No sleep til’ dub dub! Or something like that? Today, I’m proud to give you the eleventh annual Swiftjective-C W.W.D.C. Pregame Quiz featuring Apple Intelligence, Jony Ive and more! If you want to test your mettle against previous years, you can hop back in to any of them:

WWDC 2015

WWDC 2016

WWDC 2017

WWDC 2018

WWDC 2019

WWDC 2020

WWDC 2021

WWDC 2022

WWDC 2023

WWDC 2024

Ground Rules

There are three rounds, and the point break down is as follows:

• Round 1 – 1 point each answer
• Round 2 - 2 points each answer
• Round 3 - 3 points each answer

The last question of each round is an optional wildcard question. Get it right, and your team gets 4 points, but miss it and the team will be deducted 2 points.

You just know I had to. Let’s rip the band aid off! Don’t try and cheat and ask Siri for the answers, it’ll just reply back it found web results anyways (🥁).

Question 1:
Genmoji was supposed to usher in an era of creativity in the world of emoji expression. It…hasn’t quite hit that mark. Which API is meant to display them inline within text components?
A: NSGenmojiRepresentation
B: NSAdaptiveImageGlyph
C: AttributedImageString
D: AttributedGenmojiString

Question 2:
Apple AI chief, John Giannandrea, wanted to include which chat assistant instead of OpenAI’s chatGPT in iOS 18?
A: Meta AI
B: Gemini
C: Alexa
D: Claude

Question 3:
In the now infamous (and pulled) ad featuring Bella Ramsey about Apple Intelligence, what was the name of the guy Siri allegedly found using its (seemingly made up) context aware capabilities?
A: Matt Granger
B: Nolan Quindle
C: Derek Blanchard
D: Zac Wingate

Question 4:
We all want Siri to be more conversational, and, well — basically work like our favorite LLM chatbots do. To that end, what’s the internal codename for Apple’s revamped Siri architecture aimed at delivering a similar experience?
A: Siri 2
B: LLM Siri
C: Siri Chat
D: Siri Next

Wildcard:
The creators of Workflow (acquired by Apple) eventually went on to spearhead Shortcuts in Apple. Recently, key members left Apple to start a new company to bring AI to the desktop. What’s the name of the nascent company?
A: Quantum, Inc
B: DesktopOS, Inc
C: NewAi, Inc
D: Software, Inc

With all the rage being AI, LLMs, and similar beats — Jony Ive recently stepped into the ring with OpenAI and their company, io. Let’s chat!

Question 1:
Okay, io. Let’s see how much you follow the rumor mill — what’s the expected form factor of their first AI device according to reports?
A: Watch
B: Wearable necklace
C: Pin-on (i.e. Humane)
D: Smart glasses

Question 2:
Here’s one that surprised me a bit. When is their first device expected to hit the market?
A: 2025
B: 2026
C: 2027
D: 2028

Question 3:
A bit lost in all of the io new is LoveFrom, Ive’s design firm — which is now taking on design at OpenAI. To date, which of these ventures has LoveFrom not been a part of?
A: Designing Ferrari’s first electric car.
B: A new seal and typography for King Charles III
C: Airbnb core products
D: Redesigned and customized headphones for Bose

Question 4:
Ive’s first project at Apple, while working at design firm Tangerine, was for “Project Juggernaut”, which was a codename for…
A: The Apple Lisa
B: Newton
C: Powerbook
D: Macintosh Portable

Wildcard:
Bro got paid. 2011 was the last time that Ive’s compensation was publicly noted. In addition to his cool $25 million stock bonus, what was his reported base salary at the time?
A: $20 million
B: $25 million
C: $30 million
D: $35 million

Let’s go back into my lore for a moment. If you’ll indulge me, can you answer these wildcard questions from quizzes in years past?

Question 1:
From 2019’s section on Apple Lore: What original Apple employee quickly sold off their 10% share of the company in 1977 for only $800 (which would be worth billions today)?
A: Ronald Wayne
B: Patty Jobs
C: Nikola Tesla
D: Johannes Kepler

Question 2:
From 2017’s Apple Brain Teaser section: Which famous English astronomer, mathematician and physicist was originally featured on Apple’s logo?
A: Isaac Newton
B: Galileo Galilei
C: Johannes Kepler
D: Nikola Tesla

Question 3:
From 2015’s Senior Developer Only’s section: Finish the sentence. At WWDC 14, it was famously declared that Swift is “Objective-C __ ___ __!”
A: with type safety!
B: without the pointers!
C: without the C!
D: with readable syntax!

