Cutting Board App - Rant

Before I start my rant, I want to express how awesome it is that my random tool that I put on my website has gotten so much attention. It was really just a thing I made so that I could use my garage computer to try out different cutting board designs. Oddly, Google picked it up and now I'm on page one when people search for stuff about making cutting boards.

Since it got so much attention, and I've been itching to get into iOS app development, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get an app out there. That being said, holy sh*t people are nasty. Did you waste 99 cents on an app and you want your money back? Let me know and I'll refund you.

-- Start Rant --

1. The website is a free resource. Yes I do have a donation link and I absolutely appreciate everyone who throws a few bucks my way. That being said, I want to remind you that it is free.
2. Donations help, but my hosting fees aren't even close to being paid. I don't mind this as I have some other projects on my servers, but yea... not even counting the time I spend coding, this isn't a cash cow for me.
3. Based on traffic vs. other sites I have on my server vs. total cost, I estimate this site is costing me around $20 a month.
4. Did I mention the website is free? I did stick a Google ad widget on the page, but that got me about $40 in the last two years.
5. I know my website is ugly.
6. When the weather gets nicer, the boat, motorcycle, family, dogs, etc. will in fact, get more attention than this project.
7. I get a LOT of site visitors, and not unheard of I get a LOT of spam messages and mail. If you emailed me and I didn't get back to you, I'm truly sorry.

-- Second Rant --

1. The iOS app is 99 cents. I know, I know... based on the reviews it has gotten, it sucks. Thanks for the feedback.
2. The developer account to be able to publish apps on the store is $99 a year. Being that the only other app I have is a free app, the 99 cents I am asking for the Cutting Board Calculator is a small ask to try and recover some costs.
3. Yes, I've been slacking on updating it. Coincidentally when I released the first version, the Swift UI framework was going through some transitions so the layout got all wonky.
4. I didn't realize so many people would be using their phone to use the app. I thought I put something out there that this is best on iPad, but here we are.
5. Given all the variables that go into making a cutting board (especially end-grain), it is really difficult to put all the options in one place that make sense on small devices.
6. I'm working on some updates to the app, focusing on phone layout first.
7. I asked a handful of people to test the app. For the most part I got 'Looks good' and 'This is great'... I knew there was room for improvement, so instead of analyzing it to death and never actually releasing anything I decided to just go live with it. That's the best way to get feedback anyways. It's the same concept of "If you want free advice from the internet, just post something egregiously wrong, and people will take a chunk of time out of their day to give you the 'correct' answer"
8. I don't 'vibe code' this... I do use Ai tools to help with small code snippets, but this isn't some garbage that I threw into a chat window and hoped it would survive. I'm a human, and I human-made this.
9. One issue that even I had, was losing my projects. I'll add an update to my -not rant- below.

-- Not a rant --

Here's some updates I have coming down the pipeline...

• Create an account so your projects can be saved. If you happen to sign on with another device, your projects can show up there.
• I'm adding Apple sign-in and Google sign-in for easy registration/login.
• Eventually I will update the website to use the project data. If you are signed in, you could essentially start a project on the website then see it on your phone when you're out in the garage... or whatever your flow looks like.
• I'm adding a metric option to the projects! This is surprisingly difficult to do, but I think I have it figured out. Technically I'm still storing them as decimal inches in the database, but if the unit is metric, it will do a front-end conversion of the measurement. Either way, I'd like to have more metric people test this out, but I guess I'll just have to wait for some bad reviews on the next release to see what I need to adjust. (Sorry, not meant to be a rant here). I also thought of having a separate metric storage table in the database, but we'll see how this goes.
• Project images - Sometimes I'll make the same board over and over... I can take a picture and it will show in the app next to the project.
• Cut list - This is a peculiar feature really, but I have some ideas. For a typical cutting board, all the pieces would need to be at least the same length and same height. Width is variable, even when it comes to end-grain. That's it... I'm thinking of doing an output of the pieces, organized by type saying how long, high and wide each should be.

I'll probably add some more info as I go, and since the weather here in Washington is still so finicky, I have some time before the boat comes knocking at my door. Until next time, happy board making and I hope to become liked again... :)

-Dave