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Comment by EvanMiller | Hacker News Reader

You're right, it's a fair amount of money, and I'm lucky to have this problem. Right now I'm doing everything I can to focus on another app. I'm trying to give that app 100% of my time and attention, even if I could be making more money in the short term doing something else.

I personally find it difficult to work on multiple large software projects at the same time. There's just so much I can keep in my head at once. If it were a few thousand lines of code, maybe, but Magic Maps weighs in around 35 kLoC, and the other one is pushing 100 kLoC. It takes a fair amount of mental bandwidth to dig into deep bugs, and I'd like to save that bandwidth for my other app.

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The answer here is to stop supporting the old app. If you're like me and can't turn your back on something you've invested so much time into, you're in a predicament.

I had a similar situation, and went the route of open source. The product died, as no one but me really wanted to maintain it. It was effectively the same as turning my back on the project while maintaining sales, except without the $$.

I'd recommend you ignore it and focus on your new app for long periods of time. Don't fix any bugs for months on end, then take a little time to knock out the big ones. Ignore the edge cases and focus on the big picture, that this app isn't your big thing, the next app is.

Thanks for the advice. I've basically ignored it for the last couple of years, but with the Yosemite changes the bugs are reaching a breaking point. One of my concerns is that the bad reviews are starting to have a "negative halo" effect on my other app, so I'd like to take some kind of action on it.

In some sense I've been here before. My very first app was an iPhone app, actually one of the first police scanner apps, with a glowing map of Chicago that got me into the whole software-mapping thing. I had to put that one out to pasture a few years ago, even though I thought there could have been a viable little business in the right hands.

Don't underestimate the value of having a different train of thought to turn to now and again. It may stave off burnout on the major project. Consider hiring the work out for now.

This is a good point. However, in this particular case, the software has reached a size where it's more stressful than relaxing for me to think about. My sense is that this psychological function would be better served by a smaller project.

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