Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► - We should do the intro.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I suppose that's the question.

00:00:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:04 ◼   ► - I guess we didn't work all that out yet.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Didn't work that out, it's fine, it's all right.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - All right, so this is episode one of Under the Radar.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - And I'm David Smith.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - You may know our other podcasts.

00:00:15 ◼   ► David has been doing Developing Perspective for many years.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I did Build and Analyze first,

00:00:21 ◼   ► now I do the Accidental Tech podcast and Top Four.

00:00:24 ◼   ► And this is gonna be a show about development, basically.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's kind of like the sequel, the combination of build and analyze with developing perspective.

00:00:36 ◼   ► And in the spirit of developing perspective, never being longer than 15 minutes, David,

00:00:40 ◼   ► how long is this show going to be?

00:00:41 ◼   ► Never longer than 30 minutes.

00:00:43 ◼   ► So let's get started.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Let's get started.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I think the place to start seems, right now, we're recording just after the Apple TV app

00:00:50 ◼   ► store launched.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And it went online I think on last Friday and it's had the usual fanfare and the things

00:00:59 ◼   ► that go on with that.

00:01:00 ◼   ► But neither one of us launched anything on day one.

00:01:04 ◼   ► And for myself, it's the first Apple product I've ever not been in the store on day one

00:01:08 ◼   ► for, which is interesting.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm the same way, I think.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I mean, I was there for the watch and the Apple TV and I even got one of the early access

00:01:20 ◼   ► developer units because I thought I might use it and it just literally sat on my desk

00:01:25 ◼   ► and I was so busy doing other things because I was working on Overcast and trying to get

00:01:31 ◼   ► the 2.0 update out the door. And that kind of precluded this because if I'm going to

00:01:35 ◼   ► make an Apple TV app it has to be all about streaming because local storage with the Apple

00:01:39 ◼   ► TV is so limited and I didn't have the streaming engine done yet. So I worked on the iPhone

00:01:45 ◼   ► and I've been doing bug fixes on that since,

00:01:48 ◼   ► and I have literally not even opened

00:01:51 ◼   ► like an Xcode project with the TV.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I haven't even seen the TV simulator.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I have not written a single line of TV code yet.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Have you?

00:02:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got a developer kit as well,

00:02:02 ◼   ► and I wrote a version of Pod Wrangler, my podcast client,

00:02:07 ◼   ► for the Apple TV, and it works, and it plays.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I didn't spend the time and energy

00:02:14 ◼   ► get it ready for day one, though.

00:02:16 ◼   ► But it's an interesting developer platform because it is essentially iOS, just minus

00:02:21 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff.

00:02:23 ◼   ► There's a couple of new things, but essentially it's just iOS UI kits with a different input

00:02:28 ◼   ► mechanism rather than obviously being touch-based.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's remote control-based.

00:02:32 ◼   ► But I used it, and it's fine and easy.

00:02:36 ◼   ► The thing that ultimately I think slowed me down, though, is I just became...

00:02:41 ◼   ► There's just so much else to do and so many other things that, like, if I'm trying to

00:02:46 ◼   ► be on every Apple platform as a one-man shop, it's essentially impossible now.

00:02:51 ◼   ► And so I looked at the Apple TV and I'm like, "It's gonna be a long time before there's

00:02:53 ◼   ► a big market there."

00:02:56 ◼   ► And so I just didn't prioritize it.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and, you know, and I feel like, you know, we're coming at this from two different

00:03:02 ◼   ► viewpoints here.

00:03:03 ◼   ► You know, I tend to work on a very small, I tend to work on usually one app for a span

00:03:08 ◼   ► of years.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I very rarely have additional apps.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I'm not very good at splitting my time

00:03:13 ◼   ► between multiple apps.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I pretty much just do one thing,

00:03:16 ◼   ► and I try to make that one app big and complicated

00:03:19 ◼   ► and appeal to a ton of people in order to keep it going.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Whereas the background you come from is,

00:03:26 ◼   ► I think, much more interesting, honestly,

00:03:28 ◼   ► because when people, and this is one of the reasons

00:03:31 ◼   ► I wanted to do the show with you,

00:03:32 ◼   ► and one of the reasons I wanted to call it Under the Radar,

00:03:35 ◼   ► because when people do,

00:03:37 ◼   ► when people think about Apple developers,

00:03:39 ◼   ► tend to think about the handful of well-known ones who make mass consumer apps that you

