Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So sometimes in our development lives, we find ourselves dealing with or kind of beholden

00:00:15 ◼   ► to one of the big tech companies, some kind of giant power that has way more power and

00:00:21 ◼   ► influence and resources than we do, and we just kind of have to deal with it.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And developers are not the first people to ever face this problem in the world.

00:00:29 ◼   ► One way that people who provide work or labor have in the past gained power and leverage

00:00:37 ◼   ► and negotiating power against bigger, more powerful entities that they depended on was

00:00:42 ◼   ► unions.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Unions are complex.

00:00:44 ◼   ► They can be good, they can be bad.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Basically there is a group of people who is trying to start something called the developers

00:00:54 ◼   ► union.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It's kind of a bad name.

00:00:56 ◼   ► It's not really a union in the typical sense.

00:01:00 ◼   ► It's almost like a coalition, I guess, or it's like a very fancy online petition, basically.

00:01:08 ◼   ► So you can see it's at the developersunion.org.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And a couple of people I know are involved with this, and it's interesting.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Their stated goal is to create basically a group of developers that advocate and kind

00:01:26 ◼   ► of campaign with Apple or lobby Apple to make App Store development more financially viable

00:01:35 ◼   ► and more sustainable.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And the first goal they chose is they're asking Apple to commit by July to allow free trials

00:01:46 ◼   ► for all apps in the App Store by next July, so about a year from now.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And they say after that they're going to start advocating for a more reasonable revenue cut

00:01:55 ◼   ► than the 70/30 split and other community-driven developer-friendly changes.

00:02:01 ◼   ► The specific group here I think is, you know, it's fine.

00:02:04 ◼   ► It's a group of people.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I don't know most of them.

00:02:06 ◼   ► I do know a few of them.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I do think it's an interesting topic to talk about the amount of power and leverage that

00:02:13 ◼   ► we have as developers with companies that we depend on like Apple or even bigger things.

00:02:19 ◼   ► If you're making a Twitter app, there's been changes in the Twitter API recently that are

00:02:24 ◼   ► pretty app hostile.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And there's the question of what kind of leverage do those app developers have over Twitter

00:02:30 ◼   ► to negotiate this and what kind of power do they have.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And there's always basically in this day and age, most of the things you do, you're depending

00:02:38 ◼   ► on at least one tech giant for some critical part of your business.

00:02:43 ◼   ► So it is, I think, worth discussing how much power do we have?

00:02:47 ◼   ► How do you know when you have power?

00:02:49 ◼   ► And what are some effective ways to gain that power or to use it as leverage?

00:02:54 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:02:55 ◼   ► It's such a nuanced topic though.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I find I was thinking about what we're going to talk about.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Because I feel like at its core so many of these types of things ultimately comes down

00:03:08 ◼   ► to a question of idealism versus pragmatism.

00:03:12 ◼   ► That it would be lovely if Apple, in the example of the developers union and what they're trying

00:03:20 ◼   ► to advocate for, it would be lovely if they had a series of policies that encouraged sustainable

00:03:27 ◼   ► small businesses on the app store.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Like if that became a desire, a goal, an objective for Apple, that would be great.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And the idealistic part of me sort of likes that thought of that being something that

00:03:41 ◼   ► Apple takes seriously, that they start to care about, and that they take that caring

00:03:46 ◼   ► and they turn it into policy changes that are specifically geared to making that happen.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Like that sounds wonderful.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Then the other part of me, the more pragmatic part of me says, "I don't think that's actually

00:03:59 ◼   ► going to happen.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I don't think that's something that a company like Apple sort of necessarily would care

00:04:05 ◼   ► about or at least not in a way that would have a dramatic change."

00:04:11 ◼   ► And if it did, then it's like in a weird way, it would be difficult.

00:04:18 ◼   ► It just changes the set of problems I have to work with.

00:04:20 ◼   ► That if in some ways now it's like it's super sustainable, now there's more competition.

