Give your simulator superpowers

RocketSim: An Essential Developer Tool
as recommended by Apple

Issue 208
Feb 27, 2024

The compounding effect of minor product optimizations.

When I started implementing paid subscriptions for RocketSim, it took me 13 months to get from $0 to $1000 Monthly Recurring Revenue. 

A few years later, I’ve been able to grow from $4000 to $5000 in just 3 months. 

There’s no single reason for this growth improvement: it’s many minor improvements combined.

Obviously, RocketSim has become more mature, more developers are using it, and due to low churn, I’m building up a larger subscription base. Yet, I’m certain many of the small improvements in retention, onboarding, and ‘ah-ha’ moment conversion lead to this improved growth.

The key takeaway should be to not only focus on delivering new features but to keep an eye on core metrics and try to improve these regularly. Better retention leads to more customers and more upsell opportunities.

Enjoy this week’s SwiftLee Weekly!

THIS WEEK'S BLOG POST
I bet your app uses many third-party libraries, but did you also respect their licenses? Or do you even know how to respect their licenses? While many libraries are free to use, there's a legal requirement to acknowledge usage in your app.

SPONSORED
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MONTHLY GIVEAWAY
This month’s SwiftLee Giveaway allows you to win one of the five copies of The Mobile System Design book, authored by Tjeerd in ’t Veen.

EVENT
Join me and Bitrise on February 28th to talk about the role of CI in Mobile Development. Set a reminder

CURATED FROM THE COMMUNITY
Exciting news regarding Swift 6!

If the usual release process is followed, as a March 15 branch date indicates, Swift 5.10 will ship with Xcode 15.3 in the second or third week of March, and Swift 6 will ship with Xcode 16 in the fall, after an announcement at WWDC.
If you’re planning to build something with AI, you’re likely going to run into the world of tokens. This article by NatashaTheRobot explains what they are and how they can add up when using languages like Hindi.
Using several connectivity frameworks, you’re able to connect an Apple Vision Pro with an iPhone and an Apple Watch.
If you know, you know: I miss the Alcatraz days. This article by Bryce Pauken reminded me of those days and is an interesting journey into Xcode plugins.
It’s essential to know about the delay modifier in SwiftUI when working with animations. Natascha Fadeeva explains how it works.

SWIFT EVOLUTION
An overview of last week's Swift Proposal state changes. Make sure to check them out when they're in review, as it's your opportunity to influence the direction of Swift's future.
Active ReviewSE-0423 Dynamic actor isolation enforcement from non-strict-concurrency contexts
Active ReviewSE-0424 Custom isolation checking for SerialExecutor

QUESTION OF THE WEEK
This week’s question comes from Tim:

How do you make sure that when a new feature is developed, accessibility is taken into account from the ground up? 

This is a great question and highly relevant to building apps in today’s world since the European Accessibility act puts more pressure on making apps accessible. But even outside of that act, it’s essential to make your app accessible to as many users as possible.

Luckily, SwiftUI makes a lot of our app elements accessible by default. This is definitely not enough, and testing your app is required, but it does improve the fundamentals.

In my projects, I’m using RocketSim (shameless plug) to test at least the basics like Dynamic Type. Several linters like SwiftLint remind you to set accessibility traits for buttons or labels for images. 

If anything, I’d try to focus on educating your team on testing for accessibility and making it part of your PR reviews to ensure accessibility support is part of regular UI development.

Want to have your question answered next week? Ask your question on LinkedIn or Twitter.

FEATURED SWIFTLEE JOBS
Join the SwiftLee Talent Collective if you're hiring mobile engineers or are open to exciting opportunities.c
 

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