Creating a Crypto Terminal for macOS: Lessons Learned From Expanding Our Product Ecosystem

What if I told you that cross-platform app development may not be a universally smart business decision, after all? And creating a carbon copy of a successful Windows app for Mac? Yeah, a bit myopic also, if you ask me. Mac traders deserve better, or more specifically — they deserve “different”.

My name is Sergii Alekseev, I am a Product Manager for Tiger.Trade – the makers of a popular “swiss multitool” trading platform for Windows.  Let me tell you the story of how we skipped on the obvious decision and built something our audience was actually excited about.

Confirming a gap in the market

It all started a few months ago when our company reached a point where expansion started to look like the next logical step. At that point, we had a vague sense that there was a demand for a macOS-based trading terminal. There was even a portion of our users who ran the Tiger.Trade Windows terminal on their Macs, with varying degrees of success and overheating.

But that fact alone did not convince us that we should simply reproduce what we already had for a different OS. We decided to take a closer look at the niche before we initiated development.

Here’s what we found:

• There are no UI/UX-friendly terminals for macOS. None!
• Mac users are forced to combine multiple apps to trade
• Existing platforms have no professional “DOM” / “level 2” to trade futures as a scalper

The conclusion? The current offering is scarce, bad-looking, and has limited functionality. Our research confirmed that there was a gap in the market we were capable of filling. But we’ve decided to go a little further with our market scaping.

So, Mac users. What are they like?

One in ten desktop/laptop users is a proud owner of a Mac. What do we know about this distinct audience? We know that Apple users are generally design-savvy. They are also more likely to have disposable income and to be early adopters of new trends and technologies.

We can see it by the wildfire that Revolut and Robinhood were for the iOS and macOS crowd. And yet, when we took a closer look at the Fintech product lineup for Mac, we found neo-banks, investment platforms and stock trading apps, but one element was distinctly missing. Can you guess what it was?

A Crypto trading terminal for Mac

That’s right. In 2021 if you had a Macbook, disposable income and an acute interest in all things Blockchain, your options would be limited to pretty much a bunch of web-based exchanges.

“But what’s wrong with web exchanges? Does everything need to be an app?” – you might ask. The answer is simple. A standalone application is a way more secure solution than a web page, which could be vulnerable to phishing attacks, malware and other types of fraud.

Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency momentum was building. The explosion of cryptocurrency trading in the first half of the year led to +100% growth on all exchanges listed. Q1 2021 saw the highest levels of crypto trading ever.

Our Windows terminal was already part of the movement, but it was by no means crypto-centric. Instead, the majority of our user base did and still does comprise pro-level traders, investors, and educators, chained to the stock exchanges. And as is the case with most pros, they don’t care about the bells and whistles of superior UX design. At least not to the extent Mac users do.

Clearly, a carbon copy was completely out of the question at that point. Instead, we figured that our best bet for a market fit is a well-designed native cryptocurrency trading terminal for Mac.

The result

It has now been 4 months of hard work and we have a fantastic prototype of Tiger.Trade for macOS. It’s a 100% native application that visually stuns upon the first launch. Our design team did a wonderful job of making T.T look and feel totally in-line with other macOS applications.

Everything was designed with our target audience in mind. It’s fresh, sleek and above all — intuitive and inviting. Our user can get to trading crypto immediately, no need for two hour-long webinars explaining the intricacies of this software.

We are due to release in the late summer of 2022. If you want to get notified as soon as the terminal goes live, click here to sign up for updates. And if you can’t wait that long for Tiger.Trade for macOS, there’s a way to get the app before the launch. You can sign up to become a beta tester!

If you’re interested in crypto trading and technical analysis, join our Tester Squad on Facebook, Telegram or Discord.

I hope our experience of expanding our trading product line gave you some ideas about your own options. Do let me know if you have any questions or if you have a different experience of your own you’d like to share.