Accidental Technologist

Musings about Entrepreneurship, Technology and Software Development

Are we fighting ads, or are we fighting garbage?

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John Gruber is right:

If you want to block all advertising, I don’t understand you, but I won’t argue with you either. No one’s going to stop you. But most people just want to block garbage privacy-invasive trackers, JavaScript that slows our devices and drains our batteries, obtrusive ads that cover the content we’re trying to read.

Are we fighting ads, or are we fighting garbage?

I’m on the side of content blockers and agree with John. When it comes to blocking ads, this is the feature of content blockers that appeals most to me. Truth be-told, I don’t mind good, targeted ads that introduce me to great products and services.

The garbage ads are the ones that offend me. The ads the pop-up modally and force me to wait to close, for me to read them. These are the ads I want the option to block.

I’m in the fighting garbage camp but how would this be distinguished? How is a content blocker now supposed to show me ads someone has deemed quality? I’m not sure this is not just another can of worms.

From Products to Platforms – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

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I watched the Apple Special Event on September 9th with excitement. The iPad Pro was announced and has been on my wish list for a long time.

Ben Thompson had an excellent piece on Stratechery, which highlights some points about the event and iPad?s future that I hadn?t considered.

Talking about Tim Cook?s iPad Pro introduction:

Note that phrase: ?How could we take the iPad even further?? Cook?s assumption is that the iPad problem is Apple?s problem, and given that Apple is a company that makes hardware products, Cook?s solution is, well, a new product.

It sounds good, Apple recognizes the need for a different iPad, something with more. Bigger, with needed peripherals to make the user?s job easier, better.

My contention, though, is that when it comes to the iPad Apple?s product development hammer is not enough. Cook described the iPad as ?A simple multi-touch piece of glass that instantly transforms into virtually anything that you want it to be?; the transformation of glass is what happens when you open an app. One moment your iPad is a music studio, the next a canvas, the next a spreadsheet, the next a game. The vast majority of these apps, though, are made by 3rd-party developers, which means, by extension, 3rd-party developers are even more important to the success of the iPad than Apple is: Apple provides the glass, developers provide the experience.

So right. The iPad is an excellent device I use everyday, often for long periods of time. 90% of my usage is as a consumption device and very little to produce content. Why? Well, there?s not a lot of applications that transform this piece of glass to a device running software I can?t live without or use on my MacBook.

It becomes apparent the success of the iPad and now the professional iPad Pro is reliant on developers. Developers who can and are willing to create great apps to take advantage of what these devices can provide.

As an iOS developer, I can attest first-hand how hard it is to make a living on the App Store. It can be done but it?s not easy. Apple needs to change the way the App Store works, the way developers have been saying they need it to work:

The problem for iPad developers is three-fold:

First, the lack of trials means that genuinely superior apps are unable to charge higher prices because there is no way to demonstrate to consumers prior to purchase why they should pay more. Some apps can hack around this with in-app purchases, but purposely ruining the user experience is an exceedingly difficult way to demonstrate that your experience is superior.

Secondly, the lack of a simple upgrade path (and upgrade pricing) makes it difficult to extract additional revenue from your best customers; it is far easier to get your fans to pay more than it is to find completely new customers forever. Again, developers can hack around this by simply releasing completely new apps, but it?s a poor experience at best and there is no way to reward return customers with better pricing, or, more critically, to communicate to them why they should upgrade.

That there is the third point: Apple has completely disintermediated the relationship between developers and their customers. Not only can developers not communicate news about upgrades (or again, hack around it with inappropriate notifications), they also can?t gain qualitative feedback that could inspire the sort of improvements that would make an upgrade attractive in the first place.

The introduction of the iPad Pro is an opportunity for developers and for Apple. It?s a chance to truly be able to develop pro-level applications, but it won?t happen if things don?t change for developers. We have to be able to charge a reasonable amount for our hard work and allow users to try it out. We need to be able to charge for upgrades without having to resort to obscure tactics.

Ben also discusses this in more detail on his Exponent podcast with James Allworth in the Segue episode.

Apple, it?s obvious you need the support developers to continue to grow the iOS platform. ?Apple it has to be more about getting developers to write software for free so you can sell more hardware.?

