0 of 5 preorders, and the test I'm running instead

On 12 September I wrote here that I'd build Deskthaw if five people preordered it at $29 by 27 September, and stop if not, and that I'd post the result either way. This is a few days late. The result is zero preorders, and zero waitlist signups apart from my own test one.

Where the visits came from

I nearly got the traffic wrong as well. The main Cloudflare graph showed about 300 visitors a day, and almost all of that was bots. Cloudflare's other count includes just the browsers that actually loaded the page, and it says about 200 visits over three weeks. About 80 of those were on Windows and about 70 on Linux. Around 10 came from a headless browser, so a script. Macs didn't make the top four, and fourth place was about 10. Deskthaw runs on a Mac and nothing else.

Close to a third of the visits came on 16 September, the day I posted on r/SideProject.

So I still don't know if anyone would pay for it, and I can't tell if many Mac users even saw the page.

Who was asking

After that I went looking for them. I pulled a month of posts from r/macapps, r/MacOS and five other subs, about 6,400 in all, searched them for people asking for an app like this, and read the eight closest threads in full. In the Mac sub posts I searched, I found no one asking. What I did find was other developers launching break apps, and most of those posts got 0 to 2 points.

The two places I planned to launch, Show HN and r/macapps, want something people can install, and a preorder page isn't that. So on 17 September I stopped waiting for the deadline and changed the test.

The beta

Deskthaw is now a free beta, a menu bar app for your Mac. It waits while your camera or mic is on, while a meeting app is in front, or while an app is fullscreen (for up to an hour in that case). When you're free, it offers one short move for whatever gets stiff: your neck, your shoulders and upper back, or your lower back. There are six moves. Each takes a minute or less, you do them sitting down, and each one comes from a page published by a health body. You can skip any of them.

The drawings are made by a small program that poses a seated figure, so the still picture and the animated loop for each move come from the same pose.

It's signed and notarized, and it stops working at most 45 days after you first open it. There's no updater. A new build is a download from the site, and if you left your email I'll tell you when there is one.

The number for this one

I picked it before writing any code, like last time, and changed it once before launch.

The beta counts the installs where the person said yes to sharing a few usage counts, and no others. It asks on first launch, with two buttons and neither one preselected. If you say no, the test can't see you, and I'll mention that when I post the result.

It passes if at least 30 of the installs from the first week come back on day 1, 2 or 3 after installing, and at least half of those are still using it on days 7 to 9. I'll check on 24 October. If it misses, I stop, with no extension this time. That was the rule as published on 1 October.

The rule now has two parts, both counted over the installs from the first two weeks, 12 to 25 October:

• Reach: at least 20 installs that said yes to sharing. If this misses, the app hasn't been judged. I failed to get it in front of people. I get one more two-week try through a different channel, which I'll name here before it starts, and if that misses too, I stop.
• Keeping it: of the installs that come back on day 1, 2 or 3 after installing, at least half are still using it on days 7 to 9. If this misses, I stop.

The install day doesn't count, because plenty of people open a new app once on the day they get it. Using it means the app ran and offered a move that day, so coming back takes nothing more than leaving it running.I'll check on 7 November and post the result here that day. That's later than the date I first gave, which is the extension I said I wouldn't take. I'm taking it once, before anyone has installed, and saying so here.

The preorder

It's still on the front page, for the finished app: $29, expected by 31 March 2027, refundable any time before it ships and for 30 days after. The beta is free either way.

The beta is open from 12 October at deskthaw.com, and the waitlist gets the link first. Questions go to [email protected].