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.
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.
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.
I just took a look at your website, and your profile there, such as it is, it says you “built product at Apple”. Not sure what that means, though it implies you worked at apple, meanwhile your LinkedIn profile only lists your finance and environmental industry positions, so not really sure what to make of that. Regardless you appear to be a 0.01%er congrats, but no need to talk down to others.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mind you, given that Liss is on a bunch of Apple-focused podcasts, writing and publishing and marketing an iOS app really is giving him useful brand-related experiences. Being able to pull out recent personal anecdotes is very handy, even if he doesn't make any notable money directly from it.
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.
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.
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.