00:03:46 ◼   ► may have heard of. So apps like Tweetbot or Net News Wire or the apps from Panic that

00:03:51 ◼   ► a lot of developers have heard of or use or are wowed by. And there's this massive number

00:03:56 ◼   ► of developers who we don't usually hear about in this circle of Apple enthusiasts and tech

00:04:03 ◼   ► and stuff, and I think you are a very, very good example

00:04:07 ◼   ► of this massive market, and I think you do it better

00:04:11 ◼   ► than most people would do it.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And so what you do is not like the high profile,

00:04:18 ◼   ► you know, high attention, Mac, blogger,

00:04:23 ◼   ► long term ecosystem kind of thing.

00:04:27 ◼   ► You do something way more pragmatic.

00:04:29 ◼   ► And so can you maybe just go into that briefly

00:04:33 ◼   ► for anyone who doesn't know you yet,

00:04:35 ◼   ► who's listening to this for some reason.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Can you go into what exactly you do and how you got there?

00:04:40 ◼   ► - So I've been an iOS developer essentially

00:04:44 ◼   ► since the App Store started, about seven and a bit years ago.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I didn't quite make the day one of the App Store,

00:04:50 ◼   ► mostly because of business approval stuff.

00:04:54 ◼   ► But I've been developing ever since then.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And since then, I've launched,

00:04:58 ◼   ► I think I recently worked this out,

00:05:00 ◼   ► something like 52 unique app concepts in the last seven years.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So it works out to be about one every two months or so.

00:05:08 ◼   ► It hasn't been exactly that even of a pace, but that's roughly the average.

00:05:13 ◼   ► But I've been making a good, steady, comfortable living from it for about six and a half of

00:05:19 ◼   ► those seven years.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And so I have lots of different products in a lot of different areas.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I tend to, like at this point, I have probably five or six

00:05:29 ◼   ► that are like my main income makers,

00:05:32 ◼   ► and they each, the biggest one of them

00:05:34 ◼   ► only makes up a third of my income.

00:05:36 ◼   ► So it's a very diversified type of thing.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And that's my, the approach that I found

00:05:40 ◼   ► that works well for me is to make lots of small bets

00:05:45 ◼   ► and see which one pays off in the store

00:05:48 ◼   ► rather than trying to take the approach.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Like with Overcast, if I remember right,

00:05:51 ◼   ► it's like you spend 18 months working on it.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:05:55 ◼   ► as like a big major focus.

00:05:56 ◼   ► And like for me, the longest I've ever spent

00:05:58 ◼   ► on a product before I launched it is probably four weeks

00:06:02 ◼   ► or something along those lines.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And so it's a very different kind of a focus

00:06:06 ◼   ► where I'll put something together,

00:06:07 ◼   ► I'll put it out in the store,

00:06:07 ◼   ► I try and make it like good in quality

00:06:10 ◼   ► but very straightforward and see what happens.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And that approach means that I end up now

00:06:17 ◼   ► with lots of different products,

00:06:19 ◼   ► doing a lot of different things.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And as it's, you know, I have the benefit of diversity

00:06:24 ◼   ► in terms of stability, but the difficulty in terms

00:06:27 ◼   ► of keeping up with things when I have such a wide

00:06:29 ◼   ► sort of portfolio to manage.

00:06:32 ◼   ► - And one thing I like about the way you work as well

00:06:36 ◼   ► is that you challenge assumptions that many of us

00:06:41 ◼   ► in the other half of this community don't challenge.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Like you will, you make your income in part from IAD.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I don't know anybody else.

00:06:51 ◼   ► I don't think I have any other developer friends

00:06:53 ◼   ► who have a meaningful presence using iAds, and you do.

00:06:57 ◼   ► And you will challenge assumptions based on things

00:07:00 ◼   ► like monetization, support, app concepts, design,

00:07:05 ◼   ► all sorts of stuff that you challenge.

00:07:07 ◼   ► And I think you benefit from that,

00:07:09 ◼   ► because while everyone else is locked into this one way

00:07:14 ◼   ► of thinking and trying to shape the app store into,

00:07:19 ◼   ► like trying to educate consumers into the way

00:07:22 ◼   ► they think the App Store should be,

00:07:24 ◼   ► you are out there actually adapting and thriving

00:07:28 ◼   ► in what the App Store actually is.