Source: From Products to Platforms – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

On the iPad Pro and the Constraints of iOS | carpeaqua

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I was hoping we were going to hear some really special news about the new iPad Pro from the recent Apple event. I hoped we were going see the iPad Pro running OS X and an?Intel Skylake?processor. Why? This would allow such a wide array of existing great applications. Applications like Xcode, Microsoft Office or the Adobe Creative Suite.

Justin Williams beat me to the punch with his thoughts on the iPad Pro:

In their current incarnations, I believe that Windows 10 is better suited to the Surface than iOS is to the iPad Pro.

Granted both Microsoft and Adobe demonstrated tools developed specifically for the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. It?s a clean slate and the invented-for-ipad-pro apps are very few. There are so few apps that even look good and even fewer designed for the iPad today.

And we haven?t even started talking about the third-party ecosystem for the iPad. I can count the number of apps on my left hand that are thoughtfully designed for the iPad screen size. Most are, for lack of a better phrase, blown-up iPhone apps. Just this week, Twitter updated their iPad app to be exactly like the iPhone version but with a bit more padding on the edges to make up for the larger screen size. That?s fine for the iPad mini and mostly tolerable for the Air. On the iPad Pro? That?s approaching clown shoes territory.

I had dreams of using my iPad Pro with Xcode as Microsoft Surface Pro developers are fortunate enough to be able to do with Visual Studio. A truly portable, pro-level, device with powerful applications.

iOS may be a better choice of operating system than OS X here but iOS is the limiting factor. I doubt we will ever see Xcode running on an iPad Pro. Developers are one example of pro-users, that means we have to stick with our MacBooks for the time being.

Source: On the iPad Pro and the Constraints of iOS | carpeaqua

A Laptop for Writers – and Developers

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Matt Gemmell:

I used to be a software developer, and my computer use was split between my desktop machine (a big iMac with the maximum amount of RAM, upgraded processor, extra display, and all kinds of attached gadgets), and my ?evening or travel? machine. I didn?t code, or design, on the evening machine if I could possibly help it ? and since I work from home, the big desktop was always within reach.

I’ve been using the new MacBook for the better part of a month and haven’t had much time to write a review just yet, but it’s coming. Matt?s post pretty much reflects my experience with the new laptop. It’s great and the new keyboard and trackpad are fantastic. The keyboard worked for me almost instantly. I had gone into it with the idea I wasn?t going to like it. Marco Arment?s post about the MacBook?came out while my MacBook was on order so I had some doubts.

I have a different use-case with the MacBook. I am a developer, unlike Matt. I use Xcode and Sublime Text for Ruby development. I have no problems using the little MacBook for the projects I build. I use both Xcode 6 and 7. I don?t baby the laptop, often have PostgreSQL running alongside an instance or two of Sublime Text and an Xcode IDE up and running. Works great.

No, it?s not as fast as my main machine, an iMac 5K, but I didn?t expect it to be either.

 

 

Apple iPad Air 2 – The iPad for Which I Have Been Waiting

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When Apple announced the iPad Air 2 at it?s press event on October 16, 2014, I watched with interest to see what the new device had under the hood. ?My current iPad Air constantly crashed (out-of-memory errors) running Safari with iOS 7 and I had been hoping they would bump the memory some. ?The event disappointed and did not mention anything about more memory.

No where on the iPad Air 2 Tech Specs page can I find a single mention of memory. I decided to order one anyway. ?The updated processor, Touch ID and other sensors made it hard to refuse. ?I order the 128G space gray model with only WiFi this time, no cellular service. ?If I need, I can use my iPhone cell service and save $20 a month.

It came in only 6 days after the announcement and it?s a beautiful device and does not disappoint in the hardware department. Just so other can confirm what rumors have mentioned:

IMG 0017

3 cores

IMG 0018

And most important, 2G memory

It?s a really nice upgrade, lots of little niceties and the one i really wanted. ?Thanks Apple.

The Future is the Apple Watch

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I?ve been anticipating the official announcement of the Apple Watch since rumors surfaced many months ago. ?I?ve spent much time thinking about the features I?d like to see based on my day-to-day routine. ?Since I am an avid runner, my main use cases revolved around what I want related to running; no phone required, GPS built in, great fitness application to track my pace, distance and heart rate built in. ?I didn?t get many of the things I had hoped.

