Starting indie journey
Hey! I'm a full-stack developer with over 5 years of experience finally starting my indie journey with the friend, with the idea to make a sustainable income while building uncompromised apps.
What is uncompromised?
That’s a buzz word to describe the intention to focus mostly on UX and functionality and not on funding or scaling issues. Modern web application development just getting harder and harder. Mainly because it’s getting better and more types of applications can be built on a web platform.
But there are just too many things to handle for 1 or 2 people.
The front end, back end, design, marketing, support just to name a few.
There is no way a small team can handle that without going full time and investment.
So we decided to try the Apple way.
Problems
No investment and no intention to look for it.
I want to focus on the product and users and not on investors' desires. There is nothing bad with that, I just want to try something different from what I've seen before.
Little of overlap with ideas and skills.
My main spec is front-end and performance of web applications and a little bit of back-end with GO. And it's a wonderful combo for startups and freelance.
But it's not exactly well suited for MVP. The amount of heavy lifting and boilerplate just to get things going is huge. And what's worse I have no ideas for Saas projects.
I don't want to build another social media or fintech and even if I would I won't be able to
The idea
It should be something I want to be solved.
It should be clear how to monetize and grow.
I have little experience in marketing and I’m using Twitter in reading mode. So no way to count on existing followers.
It should be small to not rely on investment.
The application should have little ongoing costs to not rely on the subscription-based system.
And most importantly it should be clear what exactly the application is doing without shady stuff behind the screen.
With tens of thousands of applications flying around. Trust is essential for me as a user and I want it to be so for me as developer
Luckily I have such an idea!
Meet safe space (title might change)
iOS and mac os application in the future for storing and hiding encrypted photos and videos on device and iCloud.
Why this?
It’s personal. I still have embarrassing photos and sensitive documents that I store in .zip with and there is no good app for that.
The one I know has a miserable photo and video experience and focusing more on password and text like 1password or Day One
There is no way I would store such data in 3rd party server of the company I don't know.
Key features:
- No server, everything is stored on your iCloud or locally
- No subscriptions, since we have no ongoing costs the app would be a 1-time payment. Still thinking about limited free access.
- On-device encryption and decryption. No decrypted data go to iCloud.
That's it in a nutshell. Let me know what you think?
Is it something you would use?
Something you would like to see in the application which would be critical?
Wish me luck I'm both terrified and excited, thank you for reading ✌️
This is awesome, thanks for sharing! I'm also early on my journey. To be honest I don't think I would personally use it. I'm not an encryption expert but I feel like password protecting my photos is enough. Why would I want to go through the hassle to add more security?
Hey! I didn't find any good tool for "just" password protect my photos. Mostly people including myself just use "hidden photos" on iOS and OS X since that's the most convenient way and it's synced with iCloud. But there is no password protection at all. Ideally I would like to build the tool with the same level of convenience cross platform and with iCloud integration but with additional password protection for cases like shared access or losing access to iCloud.
and to be at reasonable price range around 5-10$ one time payment.
in nutshell
Hmmm okay I think I understand so you're saying you have a need for additional security on some of your photos.
iCloud require a password to login and thats enough protection for me personally. It sounds like this isn't sufficient to solve your problem. I'm curious why not?
oh I see,
iCloud don't encrypt your photos by default, there is tons of stories in the internet about stolen icloud passwords.
Simple answer even if somebody get access to your phone or iCloud by purpose or accidentally they won't be able to see encrypted data.
think of family members like children who has access to you phone or weak iCloud password in both of these cases there is no easy way to protect sensitive data.
It's basically like a 1password for files, you don't need it, you can just remember passwords. But it makes life a lot more secure with a little or even no inconvenience. same here.
Got it that makes sense. Thanks and good luck!
now when I read the post it's not clear what exactly the app is doing. Thank you for your questions!
In the first post I wanted to highlight more about approach rather than the application itself but will definitely focus on the idea and growth plan in the next one
Seems like a good approach. I struggle with defining the problem too :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you use iCloud, you store your data on a 3rd party server?
That's definitely an interesting idea, though. There is as well this project, where you can store your photos on your own server.
Hey! yes, using iCloud is technically 3rd party server but owned by Apple.
nothing beats storing files locally, but it's not that convenient.
Storing files on your own server will require maintaining server security, which is even harder and I can't imagine doing it for myself don't speak about friends and family.
So I was thinking
iCloud is quite secure by default and everyone has it in ios land so instead of storing files directly in iCloud I'll store encrypted files and decrypt it only on the device.
is it 100% secure? I doubt, but it's close.
Lossing iCloud access is hard, decrypting photos and videos is even harder.
and there are no additional costs to that, no server to maintain I will not even store any data at all, so the aim is to have a similar experience to native face id + pin code. Security should not be complicated
P.S. but photo prism is WONDERFULL. I'm a big fan of GO and I'll definitely try it in free time
It makes sense. Thanks for the explanation! Gland you like photoprism, too.
Awesome, keep the good work up!