Under the Radar

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

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:04 ◼   ► 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 this is going to be the last in our early, last for now set of Q&A, lightning round topic

00:00:18 ◼   ► questions as we sort of transition now into, you know, probably about a month before WWDC

00:00:23 ◼   ► and sort of starting to head towards that.

00:00:25 ◼   ► But I think there'd be still that last couple questions that we wanted to touch on before

00:00:29 ◼   ► we moved on past this kind of user-generated version of the show.

00:00:33 ◼   ► So that's kind of where we are now.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And so our first question comes to us from Robert Spivak, who asks, "Why is Android

00:00:40 ◼   ► so successful, and what should Apple and indie devs learn from this market reality that is

00:00:45 ◼   ► useful to them/us for us to consider?"

00:00:48 ◼   ► I like this question a lot because it's kind of a big picture question.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And you almost might think it might not apply to an indie iOS app development show because

00:00:57 ◼   ► it's about Android.

00:00:59 ◼   ► But what it really is about is what factors make Android successful, and is there something

00:01:07 ◼   ► that we can use from that.

00:01:08 ◼   ► So for me, I think the biggest reason Android is successful is that it addresses two major

00:01:17 ◼   ► market attributes or segments that Apple just will never do.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Number one is low cost, and number two is basically in kind of a summary, like letting

00:01:28 ◼   ► people do what they want, even if Apple doesn't think it's the best, or even if Apple doesn't

00:01:33 ◼   ► think it's a good idea.

00:01:35 ◼   ► And that applies to both hardware and software.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Android phones have a huge wide range of prices that Apple will never touch, and they have

00:01:44 ◼   ► a very diverse set of hardware choices and crazy things you can do with the software

00:01:53 ◼   ► that iOS will never allow you to do.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And on some level, as an indie, you always have to consider the reality that A, you need

00:02:04 ◼   ► to make money somehow, and B, that you have limited resources.

00:02:09 ◼   ► And so you can't satisfy everyone's needs.

00:02:13 ◼   ► You can't make an app that can do everything for everyone.

00:02:16 ◼   ► You can't make something everybody will love.

00:02:19 ◼   ► But similar to what Android did, which is basically look at what Apple was doing and

00:02:26 ◼   ► then cover ground that they weren't going to cover, you can apply that part to lots

00:02:32 ◼   ► of things that you do.

00:02:33 ◼   ► You know, any app you make, you can say, you can look around at the competition first,

00:02:38 ◼   ► which you should.

00:02:39 ◼   ► You know, look around at the competition before you decide what to work on and maybe what

00:02:42 ◼   ► features your app will have or what the business model will be, and see like, what are they

00:02:47 ◼   ► not addressing?

00:02:48 ◼   ► And more importantly, like, what can't they or what won't they address?

00:02:53 ◼   ► You know, if your idea for something is along the formula of, it's like YouTube for dogs.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Okay.

00:03:03 ◼   ► What happened?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Why not just use YouTube, right?

00:03:05 ◼   ► Like that, or it's like YouTube, but it offers 8K video.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Well, what happens if YouTube just adds 8K video?

00:03:13 ◼   ► You know, those are things that like, that is not a safe place, right?

00:03:18 ◼   ► But if you're asking like, it's like Apple, but cheap and allowing people to run it on

00:03:23 ◼   ► whatever hardware they want, Apple's never going to touch that.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So you are totally safe there.

00:03:30 ◼   ► You know, or in the app world, you can say it's like Apple's built-in app, but it syncs

00:03:35 ◼   ► using this awesome web service that you can also log into in a web browser or on a PC,

00:03:40 ◼   ► and it has features that Apple will probably never support.

00:03:44 ◼   ► You know, so like, that kind of thing is a good place to be and a good place to plan,

00:03:49 ◼   ► you know, competitively where your app should be.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And then, you know, within the app, when you're talking about the actual design of the app

00:03:57 ◼   ► and what kind of features it has, it also helps to, you know, take a clue from Android

00:04:02 ◼   ► of like, first of all, can you find a way to make your app free up front?

00:04:06 ◼   ► Because free is really powerful, and you will get way more people that way.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And if you can find a way to do that and pay the bills somehow, that's a really good place

00:04:14 ◼   ► to be.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And then second of all, look at, you know, how Android appeals to people by giving power

00:04:19 ◼   ► users a lot of features.

