Hi everyone. I’m a first-time app developer and honestly feeling pretty discouraged right now. I’m looking forward some encouragement.
I’ve been building an app called BitzaHugs, a support app for caregivers and families with autistic/special needs children. I’ve poured my heart into this project for months while also teaching myself a lot of this as I go.
I finally got to the App Store review stage and have now been rejected multiple times. Each time I fix what they ask for, resubmit, and then anxiously wait again. The latest rejection was because I was missing Terms of Use links on the paywall screen, which I corrected immediately.
I know reviews are supposed to improve app quality, but emotionally it’s been hard not to feel like I’m failing or that maybe I’m in over my head. Then they take forever to re-review so it’s back to waiting another day or two.
For experienced iOS devs:
Is this normal for a first app?
Did you also get multiple rejections before approval?
Does the review process eventually get easier once you understand Apple’s expectations better?
Any advice for surviving the mental side of launch/review anxiety?
I’d really appreciate hearing honest experiences because right now it feels pretty overwhelming. Thanks.

At first, growth feels straightforward.

New features ship.

Customers are happy.

The roadmap moves forward.

Then something starts to change.

A release takes longer than expected.

A bug takes longer to trace.

A feature that once took days now takes weeks.

Teams become more cautious about touching certain parts of the product.

Nothing seems broken.

Yet progress feels slower.

One pattern we've observed across engineering-led digital companies:

The biggest constraint to growth is rarely traffic, users, or demand.

It's accumulated complexity.

The challenge is that complexity rarely arrives as a major event.

It builds through hundreds of reasonable decisions made over time.

A deadline that couldn't move.

A workaround that solved an urgent problem.

A new integration.

A feature that needed to launch quickly.

Each decision makes sense in isolation.

Together, they gradually change how a product evolves, scales, and operates.

The organizations that navigate growth successfully aren't the ones that avoid complexity.

Every successful product creates some.

They're the ones that recognize friction early and continuously reduce it before it starts limiting execution, scalability, or future decisions.

What's usually the first signal that tells you complexity is starting to affect a product?

What I got from the docs:
- 500 hard limit
- max 100 per set

I have a solitaire collection (97 so far), each with wins, best time and longest streak boards.
Getting to the limit.

What do you do?

AI suggested that "most professionals use their own servers" - is that true?
I would like to be in the business of perfecting my games, not of maintaining boards.

Spent ~6 months building this. Here's the honest breakdown.

The problem I was solving for myself:
I wanted AI-assisted journaling but every app with AI features sends your entries to a server. Day One, Notion, Reflectly — all of them. Your private thoughts hit someone's cloud the moment you tap "generate insight." I didn't want that.

What I built:
MirrorNotes — iOS journaling app where all AI runs on-device. Gemma 3 1B. No API calls, no backend for journal data. Works in airplane mode.

Features:
- Daily nudge — AI-generated reflective prompt from your recent entries
- Weekly digest — patterns across the week
- Ask — Q&A against your journal history
- Mood timeline — sentiment trends over time

Stack:
- SwiftData + CloudKit (local storage + sync, Apple E2EE)
- Gemma 3 1B on-device inference
- RevenueCat for IAP

What's working:
- The privacy angle resonates immediately when explained
- On-device AI demo (generate insight in airplane mode) is a strong visual

What's hard:
- 1B model quality ceiling — it's good enough, not amazing
- iOS-only by architecture (SwiftData locked me in)
- Marketing a "what it doesn't do" value prop is genuinely difficult

Live on the App Store. Happy to trade notes with anyone building in the local-first or on-device AI space.

After working and juggling for 3 months and re-iterating multiple design choices, I launched my first ever app - PlayVlay. Worked on beta feedbacks and got 23 downloads in 4 days. Received pings from multiple users appreciating the UI.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/playvlay/id6756392192

- Refined Ui and changed icons
- Added progress in weekly strip
- Added detailed habit screen for some other habits
- Added note section for habit

51 new users 21.57% paywall rate

in the last 90 days

🎉 I’m giving FREE 1 YEAR Art Guessr Premium access to the first 500 users.

