THE APPS ARE HERE

It’s time for another “it’ll never happen to us” moment. Are you ready for the big announcement?

Actually, wait. My English teachers always told me, “show, don’t tell”. So I’ll just show you. Feast your eyes on this, my friends:

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BEANIES 👏

HAS 👏

APPS!! 👏

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It’s true.

We have real, genuine, honest-to-goodness (my mom used to say that) iOS and Android apps that you can see, feel, touch, and (most of all) download.

A download and review is really the key thing here.

Is this a big deal?

I realize that, for most of you reading this, you could probably care less. And please, let’s not get started about how the phrase should be “you couldn’t care less”. It’s neither the time, nor the place.

Honestly, this is a big deal. There’s so much we can now do with an app that couldn’t be done properly before, and it’s exciting.

I’ve talked about PWAs in the past (and if you have zero recollection of that, for which I honestly wouldn’t blame you at all, that’s ok). PWAs are great, and I stand behind that. But the powers that be still lock you out of many key features of native apps, which is why, as I said before, native apps still win the day.

What can native apps do that non-native apps cannot?

Outside of simply being listed and searchable within the walled gardens of the Apple and Google app stores (along with about 10 gajillion other apps of massively varying quality), there are features of a native app that are genuinely useful for users that would otherwise not be available to us.

For example: sharing targets. Anybody who’s ever shared a cat meme to a friend on WhatsApp should know what I’m talking about here. It’s the simple act of sharing something through your phone’s share menu so it can be sent to another app. When it comes to beanies.family, it’s one of the easiest ways to share data to the app. Share a picture of an invite, and it shows up directly in your beanies calendar, or share a link to a recipe and bam! It gets added right to your family cookbook, with all the details. Things like this massively simplify our family life, and hopefully, yours too.

Exciting news - I’m already working on building this for our app (it’s a doozy, but it should be ready soon)!

I’m honestly confused about why people don’t talk about this more. Not about the beanies apps, I mean. We’ve already established that nobody cares about that. I’m talking about the actual process of building (and getting the sacred blessing) for a native app. In our case, we (here I go with “we” again) have gone through pages and pages of App Store paperwork, multiple App Review rejections, three consecutive iOS release runs that died because of a stuck version record, plugins that compiled fine but were invisible to the app, and certificate and entitlements issues galore. Who knew that building an iPhone app would be so much work?

But anyway - we’re here, and that’s all water under the bridge. The only thing left that’s important:

DOWNLOAD THE BEANIES APP! You won’t regret it.

If you’re on my mailing list, or reading this right now, or a fan of beanies.family in any way, shape, or form, download and review our app. That’s the most important thing that you can do to help us. And me. And yourself.

The review part is key for helping beanies.family to gain traction and visibility in the app stores, and hopefully be around for a long time. So if you are so inclined, please give us a 5-star rating. And if you are even more inclined, a review (an honest review, about anything you want). If you have something you really want to complain about, though, such as the fact that I bug you every week with dumb blogs, you can always tell me to my (virtual) face.

ATTENTION!! (ALMOST) FREE STUFF!!

📢📢📢 Guess what: The first 10 families to download the app and give me a review will win the exclusive prize of having beanies.family for $1 per month, forever (because I promise, I will start charging at some point). And that’s no joke (I’m actually keeping a list). Just ping me on discord once you’ve left the review, and you’re golden. 📢📢📢

So go to the play store, or app store and search for beanies.family, or just go to the beanies.family app download page, and install one of the very few private, secure, local-first apps on any app store. And while you’re at it, give me (or beanies.family) a review!

beanies.family is truly a real boy now. And I’m a proud dad.

Enjoy the app, my beanies. Lots more exciting stuff coming soon.

-greg