The New Revere
Faster, Smoother, and Looking to the Future
Welcome to Revere 4.0 – completely rebuilt from the ground up and representing a new chapter for the app with a complete modernization using Apple's latest technologies. With this major update, I’m recommitting to Revere's future, with a sustainable subscription business model, and ability to deliver new features much quicker.
From your perspective, when you open the new Revere you’ll notice the familiar design but more polished and better workflows, like a dedicated Reminders screen and being able to set birthdays without years. Most importantly though is that the foundations are now setup to enable a steady stream of features going forward.
For a while, Revere hasn't received as many updates as I would have liked. Part of that was an older codebase and dependence on external teams, which came with high costs. I’ve now become self-sufficient building all parts of the app. I now hold the creative tools in my hands and able to build and maintain everything.
Revere’s future looks long and bright again.
What’s new in 4.0
✨ Enhanced Organization
• Dedicated Reminders page for better task management
• Separate Notes page to easily see recent notes
• New 'Check-Ins' feature to hold all your reasons to reach out.
🎯 Improved Experience
• Smoother animations and satisfying haptics
• Flexible birthday entries - now without requiring a year
• Support for large phone font sizes
• Optimized iPad layouts with more information density
💪 Performance
• Faster, more responsive interface
• Built on the latest Apple technologies for maximum reliability
The primary goal in rebuilding Revere was to modernize the underlying technical foundations, saving the larger visual redesigns for the future. However, significant design improvements were still made.
Features ahead
With the groundwork laid in this rebuild, I'm excited to give you a preview of what's ahead.
We’ll make onboarding smoother with better contact importing;
We'll bring relationships to life by intelligently surfacing the right people at the right moments, whether it's through calendar events, birthdays, or location;
We'll use AI language tools to extract key information from conversational, stream-of-consciousness voice notes — no typing necessary;
We’ll connect your people so you can see your relationships.
A re-commitment to the future
This rebuild marks a new era for Revere—one focused on the app’s long-term viability. After all, what good is a relationship app that isn’t around as long as your relationships?
A sustainable app means:
A business model aligned with existing users (i.e. subscriptions) — In a subscription model, time and money spent building new features directly benefits paying customers. In contrast, freemium or pay-up-front models get money from new customers, requiring spending focus and money on marketing and acquiring new people.
A low cost-structure — A small team (me) and support for a single platform (Apple/iOS) creates a minimal financial pressure, allowing the app to be built organically without pressure for rapid user growth. I can take the time to evolve features naturally, without needing to chase user growth to sustain the business.
Full control (i.e. no outside or venture capital funding) — Investor pressure has pushed many personal relationship apps to pivot to serving businesses. To avoid this fate and stay true to my original goals of building an app for my relationships, it’s important to avoid forming obligations to others with financial priorities.
Hopefully this gives you the confidence to invest your time, energy, and money into your most important relationships with Revere.
Your support
As I write this in October 2024, Revere doesn’t earn enough to be my full-time project. However, my goal is to make it that. I will continue building new features and making it more valuable and worthy of subscribing.
If you already subscribe, thank you. If the Free version is enough but you appreciate this project, consider writing a positive review (you can do that from Settings). Reviews help a lot to increase Revere’s visibility in App Store and help it grow.
Whatever your support, I appreciate it.
Talk to you soon,
Mark Rabo
Writing from Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