00:07:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think I try and think of,

00:07:33 ◼   ► when I look at the App Store,

00:07:34 ◼   ► I guess at business in general,

00:07:36 ◼   ► I can't change my customers.

00:07:40 ◼   ► All I can do is react to them, for the most part.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Using things like people who should want to pay for software

00:07:49 ◼   ► as a statement, it doesn't make any sense to me.

00:07:52 ◼   ► People are going to want to do whatever they want to do.

00:07:55 ◼   ► My job as a developer, as a businessman,

00:07:56 ◼   ► is to look at the market that I wanna work in

00:08:00 ◼   ► and find ways to adapt my business to it.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And I don't just use IAD or advertising.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I make the majority of my income from advertising in IAD.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And that's in some ways been far more stable

00:08:13 ◼   ► than any of the more paid or subscription or patronage

00:08:16 ◼   ► or all the other things that I have.

00:08:18 ◼   ► The most stable income I get is from advertising.

00:08:21 ◼   ► And I love it because advertising's great because it aligns developer and customer goals.

00:08:28 ◼   ► My goal is to get them using the app as much as I can because the more they use it, the

00:08:32 ◼   ► more advertising income I make.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And if they're using the app a lot, that means they like it.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And so for me, it was a no-brainer to get started, but it definitely is, I know what

00:08:39 ◼   ► you mean.

00:08:40 ◼   ► It's a bit counter to, I think, a lot of the...

00:08:43 ◼   ► It's not necessarily pretentiousness, but there's definitely that air of you want to

00:08:50 ◼   ► to sell an Apple-like product in the App Store, but that doesn't necessarily work because

00:08:56 ◼   ► Apple doesn't even sell Apple-like products in the App Store.

00:09:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think this was all rooted in the community of nice, craft, Mac-independent

00:09:10 ◼   ► developers that has existed for quite some time on the Mac before iOS and everything

00:09:14 ◼   ► became really so big. People like Panic or Delicious Monster, people like that, Brent

00:09:20 ◼   ► Simmons, Dave Watanabe, there's this crowd of like kind of old school, the old guard

00:09:25 ◼   ► who have been around for a while, you know Omni Group is a big one, who have been very

00:09:28 ◼   ► successful at this and many of them continue to be very successful at this, but there was

00:09:33 ◼   ► this idea for so long that many people still hold that that would translate into iOS and

00:09:39 ◼   ► that also any developer who would be able to program iOS apps would kind of think that

00:09:45 ◼   ► that they deserved that same level of success

00:09:48 ◼   ► if they either just got there at all

00:09:51 ◼   ► or if they put a lot of work into something.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And there's many problems with this

00:09:56 ◼   ► that are way too long to discuss in a 30-minute podcast,

00:09:59 ◼   ► one of which is that the amount of work

00:10:02 ◼   ► you put into something does not correlate

00:10:03 ◼   ► to the value that the market will place on it

00:10:05 ◼   ► or the amount of money you can make from it.

00:10:08 ◼   ► But I think it's productive to challenge this notion

00:10:12 ◼   ► of like, well, you know, is this really the way

00:10:15 ◼   ► the world should work?

00:10:16 ◼   ► And regardless of whether I think it should work this way,

00:10:20 ◼   ► if this is not the way the world works,

00:10:22 ◼   ► like in practice, what can I do as a developer

00:10:26 ◼   ► to succeed in this market?

00:10:29 ◼   ► And sitting around waiting for the market to change

00:10:31 ◼   ► to benefit you is probably not very productive

00:10:34 ◼   ► 'cause that's just unlikely to happen.

00:10:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the interesting thing,

00:10:38 ◼   ► I was wondering what you think about this

00:10:40 ◼   ► 'cause I'm seeing the spread of your app career

00:10:44 ◼   ► in the App Store, like you're starting an Instapaper,

00:10:46 ◼   ► which was paid up front $10, if I remember right?

00:10:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, the whole first year it was 10 bucks,

00:10:50 ◼   ► and I dropped it to five, yeah.

00:10:52 ◼   ► - And then it's like following the progression,

00:10:53 ◼   ► then I think your income started to shift in some ways

00:10:56 ◼   ► more to subscription and in-app purchase,

00:11:00 ◼   ► and then switching entirely to Overcast,

00:11:04 ◼   ► where it became, it was free with in-app purchase

00:11:07 ◼   ► for features, and then now it's entirely free

00:11:10 ◼   ► with like patronage support,

00:11:13 ◼   ► you've essentially followed the trajectory

00:11:17 ◼   ► of the App Store in that way, right?

