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News

The app has been pulled from the store because of changes to the underlying frameworks Apple has made in recent releases of iOS breaking compatibility with older software. I no longer have the resources to continue with development to write updates and will be terminating my developer accounts with Apple.

Violin Multi-Tuner

News (10 Oct 2023)

Violin Multi-Tuner was released in 2013 and enjoyed 33 free updates over 10 years. It took many months of hard work to write this software, which I did all on my own, on my own time and spending my own money to buy the hardware needed to do so. I put in the time and money hoping to make a career as an app developer. 

Sadly people have voted with their wallets that this was not to be. The app was downloaded over 194 thousand times, most of which was during the period the app was free. Sadly, when I set the price to a mere 99c the downloads dropped from 10K a month to between 10 and 30 downloads a month. I earned on average $77 a month from this app, which is unsustainable. 

If only more people had deemed this small asking price a worthwhile exchange, I would have been able to buy new Apple devices, write more updates and add new features which never came to be. Perhaps even start my own software company and employ others. Who knows where things might have gone. That said, I have no regrets and it simply is what it is. I will take the lessons learned from this experience moving forward. 

Because many people have deemed this small one off asking price of 99c and later $1.99 'too much' for such an app, I will now be closing my accounts with Apple. To add insult to injury, Apple took their 30% cut of the proceeds on top of the rediculously expensive annual developer fees, which I think is just pure exploitation. Whatever 'profit' I made would have all gone to buy new Apple devices just so I can continue. This is just simply too much.

There is demand, yet few are willing to part with a mere 99c a copy. If people were willing to pay this minimal amount, I would have been able to continue. When I set the price to free as a small experiment about 10 days ago the downloads shot up to 2.2K per day. I then set the price back to 99c and it immediately dropped back to one or two downloads per day, some days none at all. Was this really too much to ask?

I would like to thank everyone that have taken the time to write reviews on the app store. I would also like to thank everyone that bought a copy of this app. Sadly this was not enough to keep it going. I could have once again paid the developer fees out of my own pocket, but it has been a long time since I was able to maintain this software since the 'old' devices I have are no longer adequate, and I refuse to pay even more just for the priveledge. 

So what is the future of Violin Multi Tuner? It would be a large undertaking to rewrite it for another platform like Linux or Android. Open sourcing it is a possibility and something I will look into in the future. For the time being I have shifted my focus to other ventures.