Question 4:
From 2016’s Senior Developer Only’s section: What was the first (and eventually accepted) proposal for the Swift programming language submitted from the community?
A: Constraining AnySequence.init.
B: Replace typealias keyword with associatedtype for associated type declarations.
C: Referencing the Objective-C selector of a method.
D: To allow most Swift keywords to be used as an argument label.

Wildcard:
A…wildcard in a wildcard section? Why not! From 2020’s Dub Dub Venues and History section: Paper badges were the norm for WWDC badges for much of its history. Can you name the year they finally made the switch to plastic badges for the first time?
A: 2009
B: 2008
C: 2010
D: 2012

Answer Key

Round 1:

1. B. NSAdaptiveImageGlyph.
2. B. Gemini
3. D. Zac Wingate
4. B. LLM Siri.
5. Wildcard: D. Software, Inc. — delightful website, too.

Round 2:

1. B. Necklace.
2. B. 2026. Guess they have a head start.
3. D. Fake, though they did make a turntable!
4. C. It was the first Powerbook (a Macintosh Portable successor), though as an official Apple employee — it was the Newton.
5. Wildcard: C, $30 million!

Round 3:

1. A. One of its oft forgotten co-founders, Ronald Wayne.
2. A. Sir Isaac Newton. Because, you know, the whole Apple thing?
3. C. Without the C indeed, good times.
4. D. To allow most Swift keywords to be used as an argument label. From Doug Gregor, implemented in Swift 2.2.
5. Wildcard: A. They made the switch after 08’.

Sometimes, you just have to go for it.

That’s my been my main sentiment since I’ve chatted with a few indies about marketing. I’m glad the conversation is opening up, because we’re all starting to learn a universal truth:

When you ask someone to pay money for something, you have to sell it.

Though, so many of us aren’t sure where to start. It’s a new world for most — so my thinking is, let’s do what all of these new entrepreneurs are doing with vibe coding. They may not full understand it, but they know it does do something.

To that end, may I suggest to you: vibe marketing.

Enter Vibe Marketing

To vibe market is to not worry about attribution for a specific install. It’s the action of putting together several creatives to run as a paid ad even though you may not know best practices (I certainly don’t). It’s trying to reach out to an influencer in your space even though you have no idea how those deals work. It’s not really knowing how to target an audience just right. Or even understanding how Meta’s comically confusing ad manager works.

You’re just going for done, and far from perfect. Just try something, and keep a sheet somewhere as simple as this:

You don’t have to full grok the hierarchy of a campaign, its ad sets and the ads within them. Or, know what to set for an auction price. Or even know what CPM stands for! Like those learning to program, there’s just too much to learn! So forget learning the ins and outs academically, just try something and learn on the job. This is certainly a situation where you learn balance by falling and scraping up your knees a bit.

If the Age of LLMs has taught me anything, it’s that I’m leaning more towards action than perfection. I’ve struggled with not letting something go until my footprint and design is all over it. And sometimes, you need that. But other times? It’s okay to pull out of the garage in a Toyota rather than a Porsche.

Vibe Marketing Ideas

So, what vibe marketing have I been trying lately? Here’s what I’m up to:

• Boosting Instagram Posts: I try to find a post that explains Elite Hoops well, shows it off in action, and I put $10 behind it and see what happens. Today, I have this one boosted.

×

• Exact Match with ASA: If you can find exact search terms people are looking for when it comes to your app, definitely run them with Apple Ads (seriously can’t believe these are called AA now, but I digress). These are high-intent users, looking for what we all are taught to find: someone needing a specific problem solved, and you have the app to solve it.

• Classic Website Views: I’m a bit new to this one, but seeing as how I just rewrote my entire website for Elite Hoops, I’m trying them out. Simply serve up a Meta ad with a goal of a website visit. I think my site sells the app fairly well, so I’m curious to see what effect these will have. They run a bit cheaper than app install ads, too.