00:11:19 ◼   ► You're starting with like the old school kind of,

00:11:23 ◼   ► well, it's premium software, I should charge a lot of money,

00:11:26 ◼   ► to it's still good software,

00:11:28 ◼   ► but the way you pay for it is completely different.

00:11:31 ◼   ► - Right, and most of that has again just been because

00:11:34 ◼   ► I am like, I'm not like thinking I'm like,

00:11:37 ◼   ► treading new ground and being an explorer.

00:11:40 ◼   ► no I'm usually coming to these changes late actually.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Like Instapaper, holding the price at $10

00:11:46 ◼   ► for the whole first year was a mistake.

00:11:48 ◼   ► When I dropped it to five, sales went up considerably.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And then later on it dropped to three I think,

00:11:53 ◼   ► I held it for a while, three or four.

00:11:54 ◼   ► And then sales were pretty good then,

00:11:57 ◼   ► I started experimenting and then shifting to subscription,

00:12:00 ◼   ► that ended up making way more money

00:12:03 ◼   ► than I thought it would and doing very well.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And then with Overcast coming out at free

00:12:08 ◼   ► with in-app purchase and now with patronage,

00:12:10 ◼   ► like those have all done better than I expected them to.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And this is all about just adapting to what the market is.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Many people blame the market on Apple

00:12:22 ◼   ► not implementing upgrade pricing

00:12:24 ◼   ► or the App Store not having good enough discovery or search.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And all of those things are valid complaints,

00:12:30 ◼   ► but they're not the biggest problem.

00:12:32 ◼   ► The biggest problem is there's just a huge oversupply

00:12:36 ◼   ► of developers and apps who are all trying to compete

00:12:39 ◼   ► for the same dollars and the same roles

00:12:41 ◼   ► and the same time and attention.

00:12:43 ◼   ► And so, you know, back in the olden days,

00:12:45 ◼   ► when you'd have like Panic and Omni selling Mac apps

00:12:48 ◼   ► for 50 bucks, that worked in part because of what they were

00:12:52 ◼   ► and what people use Macs for and who was buying Macs,

00:12:55 ◼   ► but also that worked in part because there just weren't

00:12:58 ◼   ► that many developers doing it.

00:12:59 ◼   ► If you would have had 10,000 developers trying to make

00:13:02 ◼   ► the same handful of nice consumer high profile Mac apps, you would have had the exact same

00:13:07 ◼   ► problem back then. It isn't that the market has gotten stupider or cheaper or anything

00:13:14 ◼   ► like that, it's that this is now the mass market of what developers do. It wasn't.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Back in 2006, most developers weren't working on Mac apps. Now, most developers are working

00:13:26 ◼   ► on iOS and web apps. I think the shift from web to iOS apps is really pretty significant.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And so if you think about it,

00:13:35 ◼   ► that's what so many developers are working on.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Of course there's gonna be a massive oversupply,

00:13:40 ◼   ► and of course there's gonna be tons of competition,

00:13:42 ◼   ► and a race to the bottom in pricing.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And that's not because Apple is doing something wrong.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Apple is not helping in certain ways,

00:13:50 ◼   ► but they're not the cause of this problem.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And again, pragmatically, it is useful to think of yourself,

00:13:56 ◼   ► not as somebody who all you need to do

00:13:59 ◼   ► is ship a nicely designed polished app

00:14:03 ◼   ► and money will start flowing in.

00:14:05 ◼   ► But as somebody who has to really fight,

00:14:08 ◼   ► like really work hard and fight hard and be lean

00:14:12 ◼   ► to try to attract any kind of attention

00:14:15 ◼   ► and any kind of money from what is a very crowded

00:14:18 ◼   ► hyper-competitive market.

00:14:20 ◼   ► - And I think it's also the biggest trap

00:14:22 ◼   ► that I know I struggled with for years

00:14:24 ◼   ► was this feeling of overvaluing my own work,

00:14:29 ◼   ► that if I spent a long time working on something,

00:14:31 ◼   ► that everybody should then sort of,

00:14:34 ◼   ► somehow intrinsically that makes it more valuable to people.

