# 77: AltStore - Riley Testut

Channel: Launched by RevenueCat
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7awCYyrlzI
Duration: 1 hr 45 min
Language: English
Words: 21533
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/L7awCYyrlzI

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[0:00] welcome to launched I'm Charlie Chapman and today I'm excited to bring you the developer behind the popular iOS emulator app Delta and the thirdparty App Store alt store Riley test [Music] it Riley welcome to the show hey Charlie nice to be here thanks for having me on I am I think we talked about you coming on like what two years ago or something like that yeah a while back who knows just yeah it's we've we've met a couple times uh I think I think every time has been in California wwc exactly um but yeah for anybody you know listening at home this is this is the first recording the

[0:48] first episode real episode I've done of this in over a year other than like the special episodes the live episodes that I did last year so uh so yeah we're we're going to be rusty uh but uh luckily we have a really interesting unique story here to tell so uh I think I think that will make it easy to get through uh but thank you thank you for coming on I I'm excited to talk about the like Whirlwind experience you've had over the last I guess year and a half I mean it's a longer Journey but really the last year and a half kind yeah perfect word just insane just so hectic

[1:21] but and all the best ways like can't really complain just a wild ride yeah and I was telling you right before we started recording but uh you you you decided to make this an even more dramatic start for me because the day before we started recording uh suddenly you're in the news you're giving like press releases uh for some dramatic goings on with your with your alt store uh which we'll get into just another Tuesday you know Apple saying stuff about us never never a dull moment in uh in alt store Land um but before we get into alt store and Delta and hot tub and all

[2:01] of the the craziness of the last year uh I want to give everyone you know an idea of who you are uh so the three questions I always ask everybody to kick off the show is where are you from do you have a formal education related to what you do and then let's just talk about the journey that sort of LED ultimately up to Delta and all of this craziness sure okay then yeah I'll start with that where I'm from I was born in Dallas Texas and I lived there for a few years but then when I was five my family moved to New Zealand and so I actually grew up

[2:30] like in New Zealand and that's to me where I think of like my foundational childhood and where I learned so much of who I am or got much of who I am today and New Zealand's great everyone should check it out I love it there but then oh it's it's on my like very high list of places it's such an incredible place and I want to visit so much of Like My Philosophy I think on work and everything is from that culture like they're very great people lovely people but whatever that's a Sidetrack so yeah grew up in New Zealand moved back to America and then I was in Texas all

[3:00] throughout high school and then went to California for like college at University of Southern California and that's where I studied computer science and so I did study computer science I graduated with a just a CS degree a bachelor's nothing too fancy and through that time you were you were building apps like in high school and in college right yes so I started building apps when I was I think in seventh grade because I like adjust my sister got the iPhone and I was obsessed with that I was like what is this device it's so cool and so then I like saved up all my money to buy the iPhone 3G and then I

[3:37] just fell in love with all the apps like the App Store had just come out and so I had to download like so many apps like I remember like tap oh man so many apps tapt Revenge what the twinkle the like pre the twific aim all that stuff and so just playing around with that gave me like so much just inspired me to make my own and so yeah I then bought my myself like a programming book this is before there were like tutorials online and like taught myself some did you already have a Mac then I begged my parents to get me a Mac because they were trying to give us a

[4:11] laptops for school and I had to hand me down Windows computer and I was like please I really want to make apps even though I had no experience and so it my parents were like honestly I'm thank God they were willing to trust or like to believe in me I like sure we'll get to a Mac instead of a PC and see what we can do with it so I did that this is like this is a weird aside but this is something that's been on my mind recently because I have kids that are like they're they're young enough that they're not quite in that phase of like

[4:41] you know they're going to do the thing that they do for the rest of their life or whatever but like I hear you know your story right there or uh like when I was watching uh uh Steven Spielberg's uh the fabl men's movie and I've obviously read about his history too and he talks about how like it was like his uncle or something I think JJ Abrams has a similar story where it's like some body in their life spoiled them with some piece of gear yeah that when you're in that certain part of your life where you get like super obsessed with something if you're the right kid that gets handed

[5:12] the right thing that clicks with your brain you get like such a crazy Advantage uh yes absolutely because it's even even right after college like you might not be married you might not have kids but you still are now running a life sort of but during that phase of high school your life is in such a weird way and your brain is forming in such a weird way that like it's crazy how deep into the crevices of understanding something you can get even though you're obviously ignorant about the rest of the world uh and it gives you such a leg up later on that really is exactly what it

[5:44] was like it was the perfect timing I obsessed over programming I had no programming experience but then I learned Objective C fell in love with it and like just it was my obsession I followed all the iPhone like Tech blogs the programming blogs exactly cuz it was just that that ripe age for me to be so obsessed with programing and apple as well so very yes that's very formational for me getting the Mac that's so cool so you were building apps did you release any of those like into the store like are you one of those like early on you know millionaire kids releasing a f app

[6:16] or something no not at all I my first app was extremely basic it was called shoot around and it was literally just like a camera Fe the camera feed and I had like lasers and but like you had buttons you would just press and it would shoot lasers at the camera feed but it was all designed in Microsoft Paint like the buttons were just like blue circles the lasers were lit Microsoft Paint so you use the you use the PC to create your assets exactly cuz I exactly I didn't know how to use any gra any designer tools on the Mac yet but I new paint that is interesting I've

[6:48] never thought of that I guess cuz Mac paint was sort of famously with like the original Mac and stuff but like there's not really a version of that exactly like for people who know nothing which me at the time I was like yeah I I had to pull out my old Windows PC to make use paint and so I mean I would have recommended the app icon also made in paint it is not a good app icon at all like it's very bad but at the time I was like you need to send me that app icon and I should make it the chapter art for this sketch version of

[7:18] that app icon yeah I was proud of at the time I was like oh it looks like a camera look and does not at all but but like that was my first I think learning of like there's more to make making an app than just the code cuz I was like you know here's the app and then I was like I got to like make an icon for it I got to like make a website or I got to talk about it and it was just like whatever I learned there's so much more that went into like this project but i' digress yeah ah no and that's that

[7:45] that's the stuff that's so cool again especially as a kid getting you know it's like doing projects in school is super helpful for understanding how to fill out forms and do all this stuff but it's not self motivated but when it's something selfmotivated it's like a completely different thing and it absolutely it sets you up you know uh going forward so much oh yeah so okay so you You released some of them in the store were did you ever like did you make any sales were they all free like what was the story there I did yeah so I end up then my next app I made was camera Prime and

[8:19] that actually was did decently well at the time it was a camera app with like extra features that the normal camera app didn't have at the time like Zoom or Burst Mode like very basic features that just weren't there at all and so that was my start and that actually did kind of well I made like several hundred dollars a month just passively in high school and so which is amazing it was for high school it was incredible I was like oh wow I can just put this and just get money every month and then use it on whatever so that was also like really motivating just to know that it was

[8:50] possible like that was the first time I had any app that like got reviews people reviewed it said it was cool and so I don't know it yeah just that confirm that human beings somewhere else in the world especially when it's like not the us although I guess you were already a world traveler at that point but uh the idea of somebody else out in the world like seeing a thing you made and and having some experience with it is so magical oh it really was yeah I remember posting about it like on the Mac Rumors forums like trying to promote it and people were just like wow what a cool

[9:20] app and I was like oh like just I don't know such great validation Ah that's so cool so this is in high school now this is around the time when GBA for IOS happened right so what's the story there because that's sort of the the beginning of your Arc so to speak leading to now I guess and yeah it started just like as a basically an accident so I was fully focused on camera Prime that's what I thought was going to be like my main app was what I was going to be known for and then I just came across like some an open source repo for a jailbreak Game

[9:51] Boy Band simulator called GPS gpsp or no GPS phone and so I just found that and I was like wait this is just the code could I download this code and run it locally like for myself without jailbreaking because I've never been a Jailbreaker I don't like it it's not something I just want to do with my phone I actually like my phone being like pristine and apple like people that know you now for alt store and Delta we'll probably be and don't know you personally we'll probably be surprised to hear that I know it's I know it's funny to me because also people always say oh Delta was like

[10:24] around on the jailbreak phones forever and I was like it was never available for jailbroken phones because I the whole point was that I didn't want a jailbreak so I was Finding ways to not jailbreak and get out there and your reason for that and let me paraphrase and then you correct me but based on what we've talked about and what you've talked about before is that you genuinely do value the like protection layers that Apple puts on iOS you're not like iOS should be like Android and just be completely blown wide open like you genuinely buy into a lot of the arguments for why iOS is so lock down

[10:59] it's obviously you think not to the same degree that it is exactly like 99% I agree with like the status quo I think it is well I really do agree with the status quo for pretty much everyone I don't want that to change I just think yeah I love the iOS platform I love how streamlined it is like I don't like using my Mac I actively dislike using anything that's not like an iOS device because it feels like work to me versus like using a phone even I'm using productive tasks doesn't feel that way and that's so I love it for those kind of reasons and so no I would never want

[11:32] iPhone to become Android at all cuz I exact for the same reasons I just don't want that experience that's not appealing to me I want the very polished lock down experience yeah that's that's crazy so GBA for I well this is before that existed so you you saw that there was a jailbreak emulator that and so I was like okay this is cool I downloaded it and I just like it didn't compile at all but I was so determined I was like I want this on my phone so I spent literally like I think at the time like 3 months like hacking away at learning how to like cuz I was so new to like

[12:05] this whole thing I to learn and how to fix all these compiler erors and then I finally got it compiling and then I got out my phone and I remember like I loaded up Pokemon emerald and that was like just one of those magical moments in like my career just like wait Pokemon is running on my phone like for real like I didn't jailbreak it's just happening and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and so that's was like you know what I'm going to make this you know at least available for people like as again it just was in the App Store I didn't think it'd be

