Showing people my ugly baby

early discover page

I have been working on this app an irresponsible amount, given that I have no idea if it will ever get traction. So I need to get something out the door.

It took me like 4 tries to get Test Flight working so I could share this app with my friends. Some of them are becoming bored of my obsession.

Have you heard Apple developers complain about App Store Connect?

In order to move to a new beta, I need to:

  1. Build an archive.
  2. Click “Distribute” on that archive.
  3. Log into the app store connect website, dig into my app and find the new build and attest that it has no novel, unexportable encryption technologies.
  4. Describe what the users should focus on and “Submit” the build for testing.
  5. Notify the users (not optional! so annoying.)
  6. Re-assign groups to the build.

I believe these steps must all be done with ticky boxes on the web, and cannot be scripted. It fully defeats my ADHD. These steps might technically only require 3 minutes or less, but they are interruptive enough that it’s taken me ~24 hours to actually catch them all, each time I’ve shipped a build.

And my poor, volunteer users need to get a push notification each time, about an app they will presumably use like once a week.