00:14:39 ◼   ► That they look at something and it's like,

00:14:40 ◼   ► whereas when people are gonna part with money

00:14:44 ◼   ► in whatever form that is,

00:14:46 ◼   ► or I guess part with something,

00:14:47 ◼   ► like their attention, their money,

00:14:49 ◼   ► they're exchanging something for that.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Like they need to feel like

00:14:53 ◼   ► they're getting something in return.

00:14:55 ◼   ► And the funny thing is, I think a lot of people think that software intrinsically should feel

00:15:03 ◼   ► valuable.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Like, as the classic, "Oh, they will spend $5 on a latte, but they won't spend $5 on

00:15:08 ◼   ► my app."

00:15:09 ◼   ► And it's like, well, maybe they actually want the latte more than they want your app.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Like your app may not actually be that valuable to them, and that's why they don't want to

00:15:17 ◼   ► spend that money on it.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Like you have to be able to wrap your arms around what they're actually buying with that.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Is it entertainment?

00:15:24 ◼   ► Is it productivity?

00:15:26 ◼   ► Is it amusement?

00:15:29 ◼   ► Are they exchanging goodwill for money?

00:15:31 ◼   ► I think when you start to get into, like I have an app with a tip jar in it, or you have

00:15:36 ◼   ► patronage in Overcast now, your extents there, you're providing a mechanism for people to

00:15:40 ◼   ► exchange goodwill for money is really what you're doing there.

00:15:44 ◼   ► And unless you're able to really wrap your arms around that, it's hard to really be okay

00:15:48 ◼   ► with saying, "That's okay.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I do advertising because for a lot of my apps, the app itself isn't particularly valuable

00:15:55 ◼   ► to the person.

00:15:56 ◼   ► It's useful, but it's not necessarily valuable in a way that for a lot of people, they would

00:16:01 ◼   ► want to put money into it directly.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Once they use it for a while and like it, they are willing to spend money, but they're

00:16:09 ◼   ► not spending money for the functionality.

00:16:11 ◼   ► They're spending money to be able to express the goodwill they have towards me for the

00:16:14 ◼   ► benefit I've given them, but that's different than it being intrinsically valuable to them.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Because when they started, they didn't see it as valuable.

00:16:22 ◼   ► They wanted it to be free.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And if it wasn't free, I don't think, like, my pedometer app, Pedometer++, wouldn't have

00:16:28 ◼   ► sold at all, or at least not in large quantity that it has to this point.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and even as a consumer of apps now, I find myself, even as somebody who has been

00:16:37 ◼   ► a proponent of paid apps for so long and sold one for so long, when I search for something

00:16:42 ◼   ► in the App Store and I see the search results list,

00:16:45 ◼   ► if I needed something that I'm not looking for

00:16:47 ◼   ► a specific name, where I'm just looking for

00:16:49 ◼   ► a specific type of app, so a pedometer,

00:16:51 ◼   ► a step count or whatever, if I searched the App Store

00:16:54 ◼   ► and the first 20 entries in the search are all free,

00:16:58 ◼   ► and entry number 21 is four bucks,

00:17:01 ◼   ► that one doesn't stand a chance.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And that's just the reality of how people

00:17:06 ◼   ► search the App Store, and it's very important,

00:17:09 ◼   ► as you said, to recognize that.

00:17:12 ◼   ► And to recognize that not every app

00:17:16 ◼   ► that every developer makes is going to be worth

00:17:20 ◼   ► a non-trivial number of customers

00:17:22 ◼   ► spending $2 on it or whatever.

00:17:24 ◼   ► I mean, I've seen so many apps that do things

00:17:27 ◼   ► that I don't really need.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So many apps that are things like coffee timers.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Well, if a coffee timer is really good and it's free,

00:17:36 ◼   ► I might use it, or I can just use the built-in timer

00:17:41 ◼   ► on the device that's not as good, but it works.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And I think a lot of people go through

00:17:45 ◼   ► a similar kind of thought process of,

00:17:47 ◼   ► you know, if free is such a different barrier

00:17:50 ◼   ► than any price, and if you're looking at an app,

00:17:54 ◼   ► the alternative isn't just every other app

00:17:56 ◼   ► that's in the store that does that same thing,

00:17:58 ◼   ► the alternative is also just non-consumption,

00:18:01 ◼   ► it's not buying the app at all, not buying any app,

00:18:04 ◼   ► and just going without that role in your life.