[12:34] anything so I just decided to polish it up a bit make it like a real App instead of like this hack together thing and I put it basically up on GitHub again open source and called it GB and the original one the original one was also for iOS uh yes it was yes okay it just didn't work it just was for jailbroken phones so oh right right right only for jailbroken phones so you've you basically built it in a way where you could you could pull down the source code if you had at the time did you have to have your own developer account or was that after they

[13:07] had opened okay so you had to have a developer account uh but if you had a developer account you could pull the code down and then you could sideload it on your phone through xcode exactly yeah and that's what I thought was going to that's what I thought was going to be the end of it and then what really just like changed was when there is this service came out Mac build server and they just allowed you to hook up any GitHub project open source GitHub iOS project to their service which resigned apps with an Enterprise certificate so you could basically connect this and then resign with entprise certificate

[13:39] and then anyone could download your app from GitHub if it was open source without having to jailbreak okay so and like if you're not aware the Enterprise certificate program the reason for that is if you're a company that builds an app internally such as for example Apple uh cuz they have like apps that only employees can use and stuff you can like if you get the special certificate from Apple you can build kind of your own little store uh on the web where people that are internal to your company can download and run an app that really is only for employees it's like a really like

[14:17] specific lockdown program that Apple set up for companies so you have to get one of these certificates which is a whole process to get uh and so this company you said it was Mac Mac which one was it build server Mac build server they set up some kind of system they get a hold of one of these I guess and set up a system where you could have their build server do the thing where it downloads from uh GitHub repo builds it resigns it with their certificate and then they host it as well they hosted it and so you could in a way that you could just

[14:53] directly download it from your phone like from Safari and that oh that's interesting I I missed this whole like era no it was very interesting cuz this is before you had the free developer account so it was there were very like little ways to install an app outside the app store without paying apple and so this was was was it was the developer account $100 then or was that back when it was still really expensive too um I I think for Enterprise it's a little more expensive to get Enterprise certificate I'm not sure well for Enterprise I just meant for the idea of side loading your

[15:23] own stuff it would still be $100 like it was $100 yeah but that's still that's a huge especially for the market of people who want UL ERS yep exactly significant portion of them $100 is probably outside of their budget exactly so this was I didn't expect it to be a big deal but it turned out that just having the ability to download an emulator from Safari on your phone was a big deal and basically that was then that just blew up and then people started posting about it and like making Reddit posts and then I was like oh my God I I didn't realize there was

[15:55] actually this much demand for this kind of thing and it caught me off guard and so that's when I decided to take it seriously and I made GBA FRS like my real Endeavor because you know what this is a real app I'm going to now like spend my whole basically senior year of high school working on it making a new version that can be released and I like brought my best friend Paul Thorson on board like to help me design the whole thing and we were like okay let's do this we're going to release this officially using this Enterprise certificate method and just see what happens you sell it or was it did it was

[16:27] it just totally free it was just free we were just like wanting to get out there we thought it was so cool like and also we're in high school so we're like I would really care about the money part but yeah so so starts the mythology of Riley is just so desperate for people to be able to play Pokemon on their iPhones it seems exactly it's like your driving force as a of as a human it almost seems like uh that is I mean that is what it has felt like like I just want to get this out there and I do believe that like it's so much better having it free

[16:57] out there and having all these people discover this amazing thing versus having charging anything for it like I don't know I get more value of seeing just like people love it so much and it probably wasn't necessarily strategically on your mind as a high schooler but uh avoiding it's it's an area ripe for uh legal like scare emails and so if you're not making a bunch of money for it that probably helps in that regard quite a bit too exactly so that really did help it just was safe and then yeah so we released that and then was really big really popular got millions of downloads

[17:30] and then it no it was pretty wild and then the weird part was cuz Apple shut down the entprise certificate pretty quickly but then there was a bug in iOS where if you just set your date back by 24 hours it then the Enterprise certificate check didn't work so you could just set your date back by day and then go to website and download GBA for IOS and it would work and it was very it was just a bug very weird yeah but that was like how people downloaded basically GBA for the entire lifetime was that method it was called the date trick very that's crazy so for so it lived on for

[18:04] quite a while even after they yeah revoked that c they released an update I update on my birthday that broke it oh no that was fun it like got oh and it fixed the bug I was relying on I was like oh happy birthday to me oh man okay so at that point uh Not only was it nobody could download it but it was also like then it was it didn't even work on people's phones right so it's it's now dead mhm you still in high school or had you were you in college by this point I just graduated high school and I was taking a semester off between high

[18:34] school and college at this point okay so I was basically about to go into college and so to me I was like you know what fine the end of this experience let's move on to something else let's move on something normal a normal app store app maybe right and then you just joined a large company and you spent the rest of your days uhing yeah tickets right yeah doing nothing interesting y for sure so okay so how do we get from this moment where everything seems pretty normal to uh I guess Delta would be sort of the next the next stage yeah and then it wasn't even that long but the I was not

[19:09] planning to work build another emulator but Apple announced Swift like that summer and then so I was at college and I like between my classes I was like I kind of wanted like a project to work on and so I was like you know I kind of want to learn Swift I really should be learning Swift like I'm an iOS Developer it's something I should do and so I was like like yeah what's a project I should work on and then I was like ah you know I'll make a fun little emulator for me like just like a toy thing to like just test my skills like to test like project

[19:40] architecture like just a personal project like all those kind of things and learn swi was it just rebuilding like on your own the GBA for IOS app then or was there something different that you were going for it was rewriting the app to be more like sensible better General but not the core itself like I wasn't trying to write like the emulation engine myself but the GBA firest app was like thrown together for in high school and I wanted now like to teach myself better architecture design like I wanted all of the cores like in their own Frameworks and I want like my own framework that called

[20:16] through like I just wanted that type of thing and so this felt like a cool way to build it out and so that's what started with Delta and it was just going to be my personal app until I went to WWDC that year and I talked to app review and I was like hey is there any chance I could get this app approved and then they were like yeah we we don't see a reason we couldn't approve it we just worry about like the open pipeline for games but if you just you know submitted it to us and gave us a white list of games to approve that should work and

[20:48] this was at WWDC like you had a ticket you were in the labs and so you could actually talk to people on the app review team exactly yeah and so it it was like like oh cool very I that took that as a great sign that I could get this in the App Store so I was like awesome I'm now going to commit like so much of my time to making Delta an official app so it could be in the App Store and yeah this is back in 2015 and I was like wow this is amazing I'm so excited and so then yeah I spent like

[21:14] the next year working on it like again while in college but like spending so much time on it and then I went back to WBC the next year talked to them and they were like actually no no no no no no like was it the same people I did talk to the same person and he was like oh no I talk to the higher ups we don't allow emulators and I was like and you know it's nice to hear that officially because that was never an official rule at least it wasn't after you had submitted I guess but I me I was still I was pretty pissed I was like yeah yeah I

[21:47] had spent my whole past year like building this thing cuz you said I could I wouldn't have wasted that much time building it and so I was pretty pissed off at the time and I was just like what am I supposed to do now but it was just like a also at that time Apple announced the whole free developer account or that you could install apps for free with xcode with an Apple ID without having to pay yeah there's essentially a free mode to a developer account now where yeah you can like build your own apps there's limits like you can only run those apps for 3 days after you push it meod you

[22:22] get seven days but you only get three at a time you can only have three at a time installed and you can only register 10 app IDs in a week there's so many weird restrictions there's a bunch of limitations to stop somebody if anybody were to ever try to make yeah crazy some mechanism where you could like uh make it easy for people to Sid load yeah but no so exactly there were so many restrictions in place because Apple literally just did not want this to exist but I was desperate I was like I have Delta it's like close to completion and and I just saw that Apple announced

[22:55] this and I just knew that there was some way to like use that to get dealt out there was basically just what I knew and so then I spent the next like few years working on what that was and like researching I had to learned so much about like code signing I had to learned how the whole process worked and but it was all just because like I already had Delta ready to go and or close to ready to go and I just needed to get out there somehow and I refused to just give up on it because I was like this deserves to be in the world everyone people want it

[23:28] so yeah so I worked on that for several years and that's what became the first version of alt store when I finally launched okay so this is while this is all while you're in college then still um all while college and then continued while after I graduated I was after I graduated I went to working fulltime on building alt store while also like doing contract work to fund that gotcha so this is like this is what you want to do in your head was Delta and ALT store and somehow build this into some kind of system system that ultimately lets you release Delta exactly we haven't

[24:02] actually talked much about Delta at this point but like uh it was basically a nice iOS Feeling app emulator right yeah was it what were the what were the main like the original um uh platforms that you supported or like consoles that you supported I mean pretty much all the ones today except for Nintendo DS so it was Nintendo the NES SNES uh n6 4 and then Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance I think yeah okay those five and you could in the emulators themselves there's all sorts of different projects out in the world so it was I mean I'm sure it was work but

[24:41] it was relatively easy to like pull those in and run those on yeah I would yeah relatively easy compared to I mean yes compared to building the app pulling them in was not the hardest part because I didn't have to build like if I had to build the am core yes absolutely it would have been the hardest part but yes it was kind of like a fun challenge of like how do I take this code base and then incorporate it into like the framework that I was building what I call Delta cor and so it was like a fun yeah just challenge for me doing all

[25:07] that and the emulator itself then is essentially running in a in a box uh in your app and then the the frame and the buttons that exactly and the design of the the emulator like UI that's where your Delta the app that you're writing is coming into play yeah and so I'll say my wanting to have a good architecture for this has paid off very well like it is actually it's pretty easy for me to take a just a new emulator core and wrap it up in the Delta core framework that I've made and then everything just works because it's basically I need to find what's the input mechanism how do I get

