Under the Radar

Using David's upcoming app as an example, we take a journey through curiosity, excitement, productivity, despair, polishing, and shipping.

The design challenge of a podcast app's now-playing screen, how Overcast's design has progressed over the years, and the unexpected usability failures along the way.

Taking vacations or staycations to get a lot of work done in a short time and take full advantage of being in the zone.

Creating a new app as a fun exercise, and making choices that minimize its ongoing maintenance needs.

Including large or small databases and other data files with your app.

Producing and embedding content in your app that changes continuously, such as monthly challenges, directories, and user-generated content.

Running servers is easy the vast majority of the time. But sometimes, something goes wrong at the worst possible time.

Tracking down hard-to-find, hard-to-reproduce bugs that don't show up in your own usage.

When, why, and how it's OK to ship updates to your app with known bugs.

Good and bad fears of embarking on major code changes to our apps.