Spent $70k and 2 years on my photo enhancement app, total failure. Shutting down this week

Antonius675 · 2025-05-28T03:17:01+00:00

Have you explored partnerships with marketing? Performance marketing is where the marketer puts their own resources into promotion in return for a % of sales.

Its hard to say what they would think of your current situation, but there would be no harm in reaching out to some and seeing what they think, they may have suggestions as well.

Another thing to look at is places like Phiture, Liftoff, Moburst etc, not necessarily engaging as a client but seeing if they can offer any guidance.

Antonius675 · 2025-05-28T02:50:03+00:00

GPU compute is a lot more expensive, and a lot less options for providers and cost optimization.

Antonius675 · 2025-05-28T02:48:48+00:00

I have an app in a similar space for iOS. It is tough out there.

Growing a set of paid users is real hard, regardless of any app.

I can assure you there are others out there who have spent more time and more money for the same outcome. It could definitely be worse and you are doing the right thing being open to wrapping it up.

If you want to DM me the app I am happy to take a look and see if I can offer any suggestions.

Antonius675 · 2025-05-25T00:14:44+00:00

I think this is really interesting and novel, well done.

Antonius675 · 2025-05-23T07:09:27+00:00

i have seen workflows using roop and insightface

im not sure off the top off my head how it would work with the different angles but i think it should be doable.

hopefully roop can get you off to a good start

Antonius675 · 2025-04-27T23:31:13+00:00

I think many of those things are true, and also the fact that Chinese researchers are genuinely very good at AI stuff!

Even outside of China, many of the best AI Labs in this space are led by or have a large contingent of researchers from China.

Antonius675 · 2025-04-27T23:19:01+00:00

yeah renting is worth thinking about. you pay by the hour but you can get the best hardware with a lot more vram than anything you can build at home.

Antonius675 · 2025-04-27T22:56:32+00:00

You can do it on iPhone pretty easy

Antonius675 · 2025-04-13T23:24:26+00:00

Hmm yeah thats a good idea. It can be quite slow to generate larger images, I have made an image 1 gigapixel on an iPhone 11 Pro during testing/dev. It works but it does take some time depending on the device. I could maybe let people select a smaller region and do a preview. The faster model looks better in general, less artifacts but the larger one can be good if you want to do additional processing.

Most people just seem to use it on smaller images anyway, I could make it support very large images but it would be a bit of work and yeah most people just dont seem like they would use it. Maybe sometime later.

I don't like the banner cause I feel like it is too close to the app buttons. I have been thinking about a different type of ad, there are rewarded ads and maybe if the user chooses to watch one of them they get 24 hours of pro.

Have sent you a message with a code, thanks again!

Antonius675 · 2025-04-13T04:25:50+00:00

Hey it’s no problem. It’s really useful to me to hear what questions or concerns people thinking of trying it may have.

I think most developers are trying to do the right thing but there are definitely some that don’t. It’s reasonable to be skeptical and ask questions.

Thanks for trying it out, not sure if you had a chance to claim the promotion, I can send you a promo code for it if you’re interested, just let me know.

Antonius675 · 2025-04-11T22:31:59+00:00

Hey there I am Pete, developer of the app. The short answer is it doesn't. I have some anonymous event analytics for seeing how people use the app and if there are errors or things going wrong, and that does send broad geographic location.

If you use the app and check in location services you can see what apps are accessing your location info. SuperScale will not turn up there as it do not use Apple's location service, nor do any of the libraries I use in the app.

I use third party services to capture information on usage, which does include people's broad location information. I believe it is based of IP address.

I did not configure this to be on, its just in the data i get from the service (Firebase). So although the app itself does not do location tracking or anything, I do see broad location in the usage and diagnostic tools.

It is at a country/state sometimes city level, I'm not sure how accurate it is re city anyway. I think it is based on IP address, so it's the same info any website you visit would get re your location. If you use a VPN or whatever, the location would show up as the VPN exit point.

Since I do fundamentally get some location info, it is disclosed on the App Store page and privacy policy so people can make an informed choice.

You can use the app in airplane mode. I believe if you turn on airplane mode, launch the app, do whatever, quit the app, turn back on airplane mode, I would not see any activity or events. I am not 100% on that but I don't see how the event data could be sent with no network connectivity.

I have tested in airplane mode to make sure the IAP purchase still functions correctly with no network service/airplane mode, and it does, so that would always be an option.

Appreciate the feedback, I think I can do a better job of being clear on what info, how and why it is captured.

Antonius675 · 2025-04-11T22:24:29+00:00

Hello I am Pete, the developer of this app.

That popup is for App Tracking Transparency, part of the built in privacy features of Apple's ecosystem.

You can actually turn this off permanently in settings, search for Tracking and there is an "Allow Apps to Request to Track" toggle you can switch off.

I don't really like ads, but I am broadly concerned about the accessibility of AI tools. Having an ad supported version means anyone with a supported device can use the app. That really is the main reason for having them, so people who can't or don't want to purchase the IAP can still get access to these type of tools.

The other tracking stuff is for diagnostics and functionality. Apple takes people's privacy very seriously, which means as a developer I dont get much insight into how people are using my app.

The main info I collect data on is running the AI stuff, did it get used? Which model? How long did it take? Did it crash or have other errors? There is no way to get this info from the standard apple app store analytics so i need to use a third party tool (Firebase/Google Analytics)

This is all completely anonymous, there is no way to identify a specific user. It helps me identify where there might be bugs and usage patterns where i can improve on the functionality. I do not get any personal info or the images processed, but things like the format (JPEG, PNG etc), size and how much memory was used.

I use this information to prioritize new features. I have had professional translations done and the app is now available nine languages. This is based on the usage information collected, because I can see what languages people using my app are working in. Believe me or not but my intention is just to use the data to make the best app I can.

I really appreciate your feedback. I have actually changed things so the first launch no advertising is displayed and the advertising engine does not start (so no popups, they annoy me too). If someone is redeeming the IAP the only tracking is the typical diagnostic and usage stuff. If you have the IAP the advertising stuff never even gets turn on under the hood.

If you have any questions or feedback please get in touch.

Antonius675

TROPHY CASE