00:04:20 ◼   ► You know, there's a lot of people like Android because it just lets them do things that they

00:04:26 ◼   ► want to do.

00:04:27 ◼   ► It lets them have control over the OS, and it lets apps do things that Apple doesn't

00:04:33 ◼   ► think they need to expose to people or they don't think people are better off if they're

00:04:37 ◼   ► exposed to them or whatever.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Apple thinks it's making the best move for both Apple and customers, but some customers

00:04:42 ◼   ► disagree.

00:04:43 ◼   ► In fact, a lot of customers disagree, and they go to Android a lot of the time.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So if you can think about your app's features in that way, think about like, are there like

00:04:51 ◼   ► little hooks or power user features or abilities that some people really, really want that

00:04:59 ◼   ► you can add or that you can cater to, and in a way that doesn't like hurt the rest of

00:05:03 ◼   ► the app or that doesn't, you know, prove to be an undue burden on you.

00:05:08 ◼   ► That's a pretty good place to be for power user tools and for specialized use cases and

00:05:13 ◼   ► things.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Those are all really big markets.

00:05:16 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I mean, when I think about this, I love the first part.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Why is Android so successful?

00:05:22 ◼   ► And I think it's certainly, you know, it assumes Android is successful.

00:05:25 ◼   ► And I think from a numbers perspective, that is definitely true.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And I mean, the reality is I don't know for sure because if I'm honest, I don't spend

00:05:34 ◼   ► much time in that world.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And so it's hard to know as much.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But as I was thinking about it, there's kind of two areas that I think come to mind that

00:05:42 ◼   ► I think are potential reasons why it might be successful.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And then things, you know, sort of that have very useful follow on effects for me as I

00:05:51 ◼   ► think about my own apps.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And the first one I think is the power of being comfortable with something and not wanting

00:06:00 ◼   ► to change.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And this is something that I think I see, you know, in my friends and family a lot that

00:06:07 ◼   ► whatever you first learned something on, you have a tremendous affinity for because the

00:06:14 ◼   ► effort and the difficulty of that first learning experience is so hard that wanting to switch

00:06:22 ◼   ► and have to relearn something is often very, very difficult and intimidating.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And this is a conversation that I've certainly had with some friends who, you know, they

00:06:31 ◼   ► love their Android phones and I asked them, "Oh, do you ever think about getting an iPhone?"

00:06:36 ◼   ► And it's always like, "No, I know how this works."

00:06:39 ◼   ► And it's the realization that, you know, in that person's life, the things that you or

00:06:45 ◼   ► I may like, you know, sort of agonize over and, you know, listen to six hours of tech

00:06:52 ◼   ► podcasts a week diving into, like, their phone for them is just a tool that lets them do

00:06:58 ◼   ► a thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And once they know how to do that thing, then the nuances of that tool become much less

00:07:05 ◼   ► important.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And I think there is also something, which is important for me to keep in mind too, of

00:07:09 ◼   ► it's so—once somebody has learned how to use something, I think there is a tremendous

00:07:15 ◼   ► desire to be able to keep it that way.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And so the lesson that I take from that from my own apps is it's being very thoughtful

00:07:22 ◼   ► about making changes in my own apps that are going to break people's habits.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And you know, the reason they may be using my app is not because my app is good, strictly,

00:07:35 ◼   ► but may just be—they may be using my app because it's the one they learned and the

00:07:38 ◼   ► one they understand.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And so if I then come along and say, "Oh, I've got this whole new great thing," then

00:07:43 ◼   ► suddenly the reason that they were using my app, I just, like, took out from under them.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And so I think that's one reason that I could see people using Android, and I think

00:07:50 ◼   ► there's an interesting lesson there about just having that consistency going forward,

00:07:54 ◼   ► or at least keeping it in your mind.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And I think the other thing too is that having—understanding that there are going to be differences of

00:08:04 ◼   ► opinion about what the best way to do something is, that—I mean, I think there's, you

00:08:10 ◼   ► know, I think it's easy for the Apple community at large to have a slightly elitist, know-it-all

00:08:19 ◼   ► kind of an attitude about a lot of things, that like, "This is the best way," and

00:08:23 ◼   ► then, you know, using that superlative, like that, "This is the best way," not that

00:08:26 ◼   ► this is a better way or, you know, it's an improved way, like, "No, no, this is

00:08:30 ◼   ► the best way for us to do whatever this is."

