Back in the early days of OS X, Karelia Software had a product called Watson. At its time, it was one of the best apps for the new Apple OS and really showed the power of what was possible using the Cocoa frameworks and the new Aqua design language. It was so good in fact that when Apple introduced OS X Jaguar the new version of their Sherlock app looked to be an exact clone of Watson’s functionality.
And now you know where the phrase “Sherlocking” comes from.
Independent software developers can be both the smartest and dumbest people in their profession simultaneously. For some reason, developers are almost universally fascinated by building yet another todo list, notes app, weather app, or (most recently) a podcasting client. And what do all of these have in common?
If you’re answer is “Apple ships them with iOS” or “there is a ton of competition already” then give yourself a cookie. You are correct
I’m guilty of it too. My first OS X app was a todo list. My second a calendaring app. My main product on iOS has been a Markdown text editor since 2010. In my defense, the text editor market in 2010 was wide open. Today, I wouldn’t even consider trying to enter the market unless I was completely confident that I was building something that was lightyears ahead of the best product already in the market.
When dealing with such mature product bases, that’s really hard to accomplish for a 1.0. Add onto the fact that you’re also competing with free and bundled with the iOS device in the case of Reminders, Notes, and Calendar. It still drives me nuts to this day to see family and friends using the bundled Notes app over Elements, but it accomplishes 90% of what they want and is free. Hard to compete with that.
In this modern App economy, stop sherlocking yourself out of the gate and focus on harder problems than just another version of Elements or Clear with a different interface skin. Those markets are saturated to the point where you’re betting against yourself before you even ship 1.0. Look to emerging markets that have a need ready to be filled, or even existing niche markets that have a few products poorly executed.
There are still plenty of products to be made on iOS and OS X and plenty of money to be made from them. The todo app market is not one of them.
This post is a part of a series based on my keynote presentation at CocoaConf Columbus 2012.
Last week at CocoaConf Columbus I was given the privilege of offering up a keynote address to kick off the event. This is the first time I’ve ever been asked to do something like this, which sparked both excitement and horror simultaneously. Excitement because it was an honor to be asked to do something that’s designed to set the tone of the event. Horrified because I have no earthly idea what I’m supposed to talk about.
A good keynote speech has three qualities:
It sets the tone for the conference.
It offers a message that may be rooted in something technical, but isn’t a technical talk.
It leaves you thinking, inspired or (hopefully) both.
With that in mind I decided the best course of action for my talk was to crib something from Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. King’s weekly Monday Morning Quarterback Column always has a section called “10 Things I Think I Think”. I decided to take that idea and create 10 slides with different thoughts and ideas I had as they pertained to the current state of iOS development.
The slides for the talk aren’t much use out of context, but sharing that information in the coming weeks as a series of posts on this site will hopefully allow it to reach a wider audience. Hopefully they’ll even find it beneficial.
And now with the exposition out of the way…
Don’t Fight The Future
Apple is a company that doesn’t spend much time looking back. Just try compiling an app for the iOS 5 SDK using the latest version of Xcode. It’s not exactly something the company cares to support going forward. Apple is always coming out with new products and technologies that it believes are superior to what was available before.
The iPhone 5s is a better device than the 5, which was a better device than the 4s, and so on.
By the same token, SDK advances are treated the same way. The overarching theme of the year is usually outlined through Apple’s WWDC sessions. You can get a pretty good idea what technologies the company is very high on and looking for developer’s to embrace. With iOS 7, I’d argue that they’re main focus is on:
The new visual language of iOS 7
UIKit Dynamics
Text handling
These are all new technologies that are a core of iOS 7 and had multiple sessions dedicated to them at Apple’s major developer event. You can be damn sure that the company is proud of them, and looking for developer’s to highlight who have integrated them into their apps.
It’s completely possible to keep building apps without supporting any of these features today, but your code (and in this case visual style) quickly begins to show its age the longer you delay embracing it.
Take Auto Layout for instance. Apple has been pushing Auto Layout on the Mac for three years now and now two years on iOS. What seems like a very large majority of people have struggled with the technology and stuck with springs and struts in its place. Springs and Struts are fine, but don’t think they’re going to keep getting improved going forward with Auto Layout now reaching maturity. That’s where Apple is focusing its efforts on layout technology. You’d be wise to get on board.
Similarly, as much as it frustrates me Storyboards continue to be a key focus of Apple each year with them adding additional improvements that almost make them not suck. Admittedly, each year I try to give Storyboards another chance and end up punting back to standard Xibs, but I’m aware that there are times where Apple does focus their Interface Builder improvements to features that are only available for Storyboards. That’s the way they are.
Apple dictates the direction fo the platform with their yearly OS X and iOS releases. Your skillset is only as useful as your ability to adapt to these emerging frameworks and new functionalities.
