Here, File File!

First of all, I want to let everyone know that we are alive, and we are continuing development on Here, File File for iPhone and iPad, as well as a long term project we’ve yet to announce.

We understand we’ve been a little uncommunicative on the blog and via Twitter for a little while, and there haven’t been any updates to the app in a couple of months.

We’re sorry. We truly are. We want to provide the best app for you and the best experience possible, and believe me when I say we’re striving towards that every single day.

So why all the silence? What’s up?

To be frank, we’re buried in support. We are all doing this in our spare time, and we are unable to dedicate any resources to developing the actual app.

We want every single person who buys our app to use it and enjoy it, and we’re doing our best to realize that goal. Right now this means supporting existing customers.

At first, it was easy– our marketing was very targeted, people who downloaded our app knew what they were getting into, and our support effort was low. We were able to split time between supporting our customers and developing.

And then, something amazing happened. Apple featured us on a commercial for the iPhone 3GS. It was a phenomenal event in our lives, and to this day we are still beyond excited about it. 

However, our marketing was no longer in our hands– it was no longer targeted to the people who would understand and enjoy our app the most. We were now being advertised to the audiences of American Idol, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives. 

A vast majority of the people who saw these ads and were interested in our app just downloaded it straight away, expecting to be able to access their files no matter the circumstance. They didn’t understand what port forwarding was, if their router supported NAT-PMP or UPnP, or even that their computer had to be running. It was the ultimate test of our “easy to set up” promise.

You know what? We didn’t live up to that promise. For some people, it was a headache to set up, and many gave up in frustration. This is absolutely our fault, and we’re working to make it better.

How are we improving everything?

The solution is easy, really, and we’re embarrassed it’s taken us this long to figure out:

1. Better portray the nature of the app via a new web site Done!
2. Make the app easier to set up 
3. Hire a support person so we can actually work on #2

And that’s pretty much it!

So we’re on the hunt for a support person to support existing customers while we work on making the application easier to set up.

We have some phenomenally innovative features we’re building into the core product to make it easy to set up; and by the time we’re done, we will be the easiest “connect to your computer”-type application on the app store. 

Thanks to everyone for your continued patience and kind words. Here are some quick answers to questions you may have:

• Yes, there will be an iPad version, and yes we are working diligently on it.
• Yes, it will be free to everyone who bought the iPhone version. 
• Yes, it will have new features, including one very highly requested feature.
• Yes, we are working on an iPhone 4 retina display-compatible version of the app.

There’s no doubt about it: the iPad needs Here, File File. It’s a mobile platform with productivity apps but no way to access your files without physically plugging your iPad into your computer. We think that’s pretty lame, so we got busy conceptualizing what Here, File File would be like on the iPad platform. We don’t suspect you’ll be disappointed.

However, it will not be available for launch unfortunately. We’re pushing the envelope and are doing our best to create a phenomenal file browsing experience for iPad owners. In doing so, we are not just porting our app, but rather engineering it from the ground up for the iPad platform and introducing some fantastic new features.

The UI

In creating the UI, we weren’t happy simply following the iPhone-like nav column on the left / content view on the right. It’s not a bad paradigm, per se, we think we can do so much more with all that screen real estate. So we decided to build a full-on column view:

It is effortless to use. Once you view more than three columns, you can drag the columns left / right to navigate. Columns will allow arranging your files by name, date modified, date created, file type and file size. 

If you’ve got a keen eye, then you’ll notice the iPad app will have four views: thumbnail, column, split and coverflow. Search is always at your fingertips and will allow greater control over your results.

Also new in the iPad is the ability to download your files for offline storage! This is by far our most requested feature, and we know you won’t be disappointed with how easy it is to download and manage your local files. We’re not lifting the curtain on that interface just yet, but stay tuned!

Tap the computer name to get a list of familiar places, now imported directly from your Finder sidebar every time you connect:

Tap “Log Out” to disconnect from this computer and choose another computer to connect to:

The familiar desk UI that our fans love is stunning in full resolution! 

Keep in mind the iPad app is far from complete. We’re putting great care into the app and things are likely to change pretty drastically by the time it lands on your iPad. Treat the following as “concepts” and not “promises”. 

If you have any feature requests or great ideas, please contact us via twitter, we would love to hear them!

Thanks so much to you, our friends and fans, for a successful couple of weeks with Here, File File! Response has been tremendous, and we’ve been hard at work making HFF even better.