00:04:25 ◼   ► None of these things have no consequences.

00:04:28 ◼   ► There might be more delightful consequences, but any change you make in a situation like

00:04:36 ◼   ► this is going to have a variety of knock-on effects.

00:04:39 ◼   ► And so it makes me think then on the practical side, part of what I've just sort of—my

00:04:45 ◼   ► typical approach is to say, "The situation will never change.

00:04:49 ◼   ► The situation is what it is.

00:04:50 ◼   ► What can I do about it?

00:04:52 ◼   ► How can I structure my business around that?

00:04:53 ◼   ► How can I work out that if I find myself in a position where I don't really feel like

00:04:58 ◼   ► I have big power or much power influence?"

00:05:04 ◼   ► That's probably true at the low level, but there's usually at least something where

00:05:09 ◼   ► you have to be able to look at what you do have, and you have some amount of leverage,

00:05:15 ◼   ► and you can provide some amount of value to even a bigger company.

00:05:19 ◼   ► For example, one of the things that comes to mind for me is I don't feel like I have

00:05:23 ◼   ► much power influence at the high level, but at an individual level, at the low level,

00:05:30 ◼   ► I provide a service to Apple every summer typically where I try all their APIs out and

00:05:36 ◼   ► find all the weird issues and bugs and problems with it, and by doing that and doing something

00:05:41 ◼   ► that I've been doing for a long time, I can exert a certain amount of—I have a certain

00:05:46 ◼   ► amount of pull and connection with a variety of people within Apple who, having their goodwill,

00:05:52 ◼   ► is then beneficial to me.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And that side of things is finding that a teeny point of utility that I have to them

00:06:00 ◼   ► where I'm not interchangeable and emphasizing it, but that tension between "boy, it would

00:06:06 ◼   ► be nice" and "what is actually going to happen in reality?"

00:06:10 ◼   ► I feel like is such an awkward thing to navigate.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I think when talking about trying to form any kind of power or collective bargaining

00:06:22 ◼   ► power against Apple, I think the reality is they don't care about a group of a few hundred

00:06:30 ◼   ► independent developers.

00:06:31 ◼   ► They just don't care.

00:06:32 ◼   ► They have, like, what, hundreds of thousands or millions of developers registered with

00:06:37 ◼   ► them?

00:06:39 ◼   ► And so anything that you can organize with a few hundred to a few thousand people on

00:06:44 ◼   ► a website is going to only ever be a very, very small percentage of their developers.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Furthermore, if you look at what apps are actually used and the frequency of what apps

00:06:55 ◼   ► are actually used and bought and downloaded and things like that, a lot of them aren't

00:07:01 ◼   ► indie developers.

00:07:02 ◼   ► A lot of them are big companies.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And a lot of those big companies do have power and influence over Apple.

00:07:07 ◼   ► For instance, look at the drama that happened with Uber back about a year ago when it was

00:07:12 ◼   ► found that they were abusing the unique identifiers of the phone to track people.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Look at all the drama that always erupts around whenever Facebook has some creepy thing they're

00:07:20 ◼   ► doing with their app or they're abusing a part of the system to get more data or stay

00:07:24 ◼   ► running more in the background.

00:07:27 ◼   ► The reality is that Facebook and Uber have immense power over Apple because Apple can

00:07:33 ◼   ► threaten to say, "Look, if you don't fix this, we're going to take your app out of the store."

00:07:38 ◼   ► But Apple also knows that they can't really take those apps out of the store because if

00:07:42 ◼   ► they do, they're going to have a big problem with their customers.

00:07:44 ◼   ► If their customers buy an iPhone and that iPhone can't run Facebook, that's going to

00:07:49 ◼   ► be a pretty big problem for Apple.

