Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So today we're going to talk about change, I guess.

00:00:15 ◼   ► A very specific kind of change and a general feeling that I definitely have been feeling over the summer.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Where Marco and I have both been app developers for a very long time.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I think it's whatever, 13 years now. 13, 12 years.

00:00:30 ◼   ► It's a very long time depending on how you count it. But either way, a long time.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And I feel like for a long time I would say that I've been,

00:00:40 ◼   ► because the app store grew up with me in my career, I kind of know it well.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I knew it inside and out. And recently there have been a lot of things that are starting to happen in the app store that feel,

00:00:50 ◼   ► that are these larger shifts that are coming.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And they're coming in a way that is different than they've historically come.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Where the app store has evolved and developed and changed over the years.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And it's typically, it's like Apple responding to pressure or

00:01:10 ◼   ► forces within the community, within the ecosystem.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like now we're getting to a place where the app store is starting to change from forces outside of the app store.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And in some ways that's a good thing. In some ways there are some positive changes that are coming from that.

00:01:25 ◼   ► But there's definitely also in the back of my mind this weird feeling of like,

00:01:30 ◼   ► outside people who may not understand the app store, may not have my interests certainly at heart,

00:01:35 ◼   ► are coming in and making changes.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Not that necessarily I'm saying Apple had my interests at heart for the last 13 years.

00:01:45 ◼   ► But at least I think our interests are closer to each other than potentially lawmakers or

00:01:50 ◼   ► lawyers whose interests are different.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And specifically, I'm making reference vaguely to the settlement that was announced last week

00:02:00 ◼   ► that isn't approved yet. So this is always one of those things where it's like,

00:02:05 ◼   ► a preliminary sort of outline and the details are a bit unclear, but at a high level,

00:02:10 ◼   ► there was a couple of developers, or really it's a law firm

00:02:15 ◼   ► found some developers to sue Apple and has

00:02:20 ◼   ► tried to have a class action lawsuit, which for Apple's practices within the app store. And Apple has

00:02:25 ◼   ► said they've settled with these people and will set up a development fund, a

00:02:30 ◼   ► small developer assistance fund, I think they called it, which is kind of a funny name for this.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But they're putting $100 million into a pot and they're going to give it to developers who made less than

00:02:40 ◼   ► a million dollars over the last few years to compensate them for Apple's

00:02:45 ◼   ► policies within the app store. And they have a few other sort of things that they're going to

00:02:50 ◼   ► continue doing. So like the small business program is one of them. They're making a very minor change

00:02:55 ◼   ► slash clarification to the anti-steering rules. And they're going to say that app store

00:03:00 ◼   ► search and the small business program are going to stick around for a while. And

00:03:05 ◼   ► when I saw this news, I mean, there was a whole story that I think is not particularly interesting from our

00:03:10 ◼   ► sort of in our domain about the way this was sort of a PR spin tool

00:03:15 ◼   ► and allowed Apple to sort of say that they were conceding things when they weren't actually really. But from

00:03:20 ◼   ► my perspective, I think it is more instructive as I don't really know what this is. It's interesting what this means

00:03:25 ◼   ► for myself and you as small

00:03:30 ◼   ► US developers, which ostensibly, this is a

00:03:35 ◼   ► settlement that is directly targeted at us. And specifically it's US developers.

00:03:40 ◼   ► But I think they said there were 67,000 US developers who would be covered

00:03:45 ◼   ► under the class or something along those lines. And it's weird.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like I don't, on the one hand, it's like it's in some ways

00:03:55 ◼   ► it's like essentially Apple is saying, hey, some of our policies in the

00:04:00 ◼   ► past may not have been the best. You know, we're not going to admit to anything, any sort of wrongdoing,

00:04:05 ◼   ► but instead we're just going to give you some money and hopefully we'll all be good going forward.

