ZDNET’s key takeaways
- I shipped a Mac app with out writing a single line of code.
- Vibe coding took 502 directives, not one magic immediate.
- App Retailer promo photographs took virtually so long as the app.
At round midday on Sunday, Sept. 20, I got here up with an concept for a Mac app. One week later, on Sunday, Sept. 27, additionally round midday, I submitted my accomplished app to Apple. 4 days later, Apple accepted the software, and it went live on the App Store.
Additionally: AI completely changed how I develop iPhone apps … and I think I love it
That is the story of an unrelated task by a ZDNET editor, a cheerful accident, and vibe coding at its greatest. It started 30 years in the past, with a large library of icons.
Icons have been good to me
Once I began my first software program firm, one of many first merchandise I launched was Icon Manufacturing unit for HyperCard. It received a number of awards. This product supported my firm and our workers for years. These icons have been all black and white, as was HyperCard.
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In 1997, after years of buyer requests for colourful Finder desktop icons, we created a three-volume set of 32×32 pixel colour icons referred to as Icon Gallery. This was a boxed product of greater than 2,000 icons. Icon Gallery bought by means of retail, mail order distribution, and junk mail.
Icon Gallery was one of many final boxed software program merchandise I produced. I’ll be trustworthy with you. I can’t recall when or why I ended promoting Icon Gallery, but it surely most likely tracked with once I stopped bodily manufacturing boxed merchandise. That call, in fact, tracked with the rise of the online.
Now, let’s quick ahead to some months in the past. Whereas decluttering some cubbies in my workplace, I discovered the packaging for a few my previous software program merchandise, together with Icon Gallery. I caught the field on a shelf. As soon as once more, I just about forgot about it.
Then, final month, in honor of this year’s big iPhone event, my editor requested me to put in writing a sequence of historic Apple tales. Whereas writing ‘AI completely changed how I develop iPhone apps … and I think I love it,’ I dug by means of my server for a screenshot or field illustration of an AI product I produced for the Mac in the late 1980s.
Additionally: I used Claude Code to vibe code a Mac app in 8 hours, but it was more work than magic
I discovered that picture, and I additionally discovered an previous Macromedia Director file containing all 2,338 icons from 30 years in the past. Within the mid-90s, I had transformed Icon Gallery’s icons to Director format and bought the ensuing product to animators as an asset library. Director was massive within the CD-ROM days, and has since pale into Mac historical past together with HyperCard and different classic apps.
However there it was, sitting on my Mac Studio’s desktop: a 30-year-old file containing all these belongings, in a long-dead file format. I felt like an archeologist cracking open an historic mummy’s tomb.
Claude is my good friend
So, I gave that historic file to Claude. My immediate was easy: “This file is an previous Macromedia Director file containing a big library of icons. Are you able to separate the icons into their very own folder?”
Claude didn’t put up a fuss. The AI didn’t complain that the Director information have been so wildly old-fashioned that it couldn’t do something. All it requested was what format I needed the information in, and whether or not I needed the white edge pixels to be clear.
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In line with the log, this course of took 4 minutes and 30 steps. In much less time than it takes to brew a cup of espresso, I had 2,000-plus PNG photographs, organized into subject folders. I didn’t actually have any plans for the icons. I used to be largely shocked at how simply Claude extracted bit knowledge and transformed it into PNG information.
That was on Sept. 2. I then let the extracted assortment of classic information sit in a folder on my Desktop.
There might be an app for that
Eighteen days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I wanted a graphic for one thing I used to be engaged on. I considered my previous icons from Icon Gallery and thought, “Hey, it will be cool if I had an app to browse and resize these icons.”
And, in that second, Icon Gallery ‘97 was born. Why not, proper? I’ve AIs.
I labored in each Claude Desktop (to speak technique) and Claude Code (to construct the Mac app). Inside a number of hours, I had a working Mac app that might browse the unique library and create completely scaled, hard-edge bitmap icons from 32×32 pixels as much as 1,024×1,024 pixels.