The solution is so simple, so easy, and so full-proof that I’m confident it would, if implemented, at least double our revenue practically overnight: Give people the option of a free monthly trial.
If users could download and use Dark Sky for free for a limited time, their hesitation at spending $3.99 would disappear. It’s either worth it or it isn’t, and they’d get to decide for themselves rather than take someone’s word for it.
While I do believe having free trials in the iOS and Mac app stores would be beneficial for developers, because it would likely increase revenue as Grossman states above, I also see it as being beneficial for users.
Both upgrade pricing and trials are popular with developers because they’re ‘the way things have always been done’. Dating back to the shareware days, you could try a product and then, if you enjoyed it, you could pay for it. If the developer upgraded to version 2.0, existing customers were either given the update for free or for a discounted rate for being loyal customers.
The App Store turned ‘the way things have always been done’ on its head. Instead of having third-party software sold either in boxes or at hundreds (thousands?) of different boutique storefronts, Apple manages the entire store and purchase process for both users and developers.
If you want to run third-party software from outside of the App Store, your options are to jailbreak your phone or buy an Android.
Every year, there is an uproar from developers who lament the loss of trials and upgrade pricing because they believe they will bring an increase in sales that for many (myself included) is sorely needed.
That people aren’t buying software because there’s no trial is flawed notion. People aren’t refusing to buy paid apps because they are cheap or don’t trust these unknown apps. They’re just different customers than traditional software shops are used to working with.
My parents never downloaded software on their home PC. If they needed a new piece of software at work, that was something that would magically appear thanks to the “IT guy” (likely you if it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas). Even though they never downloaded software, my parents were well versed at using technology thanks to the ubiquity of the web.
That would be the World Wide Web, where nearly everything is given away for “free”.
Developers are now trying to target this new breed of software consumers who are for the first time empowered to download apps onto their iPhone or Android. There are thousands of free apps to keep them occupied and happy. When they encounter a paid product, they are likely doing the same thing they do when they encounter the paywall on a web site: find a free alternative.
I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I know that trials won’t transition customers who have grown up in the age of free into people willing to part with money for software. A martini may be $10 whereas your app is a mere $2.99, but people are conditioned to always pay for their liquor as food and drink has always been a pay-for product.
We still feel upgrade pricing is important for customers purchasing serious productivity software, since the initial value received from purchasing an app like OmniGraffle or OmniPlan is much different from the incremental value of upgrading that app from version 5.0 to version 6.0.
This comes after the OmniGroup released a product that allowed customers who purchased Omni products from the Mac App Store to purchase new versions of the software on Omni’s own store at a discounted/upgrade price point.
Apple scoffed at this because they don’t want developers to shift their shared customer base outside of Apple’s safe and secure App Store and back into the Wild West of third-party software sites.
Scary? Absolutely. Surprising? Not really.
Apple is the company that dictates that all digital products and services sold through iOS apps use Apple’s in-app purchasing system. You’re not even allowed to link to a web site such as the Kindle Book Store because that would bypass Apple’s 30% cut.
Every year, we have another dust up about developers and power users wishing for the return of upgrade pricing in the App Store age. And every year, it becomes even more obvious that upgrade pricing is another relic of the past.
Apple is more interested in developers either offering free updates indefinitely, or offering a completely new SKU at the same price for every user: old or new. Given that pricing in this new App Store age have hit rock bottom, on iOS that usually means somewhere under $4.99 and OS X somewhere under $29.99.
One price for all. Is that a raw deal for existing customers? If you’re comparing it to the way software used to be sold, yes, but not in a lot of other industries. I’m not getting a discount on FIFA from EA each year just because I bought it last year. I’m going to drop another $60 on the new version.
I just bought a new TiVo Roamio to replace my existing TiVo Premiere. It cost me the retail price of $299. There was no discount for upgrading to the new version, even though I owned the previous one.
The sooner developers accept this, the less painful it’s going to be. We’ve spent half a decade debating the merits of trials and upgrade pricing, and every year Apple remains silent. If you still believe it’s in Apple’s playbook to offer, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Transitioning power users and the subset of the population that is willing to pay for software in the old, traditional way is going to be painful for a while, but the pain will subside. Offering two stores with two different pricing models only extends that painful transition phase even longer.
It’s noble to want to offer a discount to your loyal customers, but if Apple’s not going to allow it in their store, segregating your users based on which store they purchased in turns out to be confusing and frustrating.
What the lack of upgrade pricing means is that software is being priced at a lower, base price. A $50 app for new users that is $30 for upgraded users is now being offered somewhere around $25 for everyone. Whether that makes good financial sense is up to your company’s bean counters, but that’s what Apple’s pushing toward and resistance is only causing developers to lose more hair.
It’s time to adapt. Will you?
If not, I’ll see you next year when we have this discussion again.
