Since I’m back into App development again, I’m getting a lot… A LOT of emails from Apple. I’m not complaining. It’s nice to see my email inbox busy again. But since there are so many of these emails, I figured the messages need their own folder. And since I did that, all the old “iTunes” development related emails (from years ago) should go there too.
Wow, time is flying. I’ve been using Hype over six years already. Heh, what a cheap sale price… only $29.99! What a bargain! I would spend $39.99 on 80s music just months later.
And here’s another digital gem. Remember when macOS upgrades weren’t free?
So, I spend about $20 a year on Hype. I’ve certainly made way more money than that by using Hype. Let’s just say the return on that investment is competitive with Bitcoin. That does make me feel better. I looked at DOGECOIN today and was like WHOA!
So, I may have missed out on the excitement of cryptocurrencies, but I didn’t miss out on Hype. I started using it from the first year it was available. I’m amazed that it’s been six years. It feels like I was just talking to the sales person in the Apple Store. He was so excited about Hype. And honestly, I wasn’t too excited about it at first, but I figured I’d try it. I’m glad I did.
Anyway, that’s just some Christmas-time nostalgia.
I also remember when MacOS updates were free, before there was a fee (going all the way from the original release). I also remember having my computer on all afternoon and all night in order to download System 7 via dial-up (a 14-hour session, as I recall). And these days I can download a 3.5 GB movie in eight minutes.
That was around the time that I bought an external 240 MB drive for the enticing price of only $699 ($1,280 in today’s dollars) and when Photoshop was thrown in with the purchase of a flatbed scanner (which cost $2,015 in today’s dollars).
I’m bringing this thread back because I was recently asked a good question about Hype. Roughly paraphrased, the question was, "Can you make money with Hype?
Even with the discounts for existing users, Hype is kinda steep…
How does that mess with my average cost per year for Hype?
$29.99 – Hype v1.0.5
$ 2.66 – NYC Sales Tax
$29.99 – Hype v2.0.0
$ 2.66 – NYC Sales Tax
$49.99 – Hype 3 Pro
$ 4.44 – NYC Sales Tax
$69.99 – Hype 4 Pro
$ 6.21 – NYC Sales Tax
Total $195.93
Divided by 8 years, that’s about $25 per year.
That doesn’t seem too bad. At $200, one good freelance assignment could cover that cost. But what if you’re not a freelancer? I don’t know anyone personally who uses Hype for their day job. Is Hype still worth the money?
I think there’s a fringe value to Hype – learning to code. Back in 2011, I was using ActionScript to create interactive elements on websites. I wasn’t too bad at it either. But JavaScript, at the time, seemed alien to me. Over the years of using Hype, I found myself using the timeline less and using JavaScript more.
If I went back to 2011, and that guy in the Apple Store was busy with another customer, how would life be different? What if I never used Hype at all? Similar to the story of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, how would things be if Hype didn’t exist? Looking back at your experience Hype, do you think you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of the application?
The day I signed a $10,000 contract to re-create a complex Flash presentation in HTML5 - Adobe announced the end of development for Edge Animate the app I planned to use (though the “handwriting had been on the wall” for months).
Hype was referenced in the Edge Animate forum (all members were in full mourning). I gave it a look and bought it… which saved my bacon. Incidentally Michael, your “A Book about Hype” made a huge difference in getting up to speed - along with the excellent quality of the info on the Hype Forum.
I've been planning to make a new version of the book. It's still an uncertainty, but highly possible.
I'm focusing on creating a replacement to Dashboard first. I've been creating the app from scratch. It's pure HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Swift. At first I was like... why was I even using Hype? A lot of the difficult tasks suddenly became easier. But once I got to animation tasks... wow... what a chore. Hype manages the Transform Matrix. It's been super tedious creating those functions from scratch. So far it's involved arrays, array methods, RegEx and other JavaScript techniques... just so I can move an element along the X or Y values.
Did you read up on the performance differences between Left / Top and TranslateX / TranslateY? I did. In Hype, it's just a checkbox. IT'S JUST A CHECKBOX!
For me, it's been several hours of searching Stack Overflow, W3Schools, the Mozilla Developer Network and other various websites online.
$100... that's the maximum cost for Hype 4. Heh, if I was paying a freelancer to do what I'm doing, I could have burned through that budget in a couple of hours. Alas, Hype doesn't support Flexbox. So, I have to code it manually.
I'm seeing what life is like without Hype. It's good... and it's bad!