I formally had a proof of idea.
However how would I productize it? Claude really useful two viable programs of motion. The AI really useful naming the product Icon Gallery ‘97: 30th Anniversary Edition, celebrating the hand-created retro icons. This classic really feel might be interesting in a world of AI-generated art.
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Claude additionally really useful including a recoloring function, so designers couldn’t solely select the previous icons, however recolor them to match model or identification colours. The AI additionally really useful creating collections and favorites.
Then a good friend really useful I construct in an ‘Export to Slack’ function, as a result of the retro icons could be very cool as Slack emojis. My spouse noticed the identical potential for dragging the icons into texts. I made positive these options have been within the app.
After getting favorites and collections, what occurs if you wish to use the app on one other Mac? Ah, so now iCloud syncing wanted to be added. And so it was.
Lest anybody indicate that vibe coding includes issuing one “Make me an app,” command, let me dissuade you of that notion. I gave Claude Code 502 particular person directives within the 4 days that I actively interacted with it.
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These weren’t full-time coding days. I visited the physician for my yearly bodily, spent Friday with a contractor engaged on the home, and needed to flip in three main function article thought items for ZDNET.
However round that work, I talked to Claude and guided its development process. Then I went again to my different priorities.
Utilizing AI to code a Mac app
Again once we first began utilizing AI coding agents, I developed an inside headcanon that helps me take into consideration handle the bots. I view them as working companions on the finish of a chat transcript. I take advantage of this strategy to work with lots of my human companions, so it really works nicely.
As such, typically I hearth off a query to Claude Code. In a single case, shortly after we constructed within the in-app buying mechanism and proved it labored, I noticed that somebody might purchase the app, do a full icon export, after which request a refund. I requested Claude, “Can we care?”
Claude recommended not combating refunds. That call matched with my long-term software program publishing fashion. If somebody doesn’t need my code, don’t make them pay for it. However that query fired off a extra attention-grabbing discovery. Claude realized that every one 2,146 icons sat contained in the app as free PNG information. Anybody who downloaded the free model might right-click it, select Present Package deal Contents, and replica the whole assortment with out shopping for something.
We added encryption and packaged the app with a single scrambled file. As photographs are requested, they’re unscrambled dynamically.
Earlier than we submitted the software to the App Retailer, we examined it. We intentionally corrupted copies to show the verify would catch them. Then we ran the app’s personal decryption engine over each icon. The decrypted output matched the unique information, so we shipped it that means.
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At one other level, I noticed the window scrolled extremely slowly. I needed to persuade Claude to run some exams. Because it turned out, the code compressed full-sized photographs for every preview, and one other block of code rebuilt the whole window 482 instances throughout every resize request.
Persuading Claude turned a standard theme (very very similar to working with a human companion). I needed a range rectangle that might be dragged throughout icons. Claude thought this strategy was pointless. Then I defined that Macs have been capable of drag-select since earlier than 1997. Ultimately, Claude received that one working.
I’ve stated this earlier than, however that is how I spent lots of my profession managing programmers. I’d work with them briefly all through the day, amongst all the opposite actions I managed for the corporate.
Vibe coding with Claude didn’t appear a lot completely different. The AI even pushed again on some directions, copped a ‘tude right here and there, and complained about a number of the assignments. It might completely have been one other human on the different finish of the chat. In some methods, Claude appeared extra human than some individuals I’ve labored with.
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Claude additionally received very fussy in regards to the assortment’s provenance. I discovered it attention-grabbing how cautious the AI was about ensuring the app would get by means of App Retailer evaluation. Its concern was who owned the icons. I needed to persuade it that my firm created the icons within the Nineties and that my present enterprise was the authorized descendant of the unique enterprise. All of the belongings have been mine.
Even so, Claude identified some icons Apple was more likely to block, together with a Caterpillar emblem and an individual’s head that regarded for all of the world like Charlie Brown. We additionally had a bunch of gunshot icons, a well-liked theme in 1997 however fully tone deaf in 2026. I eliminated these icons as nicely.