Glassboard is for sale. If you want to get past all the businessy corporate speak of the official blog, here’s the main nugget:
We want Glassboard to not only continue running but also to evolve and flourish. So we’re looking for a good home for Glassboard. The backend service for Glassboard runs in Azure, and it has wonderful iOS and Android clients. It took a team of talented people to create it, so we want Glassboard to go somewhere that has enough resources.
Brent Simmons has a pretty good summary of what it is and why it’s worth saving:
The problem of persistent, private, and trustworthy group sharing is still an open problem. Glassboard represents a couple years of work by a six-person team, and it’s a great start. I believe that it can be very successful, given the right home, given resources and commitment.
Brent has a bias in this since he was the former iOS developer over there, but there’s little doubt that the team that did work on it cared about it.
Glassboard has become the ‘conference’ app for better or worse. Every Macworld, WWDC, and independent conference seems to set up a board for evening activities. I’m also using it for other things such running betas for Second Gear apps.
I doubt Second Gear has the resources to acquire Glassboard, but if I were the one to acquire it, here’s everything I’d do:
Change The App’s Mission
Brent said this:
The problem of persistent, private, and trustworthy group sharing is still an open problem.
It’s not a problem that needs solving, at least not in the way they are marketing it. Nerds care about privacy. Users care about reliability, features and usefulness. Privacy isn’t a feature. It’s an expectation.
Market it like this:
Glassboard enables you to connect, coordinate, and collaborate with a group of people independent of platform or location.
That’s the usefulness.
Annotations
As part of that new mission statement, I’d put way more focus on collaboration and coordination. Add support for annotated messages beyond just images and video. Make it easy to embed a Google/iOS map with a specific place or your current location. Allow the user to link to a file that’s stored on his or her Dropbox account.
If you want to be super trendy, add some fun stickers that can spice up a conversation.
There are a million apps out there that do group chat already. None of them really do collaboration on mobile that well.
Rewrite the iOS app
The iOS app is serviceable, but not great. With iOS 7, I’d argue it needs a complete overhaul. Hire a designer, get to work and crank out a 1.0 visual refresh in 30-45 days after acquisition that targets iOS 7 and breathes fresh air into the product. Once you have the new visual design out there, focus on adding in the features like annotations or other metadata.
The Android app is pretty good. I don’t think it needs much of a visual refresh other than to sync up with visual identity.
Kill The Web App
The Glassboard web app is atrociously bad. They “needed” it, but the product they gave users was half baked at best. Kill it with fire and then bring it back when it’s fully baked.
Change the Business Model
I have been using Glassboard since it was first released and I have given them zero dollars. They came out with a “pro” plan, but the boundaries on it are all wrong. Unless you are a heavy Glassboard user, you will never hit the limits set. Good for users. Bad for business.
I’d charge a flat monthly fee per board. Base it on how many active users there are in that board on a given month and charge $x per head. Give away the first three users for free as the ‘trial’.
In the conference model that Glassboard is traditionally used for, the boards are throwaway so it’d be a yearly cost of $10 or $20 (I’m making up numbers). For people like me who use it for a beta with 25 or so people, I am putting money into the business on a monthly basis to keep it afloat.
Change the Name
For an app that touted itself as being heavily into privacy it was always curious to me that the name was prefixed with a see-through object like glass.
I’d instantly rename it Backchannel, but you could name it whatever you wanted. Glassboard doesn’t have enough of a following that you lose much awareness with the rename, but it does give you a fresh start out of the gate.
A post has been making the rounds today from the BBC iPlayer team where they point out that they have a team triple the size on Android as they do on iOS. Here’s the relevant paragraph:
Prior to delivering mobile downloads, we felt it was critical to put these two building blocks of quality playback and support for larger tablets in place. Today we have an Android development team that is almost 3 times the size of the iOS team. Over the past months this team has made excellent progress building the downloads feature, and with 100% of the team now entirely focused on downloads we’re looking forward to accelerating the delivery and launching asap.
Gruber, the Tweet-o-sphere, and other members of the iOS Echo Chamber have read this to mean that it’s impossible to build an Android app without triple the development team of iOS.
To me, it reads like a delayed project that needs some extra resources on it. Is it not plausible that iPlayer shifted engineers off of their already released and stable iOS project and onto the still baking Android variation?
It’s not dissimilar to what Apple does with iOS and OS X. OS X Leopard was delayed in 2007 as Apple shifted engineers from that project to the iPhone to ensure that it could be released on-time.
I’m not an Android developer beyond reading all of ten chapters of Big Nerd Ranch’s Android Book, and my vibe so far is that it isn’t much more complex of a platform than iOS. Different? Absolutely. But, it’s just programming.
Android is fragmented? I believe it.
There’s a million devices? Sure.
None of them look or function the same? No doubt.
Needing three Android developers for every one on iOS? I don’t buy it.