[25:45] a video buffer out how do I get the audio buffer out and once I just connect all those pieces then like you said it just runs into the box and outputs to Delta core which does all the other stuff I imagine that makes the the different like designs that you have work as well like colors or something like that right yes exactly that's cool okay so uh Apple releases a new mechanism to make it free for people to run apps in some capacity from meod to their phone you uh in your maniacal goal to make Pokemon available for people on crazy world Domin I'm going to do this

[26:22] we're going to come up with a way and so you spent years literally just trying to figure out a mechanism that is what I'm gathering based on the end result your goal was to make it a as seamless as you could experience for people exactly to be able to to download this so what did all that kind of lead up to ultimately then uh first like version of this oh the first version uh was a glorified Delta installer like so when you first launched like I launched it back in 2019 like September 2019 that was the launch of alt store and I said everything about it how it's the

[27:00] storefront but it literally could only install Delta it was just a Delta installer basically because I just wanted to like make sure this whole thing worked before I opened up this whole platform or something and so I launched that it could just install Delta and I and what what is that is it a website is it a so it is itself a native app and so how that works was I had a desktop app you downloaded on your computer for Mac or P for Mac yeah Mac or PC called alt server and then you use that program to you give you give that program your Apple ID and password and

[27:33] then it signs them with apple configures your account and then resigns the alster app and installs it onto your phone and then it's as if you were the developer that installed it yourself in Mex code and so it's incredibly Jank no it's so it's so many pieces but the important thing was how can I put together in a good enough like flow like it just had to be a basic and now we ask people for their literal Apple ID and passwords that was the biggest deterrent by far and I was it was funny to see that a lot of people didn't care like people just did just put it and I was like oh man I

[28:09] mean like we tell people give it like make a fake account use a throwaway account we don't care like we literally don't care what you give us we just need a valid Apple ID that we can configure most people because Apple doesn't have apis for you to do this yes like to ask for a token for example uh correct yeah for some sort of Factor off or something system cuz this isn't a mechanism that they necessarily wanted to support this did predate I think the App Store connect API but even now you can't do what alt store does with the official API because yeah exactly yeah like there's apps out

[28:42] there uh other iOS developers might be aware of a bunch of different apps out there that let you um do a lot of App Store connect things inside of an app um and those use the app store connect API but I'm I mean I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody I just I'm fairly certain that most of those are still doing quite a bit of like web scraping and stuff to to do some of the more advanced things because it's just there's not apis for that yep and same thing so yeah we were using the API that xod was using at the time basically just to generate the free developer count and

[29:14] everything so not official that makes sense that's crazy though I you I didn't know there was a there was a PC version of this as well oh yeah so what did you build this Mac and PC app with oh I had the original plan was to use which is stupid I wanted to use Objective C and use the window Microsoft's like win Objective C framework to Port that yeah and so I wrote like all of the code signing and like apple code and Objective C to plan like to reuse it and then I could not get it to work at all and I was just like oh my God I I'm just

[29:53] going to have to write this from scratch all over again for Windows and so I did I literally took like like I think a week and it was awful and I just rewrote my entire code base for alt server on the Mac in C++ for windows with also I no experience before this I was like I got to learn this all I knew was a C++ learnu it there there is it's a menu bar app so oh okay that's fair which is also how I got away with able to do it on the map too it just a menu bar app you tapped and then you said install alt

[30:22] store and it would install alt store so man imagine like how much easier e that would be Now with uh I know with all these like AI tools to be like hey give me that same thing but in this language there's so many way like today would be so much EAS also cuz Swift has now works natively on Windows that was like what killed me I there's also a whole bunch of crossplatform Frameworks that I B on Objective C being the cross plat which was so stupid and hindsight I was like oh so now I still the only objective c an ALT store was my core framework that

[30:54] I intended to port to Windows that never did so I'm like whatever unfortunate that's funny yeah okay so so you went through all of this you built a surprisingly smooth experience to essentially release Delta or to make Delta available but you called it alt store yes um what leading into that like the launch itself that you did for alt store Delta um were you were you sort of marketing it as this is a new alternative store or were you really marketing the emulator Delta I was yeah marketing as the store because I wanted to do more without store and to me so much of the motivation for doing this

[31:39] was that if I'm going to do all this effort to get Delta out there I might as well do it in a way that other developers can take advantage of it as well yeah and so that was like that was so motivating for me because I don't like I don't know if I would have done all this truly just for Delta but just knowing that this could allow other types of apps I don't know that was cool so then that was motivation behind that and then and then what was the reaction to both the the emulator and the alt store I mean emulator was great cuz

[32:08] there there was like this core community of people who had been following me since the GBA days and so they were stoked to have that out they loved it that there's an official way to finally install it I will never forget though like the reaction to alt store like all the comments were like this is stupid Apple's going to shut this down immediately why would anyone waste their time on it and I was like just like roll my eyes like oh my God I like I can't believe this is the reaction from everyone and so but whatever so that was but it was still excited like it made a

[32:36] lot of rounds so people liked it they thought there's no way it's going to stick around Apple's going to shut it down immediately yeah and then to their credit the next month Apple did shut down the private apis we were using to sign in to App Store connect and make all these so that was a very stressful time and I had to figure out Apple's new authentication mechanism and write that in alt store and it was completely broken so for about a couple do you think they changed it for that reason 100% it was 100% well I didn't know if it was one of those where it's

[33:07] like they made changes and it broke you or if it was like they made changes to make it harder for you it was we were using something like by the time altar launched xcode was no longer using this thing anymore so it was like a I mean is just happing but it was two weeks afterwards and then it just like shut down and away and I was like uh-huh and again I mean whatever good for them good move like whatever so we this is I wanted to talk about this actually even just what you just said there this has been a thing through I mean we'll get to

[33:39] you know you parading through the EU and talking to Parliament and whatever uh you have maintained that exact attitude frequently and I've been so impressed by it I think I told you this in person last year too but like I feel like most people who do the type of thing you're doing where you're pushing bound MH uh and trying to open things up there's this uh like what's antagonizing attitude where it's like any opportunity to cry foul it's like anger look they're they're they're the big man's pushing us down or whatever Y and I kind of I'm not that personality type I find it kind of

[34:21] grading but I also appreciate that you need that's how change happens or whatever right like I kind of had that attitude but you have managed somehow through all of this to keep a very understanding attitude like you will you are not shy to be like mad or angry about things that I don't want to say like you're passive yeah but like when you frequently you'll say that like fair enough and you'll explain exactly why they would do what they do what is that just something about your personality that you've always had is that something you've had to work on were you like that in the early days or

[34:54] uh well first thank you for saying that I appreciate that cuz yeah something I do try really hard with and I don't know I'm kind of like you it's like I don't like that approach in general like I it turns me off a little bit but I I don't know to me this is like like a lot of my like New Zealand upbringing I don't know like it's like this is kind of like the cultural there it's like I don't know like chill out like things are just not that big a deal and it just so just a mix of things I just I also just respect

[35:24] Apple so much I love them so much and I don't I don't hate Apple I really don't and I know this is just such a complex issue I and I just also know that there's so many strong opinions on both sides and so yes it's just very complicated but yeah I do it because it's I think it is just the best way to honestly make change I don't think just yelling about stuff is the way that the biggest change will be made we've very much tried to work with apple like especially in the beginning after we launched like altstore pal we were very much trying to work with them and

[36:00] hopefully trying to align with them they did not return the favor they did not work with us and so we had to change our tactics but so exactly it's kind of like I'll give them benefit of doubt I do think they are trying here but I'm yeah I'm not afraid to call them out if they do do something wrong so I think that's important too because we can't be like bullied around by them either we have to like and also it's like if you yell about everything then the stuff you do yell then just it doesn't matter so it's a mix of all that like yeah and there's

[36:29] a lot of that where people I mean we all know the people on Twitter who when they when they cry foul your immediate reaction isn't like oh no what did Apple do this time it's kind of like all right let's dig in and see cuz sometimes it is legitimate sometimes it's just like you're screaming over nothing no fully that exactly and so yeah like you said it is good that other people are doing it cuz it's not bad to have that necessarily but yeah it's just not what I want to be doing I don't think it's the best way to get to it's definitely not the best way to change

[37:00] opinions I know that for sure like yeah right sometimes it's the best way to make change it's like violence right I don't like violence I that is not something that comes naturally to me uh by any means uh but I can also appreciate that sometimes in extreme circumstances I'm not advocating so I'm just saying like it can uh precipitate change right like clearly and so uh so yeah I it's just something yeah I I find very endearing about your role in this whole Saga that we're all going through right now is uh I find you sorry I know I'm it's very uncomfortable to have Heap Praise heaped on you keep

[37:40] keep you out yeah I love it you're like no not at all uh it's it's just something I find yeah it makes me really want to listen to people who have a tempered mindset about things and who will call out postives in their enemies so to speak again not saying that you're saying there that you're enemy but it can easily get turned into these like these lines of two sides of a battle uh and I feel like it it feels like you all have intentionally kind of avoided you know that in a way which is surprising given where you're at and all this anyway sorry that was a weird de side

[38:20] you brought it up and I wanted to make sure we talked about that cuz I just I find it fascinating no thank you for thank you for saying that I just I'm glad that is appreciated because yeah we do try really hard when we're in the middle of all this and sometimes we do have to restrain ourselves there have been plenty of times I've been more livid than what's come out professionally from us and Y yeah I have to imagine show so uh and so I guess this was not necessarily your first time dealing with this cuz you did previously but it was not it wasn't your uh

[38:52] Enterprise license certificate in the past so it was a little more indirect but this was pretty directly like aimed you but you figured out a mechanism to deal with this it sounds like and then yeah we've not too interesting just like a whole different authentication mechanism at a reverse engineer and then but once we did that honestly Apple didn't really mess with us again after that so it was it was just kind of us existing on the side in this weird unofficial world and so Delta again was still totally free at this time yep totally free but you was your entire income coming from contract work then or

