Hey, this is overpass insights my name is eric and
I make apps now today I want to talk about the unexpected costs of app development
alright so last week I got a new phone look at this little sleek little Nokia 1.3 android phone
actually, this is not an endorsement I had to buy it I had to buy a phone last week because i
needed another test device and so I bought a phone it's like whenever you upgrade to a new phone
or whenever I upgrade to a new phone I get really excited about it can't wait for it to be delivered
but this was something I needed a new test phone for my uh for my app development I don't know
if you guys ever see like on my desk here I have a bunch of phones I have like four different Android
devices and four different IOS devices and I have more than that actually but some of them are so
old like they only run 32-bit programming so that they just I don't even use them anymore and
I just you know have the latest stuff but from time to time you need to use physical devices now
a lot of times as an app developer you have the simulator and you have the emulator whichever
emulator for an Android simulator for IOS it's the same thing you can run it on the screen and
in virtual and a lot of things you could get by just with that like that's the fast
feedback loop of app development is when you're like you're building on the simulator you're
refreshing you go go go and it makes life so much easier but every so often you have to do things on
an actual physical device testing you have to do on a physical device because a lot of the
times you'll find that you get memory issues when you move from say the IOS simulator to an actual
iphone you find out that the memory issues you have images that don't load properly or you know
the memory of the phone just can't handle it that's we get a lot of these crashes from time to
time so you have to do that on an actual physical device and a lot of times especially when we do
stuff for clients we have stuff that uses gps or bluetooth or other kind of things where it's just
it's just not practical to do it on a simulator and that's why you have this cost of actually
buying you know test devices and stuff like that and it's one of those costs of doing business that
you might not think about when you're getting into app development or especially if you getting into
client work right when you're doing your own applications you know you might have your own
device and you're willing to like you know accept certain risks and stuff putting out there but when
you do stuff for clients you need to have tools just like any other professional does just like a
like a plumber has tools just like a mechanic has tools as an app developer you need
to have tools and this is something to think about when you're quoting for your client projects right
you need to have a healthy margin because as a professional there are things that are going to
come up that you don't anticipate right it's going to be and ideally, it's not going to be one client
paying for this there's going to be like multiple clients it'll be something like this android test
device hopefully, I'll have couple of good years out of it before it moves
on to something else and I have android 12 or 13 uh device on my desk here but
it's one of those things about the cost of doing business as professionals
when you're so one of the big problems i had when i started doing client work my first few client
projects was i just didn't charge enough right i didn't think i didn't anticipate the kind of
things that would come up scope creeps the big one scope creep is the thing that you you never
expect is gonna happen but it always happens I've never had a project that didn't have some scope
creep involved right there's going to be something that comes up and you can either say like no we
just don't have the budget for that and sometimes you just have to say that anyway but most of the
time you want you want to give a little bit right you want to keep that that client for future work
and everything like that so you need to have that little bit of wiggle room in your margins
but then you have other things where you might have computer problems you might need to get a new
computer like you know of course not one client is going to pay for that but you need to have that
nest egg and that kind of that that buffer to purchase those kind of things so you need to get
you know you need to get new new test devices you know new new kinds of stuff new types of stuff and
projects always take longer than you're gonna expect them to do so
the point of this video I wanted to to bring up is that there's
unexpected costs that come up with app development with well with any kind of software development
but it's not so much if you're doing web development or you're doing desktop development
it's easy to download all the different browsers but with app development and you're actually
running stuff on a physical device most of the time the operating system should be fine and
you should be able to do everything and not have to worry so much about testing on every single
device because the operating system should be able to you know it's a that's what an operating
system is a blanket over the hardware that you could just program into the operating system
but sometimes you just have those situations where something doesn't work on a certain type of device
and or you're doing something with like gps or bluetooth or all that kind of stuff and
you need that device so that's my message today for those of you guys who are doing uh thinking
about doing client work doing work for you for other people think about those kinds of costs that
that may you may not even think about like you're thinking about your time and you're thinking about
how long you think it's going to take first of all it's going to take longer than you think most
likely and second there may be other things that come up that you need to be able to put that into
your margins so anyway I'm just going to enjoy my new Nokia 1.3 phone I hope you guys are having
a great week oh here's my question for you guys so I have like four ios devices
currently my current test devices for IOS devices one of them is actually my phone
and four android devices how many test devices do you have and how many of you are you able to just
get by with just one or do you have multiple like i do or am i just being crazy anyway
hope you guys having a great day stay healthy stay safe and i'll talk to you again next time