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 single point of contact, from concept to publication.
In short: for your Sydney (5,312,163 residents) project in New South Wales, you work directly with me, not a middleman. 12 years of experience, 15+ apps delivered, and a transparent end-to-end process.
You have an app idea.
If your target audience in Sydney expects premium quality, your choice of platform matters.
The most important factor is knowing where the value is.
iOS users spend 2x more in-app than Android users.
The Apple ecosystem attracts a customer base that is used to paying for quality, subscriptions, and premium services.
If you want to build an iPhone app in Sydney that generates solid revenue, you need to target the App Store.
But be careful. You do not just walk into Apple's store easily.
You have to respect their rules. Their design standards. Their technical requirements.
I am a freelance iOS developer.
My job is not just writing lines of code.
Everyone wants their app on the Apple store.
But publishing an iOS application is a real journey.
The key advantage of this complex process is that it filters out bad apps.
First, there is the creation of the Apple developer account. And here comes the surprise.
If you are a business in Sydney, you need a DUNS number.
The DUNS is the international ID card of your company.
Getting it can take between 2 and 4 weeks. It is best to know this on day one.
Then, we code. Cleanly. Following the rules.
Next comes the testing phase with TestFlight.
TestFlight is the rehearsal room for your application.
We can invite up to 10,000 testers before the official release.
This is where we hunt down bugs and tweak the experience.
Finally, the final boss: validation by the App Store.
Keep in mind that nearly one submission in four is rejected.
A poorly filled privacy form. A poorly explained paid option. A missing test account.
Apple lets nothing slide.
Validation takes between 24 hours and 7 days.
This is why having an iOS expert in Sydney is not a luxury.
I know these rules by heart.
My goal is to help you avoid frustrating back-and-forths with Apple reviewers so your app goes live as quickly as possible.
Over 15 applications delivered. Startups that found their market fit. SMBs that streamlined their workflow.
In 12 years, I've seen what works and what crashes on iOS and Android. From Cannes, I won't promise you the moon. I promise you results. My job is to build solid tools that your users will actually adopt.
The key advantage is the real-world impact of your application. Shall we look together at how to grow your project in a smart and profitable way?
You are launching your project in Sydney.
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.
Sydney is eight to ten hours ahead of me depending on which side of the daylight-saving switch we are on — and since Australia and Europe change clocks in opposite directions, the gap moves twice a year. Either way our working days barely touch. That suits a build with clear milestones and badly suits one that needs daily conversation. I will say which of the two your project is before we start rather than after, because the wrong answer wastes a month for both of us.
When it does suit, it works well. You finish your day and send comments; I pick them up as my day starts and work while you sleep; there is a new version waiting when you sit down. The requirement is that each week has a deliverable you can actually review on your own device, not a demonstration you have to watch me give. If a project cannot be broken into pieces like that, the timezone will fight it every week.
There is a practical Australian point that catches people from Europe: the App Store and Play Store treat Australia as its own storefront, with its own pricing, its own tax handling and its own review of anything region-specific. If you plan to sell beyond Australia, deciding that early matters, because pricing tiers and currency handling are easier to design in than to add. Storing amounts with an explicit currency instead of assuming one costs nothing at the start.
The last thing is scheduling the few conversations that do need to be live. Late afternoon for you is early morning for me, or the reverse, and both are workable if fixed in advance rather than arranged ad hoc each time. One reliable weekly slot beats four improvised attempts, and it removes the quiet drift that kills long-distance projects — the week where nobody quite got around to asking the question that was blocking everything.
An app can be built fast and cheap. What costs money is what comes next: code written without structure becomes impossible to change, and the smallest new feature means starting over. Invent Better charges for the work that makes a second version possible — tests, a readable architecture, and code another developer can pick up.
It is entirely possible to build a mobile application extremely fast and for very little money.
All you have to do is ignore every best practice, copy and paste random blocks of code from the internet, and cross your fingers hoping it holds together. On the day of your big presentation in Sydney, the app will probably look fine.
But that thin layer of paint will crack almost immediately.
The second you get more than ten users trying to log in at the same time, the system will crawl to a halt. On mobile devices, user patience is brutally short. And slowness is always perceived as a broken product.
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 Sydney, 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 Sydney.
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.
The healthcare sector demands absolute rigor.
Here is a case that comes up often: a connected medical tracking app.
On iOS, health has its own ecosystem: HealthKit.
The goal was to synchronize Apple Watch data (heart rate, sleep) with a simple and secure patient interface.
The key advantage here is the data protection offered by Apple.
