Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:04 ◼   ► news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:09 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number 72, and today

00:00:13 ◼   ► is Thursday, August 16th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's

00:00:18 ◼   ► get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► The first topic for today is what do you do when you make a mistake? And this is my three-step

00:00:24 ◼   ► process for when you encounter a mistake and how you deal with it. First, you identify

00:00:29 ◼   ► the mistake. In this case, Sean P. Walsh let me know on Twitter that the developing perspective

00:00:36 ◼   ► feed was kind of broken. And the interview I did with Bill Dutney that was posted yesterday

00:00:41 ◼   ► was not showing up for him or showing up incorrectly. So the first thing you do is identify and

00:00:45 ◼   ► thank whoever found it. So thank you, Sean. Two, fix and fix for the future. This is the

00:00:51 ◼   ► key thing. The second part of that is perhaps the most important part. Often, and this applies

00:00:56 ◼   ► universally to any kind of problem that's your fault.

00:00:59 ◼   ► There is a fix that you can do to fix it right now.

00:01:01 ◼   ► And then there's the fix you can do that will prevent that particular mistake

00:01:05 ◼   ► from happening in the future.

00:01:06 ◼   ► In this case, there was a unique ID problem in my feed.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And so the easy fix would just be to change the unique ID for Bill's post,

00:01:15 ◼   ► and it would just start working.

00:01:17 ◼   ► However, the fix in Fix for the Future is improve my generation of unique IDs

00:01:21 ◼   ► to make sure they're really unique.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And that's what I've done.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And the last thing you do is you apologize.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I'm sorry, everybody.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Hope you have got Bill's interview now.

00:01:30 ◼   ► If not, I highly recommend it if you got this.

00:01:32 ◼   ► But somehow, your podcasting software

00:01:35 ◼   ► didn't quite catch Bill's.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Definitely look it up.

00:01:37 ◼   ► It should just be there if you refresh now.

00:01:39 ◼   ► It's a really nice interview with Bill Dudeney,

00:01:41 ◼   ► who is just an all-around great guy and really good at-- we

00:01:44 ◼   ► had a good conversation talking about solving hard problems,

00:01:47 ◼   ► debugging tools, and a topic that I've heard a lot of you

00:01:50 ◼   ► ask me about, which is how to learn Objective-C

00:01:52 ◼   ► and kind of that process.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So we talked a bit about that.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Anyway, so that's my three-step process

00:01:57 ◼   ► for what happens when you make a mistake.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Identify, thank whoever did, fix, and fix for the future,

00:02:03 ◼   ► and then apologize.

00:02:04 ◼   ► So my bad.

00:02:06 ◼   ► All right, the two main topics we're going to talk about today.

00:02:09 ◼   ► One is designing icons and the process around designing icons.

00:02:14 ◼   ► And the second one is going to be about app acquisitions

00:02:16 ◼   ► and a little bit of the logistics around that.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And so the reason I'm talking about designing icons

00:02:21 ◼   ► is yesterday, or was it Tuesday?

00:02:24 ◼   ► This week, I launched a new version of my recipe book

00:02:28 ◼   ► with a brand new icon.

00:02:29 ◼   ► And it was designed by the Icon Factory.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I don't know exactly who at the Icon Factory,

00:02:33 ◼   ► even much of that really matters.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But the Icon Factory was the graphic design company

00:02:38 ◼   ► that I ended up going with.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And they did a fantastic job.

00:02:41 ◼   ► Highly recommend them.

00:02:42 ◼   ► If you are in the market for an icon,

00:02:44 ◼   ► definitely contact the Icon Factory.

00:02:46 ◼   ► They do great work.

00:02:47 ◼   ► They've been doing great work forever.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And can't say enough about them.

00:02:50 ◼   ► The process went as expected, on time, on budget,

00:02:54 ◼   ► all that kind of stuff.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But more than necessarily I want to talk about the design

00:02:59 ◼   ► of this particular icon, I want to talk about the process that

00:03:04 ◼   ► is likely that you'll go through with any designer,

00:03:06 ◼   ► with any graphic designer, whenever

00:03:07 ◼   ► you're coming up with a concept for either a new app

00:03:11 ◼   ► or updating an existing app.

00:03:13 ◼   ► And so in this case, basically the process

00:03:16 ◼   ► seems to work through maybe about a five-step process.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And I'll kind of walk through them in step.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So first, there's kind of the concept phase.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And you can either do this with your designer,

00:03:25 ◼   ► with your team, just by yourself.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And really, the goal of this is to try and come up

00:03:31 ◼   ► with a concept of what you want the app to look like,

00:03:33 ◼   ► what you want it to vaguely be in terms of graphical elements,

00:03:37 ◼   ► in terms of colors.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Often what you're going to want to be doing here

00:03:41 ◼   ► is looking at competitors' apps, both for the pros and the cons.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And so to some degree, it's like if you're

00:03:49 ◼   ► trying to do something that fits in to an existing thing

00:03:52 ◼   ► and has good recognizability, that's

00:03:54 ◼   ► good in terms of making it consistent

00:03:57 ◼   ► with your competitors.

