Sta.sh
The Last Two Years
On the 1st of April, it will have been two years since I launched my first app on the iOS App Store, dAmnMobile 1.0, so I thought it'd be interesting to do a walk through memory lane of what has happened in the short period of those two years.
What Happened In Those Years
dAmnMobile 1.0 launched on the 1st of April 2011. It was the first mobile client for dAmn. It brought a simple user interface with superdAmn built natively in. It wasn't great, but it was a start.
Three days after launch, dAmnMobile 1.0 received a Daily Deviation thanks to ~Thorero and `Lilyas. This helped with getting the attention the app needed for success.
Next up, on the 1st of July 2011, came dA Uploader 1.0. The first Sta.sh uploader on the iOS App Store. I offered this as a completely free application for download. It worked, thats about all I can say about it.
Then I decided that dAmnMobile needed a complete rewrite and separation of the iPad and iPhone codebases. Looking back upon the decision to separate dAmnMobile into two apps was idiotic on my part, let alone charging users for the upgrade. Got to make mistakes to learn from them though.
The iPhone version of dAmnMobile 2 came first on September 2nd, 2011 with the iPad version releasing shortly after on the 27th. As part of the launch, I charged $0.99 for the app, then after a week or two, pricing was moved to where it remains today at $1.99.
On the 11 of November 2011, the iPad deviation received Daily Deviation that was suggested by *Topicality and given by `WDWParksGal, thanks to them for that.
Next up in my product development sights was a Message Center app for dA. Initially I thought this would be simple, in reality, I couldn't be more wrong. One word, DiFi, DiFi is hell. But I trudged through this hell and out came dA Messages, a simplistic Message Center client for dA. It launched on the 13th of January of 2012.
Along came my purchase of my first actual iPhone in February of 2012, up until then I had been using an iPod Touch. This broaden my horizons in terms of what I could do think of and do. As part of getting the iPhone, I switched to a new carrier within New Zealand who didn't have a mobile app for checking usage (mind you, they still don't), so I built my own. I showed it on Twitter and it grabbed their attention. It nearly became their official app but sadly it didn't due to some legal issues on their end.
Skinny was a paid app for around a month after its launch on the 9th of May, 2012 then switched to being a free app. While it was a paid app, it reached 9th in the Utilities category in the New Zealand iOS app store.
Skinny was also my first Android app I ever developed. That was a eye-opening experience that completely confirmed my choice of developing for iOS first.
In July 2012, Sunya, my mobile application development company was born. The story behind Sunya is actually amusing. We had a local tech expo coming up and the organisers had a spot free that they couldn't fill. I had been talking to one of the main organisers via Twitter about TechEx and other topics and they asked if I wanted to have the booth. This was all three days before the expo started. Sunya was created in those three days before the expo, and we showed our work to local companies and community members. I've been working full time at Sunya since then.
Let's travel back a little bit in time to get some context for this event. Back in May, I applied to go to Cocoa Camp, an Apple run, weeklong training event for students.
Part of this application was process was sending in a demo app showing your programming skills. And my luck, I sent in the source code for Skinny, then the app broke. Somehow I was still one of 24 students from around the worldwide to be invited by Apple to attend after they reviewed our applications.
So in August of 2012, I flew over to Apple headquarters in Cupertino for the week. We did training sessions for the week as well as building a app over that time to show to Apple Engineers at the end of the week. Overall it was a superb experience that I wish I could do again, sadly I'm not a student anymore.
After I came back from Cocoa Camp, I began work on my next app, Stash. Designed by $Ikue, it was a full Sta.sh client utilising the new API's that deviantART provided to retrieve your Sta.sh. Stash launched in December 2012 on the 12th (And yes, I just noticed that it was launched on the 12/12/12 now
). Within a few hours of it's launch I received a Daily Deviation on it which I have to thank ^ladygagz and ^princepal for.
That brings us up to now where my apps have sold over 43,000 copies in so many countries. I have to thank everyone, especially anyone that downloaded or supported dAmnMobile 1.0, if it hadn't launched as well as it did, the rest of the last two years may never have happened.
Again, thanks to the community for their support and I hope to be around building apps for a long time 
.
.
.
Add Media
Style