about apps. The curiosity and fascination is largely over. Unless there's a compelling reason, people don't want to install "another app"

[scarface74]

I keep reading about websites providing more privacy. What exactly can apps do to invade your privacy on iOS without your explicit permission?

[rchaud]

Just curious, can your wife tell the difference between a native mobile app and an app that's mostly a webview?

[freedomben]

Not GP, but no mine can't. She replaced the facebook app with Slim Social (which is basically FB in a web view) and barely noticed a difference between native and web view.

[vincentmarle]

I would take "VC advice" with a big grain of salt...

[nradov]

That doesn't seem so wise. Consumers install a lot of apps. On the Google Play store, even some obscure apps have huge download numbers.

[earthboundkid]

I said on Twitter that there is a very obvious revenue strategy here. Pivot from tots to thots. Thots need to post censored versions of their photos on Instagram as the top of their Only Fans funnel. It’s a business expense for them. Seed it to some influencers but ask them to leave on the watermarks and then wait for other cam girls to buy it because all their friends are using it.

[Grustaf]

Brilliant! Then he could also bring back the old name.

[eckza]

Personally, I've been waiting for an app like this for a long time.

I don't use social media, but I have a group chat with a handful of close friends. Sometimes, I like to insert emojis into a photo for comedic effect.

Now I can do this without fighting with iOS's horrible Markup editor.

(Quite frankly, I'm surprised that this isn't part of iOS already.)

[vxNsr]

But it’s relatively easy to use iOS’s markup editor. The whole time he was explaining this app all I could think was… it’s so much easier to just use the markup editor.

If you’re sharing to WhatsApp… just use their editor, it allows adding stickers and emojis natively, it doesn’t auto detect faces… but is that strictly necessary?

For double points, if you don’t wanna share on WhatsApp you can still use their editor and just send it to yourself. Now you are still only using one app, and the new photo is saved automatically to your camera roll.

[perardi]

I kind of hate-listen to ATP at this point, as the only one who lives in the real world is Siracusa…

…but this is actually not easy to do via the iOS markup editor. It defaults to a pencil tool that draws way too fine of a line to mask a face without a loooot of scribbling, and adding a shape is a lot of taps. And text, forget about it, that's a pain in the default iOS editor. (Instagram: way better at this.)

This is a weird niche of a tool—it's for people who are posting photos to the Instagram timeline where you can't use the built-in stickers feature, or sending a lot of photos via Messages. But for this tiny niche: sure, useful.

[greedo]

Siracusa is great to listen to since he can make very complex subjects seem simple. His writing with Ars was similar. I listen to his other podcast and wish there was a way to mute his co-host so I only heard John. Despite the rambling, incoherent interruptions from said co-host, I still listen to the podcast because the value in listening to Siracusa outweighs the pain from MM.

[kiwijimm]

You've found Casey's next app right there...

[soylentcola]

Can you do it in the default photo editing app? Don't have any iOS devices handy to check out, but on my current phone, the standard Google Photos app has text markup - including emojis.

Just tested it out and I was easily able to put an emoji over a face and resize/rotate it with pinch/drag type motions. Anything like that in the default Apple app?

Granted, there is nothing like the automation features in OP's app, so at least that part is interesting.

[perardi]

Frustratingly, no.

If you insert a photo into Messages and hit Markup, the first view gives you a bunch of pen/pencil/brush options, with fixed sizes per brush. There's a plus button that allows you to insert shapes and text…but you can't pinch-zoom to scale the text. You then have to tap around again to set the font size and color.

It's a weird, neglected-feeling interface. They could borrow a lot from Instagram's story editor.

[graftak]

What the author of the app can do however is creating an <x-Apple>OS photo markup plugin that provides the more usable mask ‘aid’ tools. A feature I haven’t seen utilised once since it’s inception.

[Grustaf]

Yeah, that's definitely what he should do. Very surprising he didn't do it already, this is the perfect use case for markup plugins.

[tedmiston]

I just tested and you can do it in Photos.app (activate Markup in the top right).

