> "Either investing a load of time in learning, or a load of money in hiring a designer?"
Yes.
The app store era has significantly raised the stakes - it's no longer enough to ship something functional, people demand that it also be beautiful and usable.
For every product niche worth tackling, there is a competing app that has had the proper love of a designer. And it will win.
The success of a modern iOS app hinges heavily on ranking and featuring - go to the App Store right now and look at any of the featured lists. Are there any lazily-designed apps there?
So in short, there is no alternative. Proper design is not optional for success in the app store. The only exception here is if your app has some functionality that is so powerful, so utterly necessary for your users, and so exclusive no one else can meaningfully copy it, that your users will live with your crappy out-of-box UI.
For every AAA app out there, there is a niche "Organizer for Real Estate Agents" that uses default UI components to okay effect and makes decent enough sales for there to be a V2.
This is a replacement for THOSE people. It isn't a replacement for the next funded startup. It's a replacement for the MVP for the unfunded startup with the guy who can barely do iOS code
As someone who's running a marketplace with hundreds of iOS components and templates, I can certainly say that there's a need for these kind of templates.
A lot of people will use these templates as a good base to get started and release a MVP, much like people use github bootstrap or a wordpress theme and customize it to reach the market faster.
(A) Learn the obviously important skill (because if it was unimportant, there would be zero market for things like this)
(B) Hire a designer (which isn't always a "load of money")
(C) Spend $130 on this
I'd pretty much do them in that order. If this was a free product, I'd be all for it. It would be awesome to see more free iOS native app templates.
But it's not free and that's an issue. Assuming this becomes successful, this will be the Bootstrap of iOS themes and half the apps out there will look identical. The brave ones will be a different color. I think Bootstrap is okay because it can be used as a stepping stone (or the basis for a more comprehensive (custom) design). I use it on a project when I have every intention of redesigning or having it redesigned later after the proof of concept is fleshed out.
People are not going to spend $130 on a theme and redesign it 6 months later. There will be no iteration or redesign because the fact that there is a price associated with this means it's "good enough."
You can get a skilled art student or brand new contractor to design a custom interface for 10x this or less. Hell, you can crowd source this on a site like 99designs for $600.
I'm all for making money and I hope the OP is successful. This looks well designed and I'm sure there is a market for it. That doesn't mean that it's the best option, or even a particularly good one, if you have the slightest bit of talent or money. And if you're really so broke that you're considering a $130 theme, I don't see why $600 for a custom theme that much worse. Wait two more months and save the extra money. We have plenty of apps in the meantime.
Except compared to the other two 130$ is practically free. Psychologically free is awesome but 90% cheaper vs 100% cheaper is no great reason to pick the other options.
Also, just because people pay for shoes is no great reason to become a cobbler, speculation has a lot of value.
I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that if you can spend $130 on an interface for an iOS app, you can just as easily spend $600 a few months from now on a better one.
That's the point, though. Most people aren't bored of Bootstrap, because most people don't care what CSS framework is being used for a website. HN is very much a niche in that regard.
Yes, that should throw all the same flags that, "No programming skills required" would if you were looking at something that promised you could build an amazing iOS app. It's marketing bullshit. Either the skills are required or it's not amazing.
I find it weird to offer $29 off, rather than $30 off. The whole point of having a price end in 9 like $29 is to take advantage of people thinking "It's like $20" (cheap!) rather than "It's like $30" (expensive). But, since this is a discount you want to make it look as high as possible, not as low as possible.
I don't know the answer to number 1, since I haven't purchased, but expecting that everything is properly layered and labeled, Slicy [0] would be a good thing to have around. It really makes communicating with Photoshop a ton easier for both designers and developers. (Not affiliated with MacRabbit, but I love Slicy)
You're right, that is definitely an indicator that his code is absolutely horrible. He should have spent more time obsessing over which letter to capitalize.
An important part about design is the attention to detail. Missing a fairly easily-caught detail that will be glaringly obvious to his target audience that he missed it isn't showing the proper attention to detail, and it makes it less likely that his target audience is going to use his product.
I'm using Chrome on Windows and I'm noticing that when I have my Chrome window on one half of the screen, the responsive design breaks a bit. Basically, if I try to scroll to the right, about 1/4th of the "Ready-to-Code XCode" is cut off.
I'm not quite understanding this. How does getting handed a .psd template help me make the app? Is this simply one possible alternative to the stock UIKit skin that's been packaged up as an idea to reuse? (Like Bootstrap, if Bootstrap was just a Photoshop document instead of usable CSS/HTML?)
As this first test was quite successful, I will be releasing new UI templates soon. Also will be working on different platforms such as Android and iPad.
Have you considered creating this as a Xamarin theme component? http://components.xamarin.com/ It could be an easy way to get the theme in front of more buyers.
Buyer beware. I bought the PSD and the font is Gotham Bold. Gotham isn't on iOS and doesn't have an interactive/UI licence so it's not even an option to buy it.
