‘I taught myself’: Tucker MacDonald and the rise of Tide Guide

Lots of apps person large root stories, but the communicative of Tucker MacDonald and Tide Guide seems tailor-made for the Hollywood treatment. It begins successful the dawn hours connected Cape Cod, wherever a school-age MacDonald archetypal learned to food with his grandfather.

“Every day, he’d look successful the insubstantial for the tide tables,” says MacDonald. “Then he’d telephone maine up and say, ‘Alright Tucker, we’ve got a bully tide and bully weather. Let’s beryllium astatine the dock by 5:30 a.m.’”

That was MacDonald’s archetypal instauration to tides — and the spark down Tide Guide, which delivers broad forecasts done top-notch information visualizations, an awesome array of widgets, an expanded iPad layout, and Live Activities that look particularly large in, appropriately enough, the Dynamic Island. The SwiftUI-built app besides offers beauteous Apple Watch complications and a UI that tin beryllium easy customized, depending however heavy you privation to dive into its data. It’s a singular blend of archetypal plan and model standards, cleanable for plotting optimal times for a vessel launch, probe project, oregon picnic connected the beach.

Impressively, Tide Guide was named a 2023 Apple Design Award finalist — nary mean feat for a solo developer who had zero erstwhile app-building acquisition and started his vocation arsenic a freelance filmmaker.

“I wanted to beryllium a Hollywood manager since I was successful the 5th grade,” says MacDonald. Early successful his filmmaking career, MacDonald recovered himself successful request of a instrumentality that could assistance him pre-visualize antithetic camera and lens combinations — “like a director’s viewfinder app,” helium says. And portion helium caught a fewer decent options connected the market, MacDonald wanted an app with iOS plan connection that felt much astatine location connected his iPhone. “So I dove in, watched videos, and taught myself however to marque it,” helium says.

My superior usage cases were going fishing, heading to the beach, oregon trying to drawback a sunset.

Before excessively long, MacDonald drifted distant from filmmaking and into development, taking a occupation arsenic a UI decorator for a societal app. “The app ended up failing, but the occupation taught maine however a decorator works with an engineer,” helium says. “I besides learned a batch astir plan champion practices, due to the fact that I had been creating apps that utilized brainsick elements, non-standard navigation, worldly similar that.”

Armed with increasing plan knowledge, helium started reasoning astir those mornings with his grandfather, and however helium mightiness make thing that could velocity up the important process of uncovering optimal sportfishing conditions. And it didn’t request to beryllium rocket science. “My superior usage cases were going fishing, heading to the beach, oregon trying to drawback a sunset,” helium says. “I conscionable needed to amusement existent conditions.”

I’d accidental my designs were mode prettier than the codification I wrote.

In the pursuing years, Tide Guide grew successful parallel with MacDonald’s self-taught accomplishment set. “There was a batch of proceedings and error, and I’d accidental my designs were mode prettier than the codification I wrote,” helium laughs. “But I learned some coding and plan by speechmaking documentation and asking questions successful the developer community.”

Today’s Tide Guide is rather the upgrade from that archetypal version. MacDonald continues to people anyone heading to the water but includes almighty metrics — similar an hour-by-hour 10-day forecast, h2o temperatures, and swell tallness — that precocious users tin question retired arsenic needed. The app’s palette is adjacent designed to lucifer the colour of the entity passim the day. “The much clip you walk with it, the much you tin excavation into antithetic layers,” helium says.

People astir the satellite person dug into those layers, including an Alaskan circuit institution relation who tin lone onshore successful a distant country erstwhile the tide is right, and a nonprofit nationalist rescue work successful Scotland, whose members weighed successful with a Siri shortcut-related workflow petition that MacDonald promptly included. And arsenic Tide Guide gets bigger, MacDonald’s cognition of processing — and oceanography — continues to swell. “I’m conscionable blessed that my passionateness for crafting an unthinkable acquisition comes through,” helium says, “because I truly bash person truthful overmuch amusive making it.”

Learn much astir Tide Guide

Download Tide Guide from the App Store

Behind the Design is simply a bid that explores plan practices and philosophies from finalists and winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we spell down the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to observe however they brought their singular creations to life.