00:18:06 ◼   ► And as we get more and more and more apps in the store,

00:18:10 ◼   ► which is only, you know, that's been going on forever now,

00:18:13 ◼   ► as we get more and more apps in the store

00:18:15 ◼   ► and more and more demands for people's attention

00:18:16 ◼   ► and more alternatives that they can do,

00:18:19 ◼   ► like if they don't download your app,

00:18:20 ◼   ► they can go check Twitter for a few minutes or play a game.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And as we get more and more of those things,

00:18:26 ◼   ► more and more competition for everything,

00:18:28 ◼   ► non-consumption is also a big problem.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And so anything you can do to address non-consumption,

00:18:34 ◼   ► to address people just bailing out

00:18:35 ◼   ► and abandoning this search or this idea

00:18:37 ◼   ► they might have had that this thing they wanted to do,

00:18:39 ◼   ► And going free is a huge hit against that.

00:18:43 ◼   ► If you can remove that barrier of price up front,

00:18:46 ◼   ► then it's so much easier for people to say,

00:18:48 ◼   ► "You know what, yeah, I'll give it a try."

00:18:50 ◼   ► - And it's, I guess, and the reality is

00:18:52 ◼   ► that's how I think we've both been able to continue

00:18:56 ◼   ► in the App Store at this point.

00:18:57 ◼   ► I mean, we've been doing it for a long time.

00:18:59 ◼   ► 'Cause I, anecdotally, it seems like fewer and fewer

00:19:04 ◼   ► smaller or more independent companies

00:19:07 ◼   ► and where people are able to do it.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And I do think a lot of it is that it's a lack of pragmatism,

00:19:12 ◼   ► that a lack of just like, what is it gonna take

00:19:15 ◼   ► to make a living in this market?

00:19:17 ◼   ► And if you ultimately don't like the answer to that,

00:19:19 ◼   ► if you're in your mind, you only wanna sell software

00:19:22 ◼   ► in like a premium app store, it's like, okay,

00:19:24 ◼   ► well you might need to do something else then,

00:19:26 ◼   ► because that may not exist.

00:19:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you need to be in the right place

00:19:29 ◼   ► at the right time.

00:19:30 ◼   ► If you want that, you know, if you will not budge in that,

00:19:32 ◼   ► like so right now, so getting back for a second

00:19:34 ◼   ► to the Apple TV, which just came out now,

00:19:37 ◼   ► the Apple TV app store has almost nothing in it.

00:19:39 ◼   ► it is very, very sparse.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And if you are looking for something,

00:19:44 ◼   ► so I got this Apple TV, I plugged it in, set it up,

00:19:47 ◼   ► and I went right to the App Store to say,

00:19:49 ◼   ► "Hey, what can I get here?"

00:19:50 ◼   ► And I saw a couple of basics, you know,

00:19:52 ◼   ► Netflix, HBO Now, whatever, and then,

00:19:54 ◼   ► "Okay, let me try some games.

00:19:56 ◼   ► "I got this cool thing, I'm in the mood

00:19:57 ◼   ► "of trying new things, let me go to the App Store

00:19:59 ◼   ► "and try some games."

00:20:01 ◼   ► And I went and I spent, I don't know,

00:20:02 ◼   ► 10 bucks maybe total on a couple of games,

00:20:05 ◼   ► and I didn't even think about it,

00:20:07 ◼   ► because I'm in this buying mood,

00:20:08 ◼   ► because I just got this new device, it's brand new,

00:20:10 ◼   ► has me excited, and also there's hardly anything

00:20:13 ◼   ► there to buy.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And of the very small number of games that were there to buy

00:20:17 ◼   ► almost all of them I think were paid,

00:20:20 ◼   ► or at least many of them were.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So I had no problem spending that money

00:20:24 ◼   ► because of the context of this isn't a tremendous app store

00:20:28 ◼   ► filled with millions of apps, most of which are free.

00:20:31 ◼   ► This is a very, very small app store that, right now,

00:20:35 ◼   ► that has only very few apps on it.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And that's the reason I was able to charge 10 bucks

00:20:40 ◼   ► for Instapaper in 2008, but then I couldn't in 2009

00:20:43 ◼   ► 'cause the App Store was too full.

00:20:44 ◼   ► That's gonna happen with the Apple TV also.

00:20:47 ◼   ► If this thing takes off, if this succeeds,

00:20:49 ◼   ► and it looks like it's probably going to,

00:20:51 ◼   ► I mean it might take a few years before it has like

00:20:53 ◼   ► tons and tons of units out there,

00:20:55 ◼   ► but it's probably going to succeed.