And, things I want to try, but haven’t:

• Google search ads.
• SEO in general. Paralysis by analysis here, there’s too much data and techniques being thrown at me when I look at this. If you have any solid ideas here, I’d love to hear them.
• Good ol’ flyers at basketball tournaments. I want to make a compelling App Clip of the digital whiteboard, and hang up the QR code on the ubiquitous thumbtack board each basketball venue has.

Final Thoughts

“Vibe” marketing, coding — whatever you’re henceforth vibing, is a gamble. I couldn’t help but realize a few things as I rewrote Elite Hoop’s website in a brand new stack I’ve never used (modern web development), with a serverless backend I’ve traditionally not leveraged for auth (Supabase), and in a framework I don’t fully understand yet (React) — much less using another framework built on top of that one (next.js)!

But - I did do it! And there’s no way I could have without the help of Cursor and vibe coding. But, I’d be lying through my digital teeth if I didn’t proclaim how much I didn’t really understand at certain junctures. That doesn’t feel great. What was being done at some point in the next.js rewrite that was a critical error — but I was just too ignorant to know any better? Is there some massive flaw I just haven’t found yet? The feeling comes up, because I’ve spotted this type of thing with AI and iOS programming several times — because there, I do know.

I suppose that is the line we walk here. Vibe marketing is to do it but not fully grok it. And for my money? That’s a fantastic place to start. Far less a gamble here than it is with shipping production code. When it comes to this stuff, it’s not the mistakes that will kill you. It’s the not trying that will.

Until next time ✌️

Deep Dish Swift 2025 has been a treat, as it always is. My talk over indie app marketing seemed to resonate, but if you missed it — here are the three main takeaways from it. Think of it as a cheat sheet for my talk:

Shift your mindset

The first thing we have to do as indies is to stop defaulting to only coding. We tend to use a lot of our rare free time on “the next feature” or something from WWDC. All well and good, but there is a time and a place for it — and it’s not all the time.

Try to split your indie-dev time around, ideally, 50/50. You market half the time. You do product work half the time. If that’s unreasonable for your current situation, then try something like 60/40.

The point is, marketing must become a critical and first-class component of how you do things.

Emails!

Email marketing is, I think, something I can promote in general terms - insofar as it’s applicable to any app, for any indie and at any size. The amount of purchasing intent is high on emailing lists or a newsletter. Folks are consciously choosing to be there. If you don’t have one, I’d encourage you to get started today.

I personally use Mailerlite, and it has worked pretty well. There are several options, though — and all of them have an API. I recommend popping in a sign up form tactfully in your app’s onboarding. In Elite Hoops, it’s about the third or fourth slide, depending on a few other factors:

×

Paid acquisition

Yes, paid acquisition can work for indies. But, you need to come at it with the right expectations and game plan:

1. Save up ahead of time to spend, at least, $30 a day — and for at least a month. In my experience, you need to be spending around that much to A) learn anything about if it’s working, and B) see any tangible results.
2. Realize that setting up your first campaign sucks. It’s hard, the dashboard is confusing, there’s a bunch of esoteric errors you’ll encounter - the list can, and will, go on. It’s like submitting your first app to the App Store. A wee bit painful, but once you’re done - you’re good to go.
3. Keep a strict spreadsheet of showing all meaningful results, how you much you’ve spent, the trial conversion rate and any other data you can think of to make it absolutely certain if things are working. The one I use is in the image below - and you can download the template here.

×

Be sure to change the top row to account for your trial length. The idea is that you go back and fill in the “Earned X Week/Day Later” and then the cell right after it will do a simple Income - Ad Cost = Takehome calculation.

Final Thoughts

What else can I say? Try marketing your app! If you want to check out the talk, it’s at the 5hr08min mark here.

Until next time ✌️

The “What’s New” or “Release Notes” view are found in iOS apps the world over. Elite Hoops is no exception:

×

With SwiftUI and @AppStorage, this type of thing requires me to change, quite literally, one character in my codebase when I want to fire it:

private struct AppSettingsKey: EnvironmentKey {
    static var defaultValue: AppSettings { .init() }
}

extension EnvironmentValues {
    var appSettings: AppSettings {
        get { self[AppSettingsKey.self] }
        set { self[AppSettingsKey.self] = newValue }
    }
}

// MARK: App Settings

final class AppSettings: ObservableObject {
    @AppStorage("hasSeenWhatsNewV12") var hasSeenWhatsNew: Bool = false
}

I version my what’s new stuff, so when there is something to show, I simply increment the number:

@AppStorage("hasSeenWhatsNewV12") var hasSeenWhatsNew: Bool = false

// Becomes...