[39:29] did you find a way to sort of get support for for this whole project so it was before I commit went to altstar full-time and working on Delta it was I was talking to my at the time roommate Shane Gil who became my co-found later and he was pitching me on the idea of patreon cuz my idea honestly was like to put this out there Al S as a tool and then kind of move on like like I would support it but like it wouldn't be like my main job and Shane was the one that was like hey there's like real demand like in the Creator economy people

[40:00] really want to support independent creators right now like it just like yeah because he was like he was supporting a few and he was like for YouTubers especially and so I kind of like was thinking about that and I like you know what maybe I could try just make a patreon and so when I launched alt store at the time I also launched my own patreon and the way I like tried to give benefits or incentivize it was if you join it you get access to the beta versions of our apps so Delta and eventually that's such a good I feel like that's a really good mechanism

[40:34] because it's like yeah your most sort of devoted the ones who are getting the most value out of it um they're going to be the most interested in that for most people it's fine it works really well I think for certain types of apps but right for so many reasons of people don't want to pay for emulators there's like a lot of weird stuff with it in general so it was like I Delta just was always going to be free like I just keep that simple there's cultural thing there right yeah and then there's other stuff like I don't like the idea of having like a paid version of app because it

[41:03] means all your users or majority of users are not getting the best experience like it just like if you have a premium version only a subset is going to ever use that and that's just like unfortunate for me it's like as a developer I want my users to like be using the best version of the product and so this yes has just been an interesting way of doing that where everyone gets the features event like the stuff I put out for free to everyone is polished it's tested I'm okay with it I but if you want to donate to us you can just have early access to the new

[41:34] features and yeah I honestly think that's a really good structure for apps like this and we also I like it and and again with the emulator community in particular it's like early access to hacky or or less tested things is a high value thing exactly yeah um it might it probably wouldn't work for you know your calendar app or your uh knows personal CRM app well but like those are things where people it's like they need to be solid for most people M um yeah I'm like open GES 3.0 try it out let me know if it breaks your games or not and something and people like cool yeah

[42:11] that's almost part of the fun of that Community right is like trying and things breaking and everything exactly yeah that's cool so okay so so you had a way to monetize it at some point or maybe right away you this became sort of your full-time yeah right away so once I launched y okay and so at first it's it's literally alt store is just a Delta launcher yeah how quickly or did that change to being there's more things that you can make available the the beta version of alt store I did the same thing with alt store that could install like more apps so is Delta could be installed in the

[42:45] free version but if you joined the patreon you could actually just s load any IPA you found it wasn't like sources wasn't built like you couldn't browse it but if you just downloaded an app file you could install it and so that we did but we officially released like that functionality I think like several months like six months later or so and then that at that point it was a tool it was you could find Delta in the app or you could download apps outside like on the web where are people finding they have to be unsigned ipas like I mean they could be signed or

[43:17] unsigned I resign but yes there an IPA out there in the world where are those coming from other than I mean when I was in the Windows phone world I know people were taking cracked ipas of famous apps so they could like build clones or something but other than that like what was there a marketpl or not a Marketplace but was there a community of people releasing ipas like this yeah like a surprisingly a large amount because since GBA came out and I gave up there would have been like this black market of Enterprise certificates being used and that was how people were doing it before was with his Enterprise

[43:54] certificates so I wasn't part of that that but then I came in with alt store then people were like oh this is better than this weird Enterprise certificate and so there were just a bunch of like Edge case apps that built up yeah exactly and eventually You released at least one more of your own CU clip wasent came out yeah that was in in the original alt store at some point right not original as in when it first launched but before alt store Pop It was supposed to be there at literal launch but then there was there was a last minute bug that made it not work and so

[44:25] I had to pull it and that's what killed me cuz I wanted to launch alt store with Delta and clip cuz I was like it is a store yeah and then I had to launch it with Delta like but whatever it was fine and like in time it was fine and a real quick aside on clip uh mostly just me begging anybody at Apple who's listening to please for the love of God make it possible to to put these on the store what is clip clip is my clipboard manager and all it does is it just runs in the background and listens for whatever or you copy something and then

[44:58] it shows your little alert say would like to save this to your clipboard and if you just tap that alert saves your clipboard that's it and it's just so use I use a clipboard manager on my Mac all the time yes and for anybody who doesn't know clipboard managers are basically I mean whenever you copy something it goes into your clipboard and if you copy something else it overrides what goes into your clipboard at the most basic level all a clipboard manager is doing is saying every time you copy something it adds it to a list instead of just overwriting it and that way you can

[45:27] actually access previously copied text and it's one of those tools that like probably most developers listening have used some in some capacity but it's like once you get used to the idea of a clipboard manager running your computer feels completely broken not having it uh because the amount of times I'll copy two different things so I can paste two different things somewhere is ridiculously frequent and I actually use uh I use uh paste it's a clipboard manager on the Mac and it has an IOS app uh but I but it it doesn't integrate the way that yours do you need that it's that's the feature is it needs to be

[46:05] automatic whenever you copy something it's now and clip isn't per that's the the original version of clip that I was going to launch an ALT store was perfect it ran in the background and you didn't need to inter interact at all it just would save everything in the background and what was the mechanism you were using for that that was a combination of I use I used like a silent audio track just to run the background using the music thing I stole that from pbot from back in the day on iPhone and then I used it was an audio unit I think extension to like one of the weird app

[46:39] extensions and that had permission to access the clipboard in the background so I had this weird extension that I would basically funnel audio data into that was like Json data and then I would be like okay read the clipboard and it would send it back to clip but it worked it was perfect and that was what I was going to launch and then that's a functionality that broke right before cuz an iOS 13 Apple released iOS 13 that broke that bug and I was like well now clip doesn't work at all what was the battery impact of that um I didn't do any tests it didn't seem to be that big

[47:07] a deal in practice for me was massively obviously it'd be better to have a native API for it but for sure absolutely but it like yeah it was good enough but then but then you didn't launch it with that version but yeah yeah because it it didn't work at all so I was like H had to hold it back until I found another workr and that's the new notification it shows a notification when it the clipboard changes and you tap that that was so you have to actually like engage with it at least it's possible a notification extension does have access the clipboard because it's in the foreground that's the

[47:37] differentiator if an if your extension or app is in the foreground it can access the clipboard if it's in the backround okay ah interesting y yeah so uh if you take nothing away from this whole episode you know more important than any of the accomplishments that Riley has done it's that clipboard managers should exist on iOS and in some capacity and we should all pressure Apple yeah like I've used when I use my Windows PC for programming as a built-in clipboard manager I'm like wow so nice Windows yeah itself yeah oh I remember it being built into like Visual Studio but no yeah it's just a full systemwide

[48:10] I'm like well it's easy yeah it is it yeah it is easy it's just just check the box to implement it shouldn't be that crazy though yeah it feels like the type of thing that it just the problem is it has to be built by the platform yeah exactly anyway okay yeah so clip eventually came but that's an app built by you uh people can download their own ipas uh from wherever and run those but uh when or did you ever get third parties basically releasing their apps through the alt store and what was that process um that process was basically we discovering what are the most popular

[48:48] ipas people were installing at the time and we're like oh you know what we should try to reach out to some of these and have them like officially like in the store so that like the next like okay now it's an IPA inster we want a store we want to be able to you receive updates like you get automatic updates and you can view store pages so then that was our next step in out store and I think that came maybe a few months later a year later or so and we launched with like dolphin the Dolphin Emulator oh yeah and like and UTM was one of our

[49:17] first which one's UTM I don't know oh dolphin is for the Wii right yeah dolphin's for the Wii and stuff the utm's for PC it's a PC emulator so you can run Windows oh wow okay and stuff and so we're like hey look you can yeah run Wii you can run Windows all throughout store and and so that was like our first batch of apps again just showing stuff like that and then that's what we were for then a while so you had just kind of a collection of sort of Fringe apps that couldn't get through app review um but it worked and it was there's obviously limitations especially

[49:50] if you're on a non-developer free account but like you had a mechanism to make this possible and you had a uh patreon basee that could support you continuing to build on it for a while and then uh the world yes exploded uh or at least the the European Union exploded so what just walk us through that story that led to essentially alt store pal yeah so much and so we're I'm working on alt store honest and the like I'm seeing the political wins I'm seeing that Europe's investigating I'm that America is investig app was like in 20 2020 2021 yeah and Japan and Korea and it's kind

[50:33] of everywhere and so I see it all coming but I'm also like I'm burnt out like at this point I truly am so burnt out unable like I'm not I was not able to do much at all for like almost a full year cuz I was just like so exhausted from alt store and like handling everything and it was just me at the time and I really was like feeling the end of it and I was like had to I really felt like is this something I want to stick with do I have the energy to keep this up and I was like so I saw that the political winds were

[51:04] changing I saw that this could be something in the future and so I was like H I want to stick this out but I don't know if I can do this alone and so that's when I was like realized I need to have Shane come on board like he so he'd been with me like this whole time he we' always like talk together through ideas and everything and what's been the big what's been the big help with bringing somebody on then is that on the development side is that on the just having another person to absorb the stress of everything with you no yeah having another person is the number one

[51:32] thing cuz I I was pretty depressed as well during this like year because I had all these like all store was doing so well but I was doing it myself and so it was like very isolating and I would be at home be like I'm doing my own thing but everyone else just has a normal jobs and it felt just alone and so him coming on board to just be there with me through it all all like probably the hugest for my mental health just gave me so much I think that's I think that's a I I almost said not talked about I think people talk about it plenty probably but

[52:06] like it is one of the weird things about being especially a solo Indie developer is uh I I think it's maybe David Smith I forgot who it is somebody's talked about this where like you do a launch and it's like it feels like this big thing and you've been building up to it for months you know where you have this anticipation feeling and and and obviously there's a version of it where it fails and that's sad and everybody can imagine that but the one that's the weirdest is when it succeeds the numbers are big you have a bunch of people reply on Twitter to say you know

