This process is a fun and difficult process. But some people just cannot stay off this trail for very long. It becomes part of you, one starts to identify as a builder (yes like the Lego character). The joy of shipping this baby product off to the huge App Store on a Cloud is a weird feeling of completion, a long story to tell, and of New Beginnings.
Maybe I will tell you some of the long story that resulted in PortfolioEC.
Outline:
Years of trying but failing (typically because the charting tools were complex and expensive).
SwiftUI ... a much better iOS platform.
Still too difficult of a project to conceive - but attempts were made.
Charts API launches on SwiftUI... that's a starting point...
Figured out 5 day a week charting math (to skip weekends properly).
Failed yet again to build the AssetsFolio.
.....
Decided to start with a project that had ZERO Charts... build that project then tack on Charting once it was done. (A zen form of building the thing by focusing on the Other Things required.)
Adding Charts - found that AssetsFolio code that works great.... that's 6 months of life reused. Still a good 2 weeks to go.
Yes, still working on integrating two projects and Xcode doesn't have tools for DEAD Code.
My best tool AlexSideBar is launched... I start using it in mid-March. It is mid-August and I'm not typing code. Most of the code is written by Alex at my direction and specification (very lose term here). He/she is great at fixing complex bugs; but can struggle with simple mismatched types or similar - so yes every now and again I send Alex out for a 2x4 stretcher on the truck, and fix some bugs to get us moving again.
Almost ready...
Ship it Day has arrived. Yeah! We set the target at first of December 2025. Got Apple approval for the App Store on the 11th. Got some business contracts to deal with and then it's open sells.
Let the downloads start to flow... cut it on wide open Apple.
There is not much that is easy-peasy with a product page on the App Store. Lots of decisions and second-thoughts... will I be able to change that latter (will it be easy to update - or another Review cycle)?
Not everybody gets a behind the App view of the many pages of details that are behind every App in the Store. Here is a menu of all those pages every developer fills out.
This is the setup for the general App product page. After developing the app - maybe a year of hard work coding and redesigning and incremental improvements. The developer is greeted with a blank canvas of the hundreds of questions and decisions to be made about displaying the App in the store.
There are countless images (screenshots) of the app running in real-life on so many of Apples devices. Start counting ... and it makes your head spin, because there are so many variations of sizes... (watch, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Vision Pro). Then once you have all the categories... start iterating the versions of hardware.