Hi, my name is Manton.

This is the Timetable Microcast.

Yesterday, I said I was worried that Apple wouldn’t approve Sunlit 3.0, but today I have good news that they did approve it, and they approved it quickly.

It was only 12 hours between when I submitted the app and when it was approved.

I complain about Apple pretty often.

I try to hold them to a really high standard, but this quick approval is a nice example of everything with the App Store kind of working as it should.

12 hours from submission to approval is still 12 hours slower than I can release a new Mac version of Microdot Blog, which I can do in minutes, not hours, but by App Store standards, 12 hours is incredibly quick.

Now, of course, there’s no guarantee Apple will approve any bug fix updates.

That’s essentially what happened with Basecamp’s Hey a couple months ago, where 1.0 was approved, but 1.0.1 was held up when they were actually getting ready to launch their service, and that sparked all the frustration and controversy that followed.

I really hate that kind of uncertainty.

It’s a big relief that Sunlit 3.0 was approved, though, because it’s been hanging over my head, not knowing if John and I had wasted months of time on an app that we are really proud of, only to then push for weeks just to get the app actually approved.

And this is also why we tried to make Sunlit 3.0 as solid as possible now, do a public beta and get feedback, just in case there can’t be an update right away.

I’m really happy with what the release will look like.

We knew this was a possibility when I submitted it pretty early, that this might be the version that will be in the App Store for a bit, and I’m okay with that.

So the current plan is to release the app on Monday, that’s several days from now as I record this on a Thursday, and this will give me time to improve a couple things on the micro.blog backend.

I have some improvements to how photos show up in the media timeline part of the API that won’t require any Sunlit changes, things will just work a little bit better.

And I can also take that time to work on promoting the release before we actually officially launch it on Monday.

This is actually a big change for me really, it’s like usually when something’s approved I just want to ship it immediately, or like when a feature is done in micro.blog I just want to ship it immediately, and I usually do, I usually wrap something up and like the next day or right away it’s out because I like to have things in customers' hands.

But in this case I think it’s worth taking a step back, thinking about how we want to launch it, try to get the word out as much as possible, and meanwhile there is the public beta link so anyone can use the app in the meantime if they go seek it out.

So I’m thinking about doing a blog post series called Countdown to Sunlit 3.0.

I had this idea for actually micro.blog 2.0 which I’m working on, but that might still be a month away or so, that release.

It’s a big update across all the micro.blog apps, new features on the web, so I’m kind of stealing that idea for Sunlit 3.0 for now.

As part of the countdown I would basically write a new blog post every day leading up to the release, and each blog post would feature one part of the app.

So for example there could be a post about the new Discover section of the app which has been redesigned for 3.0, how the emoji work in the Discover section, that’s all new.

There could be a post about how the timeline works, there could be a post about mentions and conversations, and so on.

This would also give me an opportunity to post more screenshots and screencast videos, because I kind of rushed myself to get the App Store version submitted.

I didn’t include a video in the App Store, I just included screenshots, and I think the screenshots are good, but with these blog posts that would be another opportunity to feature other parts of the app and show some video.

And I could talk over the video too to highlight what is happening in the app.

I think some of the best marketing also acts as a kind of tutorial, so when you finally get around to downloading the app you already know how it works.

A bunch of apps that I love do this.

Apple is great at this, right?

They will show off iOS 14 or whatever to developers at WWDC, but by doing that they are also showing off the feature to many other people.

Tens of thousands of Apple fans who will then have a sense of what iOS 14 is about when they download it weeks later.

Apple does this in TV commercials too, they show off some new feature of the iPhone or one of their apps, and then it’s marketing, but also like, you know, a million people saw how to use that app.

Unfortunately I can’t do TV commercials, but we can do blog posts, we can get the word out that way.

Thinking about how advertising can be kind of a tutorial also makes me think we could do a blog post that’s all about signing into the app, like using it for the first time, or upgrading your blog if you don’t have a paid subscription.

That is one of the areas that can be confusing, since Sunlit does require a micro.blog account for most of the features to work.

We’ve been talking about improving the kind of the first launch experience where your timeline is blank.

Right now it’s really geared around someone who probably already is following at least a few people at micro.blog, and I think there’s more we could do for someone who’s literally just signing up to use Sunlit and they’re not following anyone yet.

They can click on the Discover tab, but like the timeline being blank, that’s something we can improve.

Anyway, I’ll wrap this episode up here, but if you can’t tell, I am very excited that Sunlit 3.0 was approved.

This is a major update to the app, a complete redesign, a complete rewrite.

I think it’s going to be a great foundation for more photo features in the future.

Thanks for listening.

Bye.