Month: January 2016

Categories
Dev

Autochords for Mac v1.0

Autochords is currently the first app under All Music Apps

A couple of days ago I quietly released Autochords for Mac (App Store link).

Despite the frustrations experienced by many Mac developers, I decided to release on the Mac App Store. I think it’s still the best way for people to find and buy new apps, plus I don’t have any payment infrastructure set up for myself and the App Store makes this very easy.

Funtionality-wise the Mac version pretty similar to the iOS version. It has a few additional moods, and the ability to play back an entire progression. It requires El Capitan[1] and supports full-screen and side-by-side modes.

While Autochords on iOS is ad-supported (with in-app-purchase to remove ads), I decided to try selling the Mac version for actual money. I think it’s quite low-priced for a Mac app at US$4.99, but I’m considering increasing the price as I add more advanced features.

For the two days since launching, Autochords has been the first app under All Music Apps, and it seems to have picked up a few purchases from there. With the low volume of new apps on the Mac App Store, maybe it will stick around near the top of that list for a while.

  1. I don’t think I’m using any APIs that would prevent targeting an older OS, so I might fire up a VM and do some compatibility testing.  ↩
Categories
Dev

Communicating via Release Notes

I’ve been on a more rapid release schedule with Autochords for iOS lately, which means writing more release notes…

I don’t nag for reviews in the app or even have a feedback/review link anywhere[1], so I thought I’d try asking for reviews in the release notes. I added the phrase, “If Autochords has helped you write a song or you had a good jam with it, why not leave a nice little review? :)” to the release notes to see if I could get some new reviews. It worked quite well, with about 6 people writing reviews and all of them positive. Previously I’d mostly only get reviews if people ran in to bugs, so that’s certainly been an improvement.

In a later update I also said: “Email hey@autochords.com if you have any suggestions for new progressions!”. This has only given me 1 email so far, but it was actually a really good suggestion so I’m counting that as another win. 😁

  1. Ironically, I got an email requesting this recently so I probably will add some feedback and App Store review links to the app soon. I still won’t be a dick about it though.  ↩