Calendar Paste - iOS Calendar Companion
The Context
Calendar Paste was my entry into the App Store in 2012. As my first commercial iOS app, it represented a huge learning curve – not just in development, but in the entire process of shipping software.
The app is a calendar companion tool – not a calendar replacement but a utility that works alongside the system calendar. It helps users quickly create events from templates, perfect for shift workers, students with repeating class schedules, or anyone who needs to enter similar events regularly. While not actively developed with new features, I still maintain it for compatibility with new iOS versions.
Technical Challenges
First-Time App Development
- Learning Objective-C and iOS SDK from scratch
- Understanding Core Data for persistent storage
- Implementing proper MVC architecture
- Managing memory in pre-ARC Objective-C (which wasn’t all that bad)
Calendar Integration
- Working with EventKit framework
- Handling calendar permissions and privacy in the ancient times where there were fewer privacy permission dialogs
- Syncing with multiple calendar accounts
- Managing recurring events and exceptions
App Store Process
- Navigating Apple’s review guidelines
- Creating App Store screenshots and descriptions
- Managing certificates and provisioning profiles
- Handling customer support without experience
Team Dynamics
As a solo developer on my first app:
- Self-taught through books and online resources
- Beta testing with friends and family
- Learning and appreciating customer support through trial and error
Personal Reflections
Calendar Paste was my programming education compressed into a shipping product. Every feature was a learning opportunity, and boy was it exciting to learn UIKit!
The app taught me that shipping is a skill separate from coding. Getting that 1.0 into the App Store felt impossible, but pushing through that resistance changed everything. Once I’d shipped once, I could ship again.
When friendly bloggers like Brett Terpstra shared links to the app and I made $70 over the first weekend, I shaved my skalp and wore a Mohawk for about a year.
Looking back, my understanding of what I wanted the code to be evolved during the project, so some architecture decisions became questionable before I finished the thing, but it worked, and it was simple enough to refactor and extend later.
One lesson I forget to take away from this over and over is that perfect code that never ships helps nobody.
Impact
While Calendar Paste wasn’t a financial success and didn’t open the flood-gates of infinite passive income, its impact was profound:
- Proved I could build and ship software independently
- Taught me the full app lifecycle from idea to support and marketing
- Built confidence to tackle larger projects
- Led directly to Word Counter and eventually my indie career
Most importantly, it transformed me from someone who wrote code to someone who shipped products. That identity shift made everything else possible.