[52:39] good job and then you know you go pick up your kids from school or you go whatever and you're like doing laundry and cleaning your dishes that evening and it's just like normal and there's almost something deeply depressing about that no it really was yeah it makes your life feel almost not meaningless that's the wrong word but it's like yeah you build this thing up in your head so much because it could go wrong and then when it goes right it's almost sad and Simply Having a having a group of people that you can share in the excitement with whether that's in person or even just a friend

[53:15] group of other people who do the same thing who can get excited with you it's surprising how much of a difference that makes cuz at a company you get that naturally yes um and on your own you just don't and I yeah so I but that's exactly it I just had to learn that myself like 2020 basically was a great year for alt store and then 2021 I crashed cuz it was like that I just was man I like it was such a ride and wave and then I just was by myself still nothing had changed I was like yeah your actual life wasn't really actually

[53:44] different even though it felt like it should be so yeah so but so yeah bringing him on board changed all that the original pitch was to move to New Zealand together I was like let's go let's do this let go back I want to go back to like my home country amazing it was in the middle of Co though and they did not yeah I was to say New Zealand famously was very open I mean I was wanting to get in that bubble I was like I want in there but then yeah that's true yeah so then Shane I'm a citizen Shane is not so he was not able to come

[54:14] so we moved to Dallas Texas instead to my other home just as exciting the New Zealand of the Midwest you know that's what they say so do you consider it the Midwest I mean yeah that is what we say here yeah Midwest really oh man I'm I'm going to do my best not to go off really far on this but I'm fascinated by this topic I have family in Oklahoma MH and every time I talk to them I'm like what region do you consider yourself in and they're like uh Oklahoma like I don't know and I was like what do you call that it's not the South and Texas in my

[54:46] head has always been Texas yeah I know I mean yeah we are pretty Texas but if I were to describe where we are like like the Midwest whatever you'll say the Midwest oh that's super interesting to me okay anyway yes we'll move on uh but uh okay so you you got somebody on board uh which I can already predict was unbelievably uh necessary for you to survive the insanity that happened so then after you brought him on board we how did the insanity go we just were like okay we had like we're like let's hit the ground running we knew this was going to happen soon so we just like

[55:21] worked together we were super like efficient we got we figured out our whole like work schedule and everything and so then we spent like a good and this is going to happen soon meaning some sort of opening up of the App Store the dma was still like about to be passed and so we were just preparing for whatever that was and then it just fast forward to then the dma Bas finally was passed like the actual law came out was passed and then that's when we were like okay this is it before Apple said anything we were like okay we know this is now a real thing and so we really dma

[55:53] for anybody who missed all this uh which I is totally understandable cuz it was a lot uh was the European Union passed a law to basically well it had a lot of different things that targeted a lot of different big tech companies but with regards to this story and apple specifically it meant that at least in some capacity Apple had to open up the app store to third party apps sort of yeah what that necessarily meant nobody fully knew yet but it was going to happen and so that's that's the stage set for you know something's going to happen and you're trying to prepare for it yeah exactly and so so yeah we were

[56:32] prepared for that and then I was fast forward to the real when everything really changed was last year when Apple announced how they were going to comply cuz we knew that there was just going to be a way to install apps outside the App Store and we had no idea what that would looked like we honestly were hoping for not third party app stores we were hoping that it was just going to be like apple be like you can just sideload from the web or something and then we were like oh we'll turn alt store and like this discovery platform not whole store but then Apple announces in January nope

[57:02] okay third party app stores a full thing and you got to have all these ridiculous requirements like the standby letter of credit you got to have a subsidiary in like Europe and we're like oh my God and so that was January 25th and the law get into effect March 5th and we were like okay we have a little over a month to do all of this to build to turn alt store into a full app store to get this money to like foring Corporation in Europe and that so yeah that was probably the most stressful like month of the year cuz we were just like what the hell are we

[57:37] doing and man just and thank God for Shane he did so much of like the business he was able to get a standby letter credit we found people at Morgan Stanley who believed in us like and like just working so hard to do that and we did that for a month and then we were coming up on the March 5th deadline that's when the law went into effect and apple had to comply and so Apple then had this Workshop in like Cork Ireland for alternative marketplaces to like go and get help and this is like the two weeks before March 5th and so me and Shane were like okay you know what we're

[58:11] getting close to like we're we're pretty close to launch we 't working we should apply we should go to this court or we should go to this lab get any help we need and so that's kind of what we did and by the time we got there it was like Fe the end of February and we were had everything working like I had I had update I had worked on alt store it worked as an App Store with the new Marketplace kit framework that Apple released and so basically we showed up day one and we're like cool we're ready to launch and they were not wri for that

[58:43] and it was very clear that apple had no idea that we were this close to being ready to launch and they just flat out we're not ready in time for the deadline and so that then was the whole bit where we were like we're in Europe now the app is ready to launch we have all the things that we need from Apple and Apple's like we're going to take our time we're going to see what we need to do here and so we did a lot of stupid stuff during this time because but God we're just getting so frustrated CU Apple was just delaying like trying to delay us and we were like

[59:19] this is not fair we are here we're ready to launch you the law says you have to be ready by March 5th Apple so we were pretty pissed off we so then like a week like no the day like the week of March 5th we sent an email at Tim Cook cred federi Phil Schiller we just said like bluntly we are here in Europe we are ready to launch y'all are holding us up please approve our app so we can launch on the deadline and we sent it to them and then sure enough the next day we got some progress happening on us and then we also got a Stern talking to from our

[59:53] contacts at the lab saying not to email Tim Cook again but we're like it's the thing only thing that works like apple don't never run to the Press thing like well except for when you have to this is the beginning of us learning that Apple like again we want to be working with apple and we've learned apple is not wanting to give an inch at all and I think that's dumb of them but whatever so we're like fine we'll email Tim Cook they finally notorized our test app but then they still were holding up alt store and we stuck in Europe so we're just there for what ends up two months

[1:00:27] just trying to launch yeah you were kind of bouncing all over the place right and weren't you going to like EU is it parliaments you were going to like special sessions they were putting on and stuff right because basically we were there and then we got this email from the European commission saying hey you oh we're having this Workshop in Brussels would you like to join and we were like you know what since we're here in Europe why not let's just like join this thing that's kind of why like what started this whole thing so then we traveled to Europe then we were at this Workshop I

[1:01:01] asked Apple questions and whatever and yes we it was a whole ordeal yeah and we we're like running low on time otherwise I would want to dig into the Press frenzy that you were sort of in the middle of cuz you were being quoted in papers of record and like your faces and videos everywhere yeah it was such a surreal time just because yeah like we were we were just we weren't doing anything all day in Europe just waiting for Apple so then we would like fill our times talking to reporters or like just doing whatever because we're like we literally can't do anything else and it

[1:01:35] was a whole yes frustrating part I hearing the beginning of this I didn't realize you were just completely on your own until right before all this happened oh yeah and it's like I can't imagine that like uh doing that on your own I mean it also sounds like he was just really good at all the business stuff too but like even just having a person with you through all this must have been there's no way I could have done this the only thing that kept you going yeah cuz it's just us two backpacking through Europe I have my iMac though cuz I brought that I wasn't yeah I've seen

[1:02:08] pictures of you in cafes with an iMac Is that real yeah cuz I I love my iMac it's great I have a carrying case for it and it's cuz I don't need to carry another separate screen it's amazing but then I'm now I'm traveling through Europe literally with a iMac sorry a freaking iMac and you know what like just whatever just so ridiculous but we don't at this point we're like don't care crazy yeah okay but eventually uh it gets through right what was what was the deal there so again we're waiting we're finally and then it's a Friday night we're at tily this amusement park in

[1:02:43] Denmark in Copenhagen and we're about to get on this roller coaster and I get this email saying the App Store rules guidelines have changed and emulators are now allowed in the app store oh right and we're like this was the most caught off guard I had been this entire time like was this move by Apple cuz I and it so surreal again we're about to get in this roller coaster I'm like really I'm like what like this is our whole thing like we're about get on the roller coaster did you get out of line we got and but my first Rea my reactions basic me and

[1:03:18] Shane had different reactions Shane was more of like what does this mean like what like this is our whole bit and I was honest like this means that we really got to them like if they changed the App Store rules to allow ulators that means they're afraid of us and so that gave me like the motivation like okay let's do this if they want to allow it in the App Store let's put Delta in the App Store let's use that to get like notoriety for us and so then we were like that was the plan and so and so I was giddy that roller coaster I was like Wow Delta is

[1:03:52] going to be in the App Store like and I just couldn't believe it and it was so amazing what a surreal just memory to have on that roller coaster so like just like yeah my mind going through everything and like wow this is like everything I've dreamed of and so yep that happened and then after they approved it guess what Apple was like okay you have to go ahead to launch alt store now yeah and we're like they waited until the leverage for why everybody would download it went away and that that your fear thing that's at least my interpretation of those events is when they realized that they were going to

[1:04:26] have to let this through and they probably knew how much demand there was going to be for an emulator and a nice emulator that has already been proven to be popular and they didn't want a really really popular app that you can only get through third party store to drive loads of people especially younger people to normalize downloading these third party apps that they don't really want people or sorry third party stores that they don't really want people downloading in the first place M uh and so they tried to cut it off at the knees by making that app available on the app store anyway yeah exactly and

[1:05:04] so and also say this was the most impressed I was with apple as like a strategic move it's a very like I respect you moment I truly was like man that is a very good move of y'all and I'm very if you didn't do it it then turns the like uh the pr against you right mhm it would have been an easy La for us that but then they did that I like Kudos apple and again like I I like a good comp competitor move I like to be challenged a little bit I was like okay good for you I'm proud of y'all for doing that