One actually cool benefit of utilizing AI coding is how shortly you may take a look at out concepts. Git can department code. This functionality isn’t AI-related in any respect, but it surely means you may revert to a earlier codebase or combine modifications. I combined utilizing Git branches with AI experiments. At one level I requested Claude to strive a totally completely different visible design. Claude constructed it inside an hour, and inside 30 seconds I made a decision it was horrid. We have been capable of revert immediately.
App Retailer learnings
I’m not a whole App Retailer neophyte, however I would as nicely be. The final apps I constructed for the App Retailer have been in 2008. The final cost I received from Apple for these apps was in 2012. The world, and the App Retailer, have each modified rather a lot since then.
In getting ready my submission to the App Retailer, I used Claude to stroll me by means of every display screen and submission possibility. I took screenshots of each new display screen and despatched them to Claude earlier than hitting the verify or subsequent button. This strategy labored fairly nicely.
I additionally used Claude for recommendation on organising the App Retailer account. The most important recommendation I received was that new App Retailer companies (these below $1 million in gross sales) can apply as a small enterprise and commissions will drop from 30% to fifteen%. That’s an enormous win.
Additionally: How to install and configure Claude Code, step by step
Earlier than submitting the app to the App Retailer, I instructed Claude to launch a sequence of adversarial brokers to look at the app finish to finish. Though I’d executed lots of testing, the brokers did discover a number of issues that wanted to be fastened earlier than submission.
Most likely my greatest shock was the graphics that accompany an App Retailer submission. Apple permits as much as ten 2880×1800 graphics which are displayed with the app in your itemizing. Creating these graphics took me three days round my different work. In different phrases, creating the graphics took virtually so long as creating the app.
That’s as a result of Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT have been horrible, horrible, unlucky, ineffective, and general fully incompetent at creating App Retailer promo photographs. Whereas I’ve had lots of great success with AI image generation, there’s one thing about getting the message proper in an App Retailer promo picture that made the AIs fail. So, I did the work by hand in Photoshop, like a caveman. You may see a few of these graphics above, sprinkled all through this text.
Oh, and right here’s a tip. When you arrange TestFlight, which is the software for sharing your app throughout customers and machines, restrict your uploads. On Wednesday, I uploaded 21 builds between 6:49 am and 9:20 pm, whereas fine-tuning the ultimate feel and look of the submission. Apple refused to simply accept the twenty-second submission and made me wait a full day to strive once more.
That pause pushed the entire mission again a day.
Listed below are a number of extra ideas:
- Inform the AI to document each determination in an .MD file
- Make the AI measure as an alternative of guess. Metrics work; AI guesses go down just about ineffective rabbit holes.
- Use tooling and deterministic evaluation relatively than simply AI. In different phrases, inform the AI to put in writing Python scripts for outcomes, relatively than give its impressions.
- Launch subagents after each session to evaluation that session’s work.
- Control the context utilization in every session. As soon as it reaches about 75%, save progress and restart. The AI begins getting stupider and stupider above 75% context.
- Use exterior testers. Neither you nor the AI will catch every part.
Signing up as an Apple Developer prices $99/12 months. With out that, you may’t add your software program to the App Retailer or use TestFlight.
Look, I don’t know the way nicely the app will do financially, and admittedly I don’t care all that a lot. I’m actually not anticipating it to fund my retirement. However it was a ton of enjoyable and let me productize one thing I needed to make use of for myself. It was additionally gratifying to offer new life to all that inventive retro artwork from the previous. The method gave me a secure and managed method to learn to code in-app purchases for my different app tasks, and it was an ideal take a look at case for whether or not you will get AI to assist create an app (within the house of every week) that may be submitted and permitted by the App Retailer and Apple (in simply one other 4 days).
Oh, and I didn’t write one line of precise code. Not. One. Line.
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