00:08:34 ◼   ► And the reality is, for almost any feature or way of approaching something technically,

00:08:40 ◼   ► like there's trade-offs, and very few things have that kind of universe—if you say yes

00:08:46 ◼   ► to one thing, you're saying no to something else.

00:08:49 ◼   ► And so I think Android, in many ways, likely captures a lot of things where people—there's

00:08:56 ◼   ► some difference of opinion someone has with the way that Apple does something or has made

00:09:00 ◼   ► a choice to do it, and because the iPhone is so opinionated and so immovable in so many

00:09:07 ◼   ► ways, it makes something like Android work a lot better, where if, for whatever reason,

00:09:12 ◼   ► the way that Apple doesn't let—only in a lot of things has forced defaults, for example,

00:09:20 ◼   ► that like, you know, if you use the first-party stuff, it's great, but integration with

00:09:23 ◼   ► third-party things maybe isn't quite as good.

00:09:25 ◼   ► That's a much better thing on Android.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And so having that understanding that people are going to come at things from a different

00:09:33 ◼   ► perspective, I think, is a very useful thing, and as an indie especially, I think of some

00:09:38 ◼   ► of the best opportunities that we have to take advantage of are even within the iPhone

00:09:45 ◼   ► platform.

00:09:46 ◼   ► If you're an iOS indie, it's looking at some of the established players and creating

00:09:52 ◼   ► alternatives to them that are different in some way.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Maybe they're simpler, maybe they're more flexible, but looking at it from that perspective,

00:10:01 ◼   ► I think, is a useful place to start, and understanding that people have different preferences, and

00:10:07 ◼   ► sometimes they have strong feelings about those differences of preference, and so there's

00:10:12 ◼   ► potentially an opportunity in creating something that addresses a need in a different way.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Our next question comes from Adam Fallon, who asks, "What is the biggest disappointment

00:10:22 ◼   ► from WWDC that you thought was going to be great?"

00:10:25 ◼   ► This was a really fun question, I thought, because—not like in a complaining about

00:10:30 ◼   ► Apple way, but just like things that—when they launch new stuff, we all think of all

00:10:35 ◼   ► the different ways this could be awesome, and different new markets it opens up and

00:10:40 ◼   ► everything, and a lot of times it works out that way.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Sometimes it doesn't.

00:10:44 ◼   ► For me, I think the biggest one to me recently is probably SiriKit, because SiriKit, when

00:10:54 ◼   ► I heard they were doing this, and then when they announced it, I'm like, "Oh, great!

00:10:58 ◼   ► I can finally use Siri in Overcast," and then I just couldn't, because it was limited

00:11:04 ◼   ► to these certain intent systems, like these certain domains of problems, and not very

00:11:10 ◼   ► many of them, and they're pretty narrow.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And so it's been great for my Reminders app, and nothing else.

00:11:20 ◼   ► So I really hope SiriKit is expanded in the future, but right now it just is nothing for

00:11:27 ◼   ► me as a developer, and fairly little for me as a user.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I think on an even bigger scale, I think iMessage apps really—I think everybody thought they

00:11:40 ◼   ► were going to be bigger than they are.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And maybe they're really big and I just never see it, or I never hear about it, or

00:11:46 ◼   ► the people who I message with or who I talk to are just the weird ones who never use them,

00:11:52 ◼   ► but I never use iMessage apps, and I never see anyone else using them either.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And it seems like what iMessage apps really are are sticker packs.

00:12:02 ◼   ► The only apps I ever see used are sticker apps or sticker packs.

00:12:06 ◼   ► That's about it.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And so I guess on that level, you can kind of say they have been successful, because

00:12:12 ◼   ► stickers are used a lot, but they built this whole app platform to do all sorts of more

00:12:18 ◼   ► detailed things in messages, and anything beyond stickers I have yet to see actually

00:12:24 ◼   ► be used in practice.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And then on the even bigger scale, my biggest disappointment of like, you know, W2C release

00:12:34 ◼   ► technologies has been WatchKit.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Because, you know, I'm not going to go over it in much detail right now, because I have

00:12:40 ◼   ► in the past, but I just want Watch apps to be so much better than they are, and that

00:12:45 ◼   ► all—almost all of that lands right at the feet of WatchKit just not being very good,

00:12:51 ◼   ► not being very complete or robust or even stable or performant.

