I’ve just updated my two iOS apps, NastyWriter (now 3.0) and NiceWriter (now 2.0). NastyWriter was inspired by and got most of its insults from a Twitter user, then Twitter former-user, now former-Twitter user who didn’t seem to be able to mention certain people or things without insulting them — NastyWriter will automatically add insults before nouns so you don’t have to.

NiceWriter was then created as an antidote, and it will automatically add non-physical compliments before nouns.

The latest versions of both apps have new adjectives (insults or compliments) as well as the following changes:

• Fixed a compatibility issue with iOS 17 and above where suggested text could be inserted without the user selecting it
• Removed ads

The first change was because it was simply embarrassing to have a buggy app out there when I’m looking for work as a developer, and I hadn’t had the time to figure out what the issue was until now.

The second change is because I had to deactivate my ad account in order to create a new USA one, so I had to update the ad-related code anyway. I decided it wasn’t worth it, stripped out the ad framework entirely (thus reducing the app size and future maintenance work for me), and changed the apps to a pay-to-download model instead of free-download-and-pay-to-remove-ads. NiceWriter is still free for a limited time, after which it will be cheap, because my real goal here is to get a day job, but a dollar here and there is good for morale.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll write a post some day about how to change the country of online accounts, but here’s a sneak peak: Google is the worst of them. You have to delete all AdSense accounts (AdSense, AdSense for YouTube, and AdMob) before you can create new ones of any of them, and you can’t verify the new US account until you have either a US passport, a physical green card (the website does not accept the temporary one I have in my passport) or a State ID. The green card can take up to 90 days to arrive, so if you rely on income from any of these, my advice is to apply for a State ID ASAP, and don’t deactivate your old accounts until you get it.

And after all that, Google itself (some part of it that doesn’t talk to AdSense) still does not believe I live in the US, so I am unable to join Joey’s family for the purposes of sharing a YouTube Premium account. Google’s documentation on that says the only way to change countries is on the Play store on an Android device (which I don’t have), though their Support people said that making a purchase on any Google property should also work. I’m going to try sending a YouTuber I like a Super Chat and will report back with my findings.

Anyway, go check out the new versions of NastyWriter and NiceWriter! Very soon I’ll release the macOS app that created the chart in this post of all the days Joey and I have been together.