The Story of Beacon

Beacon is no longer available. The iPhone is now powerful enough to run more featureful apps very efficiently. You should use one of those apps.

You can see the original Beacon description here.

When Beacon was first submitted to the App Store, there were virtually no apps in the “Navigation” category, so there was very little competition. Beacon rose quickly in the App Store.

Within a few months, Beacon became the “#1 Free App” in the Navigation category. When Apple changed the category icons to be top apps in each category, Becaon was the first Navigation category icon. Beacon appeared on the home screen in numerous Apple ads.

Beacon was hosted on the Apple Developer account of a good friend. He accidentally let his account lapse, and Beacon disappeared from the store.

I, and a mysterious man named Andreas who randomly started sending me graphics one day, did a lot of work on a replacement app. By the time it was ready, however, the Navigation category was full of much better apps, and Beacon’s continued presence in the charts had largely been due to already being in the charts.

Beacon came back to the App Store when my friend reinstated his Apple Developer account a long while later. By that point, it was hopelessly outmoded, and I didn’t update it. It continued to collect terrible reviews until the day my friend mercy-killed it.

I do other stuff now, none of which is a terrible iOS app.