00:12:57 ◼   ► It's a very incomplete, low-priority, buggy development platform, and I just want Watch

00:13:05 ◼   ► apps to be so much better than they are.

00:13:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's—I feel like there's this tough thing that happens every single year

00:13:11 ◼   ► for me at W2C where, you know, there's always something new, and, you know, the presentations

00:13:19 ◼   ► are really good and slick, and it's always kind of like, "Oh, that's exciting, that's

00:13:23 ◼   ► interesting."

00:13:24 ◼   ► And then I often end up coming walking away from it with this feeling of like, "I'm—like,

00:13:29 ◼   ► the more I think about it, the more I don't get it," or the more I'm like, "Hmm, that's

00:13:32 ◼   ► not really for me," or like, this is where I sometimes—like, so you start making the

00:13:36 ◼   ► jokes about being old, where it's like, I see iMessage apps, and I'm like, "I don't

00:13:41 ◼   ► really get it.

00:13:42 ◼   ► Like, is that really—like, is that a thing?

00:13:45 ◼   ► Is that what the cool kids do these days?"

00:13:48 ◼   ► Like, and I think what I've started to—I used to come away from that with a feeling

00:13:53 ◼   ► of like, you know, "I just don't get it.

00:13:56 ◼   ► This is gonna be cool.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I should still probably adopt it anyway."

00:14:00 ◼   ► And I think increasingly I've come to the—more of the conclusion that if I don't get it,

00:14:06 ◼   ► if I don't think it's gonna be—if I don't really see the immediate utility of

00:14:12 ◼   ► it or, like, think it's really cool, then there's a good chance that I'm probably

00:14:17 ◼   ► more typical than not, that at least there's something—and, you know, there's a chance

00:14:21 ◼   ► that I'm missing the next big wave, but it's also just as likely that I'm not,

00:14:25 ◼   ► and that they're actually not gonna be, you know, be this big thing, because, you

00:14:31 ◼   ► know, the nature of these new announcements is so often they are solutions going in search

00:14:36 ◼   ► of problems, and they're often very cool and technically very capable, but it's difficult.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Like, I think it's in, like, ARKit as an example, which was—is, you know, technically

00:14:51 ◼   ► very cool and can have some really kind of interesting demos, but as far as I can tell,

00:14:56 ◼   ► you know, almost a year into ARKit, it isn't this wildly new transformative technology

00:15:03 ◼   ► that isn't like—you know, there aren't these huge killer apps that have sprung up

00:15:08 ◼   ► and taken over the world, you know.

00:15:10 ◼   ► Like, the biggest example of an AR app that, you know, did that was, like, Pokemon Go last

00:15:16 ◼   ► summer, which didn't even use something like ARKit, and it wasn't really—like,

00:15:19 ◼   ► it isn't really AR; it was just location services, primarily.

00:15:24 ◼   ► And like, that type of thing is, you know, I didn't really get it.

00:15:29 ◼   ► When you start to get, like, well, isn't this gonna get really tiresome to, like, how

00:15:32 ◼   ► is—or, you know, to hold up my phone and, like, move it around, or how is that—is

00:15:36 ◼   ► it that much better than just sliding my finger up and down to control my viewport in a three

00:15:40 ◼   ► D world?

00:15:41 ◼   ► Like, it's a tricky thing, and I find, like, every single year, there's, you know, this

00:15:47 ◼   ► WWDC, I'm sure there's gonna be new technologies.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I'm sure there's really cool, interesting, from a technological perspective, features

00:15:54 ◼   ► that are going to come out.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And I think in the past, I've, you know, I've quieted my inner voice being like,

00:16:02 ◼   ► "I don't get it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Like, that's weird."