00:07:52 ◼   ► All the fallout from that is going to land on Apple, not on Facebook.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And Apple knows that.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So Apple knows that in that relationship, they kind of have to reach some kind of deal

00:08:04 ◼   ► with Facebook where like, "Okay, we'll find a happy medium where we can work together

00:08:07 ◼   ► on whatever you want to do."

00:08:10 ◼   ► Same thing with Uber, right?

00:08:11 ◼   ► That's why when Uber was found to be doing this gross, horrible thing, they got a private

00:08:16 ◼   ► phone call from Tim Cook, not just kicked out of the app store with an email, like what

00:08:20 ◼   ► most of us would get.

00:08:22 ◼   ► So there are entities and companies that do have bargaining power over Apple.

00:08:29 ◼   ► We are not those entities.

00:08:31 ◼   ► If all of our apps got removed from the store, if every app made by an indie developer got

00:08:36 ◼   ► removed from the store tomorrow, there would be angry people, but it wouldn't be anywhere

00:08:42 ◼   ► near what would happen if Facebook was removed or if some of the big games from the big game

00:08:47 ◼   ► publishers were removed or if Netflix, the big companies like that, they're the ones

00:08:52 ◼   ► with the power here.

00:08:53 ◼   ► We unfortunately aren't.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Additionally, the world of indie developers is quite large and quite diverse.

00:09:02 ◼   ► So any effort to organize, if you look at the way unions in the physical world do it,

00:09:10 ◼   ► it's fairly easy to make contact with, to reach, to meet with every employee at a factory.

00:09:19 ◼   ► That's something that is reasonably done in the real world.

00:09:25 ◼   ► There is no way really for any of us to reach all or even most or even a majority or even

00:09:33 ◼   ► a plurality of indie developers.

00:09:35 ◼   ► There are just too many of us, too many different areas, too many different languages, too many

00:09:40 ◼   ► different cultures.

00:09:42 ◼   ► There'd be no way for any large effort to actually try to contact and then organize

00:09:50 ◼   ► indie developers in a useful way.

00:09:53 ◼   ► So any kind of organization like this would always be limited to some small community

00:09:59 ◼   ► relative to the larger group.

00:10:02 ◼   ► And so there's no way that's ever going to have power to be able to demand things

00:10:07 ◼   ► from Apple and have a reasonable chance of getting those things done.

00:10:11 ◼   ► There are different ways to do that, but mass organization and trying to do what unions

00:10:18 ◼   ► do in regular industry or real life, I guess, whatever, it's kind of a weird term, but

00:10:24 ◼   ► trying to do what unions do with factories and stuff is not going to work in the indie

00:10:29 ◼   ► iOS developer scene because it's totally different.

00:10:34 ◼   ► The numbers are totally different, the situation is totally different, and developers might

00:10:39 ◼   ► not want to be a part of this.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Even if you can reach them, people have different opinions.

00:10:46 ◼   ► A group of people who dictate a list of things like this, their primary thing is to get Apple

00:10:55 ◼   ► to commit to allowing free trials for everything.

00:10:59 ◼   ► I didn't put my name on this because, first of all, I think that's a lost cause.

00:11:04 ◼   ► I think that battle was fought and lost long ago.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Apple has been very, very clear that they don't think that that's a good model for

00:11:13 ◼   ► the app store, that they want people to use various in-app purchase and subscription things

00:11:17 ◼   ► instead.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I didn't want to put my name on this because I feel like I'm asking for something that

00:11:22 ◼   ► I'm never going to get, and that puts you in a bad negotiating position to have the

00:11:26 ◼   ► very first thing you're asking for be something that you just have no chance of.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Even something like this, I read this, I know people who are in this, and even I wouldn't

00:11:38 ◼   ► put my name on it.

00:11:39 ◼   ► That's just one example.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Any effort you try to have to try to mass organize iOS developers, you're going to have

00:11:48 ◼   ► this problem where developers are pretty resistant to that kind of thing, even if you can reach

00:11:53 ◼   ► them.

00:11:54 ◼   ► The reality is you probably won't reach a large percentage of any developers.

