As regular readers know, I usually take some company to task on these posts for what is usually incredibly stupid decision making. I’ve done it with Xbox, Google, and Sony. (Trust me when I tell you I’m far from done with Sony.) For this post, we’re going to find out if I can add myself to that list of bad decision makers. Why?
I created an app.
For the last four months, I’ve been toying and tinkering with an app for those of us who have to take medications or supplements everyday. The reason it took that long is because yours truly was also researching stories for this blog as well as several other ventures at the time. But now, after quite a bit of development, I think it’s ready. The biggest sign of that is the fact that I got it to finally run and haven’t run afoul of any bugs in Swift Playground where I built it and tested it.
I’m still tinkering with a couple minor polishes, but it’s going to come up soon to where I can invite beta testers to kick the tires, so to speak, and see if they have any issues to be resolved before I launch on the App Store. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in doing and use iOS, I’d appreciate it immensely and you can let me know at either of the links at the top right of this page on my socials: Bluesky or Mastodon.
Now you may be asking yourself why on Earth did I make an app? It’s a fair question for someone who spends more than a fair amount of time going after tech companies who are taking advantage of consumers like you and I. The reason I did it is because it’s always been an interest of mine as someone who uses apps for virtually everything. I began getting farther and farther into it as I realized I was leaving pretty detailed reviews on the App Store pointing out issues I had run into with various apps.
One such example was Proton Pass (Proton being another company on my radar for a future post), an authenticator app they launched a while back that was so shoddy that I thought I had downloaded the wrong app accidentally. No 2FA app should have an extended strobe light effect every time you open it, and theirs did on my iPad. I kept thinking I hope no one with epilepsy finds this. You’ll be glad to know it’s been fixed from what I was told by others now, but still the interest only grew from there.
Then as most developers likely do, I began thinking about what apps I would want that would make my life a bit easier. That took a little while admittedly. I only had one main requirement: privacy. So many apps out there are tracking you to get as much information out of you as possible. I despise that immensely. So before I even began to think about what kind of app I’d want to use, I put privacy at the forefront.
My little app respects that requirement. It only lives in your iCloud. It sends no information to me or anyone else. It’s all yours never to be shared by simply using what I created. No one but you and your doctor needs to know what medicine you take, why you take it, and how much of it and how often you take it. It’s frankly no one’s business but those responsible in the relationship between you and your provider.
After making that choice, I realized “Hey Mark, you’re not a programmer!” And I answered myself “You got that right!” So what did I do? I began learning. I didn’t take any courses. I simply began reading about the language I planned to write this in, and started the process from there. I admit many mistakes were made, but they were all learned from. I did have a little help from AI that fixed a couple bugs and issues that I wasn’t successful with resolving on my own, but it’s working like a charm now, as far as I can tell. But we all have blind spots in anything we create.
So that’s why I’m going to give it out to a small group of people to test out and see what they find with it. This has to be a collaborative process in order to make sure I put out the best quality app possible for what it does. And if this turns out to be a success, no one will be happier than me. If it doesn’t, no one can ever say I didn’t give it a shot.
If you’d like to be included in that very small beta test group when it’s ready, please let me know via either of the two social media accounts at the top right of the page. I’m active on Bluesky and Mastodon, and it would be greatly appreciated.
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