00:04:10 ◼   ► But at the same time, it's also kind of like they're just giving developers money and then

00:04:15 ◼   ► essentially, the developers have to agree to not sue Apple

00:04:20 ◼   ► for, I imagine, a meaningful amount of time about things related to the App Store, which

00:04:25 ◼   ► is also weird and dubious. But it's very strange for the App Store policy

00:04:30 ◼   ► to be coming from a legal filing rather than

00:04:35 ◼   ► from WWDC or through the developer program itself.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Frankly, I always resist any efforts that

00:04:45 ◼   ► groups put in to try to classify developers as one block of people

00:04:50 ◼   ► or one interest or one group. There is no developer

00:04:55 ◼   ► association. There is no union of developers. We're just, we're all independent and

00:05:00 ◼   ► we all have different thoughts and feelings on things. And so the whole idea of this being like a lawsuit that represents

00:05:05 ◼   ► developers, like I kind of take offense to that because no one asked me what I thought and no one speaks for me but

00:05:10 ◼   ► me. And so that angle of this kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But I think, you know,

00:05:15 ◼   ► the larger picture of this, which again, we need to get too much into the specifics of this because honestly, I don't

00:05:20 ◼   ► think this suit matters at all. I don't think the settlement matters at all. I don't think the rule tweak

00:05:25 ◼   ► matters at all. Apple's making a big song and dance. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

00:05:30 ◼   ► The amount of money Apple is putting into this is negligible to them.

00:05:35 ◼   ► The developers who accept the settlement and actually get paid, it might be a

00:05:40 ◼   ► real amount of money to some of us, probably not most of us. And so I think this is

00:05:45 ◼   ► overall a big bunch of nothing. But it does point to, you know, and

00:05:50 ◼   ► there's other things going on too, like the news just came out that South Korea passed a law

00:05:55 ◼   ► that effectively requires Apple and Google to allow

00:06:00 ◼   ► third party payment systems and apps. But that would presumably only apply

00:06:05 ◼   ► either to apps that run in South Korea or apps that are run by South

00:06:10 ◼   ► Koreans or maybe both or the intersection. I don't know. But I think we're heading

00:06:15 ◼   ► towards a world of fragmentation. And that, you know, we've enjoyed

00:06:20 ◼   ► for the app store so far, we've enjoyed a few luxuries

00:06:25 ◼   ► that are easy to overlook but that I think we're going to lose soon.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And some of them we already have lost. You know, one such luxury that

00:06:35 ◼   ► we've had for a long time is that we can pretty much just submit

00:06:40 ◼   ► one app to the store and make it work the same way everywhere. And

00:06:45 ◼   ► there weren't that many regional variations of what apps can and can't do legally.

00:06:50 ◼   ► There wasn't much that most apps had to worry about. Most apps, unless you were

00:06:55 ◼   ► doing certain types of things, most apps could work the same way everywhere, could offer the same

00:07:00 ◼   ► features and services to everyone, and whatever minor variation that existed with things

00:07:05 ◼   ► like even taxes and stuff. Apple took care of that for the most part. And so we were able

00:07:10 ◼   ► to not have to worry about all these different variations that actually exist in the real world

00:07:15 ◼   ► all over the place. So it made it easier for small

00:07:20 ◼   ► developers like us, you know, one person shops, two person shops, it made it easier for

00:07:25 ◼   ► small developers to operate without having to worry about a lot of the stuff that really big companies

00:07:30 ◼   ► have to worry about when they try to have something available to the whole world. And

00:07:35 ◼   ► in general, I think that time is

00:07:40 ◼   ► certainly eroding. I don't know if it's coming to an end, but that's eroding. But that's also

00:07:45 ◼   ► part of a bigger theme that's always kind of bothered me, that the app

00:07:50 ◼   ► store started out being really great for independent developers. But as time went on,

00:07:55 ◼   ► as it got bigger, the world got bigger, Apple got bigger, it started to represent

00:08:00 ◼   ► a bigger and bigger part of the economy of the world. And so much

00:08:05 ◼   ► important commerce happens through apps now. It's increasingly

00:08:10 ◼   ► a place made for big companies. And a lot about the app

00:08:15 ◼   ► store, some of which is Apple's fault, some of which isn't, has seemed to be

00:08:20 ◼   ► fairly hostile and exclusionary towards independent developers, whether it's because

00:08:25 ◼   ► it just requires a lot of staff to

00:08:30 ◼   ► engage with a certain feature or to maintain a certain type of marketing or

00:08:35 ◼   ► data analysis or legal requirements or whatever, or just stuff that just requires money.

00:08:40 ◼   ► You know, like the increase of things like paid search placement being more and more important,

00:08:45 ◼   ► or Apple making deals that only happen to apply to big companies in certain ways.

