Mickael Romaniello
30 minutes, no slides, nothing to prepare.
Mickael Romaniello
30 minutes, no slides, nothing to prepare.
12 years of experience. 15+ apps delivered. One dedicated point of contact.
In short: ios app development for Edinburgh (524,930 residents) means a project driven by a senior expert — not an agency. Direct communication, ownership of the code, published on App Store and Google Play within weeks.
You want to launch your app.
Spoiler: Apple is not waiting for you.
Apple processes 100,000+ app submissions per week.
And behind this review process, there are real humans clicking, testing, and judging your work.
The key advantage of this strict process is credibility.
When your application is live on the App Store, it is a massive quality guarantee for your clients in Edinburgh.
It proves that you respect privacy, that your interface is clean, and that the experience is smooth.
But nearly one submission in four is rejected.
A hidden crash. A misplaced icon. A button that does nothing.
The iPhone user is unforgiving. They click. They quit. They forget.
And Apple is even stricter.
Launching an app costs money and time.
Should you launch on iOS and Android at the same time? Or start with iOS?
If you have a tight budget in Edinburgh, starting with iOS is often the best choice.
The most important factor is profitability.
iOS users spend 2x more in-app than Android users.
They are more likely to pay for subscriptions, premium services, and in-app purchases.
By developing for iPhone first, we validate your business model faster.
Furthermore, the hardware ecosystem is controlled.
There are only a handful of recent iPhone models.
This significantly reduces development and testing time compared to Android and its thousands of models.
We can focus on what matters: value for the user.
A clear interface, optimal performance, zero bugs.
Once the iOS app is a hit in Edinburgh and revenue is flowing, we use that budget to confidently fund the Android version.
Spoiler: this is the strategy Instagram and Clubhouse followed in their early days.
iOS development is about designing the perfect product for the most demanding clientele, before adapting it for the rest of the world.
My primary role is to protect your budget. Did you know that most an app's features are never used?
From Cannes, I help my clients avoid this massive waste. With 12 years of experience on iOS and Android, I know exactly where the money should go. We cut the fluff to focus on what brings actual value to your audience.
The key advantage: an app that launches fast, tests the market, and costs the right price. It's a matter of logic. Let's build the essentials first.
Edinburgh has a strong finance and public-sector presence, and both mean a review process before anything ships. Knowing that at the start changes the hosting decision, the way data is stored, and the timeline. Finding out at launch costs a quarter.
The questions a review asks are predictable, which is the good news. Where is the data physically held, who can reach it, is it encrypted in transit and at rest, how is access removed when someone leaves, and what happens if a device is lost. None of that is hard to satisfy when the app was designed with those answers in mind. All of it is expensive when the app was built first and audited afterwards, because the fixes touch the foundations rather than the surface.
A review process also changes how a project should be paced. If sign-off takes weeks and involves several people, a build delivered as one large release at the end accumulates misunderstandings invisibly until the day it all surfaces. Shipping something installable every two or three weeks turns that risk into a series of small corrections, each cheap because the work is still fresh in everyone's mind — including mine.
Edinburgh's other characteristic is a strong university and research presence, which produces a distinct kind of project: the technical core is already solved, sometimes impressively, and what is missing is everything around it. On those, the most useful thing I can do is usually not to build the full application but to build the three screens that prove the idea holds up in front of twenty real people. That teaches more in a month than half a year of development, and it costs a fraction of it.
You are launching your project in Edinburgh.
And you are probably wondering who to work with to build your mobile app.
It is the first major decision you have to make. Some people think that to succeed, you absolutely need a big agency right around the corner. Others believe they should outsource to the cheapest team they can find overseas.
Both options come with serious tradeoffs.
A big agency will assign your project to a junior developer you have never met. An offshore team will deliver code you cannot read, three weeks behind schedule, with zero accountability.
The most important factor in the success of an app is not just the code. It is communication.
When you work with me, you get one dedicated expert with 12 years of experience and over 15 delivered projects. Not an account manager. Not a rotating team. One person who knows your project inside out.
Invent Better starts by removing, not adding. An app that does one thing properly ships in two months; one that does five things halfway never ships at all. Given that a large share of features planned in advance are never actually used, the useful question is not whether a feature would be nice, but whether anyone still uses the app without it.
Running an app on iOS requires precision.
The key advantage of native development is full access to the phone's capabilities.
No middlemen. No slowdowns.
The main engine is Swift.
A robust programming language that guarantees maximum performance.
Coupled with SwiftUI, we build the interface for your project in Edinburgh.
This is what gives Apple applications that magical feel: smooth transitions, instantly reacting buttons.
If your app lags, the user deletes it.
They click. They quit. They forget.
That is why I always favor the tools provided directly by Apple.
To manage complex data flows, I use the Combine framework.
It is the conductor that ensures your application's information displays without delay.
Many app projects fail at the App Store door.
Apple is strict.
The most important factor for success is understanding their expectations.
From the very beginning of our collaboration in Edinburgh, we integrate Apple's rules into your specifications.
No hidden external purchases. No notification spam. No tracking without consent.
Once the foundation is sound, development begins.
I code in iterations. This means that every two weeks, you see the project progress.
How? Via TestFlight.
You open TestFlight on your iPhone, download the update, and test it at home in Edinburgh.
You see exactly what you are paying for.
When the application is ready, we prepare for the big leap.
App Store Connect requires special attention.
You need the right screenshot sizes, precise text, and above all, you must complete all legal privacy requirements.
The review process by Apple takes a few days.
They test on real devices.
Apple processes 100,000+ app submissions per week, so we must be flawless to avoid wasting time.
As soon as the green light is given, your app becomes available to the whole world.