I don?t even wear a watch today, except when I run. ?After the Apple announcement of the Watch, I upgraded my running watch since the Apple Watch met almost none of my running needs and wouldn?t be available until 2015. ?The last thing I want to do is run with my new iPhone 6 and a watch.

Apple watch

Witness the Future

Even with the Watch not meeting my set of requirements, I still want one. I think this is a paradigm shift in how we interact with the world.

What we witnessed in the keynote from September 9th introduced a new product platform which will change the future. It?s unlike any wearable to date in the sense that it truly extends the iPhone and delivers only the most important bits of data to the Watch screen. ?It acts as a filter we control, where we determine the notifications and data points most important to us and puts them in a convenient location; right (or left) on our wrist.

Today we see many people with their smartphones out everywhere, checking Twitter, Facebook, texts and email. ?Tomorrow we could very well see people quickly checking their watches to view these updates. Less disruptive and much more of our attention.

Developers! Developers! Developers!

Applications being available the day the Apple Watch is released is important. ?There are plenty developers already chomping at the bit to get started with the Watch. These are the developers who will make a difference, have the ideas that will drive the platform into the future.?

Jeremy Olson of Tapity is one of the those outspoken developers who has described his vision for using the Watch with their Hours application.

The ?Watch takes this to a whole new level. It means you can switch timers without even taking your phone out of your pocket. Just glance at your wrist and tap. Boom.

We absolutely cannot wait to start time tracking on the ?Watch and you can bet Hours will be available for ?Watch on day one.

Jeremy explains it well in a post on Medium, The Apple Watch?s greatest superpower:

For example, my time tracking app Hours could have a unique tap that reminds people every so often that they have a timer running. This kind of notification would be useless on the iPhone because it would result in a lot of obnoxious buzzing that may or may not mean anything related to your time tracking.

Apple Watch White BG

Jeremy represents exactly what I think the successful applications on the Watch will be. Small windows into their bigger apps with a small subset of features. Perfect for a watch.

I don?t think there will be an Apple Watch Store, but rather applications for the watch will be an extension of applications we already have on our phones. ?Just the way we now have app extension in iOS 8.

Developers are the ones who are going to make or break this device. Creatives will be the ones who see the potential and extend the great ecosystem we have in the Apple App Store today.

Apple will need to get a Watch SDK and devices to developers long before a release. ?I?m hoping for a Watch Kit that will give us a device and all documentation to start creating this next generation of applications.

If we don?t get these kits then applications will only be from Apple and key partners at first.

Finally

The Apple Watch represents the future. ?We are all bombarded with data looking for our attention everyday and when we look to our phones it can be overwhelming where to turn our attention.

A device like the Apple Watch will help filter out the noise and focus our attention to what we feel is important. Developers who get this will be the successful ones on this platform and help guide others.

I?m excited to see what comes to the Watch.

AirPrint Where You Couldn’t AirPrint Before

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Our household has several iPads and iPhones. I use my iPad all the time to surf the web, reply to emails and view my Twitter stream, among other things. ?Occasionally I find it would be nice to print from the iPad, since it has AirPrint and all, but our Canon MX860 printer doesn?t support AirPrint.

Enter handyPrint?.

handyPrint? v5 is a 64 bit Mac OSX application that allow you to print from your iPods, iPads and iPhones on printers that do not support the AirPrint protocol. v5 has been re-designed as a standard application similar to the ones you would find in the Apple App Store. You simply copy it to the Applications folder and run it from there. Once you turn the application switch to ON it will start on its own every time you login to you user account. No need to manually start the application.

handyPrint is a simple download which is a DMG, just click to install. ?It?s an application needs to be running while the user is logged in on the host Mac. ?I noticed there?s a Pro version that runs as a service to alleviate this requirement but this didn?t matter to me.

Once installed handyPrint is run and sits in the OS X menu bar after it?s turned on. The user interface is really simple:

HandyPrint

A list of available printers shows up and you just select the ones you enable AirPrint support. ?This particular printer is actually wireless, I just happen to have the driver installed on my Mac.

Printing from the iPad is simple. ?While you?re in the application you want to print from, just select Print as if you had an AirPrint-supported printer around:

IMG 0001

Select the printer and that?s it. ?handyPrinter works seamless.

Thanks to Eric Davis for pointing it out on Twitter.?