00:08:50 ◼   ► There's more and more of that stuff coming to the app store, and this has been a multi-year

00:08:55 ◼   ► transition. But I feel like the combination of that along with

00:09:00 ◼   ► what seems like the dam being about to break with regards to antitrust

00:09:05 ◼   ► regulation in various countries or states, I think we're

00:09:10 ◼   ► in for a near-term future and possibly a far-term future where

00:09:15 ◼   ► it's increasingly difficult for independent developers and small

00:09:20 ◼   ► companies and small budgets to even just keep up with all the stuff that's going on

00:09:25 ◼   ► and to possibly be able to handle it all ourselves. Because the simplified

00:09:30 ◼   ► world that we've mostly been operating in for the last 13 years is

00:09:35 ◼   ► slowly and then possibly quickly eroding.

00:09:40 ◼   ► In some ways that was inevitable, I think. That's just the nature of

00:09:45 ◼   ► the app store brings in tens of billions

00:09:50 ◼   ► of dollars, I think, each year. It's sort of the general estimates that I can

00:09:55 ◼   ► find. That is a massive thing. And the role

00:10:00 ◼   ► and the importance of smaller developers is

00:10:05 ◼   ► just shifting. And it is kind of a funny thing. In these lawsuits, they have to

00:10:10 ◼   ► put in some numbers, and so you kind of get a little bit of some insights where I think they said there were 67,000

00:10:15 ◼   ► developers who would be part of the class. So essentially

00:10:20 ◼   ► developers in the US who made less than a million dollars over the last

00:10:25 ◼   ► five years per calendar year. That sounds low. There are 586

00:10:30 ◼   ► companies that do not meet that criteria. So there are only 586 companies

00:10:35 ◼   ► who made more than a million dollars in a calendar year for the last

00:10:40 ◼   ► three years as far as I can tell from their numbers. And I feel like

00:10:45 ◼   ► it's weird because on the one hand, it's like, "Oh wow, there's a lot of developers." As a proportion, it's like

00:10:50 ◼   ► 99.1% of developers are eligible for the small business

00:10:55 ◼   ► program, essentially. Basically, that's what those numbers seem to indicate. But at the

00:11:00 ◼   ► same time, I imagine the 586 developers that do not meet the criteria for the small business

00:11:05 ◼   ► program make up the vast majority of the interest,

00:11:10 ◼   ► of the value, of the place where

00:11:15 ◼   ► the big moves are going and where the big moves are oriented towards.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Because while there may be a number of small developers, we're not the

00:11:25 ◼   ► show. The show is these giant companies. This is the

00:11:30 ◼   ► Epics and Netflixes and Amazon and all these other companies for whom

00:11:35 ◼   ► the apps are part of these multi, these massive

00:11:40 ◼   ► 100 million, billion dollar deals and content situations and all the things

00:11:45 ◼   ► going on there. And we're just sort of there in the side. And in some ways, when I see this lawsuit,

00:11:50 ◼   ► almost in my mind, I see it as Apple saying, "Look, we are going to focus on

00:11:55 ◼   ► these 586 developers who are probably going to continue suing us and are going to be working

00:12:00 ◼   ► with Congress to get laws passed and they have a lot more on the line. We're just wanting

00:12:05 ◼   ► to settle with the rest of you. We're just going to close off that front of this war. Here's

00:12:10 ◼   ► some money. Hopefully you feel good about getting some money and we can just

00:12:15 ◼   ► mark off that part of this thing." And in some ways I think that makes sense.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And I think Apple has been very shrewd in some ways in this settlement where they clearly, I think they, based on, as far

00:12:25 ◼   ► as I can tell, they would not have lost this lawsuit if it had gone to trial. It seems very

00:12:30 ◼   ► unlikely they would have lost. Instead, they're just using it as an opportunity to close

00:12:35 ◼   ► off a front on this battle they're fighting and then they can focus

00:12:40 ◼   ► in another direction. But it's weird when you're in that front and where

00:12:45 ◼   ► it's like the App Store is just sort of a slightly different place.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I think it's, in some ways, mostly there's a part of me that just emotionally feels weird about that.

