Attic is almost ready
By Rob Chipman
Three weeks ago Attic was an empty project folder. Today it's an app I use on my own house, and it's close enough to done that I can see the App Store from here.
Here's where things stand.
What it does, finally
You document your home and Attic keeps the record. Rooms full of items, each with the fields that matter: paint with its brand and finish, appliances with model and serial numbers, flooring, fixtures. Your major systems, heating and cooling and electrical and plumbing and the roof and the water heater, each with their own history. A dated log on everything, so the story of the house accrues as you live in it. And a maintenance calendar that tells you, calmly, what's coming up.
When you sell, all of it hands off to the next owner. That was the original point and it's still the part I care about most.
It does all of this without tracking you. For most of what you'll do, your data never leaves your phone. The only time anything goes to a server is if you choose to sync across devices or share a home with someone, and that's the one feature that needs a server to exist at all.
How the pricing works
Simple, and I want it on the record before launch so there are no surprises.
The app is a free download. Documenting your home's systems, the heating, electrical, plumbing, roof, and water heater, is free forever. That's the safety-critical core and I didn't want it behind a paywall.
The full home inventory, all your rooms and items and the change log and the maintenance tools, is a one-time $4.99 unlock. Pay once, it's yours. No subscription, no renewal.
There's one subscription, called Share, and it's only for cloud sync and letting a partner onto the same home. It costs money because running a sync service costs money every month. If you don't need it, you never see it. Everyone else gets a complete, useful app for five dollars, once.
What's between here and the store
Testing, mostly. I'm running the whole app through real-device passes, fixing the rough edges that only show up when you actually walk a house with it in your hand. There's the App Store submission itself, the screenshots, the review queue. The unglamorous final mile.
But the thing works. I've been documenting my own house with it, and for the first time I actually know my paint colors. After years of butter-knifing chips off the wall, that's a strange and good feeling.
I'll post here the day it's live. If you own a home, it's almost yours.
-- Rob