I firstreviewed it in 2011and it kept getting better since.
So what does it feel like?
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Who are you, and what do you do in life?
I’m a born’n’bred Londoner, 28 years old.
What made you create Llama, when Tasker [previously-reviewed] was already around?
Is it your first Android project?
Tell us a little bit about what starting out felt like.
Llama actually started out as my final-year university project.
The idea was simply to automate the sound profiles that most Nokia phones had back in the day.
Knowing that my phone had the ability to collect exactly that information the idea moved on from there.
There were other Nokia S60 apps at the time that did something similar.
Eventually, Nokia failed to make a phone that interested me and I got an Android gadget.
It could only change profiles based on time and area.
Android doesn’t actually have profiles, just a volume level, so those had to be emulated too.
I wrote up a quick message on XDA and some people started asking for features.
Eventually, Llama was ready for the market.
It was released as a free app because I’m nice, ha.
Llama has a donate version, but the main app is free and isn’t limited in any way.
Where do you find the motivation to keep maintaining it?
How time consuming is it?
The motivation comes from succeeding at a problem.
It’s awesome to see something working.
To start with Llama was a little time consuming.
Are people actually getting the Donate version?
Did anyone support Llama in other interesting ways?
More people than I expected get the donate version.
The in-app purchases let people donate as much and as many times as they want.
Some users started emailing saying that they wanted to donate more.
I wasn’t expecting anyone to ever donate me a steak but a few people have!
Did developing Llama help you in your professional career in other ways?
My boss uses it though, maybe that helps a bit.
I’m not sure if I’d want to program for Android professionally.
(I.e, how should I get discovered?
Is that even important?)
You should definitely want to write an app you’ll actually want to use and end up using.
If you aren’t using it then you’ll never figure out how good or bad it is.
It was a nice day when the play store counter clicked over to 500,000+.
You should probably also decide what you want to get out of it.
To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted out of Llama.
It was a nice day when the play store counter clicked over to 500,000+.
Thank you, Steven, for taking the time to chat with us!
