Issue 703

14^th March 2025

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Content marketing isn’t new, but it’s something that’s really hard to do well. So I think it’s worth highlighting when a company does a consistently good job with it over a prolonged period of time. I’m sure you can learn from what they do, even if you’re not targeting an app maker audience like they are.

The company is RevenueCat, and their main content output is their blog, but they also have a podcast and newsletter.

It’s hard to pinpoint why something feels authentic, but it definitely has some “I’ll know it when I see it” about it. RevenueCat gets authenticity right, though. Maybe it’s because they encourage their employees to keep their side projects going, or even start new ones. It’s also clear that the articles and other content come from across the company, not just from a “blog” or “content” team¹. Yes, there are purely promotional articles in the mix, too, but there’s enough genuinely interesting and engaging posts to make a subscription worthwhile, even if you’re not currently interested in their product. Finally, it’s also obvious that the company cares enough about creating a great blog that they put significant time behind it. Writing a good and authentic blog post takes time. It’s not something you can do with 15 minutes before you leave the office on a Friday.

As an example, here are a few articles I found really interesting recently:

• Are subscription trials dead in South Korea? by Rik Haandrikman
• What you need to know about Apple’s Advanced Commerce API by David Barnard
• What drives your users to pay? by Daphne Tideman²
• Smart discounting strategies by Vahe Baghdasaryan

I linked to some of these in previous issues, but if you missed them, these articles are all worth reading.

You might not have noticed yet as you won’t have seen this issue’s sponsor yet, but it’s no coincidence that RevenueCat sponsored this issue. However, they did not pay for this opening comment and have no idea I’m writing it. Whether you take my word for that or not, I assure you it’s true. However, it also didn’t seem right to write this and a different company sponsor the newsletter, so I postponed writing this for a couple of weeks until everything aligned. You should know they are a regular sponsor of this newsletter, though, and weigh any bias you want from that.

Anyway, if you’re an app maker or app business owner, I’d encourage you to subscribe to their RSS feed. Don’t just pay attention to what they’re writing, though. If you’re doing content marketing yourself then take a look at how they’re doing it, too. You might not be able to match their team size, but I’m sure you can learn something from them.

Dave Verwer

Sponsored Link

Try the beta for the new highly flexible, natively rendering Paywall UI framework from RevenueCat. With RevenueCat Paywalls you can remotely configure and edit your entire paywall view without waiting on App Review. See how it works here.

News

I really hope Apple doesn’t increase fragmentation by further separating the third-party stores, meaning there would need to be Brazil-specific stores and EU-specific ones. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that this new ruling “simply” triggers an expansion of the current EU stores into Brazil. This doesn’t need to get any more complicated for developers.

Tools

Charlie Chapman’s new developer utility will save you some time if you like to frame your screenshots. There’s a free version with a generic looking frame, or upgrade for better ones.

I know this isn’t the place for feature requests for Charlie, but I’d love it if you could also add a line or two of text with some text customisation above/below the framed screenshot, and a gradient background, and … 😬 Updating the screenshots is the worst bit of an App Store release and I hate the Photoshop document I use for it.

Code

We were so preoccupied with whether we could, we didn’t stop to think if we should! Matteo Altobello explains how, but only you can decide if it’s a good idea.

How does SwiftUI decide what it needs to redraw? Let Natascha Fadeeva explain it to you with some simple, step-by-step examples.

You won’t find a use for this technique from Chris Trott every day, but that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. Oh, and if you ever do need to render pixel art in an app, this post will make your day.

Business and Marketing

From Ryan Ashcraft’s latest post:

If I could go back, I’d be more strategic and less afraid to hire help. Once you know what you’re looking for and where to find it, bringing in great people becomes much easier.

This is good advice. I’ve used both UpWork and TopTal and had good experiences with both. That said, I also had one bad experience with a freelancer through UpWork. The best advice I can give is to encourage really frequent communication with someone new you’re working with until you both learn how each other likes to work, but Ryan has written much more on the subject.

Jobs

Senior iOS Developer - Productivity Team @ komoot GmbH – As a Senior iOS Developer, you’ll be an essential part of our newly established iOS Developer Productivity Team. You’ll work closely with other iOS developers and help them perform at their highest technical level. – Remote (within European timezones)

iOS framework developer @ Nutrient (formerly PSPDFKit) – Design APIs that will affect hundreds of apps, and create UIs used by millions of users. Collaborate globally in a small team working on the leading document SDK for iOS, macOS and visionOS. Make the most of a flexible schedule, and attend annual retreats at exciting places around the world. – Remote (Anywhere)

iOS Engineer @ Bevel – We’re building at the forefront of consumer health. We are a small team that deeply cares about our craft. You’ll get a chance to work on something that improves the health of tens of thousands of people! – On-site (United States in NY)

And finally...

Happy Pi Day! 🥧