Ratings or No Ratings, It Could be Time for A Change to Apple App Store Rating System

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The latest episode of the The Talk Show, Gruber discusses his distaste for apps that ask for a rating. I found the view a bit disappointing. He has a lot of influence and is both a user and an app developer.

I can?t understand this adversity. A developer works hard and wants to know what a user thinks of their work. Is our time too much in demand to leave a bit of feedback? Ratings are supposed to have an effect how apps appear in the store, their rank and eventually their placement. An app without ratings is an app that may never be found, a possible lost soul.

I have responded in every way to the rating dialogs. If I don?t have time or have not had enough time with the app I will request to be asked later. If I just don?t want to rate it, I will respond with a ?No thanks? but I do rate the apps I use and like.

This is but one problem with the App Store and users. Giving an application a rating or a review is not easy. ?A user has to go to iTunes and the App Store, find the app and rate it. ?It?s too much work.

David Smith has a thoughtful piece on his hopes for the future of the app store. I wish I had the same positive view of the future:

I want to believe that the App Store is a special place. I want for it to be the singularly best venue for customers to come and find innovative, well designed, quality software. Software that pushes the boundaries of what is possible and continually amazes and delights its customers. I want for there to be an aspirational pull upwards on my own development. I want to feel like I need to work extra hard to make sure my apps meet the high standards my customers have been trained to expect.

Gruber had a follow-up to David?s post agreeing the App Store and iOS should feel special.

It?s not just the App Store that we want to feel like a special place ? it?s iOS itself. Using iOS, on both the iPhone and iPad, dozens of times every day, for stretches long and short, should feel like a platform in pursuit of perfection. Having a de facto standard practice where apps badger you at seemingly random moments with pop-up ads prompting you to rate them is in contradiction to this ideal.

I could be missing something but shouldn?t a user rating an application be helping filter out the bad apps? If a developer can?t ask for a rating, and we know users hardly go out of their way to rate an app, how can ensure we are getting the good apps? Maybe we should remove ratings altogether? Or it could be a time for a change to the way apps are rated; instead of a 1 to 5, a ?Like? system such as on Facebook. You can?t dislike something on Facebook, only like it. A viable option?

I don?t think chastising a developer because they are trying to ask the user what they think is fair. ?Accept this or don?t, kill off ratings completely or change the procedure. ?I think what is there not doesn?t work and is too hard for users to take part.

Digging the Gold from the Apple App Store

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It’s really hard to make a living in the Apple App Store. It’s not impossible but neither is winning the lottery. People who aren’t developers don’t understand how hard software is to create and because of the Apple-influenced ecosystem, they expect software will be cheap or free.

I have been thinking about how to be profitable in the App Store or better to avoid it altogether. I’ve discussed this with developer friends and it seems to be a challenge we all face today. Times are changing and in order to thrive we need to adapt.

Oh the Choices We Have

Today we have mainly 3 ways to make money in the app store:

  1. Conventional purchase, typically starting at $0.99 and ranging up to $4.99. Users seem to hate to spend even $0.99 when there is an acceptable, free, alternative.
  2. Advertising – display ads in your software and get paid when a user clicks on the ad. If your sales are small, there aren’t many people to look at these ads and less to click.
  3. In-App Purchase (IAP) – this seems to be a valid alternative to asking users for upgrades. IAP allows developers to bundle features and offer users these features for a fee.

IAP is an approach I am considering for my current apps and future ones. The idea would be to give the basic software away and charge for “Pro” features. ?These pro features need to be real value to the user, no just take a crippled lite version of the app and enabling features users expect.

I have experimented pricing for my apps. My main app is Palette Pro,?started out for $1.99 and did fine at release. I later changed the price to free for a short period of time to test the results, which were astonishing. Downloads for the free app was 1000x that of paid. This is pretty powerful and says a lot. Just like most developers, I can’t work for free.

Joel Spolsky from Hacker News:

The only business models I want to work on any more have some mass-market component that is absolutely free, and a niche companion product that makes money off of the exhaust fumes of the mass-market component.

The last two businesses I started are Stack Overflow, which is free, where the careers business on the side makes money on the small fraction of Stack Overflow users who are looking to get better jobs, and Trello, which is free, but the business of providing administrative tools to large organizations using Trello can sustain the whole business.