00:16:04 ◼   ► Or it's just, like, I don't see how that would be useful, and I think increasingly

00:16:08 ◼   ► I am less disappointed in those features because I understand that they're much more niche,

00:16:16 ◼   ► that necessarily as the platform is getting more and more robust and capable, the new

00:16:22 ◼   ► features that are gonna be added are going to be necessarily much more fringe, much more,

00:16:27 ◼   ► you know, specific.

00:16:30 ◼   ► And sometimes even, you know, there are features that are there adding to the OS just to, you

00:16:34 ◼   ► know, for a feature parity reason or as an experiment, like, you know, I don't really

00:16:39 ◼   ► know what Apple's expectations were for iMessage apps or for ARKit, but I think sometimes it's

00:16:45 ◼   ► the utility of saying, "We're gonna make these tools, and then we're gonna see if

00:16:49 ◼   ► someone can come up with something that's cool about that."

00:16:52 ◼   ► And sometimes they will, and sometimes they won't, you know, but I, like, I regret in

00:16:57 ◼   ► many ways that I went, you know, spent time and effort to make iMessage apps and add them

00:17:01 ◼   ► to a couple of my apps because they're not really being used as best as I can tell, and

00:17:07 ◼   ► that was time and, you know, now maintenance that I have to maintain going forward that,

00:17:12 ◼   ► you know, whenever I do a big update, I need to go and make sure that my iMessage app still

00:17:15 ◼   ► works or at the very least, or eventually I may even just end up, you know, taking them

00:17:19 ◼   ► out of my apps just because they're not actually creating this value, and I was adding

00:17:25 ◼   ► it for the wrong reason.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I was adding it so that I wouldn't miss out rather than adding it and adopting new

00:17:31 ◼   ► technology because I thought it was really cool and personally, genuinely, you know,

00:17:36 ◼   ► wanted to embrace it and use it.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think for me, like, my main disappointments are when something, when a lot of the things

00:17:44 ◼   ► that are announced are, like, those very specialized things, you know, for very specialized use

00:17:50 ◼   ► cases, and I just have no use for them.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Like, I get most excited about changes to things like UIKit, you know, like improvements

00:17:59 ◼   ► to layout, improvements to Xcode, you know, improvements to the tools and to the frameworks

00:18:04 ◼   ► that every app uses or lots of apps use.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I get a lot less excited when it's like, "Great, now Uber can connect to your address

00:18:12 ◼   ► book in a new way," or something.

00:18:13 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, I don't have any use for that," you know, like, and I also,

00:18:19 ◼   ► this is not a great topic for it to be a whole thing, but I'm also pretty skeptical on

00:18:23 ◼   ► AR's value.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Whenever technology comes out and people say, "We can't even imagine what people are

00:18:33 ◼   ► gonna do with this.

00:18:34 ◼   ► It's gonna be great," if there's not a killer app immediately apparent or apparent

00:18:40 ◼   ► very shortly after it becomes available, there might just never be a killer app, or it might

00:18:47 ◼   ► be way more limited than people think.

00:18:48 ◼   ► You know, so similarly, on the same topic, I think the Apple TV as an app platform has

00:18:55 ◼   ► been a pretty big disappointment because when it came out, we were all like, "Oh, we can

00:19:02 ◼   ► do things on TV now that we don't even consider now," and then it came out and turns

00:19:08 ◼   ► out what people want to do on their TV is watch video and play games.

00:19:12 ◼   ► That's about it.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Like, those are two big things that we already knew about that the App Store didn't change.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It just made it more accessible, and all these, like, you know, new things we can't even

00:19:23 ◼   ► think of, well, we didn't think of any.

00:19:25 ◼   ► And I think AR has a similar problem where we have lots of ideas for how this, or we

00:19:30 ◼   ► have lots of ambition in our minds for, "Oh, this technology could be used for so much,"

00:19:35 ◼   ► and you say, "Okay, like what?"

00:19:37 ◼   ► And it's like crickets.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Or it's like, "Well, there's this one thing that you can do games like Pokemon Go,

00:19:41 ◼   ► or you can overlay looking at the real world and see Yelp reviews on restaurants."

00:19:45 ◼   ► Okay, what else?

00:19:48 ◼   ► Is that it?

00:19:49 ◼   ► Like, is that all we've come up with?

00:19:51 ◼   ► And, you know, you can look at an object on a table.