00:11:59 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and I think that diversity angle is in many ways the root of why, it's the

00:12:08 ◼   ► funny thing about why we as a group have little, in general, would have limited power against

00:12:15 ◼   ► a larger organization.

00:12:18 ◼   ► By the nature of our diversity, of all of the different interests and genres of apps

00:12:24 ◼   ► and approaches and even business structures that we have, that diversity is in many ways

00:12:31 ◼   ► what makes us a rich and interesting community that I think can make some really compelling

00:12:36 ◼   ► software that our goals are often not necessarily just the same type of goals that Netflix or

00:12:44 ◼   ► Facebook or Uber has.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Our goals are, I know many developers who develop apps because they love making apps,

00:12:51 ◼   ► and the business side of it is much more diminished than a company that is entirely focused on

00:13:00 ◼   ► the bottom line and extracting every possible penny out of their customers.

00:13:06 ◼   ► The diversity there is what makes us interesting, but also diminishes dramatically our power

00:13:17 ◼   ► in the situation.

00:13:18 ◼   ► I think in many ways it is because we all have different goals and needs and wants that

00:13:24 ◼   ► what I would want, I don't even honestly, I was trying to think about what I would want

00:13:30 ◼   ► Apple to change in the App Store.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Things like free trial, I don't think I want that.

00:13:38 ◼   ► If it happened, it would be fine, but it wouldn't really affect me.

00:13:41 ◼   ► None of my apps really would benefit from having a free trial necessarily, I don't think.

00:13:46 ◼   ► I can imagine and I know of many apps where it would benefit, but for my apps personally,

00:13:52 ◼   ► I'm not sure that really fits the type of app I make.

00:13:56 ◼   ► A better revenue split with Apple, sure, sounds great, but the reality is I make most of my

00:14:02 ◼   ► money outside of Apple's cut.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I make most of my money from advertising that I put in my ads.

00:14:08 ◼   ► That's the business model I'm in.

00:14:10 ◼   ► That's actually, it would be nice.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I'm never going to say no to more money, but just as an example of, as somebody who

00:14:19 ◼   ► has been an independent developer for such a long time, those types of topics aren't

00:14:23 ◼   ► the things that, if I could sit down with Phil Schiller or whoever the appropriate decision

00:14:29 ◼   ► maker at Apple was and was advocating for things, I'm not even sure there's that many

00:14:33 ◼   ► of these types of more policy changes that I would look at.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I would be looking for things that are much more tactical probably and low level, like

00:14:41 ◼   ► seeing changes in the way iTunes Connect works or being able to A/B test screenshots.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I could imagine a variety of things like that that I could see wanting to change.

00:14:54 ◼   ► Or even more over, you start to get into other things where it aren't necessarily related

00:14:58 ◼   ► to my business or being an independent developer that I think would just be good things in

00:15:05 ◼   ► a more fundamental way, where it's like I think about how what I don't like about the

00:15:09 ◼   ► App Store most in some ways now is the degree to which it is focused around gambling style,

00:15:17 ◼   ► inapp consumable, inapp purchase applications.

00:15:21 ◼   ► That's more of almost a philosophical or political desire for change there rather than one that's

00:15:28 ◼   ► strictly coming out of a business, a felt need that I have in my business.

00:15:35 ◼   ► This is just me and my opinions.

00:15:36 ◼   ► When I see something like this, it's the difficulty around the diversity that a group of independence

00:15:43 ◼   ► brings by our fundamental nature.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Being an indie is short for being independent.

00:15:52 ◼   ► That independence makes it very hard to imagine a collective thing where by nature, by becoming

00:16:01 ◼   ► a collective, you lose independence by definition.