That said, fully agreed the UI is very clunky compared to doing similar things in Instagram's editor.

[prea]

> What's even the point of posting a photo of your child, with the face hidden? Seems very niche.

Might be a cultural US thing, but this is something my wife does a lot and I see a lot of people doing. It's one of those things that might not make sense if you don't have kids.

[Grustaf]

I have kids, and don't mind posting their photos. But if I did, why post at all? It just seems weird. "Here's my son, minus the face. Oh he's so cute!"

[tedmiston]

I also find it bizarre and think similarly... if you're going to cover up the person's face, why post it at all?

I have seen some people use these on dating apps where they don't want their own children's or other people's children's faces to be visible. I understand that use case a bit more from a privacy perspective.

[matt_heimer]

For some, its not about the kids its about showing themselves as a parent.

For others, its about sharing with people that you know that you and your kids had a good time while providing some privacy protection for your kids. Micro-managing who can see what picture is hard, the people that know your kids get the full mental image from the picture.

[wyldfire]

> the people that know your kids get the full mental image from the picture.

Maybe it's just me but this kinda thing seems a little weird. If it's too much work to partition into groups then maybe not post at all? But then again I'm not doing any social networks so I guess I'm not the intended audience.

[kiwijimm]

I also didn't get this. Why put photo's on social media of your kids AT ALL if you feel weird about it. Making them look weirder feel a bit strange to me. But now you point out that is basically to enable virtue signalling for parents its makes more sense.

[2muchcoffeeman]

This post made it make sense to me. It’s about the people taking the photos and some external validation thing.

[coin]

Yes it’s bizarre and I don’t understand it. Didn’t even realize it’s a thing.

[mysterydip]

I have a friend who does this for her foster kid(s).

[Nathanael_M]

My in-laws foster and this is the first use case I thought of. It’s sad to take a big family photo and either not be able to share it, or have to take a duplicate without the foster child.

[Grustaf]

Why do you need to do that?

[ajbourg]

Speaking as a foster parent: my agency like many have rules against posting foster kids to social media. Usually intended to help protect kid's privacy. I think the motivation comes from a handful of places, protecting kids from being exploited for likes, keeping kids privacy, but a big one in foster circles is so that people don't know you're a foster kid unless you say so. Most adults in the system take great care to not acknowledge kids if they run into them in public to avoid situations where kids have to explain to their friends, "Who is that?" and then having an awkward situation where they have to say something like, "That's my caseworker/therapist/whatever".

[wlesieutre]

Probably varies by location but here's what Connecticut DCF has to say about it:

> Please refrain from posting any photos or information on social media websites about the child/ren in your care. Their presence in your home should be treated as confidential information is not to be referred to on any social media websites.

https://portal.ct.gov/DCF/CTFosterAdopt/Manual/Chapter2#Scho...

[andrewoneone]

Why do you care? Nearly every comment you've left here in this post has negative language. You claim to have been an iOS developer for ten years - where's your podcast? Where are your apps on the app store that you're posting publicly about? Why aren't we talking about Grustaf in this post? Find empathy. Find humility. Find more in life than being a negative person on the internet.

[ProAm]

To be fair their podcast has two programmers and a stay at home dad so it makes sense why he only had focus on his kids. The app isnt worth .99 cents though with questionable utility and a plethora of other apps that do this for free.

[greedo]

To be accurate, all three of the hosts are programmers.

[ProAm]

Two of them are working programmers though and, in my opinion, much stronger programmers. I just think it's clear why he thought this was a valuable app idea.

[greedo]

I've listened to ATP since day one. My impression of Siracusa as a programmer is limited to the few apps he's released. But he could be a fantastic programmer at his "jobby-job." Or he could just be average. We have no way of telling, despite how intelligent both his writing and his speaking on the podcast might convey.

Marco is very successful with Tumblr, Instapaper, and Overcast, yet we don't know how good a programmer he is. He's made great money, and has strong opinions, but again, we don't know how good a programmer he is.

Casey used to have a "jobby-job" before leaving the corporate world. So he too might be a good, bad or excellent programmer. We don't know.