Here’s a rundown of what’s new & improved in 1.1:

• Support hostnames in addition to IP addresses
• Added landscape support for viewing documents
• Fixed “Email as Link” causing crash
• Fixed crash where app would hang on startup for ~10 seconds then crash
• Fixed memory error that would cause seemingly random crash
• Fixed crash when editing computer that had been setup manually
• Fixed seemingly random crash when sometimes viewing the desk
• In 1.0 large files would cause HFF to run out of memory and crash. In 1.1 an error message is displayed and the file is not previewed.
• Local file cache is cleared during upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1
• Easier to tap the edit computer info button
• fixed computer icon sometimes missing on desk
• Better overall performance
• Better error message shown for unsupported files
• Fixed icons in automatic setup list to not extend past their row
• Better image preview
• Manually add computer screen shows a spinner while saving
• Tapping save on the add / edit screens multiple times doesn’t screw up the UI
• Clearer text in navigation buttons - not as fuzzy
• Fixed possible crash when editing computer
• Memory optimizations

If you haven’t already, go download Here, File File! It’s awesome I promise!

If you’ve had crash issues in the past it would mean a whole lot to us if you adjusted your rating (provided 1.1 fixes your issues, that is). Thanks!

Also…

We’re having a Here, Fire Fire Sale!

Get it? Fire sale? Ah-hem.

As you know, $6.99 has been our introductory price for early adopters. We were going to end the sale on the 14th but we love you guys so much we extended the deadline to post-1.1. Well here’s 1.1 so starting from right now, you have 24 hours left to buy HFF at $6.99! Tell your friends and family!

To help spread the word, we will be giving away five copies of HFF 1.1! Here are the rules:

• Just click here to tweet to the world how excited you are about HFF and you’ll be automatically enrolled.
• Follow @herefilefile
• Be from the US (the promo codes are US-only)

Winners will be announced Thursday morning (2/25) and we will will DM them their codes (hence why you need to follow @herefilefile)

Good luck everyone and thank you so much for your support!

Wow it’s been quite a trip these past few months. First of all, many thanks to our fans and beta testers that challenged us to make due on our promise: easily access your Mac from anywhere.

Second of all I want to extend a thanks to Sebastiaan de With who designed our icon. It’s memorable, catchy and divisive; just like our name! It’s a perfect match, and his penchant for abstract thinking really benefited a concept like ours. Both we and Seb weren’t happy with just merely showing a computer in a cloud (though his sketch for that was pretty nice looking :D).

App Submission

We submitted our application to the app store Tuesday of last week, and it was approved just yesterday, seven days after submission. We were getting fairly nervous because our app is pretty unconventional for four reasons:

1. It requires an OS X companion app
2. It streams video and music from your machine on the fly
3. We pull down Apple copyrighted images from your computer to display on the desk and the file listing.
4. We’re directly competing with MobileMe and BackToMyMac

While each of these is completely okay with app store policy, Apple doesn’t necessarily need a good reason to reject (or not-reject) your application. In addition, we lucked out that Rogue Amoeba was the initial martyr for the API we use to get your icon preview. The computer sitting on the desktop was an interface element we were pretty excited about, and we would have been devastated if we were told to yank it from the app.

But all’s well that ends well. We’re through the dreaded App Store Approval Process™ and we’re live on the store!

So what are people saying?

Reviews are positive so far! It’s really exciting to be able to provide a polished experience and solve a problem that hasn’t been solved well before.

Some of our favorite reviews:

• TUAW Review and Giveaway: Here, File File! - TUAW
• Access Your Mac From Your iPhone with Here, File File! - Smoking Apples
• Here, File File! Puts Your Mac on Your iPhone. And It’s Stunning. - MacStories
• Here, File! File! - AppSafari
• Here, FileFile! Pieejams uz iPhone - ipods.lv

Check the twitter buzz on Topsy to see what real folks like you are saying.

The great thing about these is that many of these reviewers helped us beta test the app, which is exceedingly important for an app of our nature. The environment variables are too many to name, and we want to extend a special thanks to our beta testers and journalists who helped us make Here, File File a fantastic product!

How’s it going so far?

Things are going fantastic so far! We’ve done our best to market the app the best way we know how: contacting journalists and bloggers, buying some ad space with Fusion Ads, and doing our darndest with word-of-mouth marketing.

As of right now we’re tracking #78 on top grossing for the app store, and #26 in the utilities section. This is just phenomenal.

What’s in store for the future?