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00:17:43 ◼   ► So you know, I think the big issue here with trying to organize in a union fashion basically,

00:17:50 ◼   ► to summarize what we've said, is that basically we don't have any way to accumulate enough

00:17:55 ◼   ► power to matter.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Because you're never going to reach too many developers because developers are such a diverse

00:18:01 ◼   ► group.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Even if you try to organize developers, even if you could reach them, it's really hard

00:18:05 ◼   ► to get everyone to agree on what the causes and priorities should even be.

00:18:11 ◼   ► And one of the biggest problems with that is that, with using this kind of structure,

00:18:16 ◼   ► is that there's basically no way to enforce people staying in a union or complying with

00:18:25 ◼   ► the union.

00:18:26 ◼   ► You know, one of the biggest, like most dramatic things you hear about with unions, and one

00:18:30 ◼   ► of the ways they can exercise their power, is by a strike.

00:18:33 ◼   ► But there's no way to actually have a union of developers enforce a strike.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Like what are we going to do, I'll pull our apps out of the store?

00:18:43 ◼   ► In the real world, with unions for like a factory and stuff, you can enforce that with

00:18:47 ◼   ► social pressure, with intimidation, in worse ways.

00:18:53 ◼   ► But there are ways to encourage and enforce compliance and actual, like you know, being

00:19:00 ◼   ► a union, like actually unity and standing up with everyone else.

00:19:04 ◼   ► In the app store, there's no way to do that.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Like what's going to happen if a whole bunch of people pull their apps out of the store?

00:19:10 ◼   ► Well a whole bunch of other people will keep their apps in the store and make more money.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Like there's just no way to actually pull that off.

00:19:16 ◼   ► So basically I think this whole structure is not great.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And what's instead, the way to accomplish things with Apple, first of all, is to recognize

00:19:28 ◼   ► whether what you're asking for is realistic or not.

00:19:32 ◼   ► With things like reducing the cut, Apple already has given us a way to reduce it from, to increase

00:19:39 ◼   ► our part from 70 to 85.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And that is with subscriptions after the first year.

00:19:44 ◼   ► And when they first said this, I thought, great, but you know, I don't think it's ever

00:19:47 ◼   ► going to be that meaningful to me.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Well I now have one of these subscriptions, and as of this past fall, I now have people

00:19:53 ◼   ► on the 85% tier.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And it turns out that so many of them are on the 85% tier, because so many of them stuck

00:19:58 ◼   ► around for the second year, that my average app store cut is now 79%, which is great.

00:20:05 ◼   ► This is way better than I would have expected how this would go.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So they actually are giving us ways to do it in small ways like that.

00:20:13 ◼   ► Free trials, again, there are ways within App Purchase to kind of approximate that,

00:20:19 ◼   ► and people have tried a lot of them.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And people have largely found a way to adapt to that.

00:20:22 ◼   ► So simply taking advantage of what we have in the Apple system, like taking advantage

00:20:27 ◼   ► of the things they do give us, is, as you mentioned earlier in the show, mostly the

00:20:31 ◼   ► pragmatic option.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Because here's one thing they're not going to do.

00:20:35 ◼   ► They're not going to all of a sudden become beholden to a group of 100 indie developers.

00:20:39 ◼   ► As we mentioned earlier, that's just not enough developers to matter.

00:20:42 ◼   ► They're also probably not going to reduce their cut for everybody, because why?

00:20:48 ◼   ► They make tons of money with that, and they are trying to grow their services business,

00:20:53 ◼   ► and that's the biggest part of their services business.

00:20:55 ◼   ► So there's actually massive Wall Street and potential board incentive to not voluntarily

00:21:03 ◼   ► lose their services revenue for no apparent reason.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I think if they actually did that and services stopped growing for a few quarters, Tim Cook

00:21:12 ◼   ► would have a big problem on his hands from investors and the board and everything else.

00:21:16 ◼   ► So that's not going to happen.

00:21:18 ◼   ► It's just not going to happen.

00:21:20 ◼   ► So instead, focus on things you can do.