00:12:55 ◼   ► That the thing that I've, you know, my professional career is very tied into the

00:13:00 ◼   ► App Store. I care a lot about it, but it is increasingly not something that is

00:13:05 ◼   ► oriented around me. Not that it ever was like, you know, indies first. It's like

00:13:10 ◼   ► indies were part of the discussion and were a big, it felt like a big part of the

00:13:15 ◼   ► development of the App Store. And it's like now we're kind of more being shifted, even more so into

00:13:20 ◼   ► the side and there's going to be these big shifts that are going to come through and like, who knows what they're going to do?

00:13:25 ◼   ► I just don't like the uncertainty of that. I really don't like the fact that there might be

00:13:30 ◼   ► this law in South Korea. As far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to directly affect me. But who knows

00:13:35 ◼   ► when there isn't one that's going to come in the EU or in the United States or

00:13:40 ◼   ► places where it would have a much more meaningful impact on my own business. And it's like, I kind

00:13:45 ◼   ► of like that generally speaking in the App Store, what I have found is it's like the rate that my business

00:13:50 ◼   ► decays to the degree that it does decay is like mirrors the degree to which it

00:13:55 ◼   ► rose. So if I have like a crazy spike in sales, it'll kind of come down around the same rate. And if I have

00:14:00 ◼   ► a slow, steady buildup of sales, then I can kind of expect to have a slow decline of scales.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And what I really don't like are when there's these abrupt sort of discontinuities in that because

00:14:10 ◼   ► even if when they're disrupt, sometimes when they're positive, it's like it means

00:14:15 ◼   ► that I can brace myself for a big drop on the other side. Or I think about a law

00:14:20 ◼   ► coming into effect and it's like, who knows what the unintended consequences of those are and what they might mean for

00:14:25 ◼   ► the viability of being a small developer. But at some point it's like, do I need to have a lawyer

00:14:30 ◼   ► that I have on retainer to handle some kind of compliance thing that's going to come about

00:14:35 ◼   ► as part of these laws and that's going to cause a lot of trouble or raise the bar to entry for

00:14:40 ◼   ► being a developer in the first place, such that only large companies are able to be

00:14:45 ◼   ► in the App Store at all. Like, who knows? That's kind of a scary thought.

00:14:50 ◼   ► That to me, that kind of thing is the biggest threat, I think. Because there's always been

00:14:55 ◼   ► clear assumptions made by Apple and by the App Store that

00:15:00 ◼   ► oh, of course everyone out there is going to have a full-time designer. And of course everyone out there is going to have a full-time

00:15:05 ◼   ► marketing head or marketer or whatever those are called.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And when you're like a single developer

00:15:15 ◼   ► and you don't have these other full-time supporting roles that everything about the App Store seems to assume

00:15:20 ◼   ► that you have, you can kind of feel unseen or left out or

00:15:25 ◼   ► excluded or feel intimidated. Like, I guess I can't make an app

00:15:30 ◼   ► because I don't have this kind of skill or this kind of help or this kind of budget. And so anything that

00:15:35 ◼   ► raises that either real or implied or perceived floor of

00:15:40 ◼   ► what's the minimum that you need to really have an app in the store and compete at all,

00:15:45 ◼   ► anything that raises that above what one person can reasonably do

00:15:50 ◼   ► significantly excludes a lot of people. And I hope that somebody in Apple

00:15:55 ◼   ► has that in their mind of like, let's make sure we don't exclude people as things get more complicated.

00:16:00 ◼   ► But I don't know how much that weighs in because these decisions, as you said, they're

00:16:05 ◼   ► so big and they involve such big companies and big budgets and big parts of commerce and big governments

00:16:10 ◼   ► even. And it's hard for the interests of the independent developer to be maintained there.