00:20:57 ◼   ► And if that happens, or as that happens,

00:20:59 ◼   ► the App Store is gonna be way more crowded than it is now,

00:21:03 ◼   ► and it is going to get harder and harder to sell games

00:21:06 ◼   ► and apps for the Apple TV for money

00:21:08 ◼   ► once there is competition for that same role

00:21:11 ◼   ► in people's lives.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And so if you were gonna be the kind of person

00:21:15 ◼   ► who wanted to sell a premium app for money,

00:21:18 ◼   ► you just had a window to do that on the Apple TV.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Almost no one has taken up that opportunity.

00:21:23 ◼   ► But you just had that opportunity right now

00:21:26 ◼   ► and it won't come again on the Apple TV probably ever.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Like this product has now done that

00:21:31 ◼   ► and it probably won't come again.

00:21:33 ◼   ► And so you have to wait 'til the next big wave

00:21:35 ◼   ► and you have to be in one of those positions where

00:21:38 ◼   ► if you're not going to be the kind of person

00:21:42 ◼   ► who can thrive in an ultra competitive,

00:21:44 ◼   ► low priced environment like the web has pretty much

00:21:47 ◼   ► always been and like the iOS app store is now,

00:21:50 ◼   ► then you have to follow the trend and be early to things.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Be there on day one when new things happen.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Be able to figure out and guess which new things

00:21:59 ◼   ► will take off which is a hugely risky process

00:22:01 ◼   ► that you will often get wrong and it will often

00:22:03 ◼   ► go completely to waste.

00:22:05 ◼   ► and be there in those less competitive markets.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But then as soon as the market becomes more competitive,

00:22:10 ◼   ► you have to either adapt or leave.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think the difficulty honestly with Apple TV

00:22:14 ◼   ► and why I, well I think I agree that like the best time

00:22:16 ◼   ► to have sold big software would have been like

00:22:19 ◼   ► if being there on day one.

00:22:20 ◼   ► My suspicion is the narrowness of the window

00:22:23 ◼   ► where there's gonna have that kind of general rush

00:22:26 ◼   ► in people being okay with buying things

00:22:29 ◼   ► is narrow enough that I'm very skeptical

00:22:32 ◼   ► if it would actually be financially successful

00:22:35 ◼   ► for most people, that if they had spent a lot of time,

00:22:39 ◼   ► made a nice big premium game or something like that,

00:22:42 ◼   ► especially designed specifically for the Apple TV,

00:22:45 ◼   ► the window in which they were gonna be able to sell

00:22:48 ◼   ► into a kind of a premium group of people,

00:22:50 ◼   ► like people who obviously were excited enough

00:22:52 ◼   ► about the product to get it on day one,

00:22:54 ◼   ► they're very, they've just spent, in Apple terms,

00:22:58 ◼   ► a relatively small amount of money for it.

00:23:00 ◼   ► They're not nearly as expensive as a lot

00:23:03 ◼   ► other products that, you know, like an iPhone is $700 or something, whereas this is $100

00:23:07 ◼   ► and something, or $200.

00:23:09 ◼   ► And so that window is going to be very narrow.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And so if your app requires that you then have big sustained sales over the next few

00:23:21 ◼   ► months, my suspicion is that's going to be a losing proposition.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And so that's interesting.

00:23:28 ◼   ► And the Apple TV, I think, will be a nice,

00:23:32 ◼   ► sort of in many ways like the watch.

00:23:34 ◼   ► It's just an add-on to the main product that Apple sells,

00:23:38 ◼   ► like which is the iPhone.

00:23:39 ◼   ► It's like the iPad in many ways, the watch,

00:23:42 ◼   ► now the Apple TV.

00:23:43 ◼   ► These are all just add-ons to the iOS ecosystem

00:23:46 ◼   ► that exists for the iPhone.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think the value that you can get

00:23:53 ◼   ► out of being there, I think you make a very good point

00:23:55 ◼   ► about that window being fairly narrow.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I think how narrow it is depends on how easy it is to develop for it and how many people

00:24:03 ◼   ► realize how quickly they need to be developing for it or they want to be developing for it.

00:24:08 ◼   ► So with the iPhone, that was very, very quick, really, because the iPhone already had a massive

00:24:13 ◼   ► installed base.