00:21:23 ◼   ► So things like policy changes, API changes, editorial changes, those are all things that

00:21:27 ◼   ► we can do by using the press, by using blogging and Twitter and podcasts.

00:21:34 ◼   ► We do have influence over things like that, because Apple is sensitive to bad press.

00:21:39 ◼   ► We also have the ability to simply argue and make good points in public, because inside

00:21:45 ◼   ► Apple most decisions that we see on the outside had or have an argument behind them that happened

00:21:51 ◼   ► inside.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And they use public blog posts and comments and articles and things like that to help

00:21:58 ◼   ► bolster one side or the other of those arguments inside.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And those can and have changed the way these decisions are made or changed the outcome

00:22:07 ◼   ► when they're good arguments or when enough people or when influential enough people are

00:22:11 ◼   ► making them.

00:22:12 ◼   ► So this is how to argue with Apple.

00:22:15 ◼   ► This is how to put pressure on Apple, is make good arguments and use the press.

00:22:21 ◼   ► Those are the tools we have.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Beyond that, unless you're planning on becoming Facebook or Uber, you basically have to work

00:22:28 ◼   ► within the system that we have.

00:22:30 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily a horrible thing, but it is the reality of it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► If you don't want to work within the Apple system and you don't have any interest in

00:22:42 ◼   ► doing the things that we can do, if you only want things they're never going to give us,

00:22:48 ◼   ► you don't really have a lot of options here, because you don't have any power.

00:22:51 ◼   ► In any negotiation, it's very important to recognize, do you actually have any power?

00:22:57 ◼   ► And what is that power?

00:22:58 ◼   ► And what is the value that you are providing to this big entity that you are threatening

00:23:02 ◼   ► to take away if they don't comply with your demands?

00:23:05 ◼   ► And if that value isn't really big, they're probably not going to comply with your demands.

00:23:10 ◼   ► So my suggestion for pragmatism and for healthy business practices in the App Store is to

00:23:16 ◼   ► just work within what we have.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Make good arguments with blog posts and stuff like that when you have them, but otherwise,

00:23:24 ◼   ► this is the system we have and it's better off to just be in it.

00:23:27 ◼   ► >>

00:23:28 ◼   ► And I think that approach, which I think is broadly, I think it's what both of us have

00:23:32 ◼   ► been doing for years now, is the approach of recognizing what abilities and power we

00:23:43 ◼   ► have and the things that we really uniquely bring.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I think we have, like when you and I talk about things in the App Store, it has the

00:23:53 ◼   ► weight of someone who has been doing this for a long time and who has a lot of experience

00:23:59 ◼   ► in it.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And so if that is being used internally as a argument for something, it is in many ways

00:24:06 ◼   ► it is building up a reputation that hopefully carries some weight that if, at the very least,

00:24:12 ◼   ► would get someone's attention or at the very least would be a useful mechanism inside of

00:24:18 ◼   ► that.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Because in reality, in weird ways, there was a time when I was fairly pessimistic about

00:24:26 ◼   ► the App Store.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I'm pessimistic.

00:24:28 ◼   ► There was a period probably maybe about six to seven years into the App Store where I

00:24:34 ◼   ► started to really be a little bit more down on it and started to question whether this

00:24:38 ◼   ► is where I wanted to make my living.

00:24:40 ◼   ► But I would say more recently that's not the case, that I've seen substantial and

00:24:46 ◼   ► measured improvements in the App Store year on year on year.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Thanks, Phil.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like, "Thanks, Phil.

00:24:52 ◼   ► It's great.

00:24:53 ◼   ► It does seem to coincide with some leadership changes," which is great.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And so from that perspective, I look at it and I just think, "These things are going

00:25:02 ◼   ► in a good direction."

00:25:03 ◼   ► And I like that.

00:25:06 ◼   ► It's cool to see.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It makes me feel confident that this is still a good place for me to make my business.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And because those changes are there, it makes me feel comfortable to just keep on with the

00:25:17 ◼   ► approach of finding interesting and creative ways to work within the rules as they are.