This is more than just “freemium” or “advertising-supported.” Freemium and Ad-supported business models are special cases of this general model. The real insight is that the free product has a chance to reach an enormous audience which provides distribution/advertising/marketing making it trivial to go to market with your paid product.

What Marco is reporting here is that the old-fashioned “make something and get people to pay for it” business is much harder to pull off and likely to always be left in the dust by someone making the same thing for free, getting 100x the user base, and getting 1% of them to pay for some value added feature.

Upgrades

Apple has so far refused to listen to the developer community for app upgrades. Today, when a developer releases a new version of their app they are not compensated. Small updates are fine and expected, but full an upgrade that takes developers weeks or months are hard to justify spending the precious development time and see no immediate return. If a user purchases an app, they receive free-for-life upgrades.?

The only way today to get paid for upgrades is to create an entirely new app in the app store. People have to pay the full-price for the mew features. This is great for developers but not appreciated by users.?Realmac Software, developers of the Clear to-do app for iOS and the Mac, attempted this recently and it was not well-accepted. So,?Realmac back peddled on their decision.

David Smith has a great episode of Developing Perspective where he talks with a Clear user (his wife) about her thoughts on the Clear upgrade attempt. If her thoughts represent how most users view software on their mobile device; upgrades are not worth pursuing.

Personally, I think this is a great way to get paid for upgrades. Users don’t have to buy, if their current version does what they need then just keep using what you have. This is how software has been sold over the years; you have version, here’s an upgrade, don’t buy it if you don’t want it. Users don’t favor this approach.

Marco Arment recently discussed his new podcasting app, Overcast, on his blog and thoughts on pricing. He’s right:

I?ve gone back and forth on what Overcast?s business model should be. I?m definitely charging customers directly (rather than venture-capital or ads), but I?m still debating where, how, and for what.

I?m sure of one thing, though: the market for paid-up-front apps appealing to mass consumers is gone. If you have paid apps in the store, you?ve probably seen the writing on the wall for a while.

That model made sense when there were fewer apps available, but now that there are plenty of free and good-enough versions of almost anything, it?s a different game. Apps targeting niche markets can still find enough paying customers to stay alive if they?re much better than any free alternatives, but the number of apps in that situation is always shrinking.

I don’t think we will see an upgrading pricing structure any time soon from Apple. ?The company wants apps to be free and let developers figure out how to run the business side of things.

The Gold at the End of the App Rainbow

The art of pricing combined with making a living with mobile apps has been on my mind for a long time. ?Recently my thoughts have become a bit more tangible. The reality is, most apps will be free. ?Most people with make money giving their applications away, while getting the most attention, ?then offer premium services with In-App Purchase. ?

One aspect I haven’t mentioned but believe is probably the best way to realize the value of mobile applications is to offer applications for free but consume a paid backend. ?A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) backend is offered for some monthly fee and the mobile application is simply a client of the SaaS app, just like a web browser. ?The beauty and simplicity of this approach is that it works for apps in the Apple app store but also on Google Play and the Windows Store.

It’s interesting where this is going but things are pretty clear; developers need to change their approach to how they earn their living in mobile.

JOBS

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Jobs

I don’t usually post about movies, mainly because most movies these days really suck and aren’t worth the time to even say I saw one. ?I did take in the new JOBS film with Ashton Kutcher. ?I really enjoy the movie. ?It brought back a lot of memories of how the industry was back in the day and how it has evolved since then. ?It was truly an exciting time and I hate to admit, a far more exciting and exhilarating time than today. ?

I’ve heard a lot of criticism leading up to the movie, both about the content and Kutcher’s portrayal of Steve so going into the movie my expectations were not very high. ?I have followed the creation of Apple, and many tech companies for that matter, since I got my first computer in the early 80’s..so I’m very familiar with the storyline.?

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. ?It was just over 2 hours and I found myself entranced by the film. ?I thought Kutcher did a great job of becoming Steve Jobs, from his facial mannerisms, the looks, personality (maybe a bit nicer) to his walk.

Watching the feedback this weekend I have heard much about how the story wasn’t told accurately and various aspect exaggerated. ?The fact that it was meant to honor Steve and Apple as well as entertain, should be obvious it is not a documentary.

Apple fans should enjoy the movie and avoid the criticism. ?My daughter and I thoroughly enjoy the story and would/will see it again. ?It was a trip back in time when technology seem magical and revolutionary.