[1:05:38] just did not think you would but so then whatever and then we then yeah so I think the next week we then finally launched alt store pal officially with Delta in Europe and then in the App Store outside of the EU and ALT store pal the naming just Chef's uh pal meaning for those who don't know uh if you're in North America and have never dealt with this like that is the what's the actual name it's like the convention for the uh man like the video format like yeah it's like the format for just like standard def video broadcasts so in the states it's ntsc right and in Europe it was pal and like

[1:06:18] pal is 50 frames a second instead of 60 frames a second and a couple interlacing details and stuff but yeah that's just such a great that was such a great name for like this version of the alt store thank you no we were once we came up with that cuz we were like we need to have a way of differentiating between existing alt store new alt store I didn't want to call it European alt store I didn't want to call it new alt store but then we were like like region locking and that's what led to the oh Pal games yeah so good pretty and so

[1:06:46] good at the gaming level like way of thinking about it too no and then also say we were talking to the verge at this time like CU we had like a launch article ready to go with them yeah and oh my they really wanted to spoil the name alster pal ahead of time they were like asking us so like can we please say it and we're like no we're sa no we're saving that that's our s you can't announce that they really wanted that scoop that's amazing and so we're like no no no no no we're saving and we we yeah held firm on that one I'm so glad

[1:07:14] we did because like no it's got to be a surprise name people can't expect it that's great so yeah and then Delta itself uh you know it came out on the App Store and it I mean just exploded like it was the most popular app on the store for weeks right it for 2 weeks it was the most popular app in the app store how I have to assume like you don't have servers or anything right so at least there wasn't that yeah yeah but well right right for for Delta but I have to imagine your support like you were getting just an ungodly amount of

[1:07:48] email and everything right yes what was that like well that was Shane I did not have to be the one with it but what happened was we came home Shane immediately went to Coachella cuz we came home the week before Coachella and Shane want Coachella Music Festival if anyone doesn't know and he was like yeah I want he wanted to go and so he did that for the like the weekend after lunch and so I was like holding the fort of everything I'm just like making sure everything landed and then he he came home and to like say I'm sorry for leaving for the weekend he just like did

[1:08:18] support for like a week straight of just like going through all the emails we got good most I most support was actually alt store we did not get a lot of support for Delta it was primarily and to be fair alt store because there was there were a lot of launch makes sense but just the scale I have to imagine was cuz like what are the numbers you were or have you shared that oh yeah for like how many downloads and stuff 15 million I think the last I checked for Delta like that's an astronomical amount of people no it's it's it's yeah absurd and and yeah in the first days it was in the

[1:08:50] millions and so yes there were immediately a lot but yes so they're not that many critical issues in Delta itself which I felt really good about but I this ALS it had been around for years and so it wasn't like a 1.0 app alt store very much ALT store pal the back end very much was a 1.0 and well I mean Apple's back end was very much a 1.0 if if that right and there's it's still buggy like there's an it's like updating alt store pal is still broken on Apple's end and it's very frustrating and like I I mean I work for a company that is all about working with Apple's

[1:09:27] storit apis which are foundational to a huge amount of how they make money yep uh and that's something they really really want people to use I can't imagine uh what the marketplace apis are like uh when it's you know I don't want to throw around malicious compliance uh flippantly but it's certainly not something they're excited to no it's certainly not and that's what I say it's you can tell it's it's not that they're trying to make it bad but it's like it's okay actually they I don't want to throw hate out I do think they did a lot and the the framework and the stuff they

[1:10:02] provided actually is pretty extensive and I do think they are trying but yes it is still very buggy and is it would you say that this is one of those deals where it's like the company strategically at high levels obviously wants limits that are going to make your life difficult but the engineers down at the level of people who are building this for you they're still well there's still people at Apple who have pride in their work and want to make something good is that is that accurate yes very much yeah yeah yeah so I mean that's that's good at least um and to be clear

[1:10:36] I feel similarly at the the storit level they do lots of things that are great it's not like it's just there's often times things that are frustrating way that you're like how is a company of this scale UHA still running into these kind of issues but you know whatever yeah software right yly um so the that all went you know the way that it went um but then there like that came out and it was a huge story obviously you had lots of support but I assume that waned off uh over time yeah um but then over the year there's still just been every time a new app comes out or what seemed

[1:11:15] like was happening often a new app was trying to come out and the uh notarization service which was not supposed to be app review which we haven't really discussed here yeah yeah turned to kind of actually be app riew and there has been lots of just flareups throughout the year of events happening uh we don't have to go through like each one of those like people can read The Verge or whatever but like what has that experience been like because you traveling through Europe and going through this Whirlwind experience culminating in you riding a roller coaster and you know seeing stars in the future ahead of you exactly that is like

[1:11:50] this weird wild ride but now you're at home and you're work working but there's still these occasional blasts that come up how do you deal with those as they come in like are you used to it at this point it's just a thing that happens maybe yeah kind of I don't want yeah just we've kind of settled into that flow of have especially we have to split our time between Delta and ALT store and so that's kind of like what we do mostly so I'll work on Delta like for a little bit to get an update out and then we'll focus on alt store and try to

[1:12:20] see okay what are some apps out there that we can promote or something like that and so we've been doing back and forth but I'll actually most of our biggest opportunities have just happened like yeah one of the biggest like fortnite went yeah yeah that was what November that was later last year right yeah that was or this was back in June July or was it over the summer okay yeah yeah but either way fortnite famously uh did their whole own you know kind of uh throw some shade at Apple got into a big fight and they pulled everything from both Apple and Google um and so

[1:12:58] they weren't available at all now they set up their own store as well right so there is a fortnite store in the EU that you could call a competitor in a sense it's the same kind of conceptual thing as alt store except it's focused on games and fortnite's available there but then epic invested in you all right yes and then they brought fortnite to alt store as well yeah and that was a whole thing because I was be going in we had the same opinions towards epic I think most people in the Apple Community were like oh my God y'all are just like yelling about all this stuff you're

[1:13:35] doing this so stupidly like why are you being so aggressive and so basically we it was like June and then we just got this email out of the blue from them saying hey we would love to talk we saw your work in alt store we'd love to see if there any way we could work together and my first thought was no like what what are they why what do they want from us do they want us to put Delta in Epic we're not going to do that but Shane was like you know what maybe we should like give it a chance or like see yeah yeah

[1:14:03] worth a worth a discussion yeah but the thing that really changed it was right around this time Apple rejected UTM the the PC emulator from altstar pal yes and we were like what like this is the first time they had like blocked an app and we were like yeah and for anybody listening and Confused by what we mean by rejected because yeah like there is no app review process for a thirdparty store that Apple doesn't run but there is a system called notarization which everybody kind of agreed this seems like it's a good thing that they still have because it's it's similar to what they have on the

[1:14:41] Mac which is like you have to send your app binary essentially to Apple and they run a bunch of Security checks as well as keep track of like the I don't know what they're keeping track of some sort of ID on it basically so they have a kill switch so they can kill access to the OS to even run it um but it's basically just a security layer it's like you can you can put whatever you want there's torrents on the Mac that are notorized like it's it's a it's it's not a way for them to do their normal app review thing it's supposed to be a way for them to just make sure that

[1:15:16] there's some security on iOS still so everybody thought that was okay but then what you all were running into with UTM was were rejecting apps not because of security reasons but just because they just don't want it they don't like them and this is yeah this is when we were like again we were giving benefit out this whole time and this was the first time we're like apple we've kind of trusted that you're going to not do this kind of thing and so that we and we talked to them for a bit and then we talked to them at dub actually at dub I reached to out to like the app riew team

[1:15:47] I had a lab with them and I explained hey this should be really loud and then like a couple weeks later I got a call from app review and on and they called saying we have some great news we've decided to allow UTM into the App Store as well as a prove it for you wait what yeah and then I was like lit on the phone I was like and again I was like it was delivered perfectly the person on the phone just said it in the perfect half I was like oh man I can't believe this oh it's like the uh it's like a get out or

[1:16:17] something smiling and like creepy but again I was like I can't believe but I respect this delivery wait I don't remember that so is UTM on the App Store it is in the App Store now because they didn't want to go to us I completely missed this so they wow that's so bizarre and so and yeah the second time in like a few months that apple had changed our app store rules because we had an app in alt store that was like a cool idea and so that's what's crazy is that was one that existed well I guess sort of delta in your previous alt store

[1:16:47] yes exactly but obviously the mechanism was way different and it's it's the same thing it's like they don't want people normalizing the behavior of like yeah go download third party stores Y and so anything that threatens them Ah that's so wild didn't they have to limit UTM I'm starting to remember this wasn't there a couple things that they had to change so the yeah the UTM and the original store use jit like just in time compilation and that's for technical reasons not possible in the alt store pal version okay or in the App Store App Store and out store pal can't use okay so they're the same on both yeah so it's

[1:17:20] just a slower UTM but and so oh but the reason I brought this up is they called me and I was this like when one of my most pissed I was like they like they can't do this I was like I don't care if they approve an out foral store and then change the App Store rules that's competition that's how it works holding it up it is the fact that we weren't allowed to have it in the first place and so I was pissed off and so that's when I was like Shane okay no we're talking to Epic now like I'm tired of trying to work with apple like they are

[1:17:45] just taking advantage of us they like cuz like we had been so good and yeah back to the Brussels thing we emailed them the question that we were going to ask them ahead of time we were like Hey we're going to call you you're not trying to do Goa like we were like hey we're working with you we want to have a productive like way and so this is when I was first like okay Apple's not working with us let's talk to Epic and then we talked to Epic and they really were from the standpoint of hey we really just need people to be on alternative app stores and to do that

[1:18:17] this needs to be normalized and so they just that is their entire goal yeah was and they were like so we want fortnite can would you be interested in having fortnite on your store and we're like you know I think we much so yeah we can open to that that's perfect and then and then they were like and you know would it help if you didn't have to have that $150 subscription oh I should say at the time about that cuz Apple charges us 50 cents for every download of alt store pal for a reason called The Core technology fee and we couldn't afford that cuz we're just based off donations

