A new version of Fin is now available from the App Store. It includes the usual set of bug fixes and enhancements, as well as a few new features centered around the end of timers. When a timer runs out in Fin, an animation sequence begins, with the screen fading from black to red, as the main timer shows 00:00. In addition, a small indicator at the bottom of the screen begins counting up, to indicate how much time has passed since the timer ran out. Some have requested…

Way back when I shipped Fin 1.0, it wasn’t very easy to set the timer to anything except a small set of presets. The presets weren’t even editable.[1] The only way to set a timer for anything beyond the presets was to swipe up or down to add or subtract one minute at a time. You could change the increments in settings—to make it two minutes, or five minutes, or whatever, per swipe—but this gesture was always meant for quick adjustments, not as the…

I’ll be honest: when I added remote connectivity to Fin in version 4, I wasn’t sure how many people would actually use the feature. I just thought it would be a cool thing to have, and I wanted to learn how to work with Apple’s MultipeerConnectivity APIs. All of my side projects have been about learning something, after all. But to my surprise, a number of my customers do seem to like connecting two or more iOS devices together while running timers. Recently, I received a support…

I don’t think that Apple’s design for the app is completely wrong, I just think they need to modify it a bit. First, I’d move the Custom timer option to the top. Even if there are common timers you set, I would wager that most people want to set a custom one most of the time. I could be wrong, but if I’m not, this would make most people’s default interaction a little easier. Next, I’d allow users to customize what their pre-set timers…

Bringing Fin to the big screen was easier than I thought it would be. Certainly easier than developing for Mac, and probably even easier than Apple Watch in many ways. I still think the Apple TV app market is going to be a tough place to make a whole lot of money short term, but I do find myself thinking quite a bit about the long term potential of this new platform. In any case, I figured it was worth the effort just to wrap my head around a new…