The Post-Release Journey
A bit later than planned, but here it is – the first post after the release of Cleano. The name has been changed from Cleaner to Cleano because in today’s market, an original name is essential.
The release itself took 5 days and 6 attempts to pass the review process, during which we had to convince Apple’s reviewers that we don’t collect user data or send it to our non-existent server. Questions about which data was being referred to were simply ignored, and the only meaningful comment was about the option in our settings to not send analytics, which is enabled by default. This option indeed existed and disabled the analytics systems to appease the paranoid. Ironically, after hiding this option from the settings, the reviewers approved the build without further comments. So much for the quality of Apple’s review process.
Looking back, this wasn’t the biggest issue. It took 13 months from the first commit to the release, during which we spent 282 hours on the project. Had I known it would take this long, the functionality would have been cut in half. Initially, we planned for 3 modules, but this grew to 7. Moreover, it took three months from the end of functional development to the release, spent on polishing the design and minor tweaks. Essentially, a quarter of the entire time was spent on post-completion work.
On the first day after the release, we received our first subscription – a one-year subscription. This is likely a good sign. If someone found enough value in Cleano from the first launch to subscribe for a year, it’s probably worth continuing.
Of course, like anyone, we already have our next project, which is nearing the early prototype stage. Common sense suggests that we should focus on promoting Cleano and prepare an update with bug fixes and small features that didn’t make it into the first version. However, my inner voice insists on diving into the new project because it’s fun, and we’re not starving. We’ll see which side wins.
That’s all for today. We’ll mix the joy of the release with other topics in the next post.