Take a common case: a fitness app sold on subscription.
Their business model relied entirely on converting free users into paying ones.
In short, the Apple ecosystem was the perfect target.
Why? Because iOS users spend 2x more in-app than Android users.
We built the application around a seamless integration of Apple Pay and StoreKit.
If the payment screen looks scary, the user leaves.
They click. They quit. They forget.
We made subscribing as simple as a double-click on the iPhone's side button with Face ID.
However, Apple scrutinizes subscriptions closely during review.
Apple processes 100,000+ app submissions per week and mercilessly rejects apps with unclear pricing terms.
I designed the paywall screens in strict compliance with App Store rules to avoid any rejection.
The launch was an immediate success.
The conversion rate exceeded expectations, proving that in Edinburgh as elsewhere, a well-designed iOS app is a highly profitable machine.
A native iOS app generally costs noticeably more than a web or hybrid equivalent. The reason is Apple's standards: its design rules demand care on every screen, button and animation, and App Store review rejects what does not meet them. That extra cost mostly buys a smaller chance of being rejected.
This is the question everyone in Edinburgh asks.
Let's be clear: a native iOS application generally costs noticeably more than a web or hybrid app.
Why?
The most important factor is Apple's high standards.
Apple's design rules require special care for every screen, every button, every animation.
We cannot cut corners.
Then, there is the preparation for the Store.
nearly one submission in four is rejected.
To avoid this, I spend time ensuring the code is perfect, privacy policies are clear, and all crashes are resolved on TestFlight before publishing.
This preparation and quality time comes at a cost.
Excellence requires work.
There are also Apple's fixed fees.
It is not just about coding an app.
The most important factor is using the phone's strengths for your business.
The iPad and iPhone are the ultimate reading screens.
If you offer exclusive content, iOS users spend 2x more in-app than Android users.
Selling subscriptions through Apple's native system is the best way to retain readers in Edinburgh.
The iPhone has the best augmented reality sensors on the market (ARKit).
Placing virtual furniture in a living room, or taking a 3D apartment tour becomes incredibly smooth.
It is a guaranteed wow effect for your clients.
Apple Wallet passes are magical.
The client buys their ticket, and it goes straight into their Wallet app, with a QR code ready to be scanned at the entrance of your event in Edinburgh.
No more digging through emails.
We simplify the user's life as much as possible.
It is the question nobody asks a freelancer and the one worth asking first. My answer is three concrete things: the code sits in a repository in your name from day one, decisions are written down rather than kept in my head, and the store accounts are yours. Another developer can pick it up without me. That is not a promise, it is an arrangement — and you can check it in the first week.
You do, entirely, and from the start rather than at the end. The repository is opened in your name, you have access during development, and there is nothing to claim at delivery. The same goes for the designs and the store accounts. The only thing worth discussing is if you want to reuse a component I wrote elsewhere — I say so before using it, not after.
We fix it and resubmit, and that is part of the project. A rejection is not a rare accident: Apple checks dozens of points, and the common reasons are predictable — a test account that does not work, a permission requested with no explanation, an advertised feature that is not there yet. I deal with those before submitting, which guarantees nothing but avoids most of it. You never have to handle the exchange with the reviewer.
Yes, and you should know that before building on one. Apple and Google can remove an app that breaks their rules, and they change those rules regularly. Abrupt removals mostly hit apps that collect data without saying so, copy a brand, or have not been updated in a long time. It is also why a web presence stays useful alongside: nobody can take that one away from you.
It keeps running, and you keep everything needed to keep it alive: the code, the accesses, the signing keys, the documentation. I do a written handover rather than a file transfer — what was built, why, and where the traps are. It is half a day of work that saves whoever comes next several weeks of reverse engineering, and I would rather we parted that way.
Before any quote, there is a list to gather: the code repository, the App Store Connect and Google Play accounts — in your name, not the provider's — the Android signing key, and access to the hosting and database. The signing key is the critical piece: without it, the app can no longer be updated, it has to be republished under a new identifier, and you start again from zero installs.
Wherever you decide, and it is a decision to take early because it is expensive to undo. For most projects a European host is enough and keeps GDPR simple. For health data the hosting has to be certified, which narrows the choice and weighs on the budget — better learned on the first call than on launch day. In every case, the accounts are in your name.
I know before you see the review. A crash reporting tool sends the error with the device, the OS version and the exact place in the code — with no personal data. Without it, you discover bugs through store reviews, which is to say too late and in public. It is one of the few things I set up on every project, however small, because it costs almost nothing and changes everything.
On the code side, yes: every released version is tagged and we can return to the exact state of a delivery. On the store side it is more nuanced — Google lets you halt a rollout, Apple expects a fix to be published. The real protection is upstream: a staged rollout on Android, a real testing phase, and updates small enough that you know what broke.
It works, then it degrades slowly, and one day it stops launching. iOS ships a major version every September, Android every year, and each one breaks something. An app left alone for eighteen months usually costs more to bring back than the maintenance would have. You can stop — it is your call and I will not bill you a subscription for nothing — but decide it knowingly.
Ready to launch your app in Edinburgh?
You have the idea. You know your market in Scotland. Now, it is time to take action.
But not just in any random way. The key advantage of working together is absolute clarity. I will not sell you useless features. I will not make empty promises that I cannot keep.
In 30 minutes, you'll know where to start. No commitment.
Book a free call →30 minutes to start
Book →Most of my projects run remotely, and in practice that changes very little. We talk over video whenever you need to, not only at major milestones, and you can reach me with questions at any point during the project — I always answer.
Once we are working together, travelling to meet you on site can absolutely be arranged if your project calls for it. Travel costs are quoted separately, upfront and with no surprises.