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, yeah, but you can look at an object without being on a table, too,

00:19:55 ◼   ► and it's just fine.

00:19:56 ◼   ► In fact, it's a lot easier to look at an object that's not restricted to the physical

00:20:00 ◼   ► space that you're in and how you're moving around it."

00:20:02 ◼   ► So it's one of those things that I have a hard time getting excited about because no

00:20:07 ◼   ► killer app has become readily apparent, and it's not new.

00:20:13 ◼   ► You know, even before, you know, as I mentioned, like, AR existed before ARKit, and I think

00:20:18 ◼   ► Apple has a lot of high hopes about this.

00:20:21 ◼   ► I think everyone's so desperate to find, like, the next big thing so often in this industry

00:20:25 ◼   ► that we often put unfair and unfulfillable hopes on just new cool things that come out,

00:20:32 ◼   ► and then it turns out they're not the next big thing, or they're not as big as people

00:20:36 ◼   ► want them to be, or not as widely applicable as people want them to be, and that's just

00:20:40 ◼   ► setting up for disappointment.

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00:22:15 ◼   ► All right, and our next question comes from Chris Adamson, who asks, "What's a social

00:22:22 ◼   ► problem that concerns you about our field, and can you do anything about it?"

00:22:27 ◼   ► This is, I think, a great question.

00:22:29 ◼   ► It's something that I think we should all be thinking about pretty much all the time,

00:22:33 ◼   ► because there is no shortage of social problems in our field that should be concerning us.

00:22:39 ◼   ► There's so many issues.

00:22:41 ◼   ► There's things like, one of the biggest ones is diversity.

00:22:43 ◼   ► We have still, as an industry, we have pretty terrible lack of diversity.

00:22:49 ◼   ► We also have major issues like privacy.

00:22:53 ◼   ► These are all things that concern me a great deal.

00:22:57 ◼   ► One issue that I think is also worth considering that I think some of us don't give enough

00:23:02 ◼   ► thought to, but will become an increasing issue, is the, I guess, discrimination inherent

00:23:10 ◼   ► in a lot of the algorithms that we're using now.

00:23:14 ◼   ► As the world becomes more, as a lot of critical services like transportation become more privatized,

00:23:22 ◼   ► like more in the hands of companies like Uber and Lyft, they can start doing things with

00:23:27 ◼   ► algorithms that will disadvantage certain kinds of customers that, in the real world,

00:23:33 ◼   ► either doesn't happen, can be more easily overcome, or is illegal.

00:23:40 ◼   ► For instance, if a taxi doesn't want to pick up passengers going to a certain place,

00:23:44 ◼   ► or certain passengers with certain races and things, that's usually, by most cities,

00:23:49 ◼   ► that's usually illegal.

00:23:50 ◼   ► That's usually part of the taxi program in those cities.

00:23:53 ◼   ► They're not allowed to do that.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Things like that.

00:23:56 ◼   ► When you make these things both private and a lot more algorithmic, you get a lot more

00:24:01 ◼   ► possibilities for sinister behavior, or things that seem like they might be optimizations,

00:24:09 ◼   ► but are actually optimizing people out in pretty nasty ways.

00:24:17 ◼   ► It's important when you are working on these kinds of algorithms, or looking at data, or

00:24:22 ◼   ► optimizing for the data in any way.

00:24:26 ◼   ► It's important that you try to make sure that you're not causing undue discrimination,

00:24:32 ◼   ► or unexpected discrimination to happen in layers like that.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And then, in a slightly other way, I'm also concerned about the problem of the rich get

00:24:42 ◼   ► richer.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And so, whenever I implement any kind of top list, or ranking, or recommendations, I try

00:24:50 ◼   ► to make it so that I more heavily weight newcomers and less popular things in those rankings.

00:24:57 ◼   ► So, if you see in the overcast, if you go to the most recommended section and scroll

00:25:02 ◼   ► down and you see the podcast you might like, you won't see things in there like This American

00:25:07 ◼   ► Life, because it's already too popular.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And I don't need to be giving them...

00:25:11 ◼   ► So, I look at what podcast that people subscribe to that are like yours, but that aren't so

00:25:15 ◼   ► popular and that you might not have seen, or that might be new.