[1:18:52] and so we had to pass that on consumers so we charged A50 to cover also for Delta the 50 Cent fee and tax and everything yeah and so we charged that but epic then said would you get more downloads if it was free and we were just like probably yeah I think so and so they then were like sure then we'll give you we'll cover your CTF we just want you to be able to exist like as easily as possible and I do believe that they do truly believe that exactly like there should just be more just like apple you're dealing with a company that has strategic goals and it's like they

[1:19:28] are highly incentivized to make it normalized to uh to download third party app stores and make it a thing that people are used to using and so any way they can reduce that friction helps them long term exactly and so now we're so they're just like cool we want to put your apps or our apps in your store and they didn't care about us putting our apps in their store so we're like sounds good to us we will take your money that's crazy so what was that like when that happened was there just like a was there a big impact on alt store downloads or did that change anything

[1:19:57] for sure the fact of it being free was just the biggest thing by far yeah which I mean I understand I it was always dumb that you had to pay for allar even though it was like only A50 I know that's like a frustration like I totally get it and so that was wasn't that you talked about the question that you emailed Apple ahead of time wasn't that the question you asked was basically like hey I was a student I want to put this stuff out there for free y you're creating a mechanism that makes it where it would cost me millions of dollars if this becomes popular what's the

[1:20:28] mechanism and if I remember correctly their response was very like that's a good point like we really want to work with you on that it's almost like because I didn't call them out on it no exactly it's back to the productive like that's how I thought this would work better I thought if me and us and apple are working together this is better for both of us apple does not feel that way and it's yeah and like to counter what I said earlier about the being cordial it's like that's an example where you give giving them that question ahead of time probably meant they could prepare a

[1:20:57] question that sounded really good yeah and because I remember the reaction being pretty positive to like oh wow Apple actually like responded not callously like we were used to but it's probably because they were prepared for it yeah but it's like I we wanted to have a win for both of us that's what we that was our dream like hey we can both win it's not a zero some game here Apple like we just want to be the tiny little store on the side with the apps that you don't want like the apps you are literally rejecting we will take we're not trying to steal but yeah and so

[1:21:26] we're working together and it seemed to be fine but yes and that slowly fell apart and around so then we started working with epic more and post working with epic we have not been working with apple near this closely and for just a mix of reasons I think they hate it and I'm als we like yeah again we were just like so really we learned that were taking advantage of us so we stopped trying to reach out to them yeah I mean it's like any business relationship is built on trust and uh they burned it the sad thing yeah the sad thing yeah they burned it and

[1:22:02] epic we went in thinking like distrusting and then they to credit what everything they have backed up everything they said they have not tried to like screw us over and it's and it's hard so I'm like I wanted to be aligned with apple I didn't want to be aligned with epic this is not what I was trying to do but it's like this is the reality it's apple is not wanting to play along and whatever I guess the last thing then to kind of touch on is the last flare up I alluded to recently that happened yesterday so these episodes I don't release this like right after they come

[1:22:32] out so this will all be old news and I'm sure there'll be five more layers to the story by the time it comes out but uh and also this is a very like familyfriendly show so just so you know we're going to be talking about an adult oriented app so I'll have chapter markers around it feel free to skip it I mean we're not going to be cussing or talking anything really explicit but just so you know that's that's happening uh so correct me if I'm wrong my understanding of the story is uh a new app has been launched on alt store pile which is called bathtub hot tub and it's

[1:23:07] basically like a a porn app right uh which famously is not allowed on the App Store at all uh unless it's not the primary part of your app as many people pointed out over the last 24 hours Reddit is basically a porn app that also has a bunch of other stuff on top of it that's bigger so Apple lets them through um and then of course like Safari itself can get access to adult content just super easily so it's it's kind of a a bit of a like silly thing but you know it is part of the App Store and I do think as a parent it's like I get it they want the

[1:23:42] App Store to be of a certain level of trustworthiness doesn't stop them from putting casino apps for children in there but and I get it too I agree yeah and and having in a third party app store is a good opportunity for these things to exist in a separated way or whatever um but yeah that's kind of the the foundation as this came out and then Apple on as you'd expect freaked out about it but the thing that I'm guessing you didn't expect is the way they freaked out about it was they super honed in on the fact that your press release was using the words we've gotten

[1:24:17] or apple has approved this app it's the first app that they've approved and I'm I'm putting your words in your mouth so correct me but my under my guess is that when you say approved you mean unlike UTM or these other stories that we just talked about where they were denying the notarization process they approved the notarization which means we actually could let it through yes that is was like they're making it sound like we approved this and we did not because we want to protect your children is that is that a correct sort of yeah pretty good just summary of the whole thing and you're right that I we did not expect

[1:24:50] that strong a response cuz yeah so to back up yeah We Knew by saying Apple approved that it was Apple's not going to like that but the reason we did this it's kind of like the same back in November Apple rejected mini vmac a Mac emulator from our store again and once again I was pretty pissed off I was like apple you cannot do this this one is just a legal like I'm sorry and so we've been talking to the EC about this but I was like if Apple wants to be abusing theorization process like this we need to like use it against them like if they

[1:25:30] want to be inserting themselves in it they got to put their name on these things I see they're because they people don't realize that they are involved in this they're getting away with making these decisions and no one and with no scrutiny and so it's a have your cake and eat it too it's like if you're going to use notarization to say we are allowing this or we're not allowing this based on our own decisions we're going to highlight the fact that all right well then that meant that you were okay with this one to your by your own and so that was the motivation it was we were

[1:25:59] protesting them abusing notarization and I thought it was funny because I was like because it was true I was like it is approved I think it's a pretty funny statement I know Apple's going to hate it but I don't care that's a pretty that's a pretty good like uh PR slide of hand I was I was happy with it I thought so and most people liked it we did learn that I did not expect people just thought we were lying and just thought we made up that Apple approved it and that was basically what that was probably the just the miscalculation on us was we're so in the Weeds on this we

[1:26:36] for kind of forgot that people may actually think that we're just lying about like making up lies about this that it's just a complete PR trying to get attention move exactly so that was an interesting thing that we had like figure out but no it was yeah my favorite thing is we sent this out to like maybe like a few we like the Verge and Tech crunch ahead of time saying that we're going to lunches and then Apple sent out their response too everyone like this like the stupidest thing like we got so many press emails within the next like hour after Apple sent out that blast cuz everyone was

[1:27:13] just like what like what happened like what is Apple talking about and so they reached out and we're like why we we're like shocked like why when you do something like that Did you sort of have a Playbook like were you prepared for all right they're going to get mad here's our sort of like standard statement or was your statement your original statement and that's basically it it was our original statement that's that well so we just our announcement tweet we thought that were going to be it and then we saw that Apple was like steing this counter playay and we didn't really care at first and well I mean I

[1:27:43] still think it's great but then there was some people who took Apple at face value and again thought we lied cuz Apple statement said we made a false statement and that I was very like I was like we did not lie we absolutely did not make a false statement well anecdotally like my perspective on this I saw I think I saw your like Mastadon post about it but it was a link to 9 to5 MH Mac and when I opened it and then I I experienced this across multiple news articles afterwards they clearly had only gotten Apple's press release initially y so almost everybody's article which it

[1:28:26] sounds like probably except for Tech Crunch and and The Verge almost everybody's article was literally their statement M and so I was super confused because they all were saying things like alt stor is claiming that Apple approved this but they didn't but nobody had alt stores quote at least not in the original articles so it's easy to see when you're reading it as just a reader or even as those press junkets MH uh seeing it and being like yeah they claimed that we approved in the App Store but we didn't in like assuming that's what was claimed even though obviously it wasn't and so that was then we had to put out like our

[1:29:02] first ever like official statement we're cuz I was like we just need to get ahead of this like cuz it's like it's what we're doing is fine I stand by I stand by the fact that we have porn on alt store it's hidden like you got to add the source but it's something that should exist so that was also part we should highlight that too it's not like you download app store and there's a porn app in your face it's just it's possible it is possible how alt store works is you add sources and only once you add a source will you see all the apps from that source so if you download

[1:29:31] alt store you will have no idea there's hot tub any at all in it and so that's how our SCT try to make but yeah another thing is we just wanted to own the fact because we knew that like porn is always it's no one talks about it and it's so popular and I just was like I just didn't want to it's a huge thing and I don't hate I'm not against porn and so I thought would be important for us just stand behind it just to own like the same thing with apple like if we're going to put on our store I'm going to I'm going to back it I'm going to put

[1:29:58] our name on it once you make that decision yeah and so that was like a whole thing but again yeah so we want to do a whole press thing and then Apple sent out their thing so then we sent out our official statement which we me and Shane just like sat here like for hours yesterday like writing like oh you had it it was like an image right with the text inside it looked like you know official press second exactly it's like so funny it was it's a keynote slide we put our icon in the corner put the font it looks official oh nice but it's kind

[1:30:25] of we learned like controversy is makes us popular or just like yeah it blew up we alt store downloads are higher hot tubs down like hot tubs like the number one like number two app oh yeah this is the Strand effect to the nth degree right seeing it how many people would have any idea about this if it wasn't for this becoming a massive story yeah like alt store I Che like Google trans it's like at its peak searching alt store for ever since hot tub came out and that's included like the entire lifetime I'm like apple really just like made it so much bigger than it was and then people

[1:30:58] it's a weird it's a weird strategic play from their perspective right cuz on one hand it normalizes it for way more people to download an alternate store which is not what they want but the flip side is they have some Assumption of what kind of Leverage this gives them politically right and like I don't understand the European yeah world at all in the states well to be honest I don't understand it in the states either but like it's certainly a divisive topic that you could imagine them utilizing but it's it's very uh ephemeral at least to me my understanding of how the impact is but certainly in the short term it

