I am a long time Garagesale user and occasional ebay seller. I find myself using my iPad and iPhone more often these days and so have started looking at using the Garagesale Touch iOS as my main method of listing auctions.
One feature that I would find really useful would be the ability to share draft or incomplete auctions across iOS devices.
So for example I could start an auction, filling in the description etc on my iPad, then perhaps use my iPhone to add some auction pictures or finish off and put the auction live.
Would this be something other people would be interested in / have asked for? I think other iOS apps share data across devices using iCloud - would this be possible with Garagesale Touch?
With Apple now releasing iPads like the Air 2 with specs that are not far off the Macbook Air from only a few years ago I think people will start looking to them to do activities that previously required a desktop / laptop.
I think Garagesale Touch has got real potential here, especially as many iOS devices have camera’s built in making auction preparation that much simpler, and keeping tabs on auction progress simpler.
I completely agree with you. We are going to improve working with your data on multiple devices, but this is a complex issue and will take some time. Watch for an announcement around the middle of next year.
Just thought I would pop back and see if the ability to share auctions accross iOS devices is still something you guys are interested in doing?
I have started using a few other apps now that share / store their data via icloud and it really makes for a convenient way to work with the data from the apps.
I suspect this feature is quite a bit of work, but I think it would really enhance the usefulness of the product.
Sort of related to this would be the idea of being able to develop a common auction storage format that could be used accross Garagesale Touch on iOS and the mac desktop version.
A couple of apps I use now have this feature (Byword is a good example) and its a really useful feature. It allows you to do the bulk of typing on the mac and then edit / amend either on your phone or ipad.
Anyway I digress!!! Any news on the ability to use a shared store for auction data accross devices like icloud?
Any updates? I too am using my iPad more and more but still need the laptop for many things. If/when you move forward with an application that works across multiple devices, please ensure you support either iCloud or Dropbox for accessing photo files.
I agree completely! This is a perfectly logical and reasonable request and expectation. Many, many software companies offer this compatibility and I would think GS would benefit immensely from offering this invaluable feature.
iwascoding’s lack of response is disheartening and unprofessional. Please address the issue and let us know the status. Thank you.
GarageSale for a Mac is a pretty complex application, way beyond your typical note taking application. It’s probably around a quarter million lines of code.
It’s development, support, and maintenance take up a lot of resources. It’s already pretty though to stay profitable at the price we are selling the Mac version at.
For a cloud sharing with an hypothetical iOS version, we would need to replicate all functionality in an iOS version. That means it would be roughly the same effort(*) as for the Mac OS version, because syncing would be pointless if we’d leave any feature out. Hence, we’d need to make roughly the same amount of money per month on the iOS version as we do on the Mac version.
A full fledged iOS version would probably only sell to users of the OS X version of GarageSale. We don’t think the market on iOS for our app would be a lot bigger, just because iOS has more users. Hence, the selling price would be the same as the Mac version. (Did I mention the 30% Apple cut, we get around on the Mac if you buy directly from us).
From the experience with the current iOS version and we’ve have heard from other developers, I don’t think we can earn enough money with a full-fledged iOS version of GarageSale to finance it’s development. There is just not enough willings among iOS user to pay for $40 niche apps.
(*) Maybe a little less, as some the of the business logic can be re-used. But most of the code is in the interface, which would need to be rewritten.
Thanks for finally replying and explaining, Ilja. I’m guessing that was “the announcement around the middle of next year” we were waiting for?
BTW, I completely understand the complexity issue and the margin issue; I wonder if some of that could have been solved at the initial planning stage. Perhaps opening it up to other developers might help, if it isn’t already? (Works for some apps like OpenOffice, but not for others; just a suggestion.)
Still holding out hope because it would be a boon for me, the non-profit for which I work, and many others I know who either have both devices or work with others who have only one or the other.
Technology is a lot like archaeology and astronomy, isn’t it? One discovery only leads to more questions, more requests and a lot more work!