Right off the bat, feature requests came pouring in. As a software developer, this is how you know people love your product and want to use it. Here’s what we’re seeing:

1. Make it faster. We’ve done quite a bit to make sure everything comes in as quickly as possible, but we understand that things can always be faster. We promise to make it faster.
2. Allow for dynamic DNS domains. This is one of those features that we knew we needed to build out, but made the tough decision to launch without it.
3. Enough with the crashes. Argh, crashes are so annoying. We hate them as much as you do and thinking that HFF might be making someone really mad right this second is pretty depressing.
4. Pages `09 support. Not sure how we didn’t catch this in beta. We promise to make it better.

We’re dedicated to this app, and we are working hard to make a great app even better!

In closing

Let me tell you something, personally… (If I were talking to you in person, this is where I’d lean over) we love this. We love taking a problem that people are craving to be solved, and then solving it in the most elegant way we can muster.

Even if we didn’t sell a single copy we’d consider HFF a success because we love the way it turned out. But the fact that we’re getting this positive praise– not just from journalists and bloggers, but also from our customers– is immensely rewarding.

This is what making consumer products is all about; we get to engage with you and make your life a little bit better through our product. My only regret is I don’t get to see the smile on your face when you use the app, but until then an emoticon on Twitter will have to do.

Or, “Time to fess up, we missed our launch date. Here’s why”.

I hate launching things late for two primary reasons:

1. It undermines the trust our fans put in us. When we say we’ll do something and we don’t, it speaks to our character as developers, businesspersons and people.
2. It’s such a cliché in the software world. Heck, in pretty much any product-oriented industry missing dates is almost expected. We like to consider ourselves better than that, and would loved to have bucked that trend.

So on behalf of the HFF crew, I want to extend an apology for missing our promised “submit to Apple” date.

So what happened?

Development is pretty well wrapped-up for what we originally set out to do. The primary reason we missed our date is due to what I call the “iTunes App Store Launch Day Heebie-Jeebies”.

It is incredibly important to us to make a good first impression, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure each and every one of our users has a fantastic experience. This isn’t just good software-making, it’s good business.

First impressions are everything

We are doing everything in our power to make sure HFF is successful. We want it to make money, we want to reach out to as many users as possible, and we want those users to just gush and gush about how much they love HFF.

In a recent taptaptap blog post, they cited the importance of having a good launch. Indeed, all of the sales charts I’ve seen around the web always spike at launch and then dwindle down over time. This is very different than the tried and true web 2.0 approach of “launch early and often”, meaning you can rev a web site quickly and gain customers over time as word of mouth builds and google rank increases.

Indeed, the iconfactory learned “an expensive lesson” about what can happen if you miss your launch entirely.

In order to secure a successful launch, we plan on getting the application in the hands of reviewers and customers, and making sure they have a wonderful experience.

Here, File File! is a bit different

However, HFF isn’t the simplest of iPhone applications. It requires some setup in order to get going. The fact that it requires an OS X application in order to function makes it something of an anomaly on the App Store. Because of this, we have to do our very best to make sure the set up for new users is as smooth as possible.

We’ve been hard at work lately making sure the messaging is consistent and clear, providing a way for users to easily get help if they are having issues, providing more concise prompts within the application should a user run into roadblocks.

Here, File File is a powerful app. In fact we believe it’ll be one of the most powerful and useful apps you’ll have on your iPhone or iPod Touch. We want to make sure that using it is simple and graceful, and that you’ll come back and give us a wonderful review on the App Store.

- @buckwilson

Howdy fans,

As you probably know, Here, File File is still under development. However, we have learned quite a bit during the development phase that we consider worth sharing, so over the next week I’ll be posting a few tidbits of our journey so far.

In late November, 2009, we prepared a video of our current progress of Here, File File to submit to the App Star Awards. Shortly thereafter, the video was picked up by TUAW, CultOfMac, and several other blogs. People really seemed to be digging what we were creating! It was a great feeling.

We created a little teaser site so people could sign up to be alerted when Here, File File launches on the iTunes App Store.

On a whim, Adam stuck a “Tweet this!” link right under the sign up link:

We had no idea if people actually used those little buttons– heck, I know I didn’t– but it was worth a shot. The more marketing we could get the better!

We were pretty surprised by the result! We are just over 300 Tweets via that button, or a 3% conversion rate. This is quite a bit better than I was expecting!

Do you have a “Tweet This” on your page? How is it performing? Let me know!

In the next couple of posts, we’ll explore the effects of Twitter marketing, the conversion rate of the “Sign Up” form, and other such pre-release-y things.

Stay tuned!

- @buckwilson