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00:17:35 ◼   ► I think something that's kind of a funny aspect to this too is how

00:17:40 ◼   ► all of these changes, all these things that people are talking about, or like laws that are being proposed,

00:17:45 ◼   ► or all these directions, almost all of them when I see them are things that I don't expect

00:17:50 ◼   ► I would particularly avail myself of in terms of like having alternative payment

00:17:55 ◼   ► processing that I might be theoretically allowed to do when my users are in South Korea

00:18:00 ◼   ► now, that I could have them subscribe through something else. And it's like, I probably wouldn't.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Apple has been giving me a pretty good deal. And in some ways that's

00:18:10 ◼   ► like, I don't know if that's a counter view to a lot of the prevailing feeling, but it's like

00:18:15 ◼   ► overall, I feel like Apple has given me a pretty good deal the last 13 years and they provided a lot of

00:18:20 ◼   ► infrastructure and a lot of tooling and a lot of opportunity that I've been able

00:18:25 ◼   ► to take advantage of and work towards. And so all these things that are changing and sometimes

00:18:30 ◼   ► the small developer is held up as the reason for this and it's like we're the reason why people

00:18:35 ◼   ► are going to have to come in and whip Apple into shape. And it's like, I look at these changes and I'm like

00:18:40 ◼   ► I don't know if those are actually good for me. And I am a small developer the last time I checked. So

00:18:45 ◼   ► it's kind of a funny place to be. Yeah, it's like

00:18:50 ◼   ► I largely wouldn't do like my own in-app purchase system or anything like all

00:18:55 ◼   ► these, you know, the new freedoms that we might get

00:19:00 ◼   ► if regulation does go into effect or if Apple changes its policies, which by the way,

00:19:05 ◼   ► I don't for a second think that one or two laws in different places would make Apple

00:19:10 ◼   ► change the rules for everyone. I think Apple would comply with these laws in the narrowest

00:19:15 ◼   ► possible way. And so, yeah, maybe your app would be allowed to use in-app purchase methods other

00:19:20 ◼   ► than Apple's in South Korea. But certainly they wouldn't allow you to do that anywhere

00:19:25 ◼   ► else. I wouldn't for a second assume that they would give any more than they have to on these fronts.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And so you have fragmentation then. You have different things you can do in different countries. And again,

00:19:35 ◼   ► that's terrible. But I'm even worried like my biggest concern is

00:19:40 ◼   ► if Apple's, you know, stubbornness on holding on to the in-app purchase

00:19:45 ◼   ► thing causes much more severe regulation

00:19:50 ◼   ► that would force them to take away other parts of the app store that I think are actually

00:19:55 ◼   ► not good to take away. Like one of the biggest areas of this, I am super

00:20:00 ◼   ► not into the idea of anything that could create alternative app stores

00:20:05 ◼   ► or sideloading. Because that to me, like as a

00:20:10 ◼   ► user, sideloading scares the crap out of me. Because all you need to do to think about, you know, hey,

00:20:15 ◼   ► would this be a good idea? Just think about what would Facebook do? And you can see it.

00:20:20 ◼   ► You don't have to use your imagination too much because Facebook has done lots of terrible

00:20:25 ◼   ► things through the existing app store ecosystem. You know, things like the Onava VPN

00:20:30 ◼   ► thing. Like the investigation of possibly using exploits

00:20:35 ◼   ► to spy on people even more than the app store allows them to. Facebook does some really creepy stuff even

00:20:40 ◼   ► within the limits that Apple places on them now. And if we enter a world of

00:20:45 ◼   ► alternative app stores, guess what? We're all going to have to put our apps in the Facebook app store.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And that terrifies me. Because like, you think Apple's bad. You think

00:20:55 ◼   ► paid placement, paid search ads in the app store, you think that's bad? Just

00:21:00 ◼   ► wait. If there's ever a Facebook, and as soon as alternative app stores are allowed on iOS,

00:21:05 ◼   ► I guarantee you we are going to have the Google Play Store on

00:21:10 ◼   ► iOS, we're going to have the Amazon app store with no space in it on iOS, and we're going to have the Facebook app store.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And then we're going to have to put our apps in three or four different app stores. Every single time

00:21:20 ◼   ► we have to keep up with all three or four different app stores, deal with their own rules

00:21:25 ◼   ► that will all be slightly different from each other, and pay them to show our apps to their users.