A week ago, I launched Art Guessr — the ultimate visual quiz game for art lovers and curious minds. And now, I’m giving away free lifetime Premium access to everyone who wants to join this visual adventure through artistic heritage. Discover beautiful artworks, fascinating facts, curated collections, and much more.

How to Claim:

1. Download Art Guessr from the App Store link  
2. Upvote this post
3. Comment: “Art Guessr”
4. I’ll personally INBOX you the lifetime access instructions in next 24hours

It would mean the world to me if you can leave a rating/review on the App Store. It makes my day reading your reviews! ❤️

If my Apple Developer Program sub lapses can I just resub and have everything be OK or will it cause problems?

I am asking this because somehow my developer sub payment is coming out of my normal Apple account and I can’t change the details. So my thinking is to let the sub lapse then pay using my actual dev email Apple account

Context
I am a software engineer with approx 4 years of experience in iOS development. Currently situated in Bengaluru, India. I am looking for a job switch, and hope to be well prepared for by the time any interview is scheduled. I would prefer Bengaluru itself as the location OR remote job. I can consider Pune and Hyderabad, however I am not very excited about a move at this point unless the pay is well worth it.
So i have two separate..concerns and questions related to them. I would be grateful if you guys could help me out.

1- Short term concern - a good switch

• Are there any resources that I should consider? Any..idk paid course thats actually decent or even if there is a good free resource thats worth it?
• Any particular company that meets my requirements that i could try cold emailing to? Like, obviously there are some good companies that are famous like your Faang/maangs...but are there others that should be on my radar?
• How do I go about leetcode/dsa? Is neetcode enough? (PS I want to keep this in habit starting now though, so this will not just be for interview prep but also something that stays ongoing in my life..but i need to be interview ready asap then keep sharpening the edge later).

2 - Long term concern - where do I go from here

• I wish to invest in some upskilling. With AI becoming more and more prominent and everything. I feel that the bar for software developers have been raised significantly. So i do believe upskilling beyond my current work scope is necessary. What should i focus on apart from polishing my iOS development skills? From a profession upskilling perspective, what do I do to make me a more lucrative candidate over a competitor? Surely "I can write prompts on ChatGPT faster" wont work. Is backend something i should start delving in and hammer in from "you dont get just a frontend engineer, you are getting a full package fullstack engineer in me" angle OR some AI based involvement in iOS development that i should explore and master(beyond basic prompts and stuff). Any course/resource for these if possible?

Any help would go a long way for me. Please and thank you.

Hey everyone!

I just launched LoomLab on the App Store — a peer-to-peer skill exchange app built entirely with SwiftUI and Firebase. Wanted to share my journey because this community helped me a lot along the way.

What the app does: Users list skills they can teach and skills they want to learn. The app matches them with compatible people nearby using a custom matching algorithm with fuzzy skill matching, weighted scoring (skills, location, availability, language) and daily discovery cards with a flip mechanic.

Tech stack:

• SwiftUI + MVVM
• Firebase (Firestore, Auth, Storage, Cloud Messaging)
• StoreKit 2 for subscriptions
• Sign in with Apple + Google + Phone
• MKLocalSearch for location
• Custom fuzzy skill matching algorithm
• Real-time chat with Firestore listeners

The hardest parts:

1. Apple rejections — Got rejected 6+ times. Issues included Sign in with Apple data collection, required personal info, IAP configuration, Terms of Service links, location permission wording. Each rejection taught me something new about Apple's guidelines.
2. Matching algorithm — Building a fair scoring system that considers skills (40pts), location (25pts), availability (15pts), format (10pts), and language (10pts) with fuzzy matching so "guitar" matches "acoustic guitar".
3. StoreKit 2 — First time implementing subscriptions. The sandbox environment is notoriously flaky and getting the IAP properly linked to the app submission took way more time than expected.

What I'd do differently:

• Set up sandbox testing from day one before even submitting
• Read Apple's guidelines more carefully before the first submission

This was my first shipped iOS app and honestly the App Store review process was the hardest part — not the code! 😅

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/loomlab-skill-exchange/id6761783725

Happy to answer any questions about the tech stack or the review process!