David Smith's success

— 3 minute read

David Smith success

I have long been a fan of David Smith’s work. I came to know about him through his podcast Developing Perspective several years ago. And later through his apps: Pedometer++, FeedWrangler, PodWrangler and Sleep++. Folks in the Apple community fondly call him Underscore (after his screen name _DavidSmith he uses in podcast live chat channels).

iOS as a platform has matured over the last decade. But, in terms of customization options, it has not offered much to the user. The recently released iOS 14 changes that by providing the ability to add custom widgets (of three different sizes) to the home screen. And sure enough, Underscore made an app to help people make custom widgets. His latest app WidgetSmith shot to fame to become the #1 downloaded free app on the iOS App Store, surpassing even Gmail, Netflix, Spotify and other high profile apps.

It is amazing to see an independent developer — essentially a 1 person shop — get so much success. Of course, this did not come overnight and took years of hard work and preparation. David has been making iOS apps for 12 years, yeah TWELVE. And in that time he published 59 (!) applications.

Having been a long time listener to Underscore in podcasts, I have heard him say time and time again, as to how hard he works to adopt the latest Apple APIs, how busy the months after each WWDC were — as he dove head first into making good use of the APIs that Apple had just announced. He would make every effort to have his apps in the store on Day 1 of almost every iOS launch, so that he can offer people who installed the latest iOS, something that he made to install and play with, on their devices. Often times, he was rewarded with good success when Apple featured his apps in the App Store. But climbing to the #1 spot in the App Store, is a probably the ultimate reward — a dream come true for every indie App developer.

He talks about this success in two podcasts:Under the Radar and The Talk Show. It is amazing to hear Underscore say that he was receiving emails faster than he could click to open them.

Marco, John and Casey spoke about this on the Accidental Tech podcast too. I always felt he was an incredibly nice person, but to hear John Siracusa describe his character as “disgustingly nice” is a pretty awesome tribute. I laughed out loud when John mentioned: "he is so nice, it makes you angry".

Underscore, hearty congratulations on the well-deserved recognition. You are an inspiration to all of us.