00:21:30 ◼   ► Now, you might think users, well, on iOS we can just stay in the Apple app store

00:21:35 ◼   ► because that's what most users will have, right? Well, as soon as there's a way to get alternative

00:21:40 ◼   ► apps or app stores onto your device outside of Apple's app store, Facebook is going to say,

00:21:45 ◼   ► well, you know what, if you want to put Instagram on your phone, or the Facebook app on your phone, you're going to have to get it

00:21:50 ◼   ► from our store now. We're going to pull it out of the Apple store. And Facebook has enough clout in the world

00:21:55 ◼   ► that people will do that. So everybody will have the Facebook app store installed on their

00:22:00 ◼   ► phone. Everybody. And that will become, you know, Facebook will use its rules, and its lack of

00:22:05 ◼   ► rules, and its control, and its share of the ad-driven app install market

00:22:12 ◼   ► to heavily leverage people to use that entirely. That would be

00:22:18 ◼   ► where everyone went to get their apps. The Apple app store would become like the Mac app store. It would become

00:22:23 ◼   ► the place where some people go sometimes, but it's not going to be where most distribution happens.

00:22:28 ◼   ► So that's the world that will be created if we get sideloading in a way that enables alternative app stores.

00:22:33 ◼   ► And that, I do not want that world to occur on iOS. Trust me, you don't want that.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I know that's how the Mac works. The Mac is in a different environment. In many ways,

00:22:43 ◼   ► it's a very different world. You do not want that world on iOS. Trust me.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And as a developer, I'm afraid that as Apple has, you know, they're keeping their grip so tight

00:22:53 ◼   ► on the in-app purchase rules because they make so much money from them, that I'm afraid that

00:22:58 ◼   ► heavier regulations will come down in response to Apple's inflexibility on that,

00:23:03 ◼   ► that possibly we will be stuck with

00:23:08 ◼   ► that kind of world that occurs. I don't know. That concerns me greatly.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel so, I mean, I certainly don't want to go down that road either.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I feel like I would, yeah, and I've, over the years, I remember,

00:23:23 ◼   ► in the early days of the app stores, when I was still trying to work out what kind of a business I wanted to be in,

00:23:28 ◼   ► I launched some apps on the Google Play Store and I launched some apps in the Amazon App Store.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I even launched some on the Microsoft Windows Phone Store

00:23:38 ◼   ► way back in the day. And it's like, it very quickly dawned on me that it's like, I don't want to be in the

00:23:43 ◼   ► multi-store lifestyle. Like, the multi-store lifestyle is a bad, is a bad scene.

00:23:48 ◼   ► It's complicated, there's too much to keep track of, and it becomes, like we were saying,

00:23:53 ◼   ► it's like, now I need, I would need to have a person who was dedicated to that, who was going to

00:23:58 ◼   ► Google I/O or Facebook F8 or whatever the

00:24:03 ◼   ► events are, and understanding what's happening, and being aware of the news, and what I should be doing, and it's like,

00:24:08 ◼   ► it becomes very, very quickly becomes untenable to do this as an indie developer.

00:24:13 ◼   ► And so, like, I want to have one place that I can focus all my expertise and effort and try

00:24:18 ◼   ► and become, you know, it's like an expert in one thing, and that feels sustainable and manageable, but

00:24:23 ◼   ► becoming an expert in like five things isn't. And it's like all of those things, it very quickly,

00:24:28 ◼   ► yeah, it loses a little bit of the sense of, like,

00:24:33 ◼   ► one of the things that attracted me to the App Store initially is that,

00:24:38 ◼   ► and this is certainly one of those things that is not 100% true, but it's like 80% true,

00:24:43 ◼   ► or sometimes 60% true, but who knows, but we're like, there is definitely a thread

00:24:48 ◼   ► within Apple that cares about good experiences, and cares about design, and cares about quality,

00:24:53 ◼   ► and if you do things the right way, there are people within Apple who seem to care

00:24:58 ◼   ► about elevating that work in a way that has made lots

00:25:03 ◼   ► of small developers who really sort of sweat the details be able to have careers.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And it's like going into a different world where it is entirely,

00:25:13 ◼   ► you know, A/B test, sort of big money driven,

00:25:18 ◼   ► and it's all about analytics, and it's all about engagement, and it's all of those types of metrics are the things that you

00:25:23 ◼   ► start to optimize for. It's like the world becomes a thing that I don't, I just have no interest in.

