Introducing Retakee: The Perfect Tool for Capturing Consistent Photos

Hey,

I've been very quiet for the past three months, but I can finally break the silence with my new project called Retakee! It's an iOS app that helps you recapture nearly identical photos. If you'd like to know more about the app, please check out the project's landing page or read the following article I wrote. Thank you!

But the purpose of this article isn’t just to introduce the app — it’s about my developer journey over the past few months.

The Idea

I had been playing around with this idea for quite some time. The problem? I had no experience writing iOS apps. So when it comes to my indie hacking journey, I'm still not sure it was the smartest move. But it was definitely a refreshing one! After several years of nonstop web development, this was super fun!

The Development

As much fun as it was, it took way longer than planned. I started the project on June 12th, thinking I could wrap it up in about two months. Boy, was I wrong. This was (and still is) a whole new world to me — from the tooling and ecosystem to the frameworks and even the formalities just to get into the App Store. Things I expected to be straightforward sometimes felt unnecessarily complicated, which totally threw off my schedule.

Nevertheless, I managed to finish it, and I can't express how happy I am. It might not be much, but for me, it's an amazing first step on this journey.

The Runway

As I mentioned, the delay definitely didn't help my runway. I still have a decent amount of time, but I need to be conscious of what I spend on and where I focus my time to make the runway last as long as possible. But hey, that's part of the game, right? 💪🏼 Now that I have a basic grasp of iOS development, I no longer have to rely solely on web apps, and I’m confident the next app will take much less time to build — I won’t have to learn everything from scratch!

What Now

Now, I'm entering yet another completely new world to me — marketing and business. But honestly, this was something I really wanted to try, and it's one of the reasons I decided to go through with this journey. I've always made projects/products just for myself, a few friends, or work. I've never crossed the line to actually publish something, give it a proper launch, try to make it viable, and all that jazz.

I fully expect this to be even harder than building the app itself, but I’m excited to share this experience with you, and I’m looking forward to meeting fellow indie hackers and other amazing people along the way.

Here's to better tomorrows! Until next time,
Tony