00:24:14 ◼   ► There was tons of pent-up demand to develop for it and people knocked the doors down to

00:24:17 ◼   ► get there.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Most platforms don't work that way.

00:24:21 ◼   ► The watch, I think, has kind of fizzled out.

00:24:24 ◼   ► The watch, I think, is kind of at a standstill right now.

00:24:25 ◼   ► I don't know of any really interesting stuff

00:24:28 ◼   ► that's happened on the watch in the last month, say.

00:24:30 ◼   ► You know, it seems like not a lot is going on there,

00:24:33 ◼   ► and we'll talk about that in future episodes, I'm sure.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:24:36 ◼   ► - And the TV is now out, but it's starting

00:24:38 ◼   ► from an installed base of zero for a product

00:24:41 ◼   ► that people are excited about, but not so excited

00:24:43 ◼   ► that they're gonna go out and like,

00:24:45 ◼   ► raid all the stores and deplete all the stock on day one.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So it's gonna, that's gonna have a slower buildup.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And so if that buildup is slower,

00:24:52 ◼   ► also on the developer supply side,

00:24:53 ◼   ► where fewer developers are jumping in,

00:24:55 ◼   ► so soon, so quickly, then I think you do have

00:24:58 ◼   ► a wider window, like I would say the biggest sales day

00:25:02 ◼   ► for Apple TV apps this year is gonna be

00:25:03 ◼   ► the day after Christmas, and if you are there,

00:25:06 ◼   ► I think you can still sell a nice $10 game

00:25:09 ◼   ► the day after Christmas in big volumes this year,

00:25:12 ◼   ► but probably not next year.

00:25:14 ◼   ► - We'll see, yeah, I would say I'm more

00:25:17 ◼   ► on the skeptical side of that, but I think you're right

00:25:19 ◼   ► insofar as that's a reasonable, it's going to,

00:25:23 ◼   ► this next few months will be interesting for it.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And I think the Apple TV,

00:25:28 ◼   ► I will ultimately develop for it though,

00:25:30 ◼   ► and which is probably a good place to wrap up,

00:25:31 ◼   ► is to say, I expect to make apps for it,

00:25:34 ◼   ► mostly because having a nicely rich,

00:25:38 ◼   ► it's a checkbox that I can check

00:25:41 ◼   ► for some of my applications to say,

00:25:43 ◼   ► make them just that little bit more appealing to somebody.

00:25:46 ◼   ► If someone was on the fence about downloading my app,

00:25:48 ◼   ► and they're like, oh, it'll work for the Apple TV, awesome,

00:25:51 ◼   ► then it's like that little, little thing.

00:25:53 ◼   ► But it's not a priority for me insofar as I don't think

00:25:56 ◼   ► it's gonna ever be a primary driver for my business.

00:25:58 ◼   ► It's like same as the watch.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I make watch apps for a lot of my apps,

00:26:01 ◼   ► mostly just so that it's like,

00:26:02 ◼   ► if someone, for the narrow group of people,

00:26:04 ◼   ► for that's all they needed to go over the edge,

00:26:07 ◼   ► then it was worthwhile for me.

00:26:08 ◼   ► But in and of itself, it's probably not.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that could be a whole episode right there.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And I totally agree with everything you just said

00:26:15 ◼   ► that I'm also, I expect to launch Xcode for the first time

00:26:19 ◼   ► make an Apple TV app probably this week. I'd like to see how easy it is to get Overcast

00:26:24 ◼   ► to run on it. But again, it's like, it's kind of a value add, to use a business term, I'm

00:26:28 ◼   ► sorry. It's kind of that for Overcast on iOS in general rather than like, I don't expect

00:26:34 ◼   ► to make a lot of money on the Apple TV by itself. But anyway, we are running out of

00:26:37 ◼   ► time this week so we want to keep the show nice and short so people can listen to it

00:26:41 ◼   ► quickly and don't feel overloaded by it. So, let's wrap it up this week. David, thank you

00:26:46 ◼   ► I guess? I don't know. We've never done an ending before. We don't have a song. So what

00:26:50 ◼   ► are we going to do? Just stop?

00:26:52 ◼   ► >>

00:26:53 ◼   ► All right. Thanks for listening, whoever's listening to this. And hopefully we will see

00:26:57 ◼   ► you again for the next episode.

00:26:58 ◼   ► >>

00:26:58 ◼   ► Yep. See you under the radar.

00:27:00 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]