
Halide: One Year Later
Leading up to Halide’s launch one year ago, Sebastiaan and I had no idea what to expect. We’d spent ten months of nights and weekends on this thing, and you still couldn’t take a photo with the volume buttons— table stakes for a camera app. But we’d set a deadline for ourselves. It was time to ship and test our theories. Eek. We set out to build Halide after trying every major camera app and being left unsatisfied. We wanted an app for thoughtful, deliberate photography, not selfies. We wanted a tactile experience that felt like a high-end physical camera. We wanted the professional tools you’d find on a DSLR. We hoped others shared our experience. We hoped critics understood what we were going for, and would forgive a few missing features. We hoped the app economy wasn’t dead, and you could still make a few bucks. At the same time, we were launching another camera app in a crowded market. We were asking for an up-front payment when freemium is the norm. This wasn’t the App Store of 2008, so we were prepared for the worst. One year later we can say Halide has exceeded our wildest expectations. Let’s dive into what we..