Welcome!

Hey!

It’s been a long journey since Long Ago started as a simple exercise in learning SwiftUI to a fully fledged app I’ve spent a little bit over a year into.

Back then Long Ago looked like this:

Back then I just wanted a simple app to remind myself of chores that are important to not let go but that can be overdue for a few days. I just didn’t like to see red overdue items in my Reminders.

I also wanted to really dive into SwiftUI, Cloudkit and all the fancy iOS features. I’ve never had the chance to do any of that in my job and the last time I worked in a native iOS app Objective-C was king and Swift didn’t even exist! That was way too long ago to even track in the app 😁

Time for some memories. One of the things I really like about the app store is finding this beautiful and limited-scope little apps made by indie devs. Developers like Tapbots and Iconfactory and Crunchy Bagel not only do software but also give their apps some personality. For me these apps are little toys, made to be functional as much as being nice to play with.

One of the core principles of Long Ago is that. Be fun. 

I didn’t want an app with just the standard SwiftUI components. I wanted something delightful to open and stare at.

I have spent a lot of time working in Long Ago not because the functionality is hard (though I will tell you, some of it really was! At least for a begginner like me.) but because I have put so much care in everything inside the app: from the UI, to the icons to the themes and shortcuts, even to this website.

Now I’m finally in the final stretch for a release of Long Ago in the App Store and I can’t help but reminisce how fun and full of learnings this whole thing has been. There’s still a lot more I want to do (and learn) but I really want to put this out for more people.

I’m really thankful to everyone who has helped me along the way: from the super helpful people on Mastodon, to my really pacient beta testers and of course to my wife who has given me so much good input and ideas.

So here we go. Last stretch! Can’t wait to mark this one done in my Long Ago app.