00:25:28 ◼   ► I get no excitement from that, and any time I've gone near that,

00:25:33 ◼   ► I always just very quickly say, "Nope, this isn't me." And if that's where the industry goes, and that's where my

00:25:38 ◼   ► business has to go, then it's like, well, I might need to be finding a new business, or I'll just like make do with,

00:25:43 ◼   ► you know, I'm sure there are some people who, you know, sort of, it's like your Mac

00:25:48 ◼   ► App Store example, in some ways it would burn, and in some ways it's just like, well, if that's where I found myself,

00:25:53 ◼   ► then I guess that's where I'd be, and I would just hope that it would work out, you know, for long enough

00:25:58 ◼   ► for me to make it work. You know, the App Store has gone through lots of seasons, and I would hope I would be able

00:26:03 ◼   ► to sort of weather that one, but yeah, it's like, it just makes me nervous, and I just,

00:26:08 ◼   ► I have this feeling that I don't like that

00:26:13 ◼   ► these changes are coming externally. That's like, wow, there are lots of problems,

00:26:18 ◼   ► there are lots of things that I wish Apple had just done differently over the years. It's like overall, I think

00:26:23 ◼   ► they've been a reasonable steward of the App Store, especially when you understand that it's like Apple first,

00:26:28 ◼   ► customer second, developer third kind of thing. Like, you understand your place in that, you understand what they're

00:26:33 ◼   ► trying to accomplish, and you can align yourself with that, like, you can make that work, and

00:26:38 ◼   ► it's like, overall, it has been alright, but I just, yeah, I don't like it, and I'm

00:26:43 ◼   ► less optimistic about the future of the App Store, and about sort of the,

00:26:48 ◼   ► you know, the way that I make my living, and the way this business works than I have been

00:26:53 ◼   ► certainly in the past as a result.

00:26:55 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's, I like the way you just put that, that I, you know, there, if the world moves

00:27:00 ◼   ► in these more complicated directions, you know, if it continues to move in these more complicated directions,

00:27:05 ◼   ► we aren't necessarily required to go along with it. You know, in many ways this happened in podcasting.

00:27:10 ◼   ► You know, there's, podcasting started out being, you know, shows like this, mostly, you know, and then there were a couple

00:27:15 ◼   ► like, you know, public radio produced shows that were like really nice, but, you know, for the most part it was a lot of stuff like this.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And then as podcasting got much, much bigger, it became way more like, big companies

00:27:25 ◼   ► coming in, big productions, big budgets, big staffs doing big things with, with other big

00:27:30 ◼   ► companies and making deals, and the whole world of podcasting has kind of moved in, in massive way towards that,

00:27:37 ◼   ► but we are still able to do this. We are just no longer like the, the, the bulk of what podcasting is, if, if we ever were.

00:27:45 ◼   ► And that, you know, as long as we are able to do this, there might be this massive other world happening off, you know, in this other place,

00:27:53 ◼   ► but we aren't required to do what they do. We aren't required to be in it, and its existence doesn't make it impossible for us to also exist.

00:28:01 ◼   ► We just aren't as big as it. And, you know, that might happen to apps too, like if, you know, if, if the world goes to this, in this direction where, you know, in, in five years we have

00:28:11 ◼   ► five different app stores everyone has to be a part of and everyone is spending six dollars per installation, most of it just goes into Facebook, like that sucks,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but if we can, if we can just still do this and be, you know, only in the stores we want to be in, only in the platforms we want to be on,

00:28:27 ◼   ► and only spending the money or lack thereof to pay people to install our apps that we want to spend, I, I think as long as we can keep doing what we're doing,

00:28:36 ◼   ► what the giant rest of the world does, doesn't necessarily need to preclude us from doing that.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I mean, and I think that is honestly, that is the part of this that in the end I feel slightly like the best about, is that

00:28:49 ◼   ► if the app stores go in the directions I don't like, and at a certain point it's like, I have agency in this, I can just keep doing what I'm doing and hope that

00:28:57 ◼   ► there are enough, you know, app used, app consumers, app users out there who will enjoy what I do and there don't need to be that many of them for me to make a nice sustainable living,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and who knows what's going on in like the other part of the world and it's like, there might be money to be made there, there might be fame and fortune, like who knows,

00:29:16 ◼   ► but if I can make a living and that's what I want to do and that's the industry that I enjoy like being a part of, then it's like as long as that exists and hopefully in all this it would, you know, survive well enough to allow that, then like that's okay.

00:29:27 ◼   ► And I guess we'll just, you know, we might become less relevant, but it's like, oh well, you know, that there are worse things.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you in two weeks.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Bye.