[1:31:38] has to have just been massive for people understanding that it was possible to download third party stores that yes that and the fact that we said it was Apple approved raised a lot or made a lot of conversations that people are learning that Apple's involved in this process cuz didn't know and now it's front and center and so people having that discussion I'm like this is good we need people to know that Apple approves and rejects apps from our store they think this needs to be Pro so it had the effect we did want in the end but yes I app I just miscalculated how upset Apple

[1:32:11] would be by that statement and I like okay so sorry we're trying to be that antagonistic I was just mad you blocked mini vmac I'm getting back exactly yeah this is really about Windows simulation if y'all hadn't rejected it this we wouldn't have done this and so it's like I know it's kind of your fault yeah man I just such an insane story and hopefully people are getting across what what I've felt every time we've talked which is like you're just a guy who likes technology and likes games yeah and wants people to be able to play them on their phones uh and you sort of and a very talented

[1:32:50] developer and strategically smart but also kind person a weird Alchemy of of things going on here I appreciate that and like I I I can't I don't know anybody else who's gone through any sort of Journey remotely like this uh and so huge shout out to Shane for going through this with you because who would you reach out to to understand what you're going through it'd be zero people right like I can't think of literally anybody exactly like it's we are the two people in the world that like are understanding this very weird like mix of so many things going on right now global politics and

[1:33:33] Technical weird like uh Nuance it's it's a weird combination of a lot of things yeah like I saw a Business Insider news article about like hot tub and it was like how Apple a porn app and Trump's tariffs are all connected I'm like oh man now we're like in like us we're getting involved in this yeah I will say you want to be loud but there might be there might be one area where you don't want to get attention no yes very much so oh man that's crazy well uh it's funny like when I finally was like I'm going to get the show back going and I

[1:34:09] was like I have to start with Riley like because I wanted to have you on for forever uh I thought man this is perfect timing cuz everything's really settled down into something right yeah I thought the next shoe to drop was going to be uh who knows what's going on with with the doj uh thing in the US yeah um but they're certainly the EU has created a potential playbook for everybody else um and I guess you're along for the ride uh for all of those yeah we're just here to see like exactly you said like our goal is just to make all these apps just available like Delta

[1:34:49] and well now those are in the App Store but like there's just so many more apps out there that hav exist so yeah it's just we want to get those to be out there and it's going to take time but it's going to come to America eventually we've been talking to the doj they know us they it very surreal talking to them because like we had like a zoom call with them and they knew everything about us and like I was like wow you know they they were telling me my GBA fir history they like oh you changed your paint on your W no like wow y'all did your

[1:35:19] research it's really cool like y'all actually do know what you're talking about here but I have gathered that like I think most people's impression of politicians uh or bureaucrats is like government they don't understand how anything Works which like obviously there's truth to that and usually the mouthpieces like the elected official they aren't experts on it but the people I know in US Senate and stuff like that that are at the wonky policy level it's always surprising like how deep they go on these topics and I don't know if that was your experience with the EU as well but like yeah they e yeah it's always

[1:35:56] surprising uh to me or it's a little uh what's the right word it makes me feel a little better about the world realizing like there are nerds uh embedded through all of this stuff you do actually understand things better than I assume that they do exactly yeah that's cool well it'll be it'll be fun to watch you uh this sounds dark it'll be fun to watch you go through all of this but like navigate all this is the right word um hopefully it's less stressful than it was at the beginning it's less stressful but we just yeah we've learned to just play everything as it comes we just like

[1:36:30] yeah we have plans but we know things come up and so most of it is just how can we respond to whatever situation arises which is fun like it keeps things interesting for sure but yeah so and patreon big shout out to them for basically creating the mechanism for you to the like ultimately The Leverage that all these big players Apple epic if they ever decide to expose or utilize it all the leverage that they have is like financial instruments essentially other than legal exactly stuff and like you're sort of outside of that to a degree because you have a group of supporters you're very small you aren't trying to

[1:37:11] build a multi-billion Dollar business with VC funding or anything and that makes you agile in a way that's probably very annoying uh for these big companies that are used to being able to apply uh differently yes it is very annoying for Apple I know that for a fact because I I know that they cuz we can just respond much faster than they can and they'll take a long time decisions and so that is our advantage for at least them but in general yeah we can be skunk work and do weird things or stuff a big company can't do and I think that's so important to who we are it's one of the

[1:37:46] reasons we're not getting like FEC funding or trying to blow up because I think that would ruin what alt store and or Al store and Delta is which is we are Indie driven by us having our patreon it means we're motivated to like make sure our patreon's good and make sure that we're treating our patrons well so that's awesome all right well um I'll go ahead and try to try to actually Land This Plane then uh thank you for for the extra time uh that you've given me from our scheduled time oh it's been great yeah so I want to end it the way that uh

[1:38:17] I always in the show which is to ask you uh what is a person or people out there that have inspired you that you'd recommend other check out C and yeah good question so I have two if that's fine like for yeah um the first one probably most people listen to the show will know the tap Bots crew like them from the very beginning of when I was work like starting to make apps I love tweetbot and I was very inspired by the fact they were at the time you two person company just the developer and designer doing everything and to me that was like the biggest iPhone app like

[1:38:50] everyone in the Apple Community like talked about it and I was like wow if two people can just like work on an app and make a business together that's kind of the dream and so that was directly from them was a lot of inspiration for just like doing me and Shane just us two being independent and seeing what we can do with it and so I just saw I think yesterday they were they were giving some hints that maybe they're considering a blue sky client which I know really love that I mean I do love Maston for so much but the main reason on Maston is because it has Ivory

[1:39:21] like that's like I do love MTH on the Val but man I it's like I'm such an app snob I need the apps that work and that's the reason I'm not on Blue Sky I mean I am a blue sky but I don't use as much it's because it's a native Blue Sky app and it's not my favorite app it's just I mean like I'll check it but like Ivory is just nice and even threads at least as an app I do appreciate like the Finesse in it but whatever versus the react native app of Blue Sky you mean mhm yeah so so yeah so so the tapbots

[1:39:50] crew I just am so inspired by them I think they make great apps and always wanted to someday make be successful as a two-person company so I've achieved that goal and so kind of owe that to them and then the other is um a very different but it's this Indie Creator supper Mario broth it's like broth a Blog that's focused on Mario content and they like do deep dives into very nerdy things about like Nintendo games like they'll be like hey in Mario Galaxy they have three different Sprites they use for Reflections and you don't see all of them in the game but here they are or

[1:40:28] they'll be like there's a like here's a hidden room you can access that's not intended to be accessed but like the super nerdy nitty-gritty stuff from like all Nintendo games I love that but why I say they inspired is that was the first patreon I ever donated to I just I followed them on Twitter I love them back when Twitter was good and I loved them so much and I was like I want to support them I just love this content and I donate like $3 a month to them and just like without really thinking about it and it was the fact that I did that

[1:40:58] that when Shane was talking about patreon I was like oh yeah I I'm supporting like supper Mario broth just because they make such amazing content for fun like I just wanted to support them and so I was like you know what maybe I could do that too like I could just get like people who love my content and support me and so really yeah oh that's cool it was awesome and and I love their content it's incredible they do really detailed like dives into all this stuff and I don't know the nerd in me loves it so much and I love that they spend so much time on it and yeah it's

[1:41:30] like just a passion project yeah I think that's the thing I think that's the thing people appreciate about the the Indie World generally too is just this idea of like it being doing stuff not because it makes sense but because you're excited about it y um that seeing people be excited about a thing even if you don't care about it on your own is in itself super exciting mhm uh and so yeah that's cool and patreon is such a good mechanism for that kind of stuff it's it's it's incredible like that's what I like just shout out in general to patreon because yeah like you said I would not be here

[1:42:05] without today it is our entire source of income and so many creators like allows for so much creativity in the world and art and yeah it's amazing and now Apple's trying to take 30% of all of it because of course like and just like a man read The Room app things just like ridiculous but yeah that was a weird yeah I could go into long detail about the weird Choice there where yeah they tried to force them to switch over but uh or I guess they did force them to happening I'm like wow I can't believe it apples God it's so bad yeah too much of a tangent but ridiculous yeah but and

[1:42:43] like to bring it back to sort of your original thing though because like you know we both have said many things about our feelings on Apple policies over the last few years But ultimately it's like the the engineers there and the team the designers there and the people building things there are still building things that we get really excited about otherwise we wouldn't care in the first place y um and it's it's the dichotomy of the the people building things for passion mixed with them doing things that tick us off uh you know on the policy level and everything that I think makes people feel as strong as they do

[1:43:21] otherwise you would have just release this on Android and about your day right like but to me like well I like iPhones I like all this like it's and I mean it's also a little more fun to try to figure all this out on on like it would too easy on Android but it's like you know what I had to be creative and figure something out uh that's funny all right well um I guess to wrap this up uh where can people find you and all of your work well you can find me across all the social medias nowadays I'm Riley testat on madon R test madono and R test

[1:43:58] on threads or riley. soal on Blue Sky because of that fancy domain oh yes the doain yes I love that yeah I do love that yeah and for me too I haven't decided yet if I'm going to continue using the ending or if I'm just going to end it with me talking so I'm just going to talk and we'll see if I cut this out or not Excell but right now launched is on well launched fm.com is where you'll find everything that's the easy one uh that is also the Blue Sky handle because of the fancy domain thing um and then pretty much everywhere else it's

[1:44:29] launched FM I think it might be just launched on Macedon uh but you can find all of that on on the website and that's the best way to let me know if you're excited to have the show back uh you know let me know on any of the social media platforms so that I feel really good about myself uh cuz that's what this is that's what this is all about uh Riley thank you so much for uh uh easing me back into this with such a fun conversation I had a blast thanks I'm honored to be the first one that you had back

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