It's kind of like how you don't really know someone until you live with them. For programming, it's until you've worked with them and seen their code. All three of the hosts might be world class; or they might be average. But there's no way to determine who is the strongest programmer of the three.

We can debate who's been more successful selling their code, but we don't know where Siracusa works and code/app sales are a poor metric for code quality.

[d3nj4l]

I think it's like a preference - I don't understand it either, but I've seen it enough times that I don't think it matters whether I understand. Some people like it.

[rchaud]

It makes total sense. I don't have kids, but I certainly understand that they aren't old enough to understand the principle of consent when it comes to being photographed for pics that will be shared online by their parents.

So blurring them out somehow protects privacy and lets parents their habitual social media posting.

[distartin]

I think it's not just US thing, I've seen parents did the same thing outside US. There's a market for this but urgency is probably low, fortunately this got viral

[_fat_santa]

You also have to consider the modal, a one time 99 cent purchase. As much as a despise all those apps with subscriptions, it's the only way for an app like this to bring in the dough.

That is not so say what the developer here did was wrong, I commend him for having the integrity to not reach for a "99cents/month" subscription, but that is unfortunately where all the money is unless you have a high volume app.

[scarface74]

There is another reason that he mentioned. If podcasting doesn’t work out, he can show that he still has up to date iOS development skills.

[Grustaf]

Ok, but he also mentioned it took him 6 months to make it, so those skills might not be quite up to date...

[mattgreenrocks]

Personal attacks are a bad look.

This sort of nitpicky comment is exactly why people stress about putting stuff on the Internet.

[Grustaf]

It's not an attack, it's just a statement. If one purpose is to appear employable, he should not mention that it took him 6 months to write it because that is just too long.

[Pyramus]

It's one thing to "write an app" and something else completely to bring it to a standard consumable by lay users.

Having published and maintained an app that is in active use by even a couple hundred users gives you an advantage in employability and quite a big one at that.

Your post makes it seem like you have neither published an app yourself nor hired single devs who have, and it's easy to not appreciate.

[Grustaf]

I've been a professional iOS developer for a decade. 6 months is way too long for that app. My very first app took 10 weeks, including learning to program, and it was more complex than MaskerAid. And better looking, was even featured in the app store in a few countries.

[yokoprime]

From reading your comments it seems like you're hoping or at least expecting this app to fail, not because it's bad, but because of what you think about the personality of the creator. It's weird and seems pretty toxic. You don't like the app, say what's bad about the app, don't shit all over the creator.

[Grustaf]

The app is not bad. If I had this need I would have used it. Well if Instagram hadn’t had it built in.

Many apps with worse UX and UI have been roaring successes, that is not the issue. I’m just saying that I think it’s very unlikely he will make any money from it, for reasons I’ve outlined before.

If malice was my motive, then I would egg him on, encourage him to spend lots of time doing something that doesn’t appear to be a strength.

[hombre_fatal]

When someone says they spent N months on something, that's not total clock time they spent in the code editor. It means they built it over the course of N months. You actually have no idea how long it took them.

[kemayo]

Yeah, unless Liss explicitly said he was working full-time on it, I'd very much assume this is a "the thing I was fiddling with around my other responsibilities" project.

[scarface74]

It isn’t his full time job. He was doing it as a side project

He’s on a 3 person podcast that could very well gross over $850K a year - 3 ad reads * 5500 * 52 weeks a year [1]. I wouldn’t make doing an app a high priority either.

He’s also on other podcasts.

[1] https://atp.fm/sponsor

[Grustaf]

Yeah I wouldn't spend a second thinking of that if I were on a high profile podcast like that. Much better to focus on growing that brand.

[d3nj4l]

Not long after that, they talk about how the first version of the app that had all the functionality was done much earlier, and the rest of the time was due to him doing pass after pass improving the UX (and time off for the holidays). That's incredible dedication and I honestly think it reflects well on him.

[Grustaf]

Have you tried the app? The UX is not that good, you can't resize and move the emojis at the same time, you have to choose one task at a time. Plus you need to put both fingers inside the rectangle it seems, there should be a very generous touch area outside the emoji itself.