00:25:24 ◼   ► I think in many ways, that is what I found to be very successful.

00:25:28 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, Apple won't give us X."

00:25:31 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, okay.

00:25:33 ◼   ► How can we approximate X?

00:25:34 ◼   ► How can we find an interesting and creative way around that?"

00:25:38 ◼   ► And often that creates new and interesting opportunities.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It ultimately, in a lot of cases, seems to shift slowly Apple's policy or it creates

00:25:48 ◼   ► reasons and examples for them to want to invest time, energy, and effort into doing something.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I think the degree to which Apple apps have started to move towards a scription model

00:26:02 ◼   ► for a lot of their businesses, which by and large seems to be...

00:26:07 ◼   ► It's not a universal fix or it's not a universal solution, but by and large seems to be working

00:26:12 ◼   ► well for a collection of applications.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I think there's issues around subscriptions that have gradually been worked on and improved

00:26:20 ◼   ► beyond things to do in just the revenue split.

00:26:22 ◼   ► But on the technical side, every year it seems like at W3C, there's a whole new set of things

00:26:29 ◼   ► that Apple is investing engineering time into to make it better.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And I'm sure that it's coming from experiences that developers are having when they actually...

00:26:39 ◼   ► If Apple gives us something, if we start using it, we find the issues, they are gradually

00:26:43 ◼   ► responsive to that.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And it would be lovely if they were instantaneously responsive, but that's not realistic.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I don't think that's something that I would ever really expect or put hope into because...

00:26:54 ◼   ► And the reality is it's probably wise for them to steer this...

00:26:58 ◼   ► It's like the App Store is kind of a big ship and steering it with a slow rudder at the

00:27:04 ◼   ► back, making small course adjustments, seeing how they turn out, make a small course adjustment

00:27:09 ◼   ► to see how it turns out, is honestly probably what I would prefer.

00:27:12 ◼   ► That making large sweeping changes abruptly sounds kind of terrifying in some ways.

00:27:17 ◼   ► I'm not saying this is what these...

00:27:18 ◼   ► Anyone is specifically advocating for, but by and large, Apple's approach of this gradual

00:27:23 ◼   ► improvement, as long as I find myself in a place where I feel like every year the App

00:27:29 ◼   ► Store gets slightly better, that it's gradually improving, then I'm happy.

00:27:35 ◼   ► I like that stability that that provides, and I like the feeling that maybe it's easier

00:27:40 ◼   ► in some ways at an individual level, both personally with people you might know who

00:27:46 ◼   ► work within Apple or going to WWDC, and I go to the iTunes Connect Lab and I talk to

00:27:51 ◼   ► the people who work on the iTunes Connect team, not because I think that that specifically

00:27:55 ◼   ► is going...

00:27:56 ◼   ► Like things I'm saying there are specifically making change, but it's planting seeds in

00:28:01 ◼   ► people's mind that they have a counter example in their head when they are at the meeting

00:28:07 ◼   ► and they're discussing this thing.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I talk to them about something that I find frustrating.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Maybe when that comes up in a meeting in six months, they have that counter example in

00:28:16 ◼   ► their head.

00:28:17 ◼   ► That kind of personal connection and that kind of personal intervention is the kind

00:28:23 ◼   ► of thing that we do have power in, and that's the power that I think we can best use as

00:28:29 ◼   ► independents is embrace our uniqueness, embrace our individuality, and use that as best we

00:28:36 ◼   ► can because I think that is far more powerful and far more likely to succeed than trying

00:28:42 ◼   ► to build a cooperative that would have a singular vision or a singular goal.

00:28:50 ◼   ► We lose what we are in some ways by doing that, as noble and as good meaning as the

00:28:58 ◼   ► initial thought may be.

00:29:00 ◼   ► >>

00:29:12 ◼   ► Thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Bye

00:29:37 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]