00:25:18 ◼   ► So, anything I can do like that to try to avoid the rich get richer problem, I tend

00:25:23 ◼   ► to want to do.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think you covered a bunch of the interesting there.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And I think, A, there's the first thing that I love this question in so far as it's the

00:25:32 ◼   ► acknowledgement that our work is a part of some of these challenges that we face as a

00:25:39 ◼   ► society.

00:25:41 ◼   ► As small and seemingly insignificant as the work that small indie developers do, it's

00:25:48 ◼   ► like we are part of this, and we can be part of a problem or part of a solution.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I think it's good to just feel that sense of responsibility and not necessarily just

00:25:57 ◼   ► take it for granted and be like, "Oh, that's something that Google and Facebook need to

00:26:02 ◼   ► worry about because they're the big players."

00:26:03 ◼   ► It's like, well, that's not a particularly constructive way to improve things and to

00:26:07 ◼   ► make the world better.

00:26:09 ◼   ► We can all do something, and even if we make it better for a smaller group of people, well,

00:26:13 ◼   ► we've still made it better.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But I think, other than the ones that you covered, I think something that comes to mind

00:26:20 ◼   ► for me is the understanding that as we get better at making applications, it's very easy,

00:26:29 ◼   ► I think, to...

00:26:34 ◼   ► We can optimize to a degree that we can create bad habits in our users.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And this is one of those tricky topics, I think, because people ultimately have agency.

00:26:43 ◼   ► They can choose to be on their phone all the time, and they can choose not to be on their

00:26:45 ◼   ► phone all the time.

00:26:46 ◼   ► That's a choice that they're making.

00:26:49 ◼   ► But I think as app developers, it's always important to think that if we make a change

00:26:53 ◼   ► that increases, say, engagement in our application, that it's superficially...

00:26:59 ◼   ► We can optimize and drive toward that as much as we can, and that is superficially, from

00:27:04 ◼   ► our perspective, a positive thing.

00:27:06 ◼   ► But I think it's always important to keep in the back of your mind, "What is this doing

00:27:10 ◼   ► on my user side?

00:27:12 ◼   ► Is it a...

00:27:13 ◼   ► If a user is using my app 50 times a day, wow, that's great, they're super engaged,

00:27:19 ◼   ► they think it's awesome.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Well, what does that mean?

00:27:22 ◼   ► What does that actually look like in their life?"

00:27:24 ◼   ► And making sure that we're trying to make apps that improve and enrich our users' life,

00:27:31 ◼   ► rather than just taking advantage of addictive tendencies in our users to make them want

00:27:37 ◼   ► to be on our app all the time.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Those are things that I think that kind of social responsibility...

00:27:42 ◼   ► And you can get into a lot of this thing with free-to-play games, and if you're trying to

00:27:45 ◼   ► specifically create actual physical addiction or psychological addiction in people, you

00:27:52 ◼   ► can go way down that road.

00:27:53 ◼   ► But I think at any level, it's understanding that there's this tension that we're always

00:27:58 ◼   ► gonna have between wanting to optimize what's good for us and optimize what's good for our

00:28:04 ◼   ► customer.

00:28:05 ◼   ► And finding that balance between those two things, I think, is an important place to

00:28:09 ◼   ► be, or at the very least to keep in the back of our mind.

00:28:13 ◼   ► That there are negative effects for people using software all the time that we should

00:28:19 ◼   ► probably just keep in the back of our mind and be aware of and be thoughtful if we're

00:28:24 ◼   ► driving too hard on trying to improve engagement, for example.

00:28:28 ◼   ► That may actually have negative effects on society at large that we are in some ways

00:28:34 ◼   ► responsible for.

00:28:35 ◼   ► All right, that concludes our Q&A series here.

00:28:39 ◼   ► We might do Q&A at some point in the future, but not next week.

00:28:43 ◼   ► So we're gonna return back to regular topics starting next week.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Thank you for everybody who submitted questions.

00:28:48 ◼   ► These have been wonderful.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I think we've explored some really cool, interesting things.

00:28:52 ◼   ► And yeah, thanks.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Thanks for listening.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Thanks for writing in.

00:28:55 ◼   ► And we will talk to you next week.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Bye.

00:28:56 ◼   ► week. Bye.