[scarface74]

Most corporation don’t hire iOS developers because of their great UX skills. They have an entire department to worry about the look and feel of the app.

Heck Marco, his cohost, has been very successful first with Instapaper and then with Overcast. He will be the first to admit that his UI skills aren’t that great.

It’s not like Tumblr - he was the initial developer - was ever a thing of beauty.

[Grustaf]

It was a comment on the comment I replied to.

But:

1. UI is not UX 2. Marco doesn’t have a UX department

Not sure what your point is about Marco to be honest.

[greedo]

From what he's said, MaskerAid is completely written in Swift/SwiftUI so perhaps his goal is to bring his skills up to date?

[gnicholas]

I recently saw a friend post photos like this on FB. She was visiting her sister and blocked the sister's kids' faces. She didn't block the faces of her own kids, who are much older. Made sense to me! I don't know how often I'd use the app, but I've just downloaded it. I'm sure my kids would have fun playing with it, regardless!

[vohu43]

Guess you have no idea with what apps you can make money :) If you have a decent app and good pricing you can convert something between 1-5% of downloads to paying customers. With his audience and reach he can easily make real money. Probably not life changing, but still a few hundred bucks each month.

[xnyan]

He said on a podcast that he spent "6 months" developing it. I very much doubt that was 6 months of full-time work, but even if that was only 10 hours a week, and even if the "cost" was let's say $100 (probably much more) an hour, that's around $25k or 7 straight years of $300 a month (that never goes down for 7 years, aka impossible) to recoup his investment. That's an absolute low end, I think you could easily argue the cost was 4x that, which means it would take 28 years of sales that never dip to break even. There's no possible way he could make anything besides less-than-nothing level money at $300 a month or anything close to that amount.

As he explained on his podcast, this project was designed to solve his own problem. The problem with apps designed to solve your own problem is that very often, your problem is not 1) shared by others willing to pay or 2) you don't solve the problem in the same way others want to solve a problem.

[scarface74]

Just for reference, $25K spent in time and then being able to talk intelligently about modern iOS development on a podcast that generates $16K an episode seems like a good investment.

And “time isn’t money”. It wasn’t like the time he spent developing it would have been spent working on something else.

[Grustaf]

He spends maybe 1% of the time talking about his apps, that really isn’t the reason.

And time is definitely money, or rather, money is time. If you already have an income stream that is more than enough for your chosen lifestyle, spending lots of time on something that might give you a tiny bit extra seems like a bad choice. Why not spend time with his family, travel, take up a hobby, or at least write an app that is just for fun. Or one that has some sort of chance of making it really really big. Obviously up to him, but still, hard to understand.

[scarface74]

Programming is a hobby for him. He’s also not traveling. He has two small non Covid vaccine eligible kids. Hardly any Indy app has a chance of making any money in todays App Store.

[Grustaf]

A few hundred bucks a month is for all intents and purposes "nothing". It's a rounding error in terms of the time he spent on it.

[brundolf]

I know lots of pseudonymous people on Twitter who have large enough followings that they don't want to share their face or real name, and I've seen them do this sort of thing

[hombre_fatal]

I think the issue is that adding stickers to images is second nature to anyone who uses Instagram.

[kemayo]

This is a little strange to hear, since it's genuinely not possible (as far as I can tell) in the main part of the app. Stories, yes, but not in the feed.

It's as if people use these things in wildly divergent ways, I guess.

[hombre_fatal]

Good point, I forgot that’s only for stories.

The iOS markup editor isn’t nearly as friendly for slapping on emojis and resizing them with two fingers.

That said there seem to be various photo editing apps that do make it easier that OP app is competing with.

[kemayo]

I did actually skim through other apps that've been linked in the thread, and I didn't see one that seemed like a direct competitor with the combination of emoji + automatic face detection. Granted, this could be me defining the market too narrowly, and many people might get by without one of these just fine.

(My own App Store searching turned up one called Face Blur which seemed to have emoji as an option... as a subscription, which seems like a non-starter.)