Five years ago today, Trip Cubby landed in the App Store. After months of hard work, it was such a relief to finally have an app for sale. But it was also incredibly scary — I put it all on the line to build Trip Cubby. Would people find it useful? Would it actually sell? Were there any bugs that slipped through our testing?
Trip Cubby wasn’t a runaway success, and it didn’t make me an App Store millionaire overnight. But people did find it useful, and it did sell, and there were a few bugs we scrambled to fix.
Here we are five years later, and I’m embarrassed to say the app hasn’t been updated in almost two years. It’s still a decent mileage log, but it’s woefully out of date — especially under the bright lights of iOS 7. Because Apple does not allow paid upgrades, and the App Store is such a challenging place for niche apps to achieve profitability, updating the app for iOS 7 was not an easy decision to make. In fact, I’ve been thinking for months now that I would just pull the app from the App Store this summer.
I’ve been forced to pull apps from the App Store in the past, and, as painful as it was to feel like I’d abandoned users and given up, I justified pulling the apps because doing so would allow me to stay in business and keep building apps. Fortunately, things are a bit different this time. I still haven’t made millions, but I’m finally in a position where I can reinvest in an app like Trip Cubby without putting my entire financial future on the line.
So that’s exactly what I’m going to do! Last month, I hired Overcommitted to completely rewrite Trip Cubby from the ground up for iOS 7. Harold and Jonathan have been amazing to work with, and we’re pushing hard for a fall release.
Along with the fresh pixels and bits, Trip Cubby will also get a new name and be launched as a new, paid app. Existing users will be able to keep using Trip Cubby indefinitely or easily export their current data from Trip Cubby and import it into the new app. While we’re working on the new app, I’ve decided to make Trip Cubby free. You can download it today and start tracking your mileage in anticipation of importing your data into a great new app this fall.