We built a completely native architecture in Swift.
Security and privacy had to be flawless to pass the App Store review.
Apple is extremely strict about medical apps. nearly one submission in four is rejected, and this number is even higher for healthcare.
So we bulletproofed the permissions and the privacy questionnaire on App Store Connect.
The application was tested intensively via TestFlight by a small panel of patients.
The result?
Apple approval secured on the first try.
Today, the app holds a 4.8/5 rating on the App Store, driven by the ultra-smooth experience typical of iOS.
This is the level of excellence I apply for my clients in Sydney.
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 Sydney 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.
The choice of platform also depends on your industry.
The key advantage of iOS is that it offers powerful native tools for certain sectors.
This is the king domain on iPhone.
With HealthKit, the app can read steps, heart rate, or sleep recorded by the Apple Watch.
This is a level of integration impossible to replicate elsewhere.
But beware, nearly one submission in four is rejected and Apple is uncompromising on health data management.
If you sell high-end goods in Sydney, the iPhone is essential.
Apple Pay allows the user to pay with a glance using Face ID.
Zero forms to fill out.
They click, they pay.
Not to mention integration with Apple Wallet for loyalty cards.
The main argument here is security.
The Apple ecosystem is closed. There are fewer viruses and gaping flaws than on other open systems.
For an app that handles money in Sydney, the "Available on the App Store" badge immediately reassures the client.
Not always, which is good news for the budget. An app that only handles its own user's data — a list, a tracker, a calculation — can keep everything on the phone and cost nothing to run. As soon as data has to be shared between people, synced across two devices, or seen by you on your side, a server is needed, and that is a cost that comes back every month.
It depends entirely on what was decided at the start, and it is one of the few choices that cannot be postponed. An app can keep its data on the device, let people work, then sync as soon as the network returns — with nobody pressing anything. It is essential the moment work happens in a warehouse, a basement, or on the road. Added afterwards, it often means rewriting half the app.
We pick a floor, and that choice has a price. Supporting older OS versions means more testing and giving up some capabilities. We look at who your users are: a consumer app and an internal tool deployed on a known fleet do not get the same answer. The floor can be raised later, when usage data shows nobody is left behind it.
It matters more than people think, because a heavy app is the first uninstalled when storage runs short. The weight rarely comes from the code: it is the bundled images and fonts. Loading images from the server rather than shipping them, and serving them at the right size, often halves it. That is invisible work, and it is the work that keeps the app installed.
Technically, sending costs almost nothing. What costs is everything around it: a server to decide what to send to whom and when, and enough care not to become intrusive. It is also the easiest mechanism to waste — a useless notification is the first cause of uninstalls, and an uninstalled app does not come back. Send few and make them useful, or send none.
Yes, with the user's permission, and how you ask matters as much as the feature. A permission demanded on first launch, with no context, is refused most of the time — and once refused it is painful to recover. Asked at the moment the person understands why, it is granted. Apple also requires a written explanation for every permission, and a vague one gets the app rejected.
Through the stores, and not instantly: Apple and Google review every version before it is published, and phones update at the pace of their own settings. So expect a share of your users to stay on an older version for weeks. That is why the server has to keep talking to previous versions, and why we avoid changes that break everything at once.
Often yes, and it all hangs on one thing: does your vendor provide a documented API. If they do, it is ordinary work. If they do not, or bill it per module, or refuse to open it to a third party, no app will work around that cleanly — workarounds exist and break at the vendor's next update. It is a question to put to your supplier before you put yours to me.
A website can be installed on the home screen, work offline and launch full-screen, with no store involved. It is a real third answer, and it is under-recommended because it earns less for whoever recommends it. Its limits: notifications stay restricted on iPhone, sensor access is partial, and you are not present in the stores — which matters if your customers look for you there.
Only if you have an audience in another language — and then it has to be designed in, not added on. Translation is not what costs; room is. German makes labels half again as long and overflows buttons drawn for English. Leaving room from the start costs nothing; redoing the screens afterwards costs days. The legal texts and the store listing count too.
While you hesitate, your competitors in Sydney are moving forward.
The mobile world moves fast. Very fast. Today, most global web traffic comes from mobile devices. If you keep pushing back the creation of your app, someone else will happily take your spot in New South Wales.
But be careful, do not confuse speed with haste. Launching an unstable application is the worst possible strategy.
In short: you have to act fast, but above all, you have to do it right. ⏳
In 30 minutes, you will know exactly where to start. No commitment. No technical jargon.
Book a free call →
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.