@AppStorage("hasSeenWhatsNewV13") var hasSeenWhatsNew: Bool = false

Since the app storage macro uses UserDefaults under the hood, it’ll recognize this as a new key — which defaults to false:

@main
struct EliteHoopsApp: App {
	private let deepLinker: DeepLinker = .init()

	var body: some Scene {
        WindowGroup {
        	TheViews()
	        	.sheet(item: $deepLinker.sheetLinkedView) { deepLink in
	                switch deepLink {
	                case .whatsNew:
	                    WhatsNewView()
	                default:
	                    EmptyView()
	                }
	            }
        		.environment(\.appSettings, appSettings)
        		.environment(deepLinker)
        		.task {
        			showPostLaunchAnnouncementsIfNeeded()
        		}
        }
    }

    private func showPostLaunchAnnouncementsIfNeeded() {
        guard deepLinker.linkedView == nil else { return }
        
        if !appSettings.needsViewOnboarding &&
            !appSettings.hasSeenWhatsNew &&
            appSettings.numberOfOpens >= 2 {
            appSettings.hasSeenWhatsNew = true
            deepLinker.sheetLinkedView = .whatsNew
        }
    }
}

And that’s it — once the user has:

1. Gone through onboarding.
2. Opened the app more than two times.
3. And has not seen the latest what’s new view, it’ll show.

A lot of developers will point out that nobody really looks at these things. Maybe they’re right, but I love working on it. It’s a dopamine hit that tells me I’ve finished up a big feature — and I tell people about it succintly and interactively.

And there’s no fluff here. Elocution is for the stage. In apps? A well-timed “What’s New” screen does all the talking you need — and SwiftUI can do it one character.

Until next time ✌️

You might have a fantastic app sitting at one or two downloads a day. You’re probably thinking that it’s deserving of a little bit more, yeah? Unfortunately, this is where I see the story end with far too many talented indies.

We love to be the starving artist, even if we don’t realize it. But if there’s one thing that’s changed things for me personally, at least from an earning standpoint, it’s somewhere down the line, I realized the following truth:

A great app that nobody knows about, is still a great app that nobody knows about.

Seriously! It’s so cheesy and hoo-rah, I know, but it’s absolutely true. You have to get the word out…

Van Gogh Releases

…or, stated differently — don’t do Van Gogh App Releases. Our boy Vincent made over 900 paintings. In his lifetime, he sold one. One!

We know how the story ends. His paintings hang in museums, sell for a lot of money, and have inspired generations since. But during his life? Crickets. However, his work was never the issue.

If the App Store had existed back then, he probably would’ve been sitting at two downloads a day, too. And, then, probably would’ve cut off his other ear dealing with app review (too much?).

Market your app

Elite Hoops has grown and grown over the past year, and it’s only because I’ve started taking marketing as seriously as I have traditionally taken development. And, to put my money where my mouth is — I’ve popped on Apple Search Ads for my good ol’ soccer app, too.

To date, it’s done like — $75 in MRR? In the past month(ish), it’s at $131. Not life changing money, but I’m giving it a chance.

When you’re in the pits, it’s easy to confuse activity with perceived achievement. But in the end, you can’t develop or feature flag your way out of nobody knowing that your app exists. You just have to tell them. Then, start shipping some of that good stuff, and it’ll most likely work out better for you.

So give something a try, here are some ideas:

• Try paid acquisition from your expendable income: Even if it’s $10 a day for a few months. You’ll learn a lot.
• Commit to marketing for a month instead of developing: Again, you’ll learn a lot. Put down the feature requests and hotfixes, and see if you can bring some people into your app.
• Post and post and post: If you have a social angle, simple try posting some features sizzle reals. Not marketing, Apple-slickified, polished ones — just simply you using the app doing this one thing that it does well.
• Think like a marketing person as much as a developer: Because when you are an indie, you are in marketing, too.

The list goes on. Try things, fail, and try again. You were probably awful at programming when you started (Me! My apps were too!). You might be terrible at marketing in the beginning, too! It’s all good, I promise you’ll get better. And, I hope you do. Frankly, I want to see more indie apps in the world.

Until next time ✌️