M4X

Senior Engineer @MySwimPro · data analyst → game dev → mobile, wearable, cloud, AI agents · breaking down system design across the stack · 15+ yrs 🚢 apps

[M4X @maximbilan]

"It's just a small animation" is how you quietly cook someone's battery.

[M4X @maximbilan]

Your app has a subtle looping animation on screen.
Users say the battery drains fast. What's the likely cause?

[M4X @maximbilan]

Fixes: pause the animation when it's off-screen or the app backgrounds, drop to a lower frame rate for ambient effects (you don't need 120fps for a slow drift), and stop the render loop entirely when nothing's animating.

[M4X @maximbilan]

Xcode 16+ silently stopped updating my Swift packages — so I built a GitHub Action that doesn’t https://t.co/lJGSlwokGR

[M4X @maximbilan]

Drowning in Telegram Group Chats? I Built an AI Bot That Sends a Daily Digest https://t.co/Cx68WIGQWi

[M4X @maximbilan]

Here we go 👉 https://t.co/ffrMobvDGk

[M4X @maximbilan]

New Metal shader: Martian dunes 🏜️
No assets, all math 👇

[M4X @maximbilan]

The real tell: you don't guess this, you A/B test it. Anyone who says "always X" hasn't run the numbers.

[M4X @maximbilan]

Your app has a free trial. When do you ask for payment details?
A) Up front — card required to start the trial
B) Never during trial — let them in free, ask at the end
One converts way better than people expect. Which do you ship?

[M4X @maximbilan]

But B wins in one case: low-trust or impulse categories, where any friction at the door kills you before they feel the value. Match it to how much the user trusts you before the trial.

[M4X @maximbilan]

"Looks stunning" and "runs smooth" are two different budgets — the prettiest effect is often the one quietly eating your frames.

[M4X @maximbilan]

You add a beautiful blur behind a sheet — frosted glass, the works. Looks stunning.
Then users say the app feels "laggy."
What's the most likely culprit?

[M4X @maximbilan]

Fixes: use the system materials (UIBlurEffect / .ultraThinMaterial) instead of rolling your own — they're GPU-optimized. Blur a static snapshot instead of a live view when you can. And never stack blur over a fast-scrolling list.

[M4X @maximbilan]

User in me says lifetime, always. Builder in me says it depends on the app. If there's ongoing value — sync, content, server costs — subscription's the only way it survives. If it's a static one-off tool, lifetime, nobody wants to rent that. The rage happens when apps charge subscriptions for something that doesn't actually keep giving

[M4X @maximbilan]

@mecid Good one. The trap with that exact age example: plurals. "I'm 1 years old" 🙃 — interpolation won't fix grammar. You need proper pluralization rules (stringsdict, or String Catalogs now) so the right form gets picked per count and per language

[M4X @maximbilan]

Here you go 👉 https://t.co/tQom0CkBF8

[M4X @maximbilan]

Speaking of a gorgeous liquid ripple animation. Here is the Metal shader 💧