00:03:58 ◼   ► There's also sometimes cases where

00:03:59 ◼   ► you're going to want to do the opposite of what

00:04:01 ◼   ► your competitors are doing, either in color or content

00:04:03 ◼   ► to differentiate yourself.

00:04:05 ◼   ► So as an example of that, say maybe you're

00:04:07 ◼   ► making a Twitter application.

00:04:08 ◼   ► There's a good chance you may want to have that have a bird

00:04:11 ◼   ► as some part of the icon.

00:04:13 ◼   ► While that's a little bit cliche at this point,

00:04:15 ◼   ► it really helps people sort of recognize what it is,

00:04:18 ◼   ► And they've kind of grown to expect that.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And it helps users down the road, especially,

00:04:23 ◼   ► when they're looking for their Twitter application

00:04:25 ◼   ► on their phone, on their Mac, they see a bird,

00:04:28 ◼   ► they think of Twitter.

00:04:29 ◼   ► That's just the nature of that branding.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And so being consistent with that is probably helpful.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Now, at the same time, you don't want

00:04:35 ◼   ► to get too carried away with that

00:04:36 ◼   ► and be sort of looking just like someone else.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Now, you're sort of-- you're starting to get into plagiarism.

00:04:42 ◼   ► You're starting to not have differentiation.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So but you're trying to find that good fit for what concept--

00:04:47 ◼   ► does this icon represent your application?

00:04:50 ◼   ► And I think also, I just think to keep in mind,

00:04:52 ◼   ► is when coming up with a concept of an application,

00:04:54 ◼   ► you often want to make sure that it matches logically

00:04:57 ◼   ► the overall feel of your application.

00:05:01 ◼   ► So for example, in my recipe book,

00:05:03 ◼   ► this is an application whose UI paradigm

00:05:06 ◼   ► is based around a cutting board with elements sliding along

00:05:09 ◼   ► on top of it.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And so for my icon, the icon is based on a cutting board.

00:05:16 ◼   ► It's a wooden background designed with a 3D effect

00:05:19 ◼   ► to make it look like a cutting board with elements laid on top.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And for me, I found that to be pretty good in terms

00:05:25 ◼   ► of being consistent, that you see that,

00:05:28 ◼   ► and it makes sense in the application.

00:05:30 ◼   ► If I'd gone with something that's a bit more abstract,

00:05:34 ◼   ► for example, that may not really fit.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Whereas when you look at something like audiobooks,

00:05:38 ◼   ► there's another one of my applications

00:05:40 ◼   ► where the It's UI is almost entirely native.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And by native, I mean it's just using standard Apple

00:05:44 ◼   ► controls for the most part with a few tweaks and adjustments.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So for that, I have a bit more latitude

00:05:49 ◼   ► in terms of how I actually design it,

00:05:52 ◼   ► because the one is very-- if your application has

00:05:55 ◼   ► a very strong design baggage to it,

00:05:59 ◼   ► you'll have to match that throughout the application,

00:06:02 ◼   ► or throughout your icon as well, to make them consistent.

00:06:05 ◼   ► If you have a fairly generic UI for your application,

00:06:08 ◼   ► you probably have a bit more latitude, I'd say,

00:06:11 ◼   ► in terms of the actual concept.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And then as you're working with a designer,

00:06:15 ◼   ► the process from here gets fairly straightforward.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Once you have a concept, you'll communicate that to them

00:06:20 ◼   ► in various ways-- in words, in pictures, in just sketches.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And then you typically give it to a designer,

00:06:25 ◼   ► and they'll do wire frames.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And wire frames are sketches, depending

00:06:28 ◼   ► on how you're talking to.

00:06:30 ◼   ► But these are just simple line drawings

00:06:31 ◼   ► showing the overall structure of the icon,

00:06:34 ◼   ► how it will vaguely look.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And often this is where they'll throw out

00:06:37 ◼   ► a lot of different concepts and ideas.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So they'll say, here's--

00:06:41 ◼   ► I understand you want a cutting board with some kitchen utensils on it.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Well, here's a couple of examples of what that would look like.

00:06:47 ◼   ► A lot of what this is trying to do is take it from a concept into an actual thing that you can talk about

00:06:53 ◼   ► and be able to say, "I like this, but not that. I like that, but not this."

00:06:58 ◼   ► And that's often really difficult to do in words, so by putting it into sort of these rough wire frames,

00:07:03 ◼   ► that sort of really helps put that together.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Once you kind of narrow in on a topic from there, then you'll move on to kind of, okay, rough mock-ups.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And these are sort of, at least from my experience,

00:07:13 ◼   ► this is where the designer kind of shifts from pen and paper

00:07:16 ◼   ► into something like Photoshop or Illustrator

00:07:18 ◼   ► or whatever they're actually going to make it in.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And these are kind of-- it's almost

00:07:24 ◼   ► like if you've seen a lot of 3D or 3D rendering and things,

00:07:27 ◼   ► this is where you take the structure

00:07:30 ◼   ► and you build it in the system and it

00:07:31 ◼   ► looks like whatever it's supposed to look like.

00:07:33 ◼   ► It's like, say you imagine it's Toy Story.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It's Woody.

00:07:36 ◼   ► You'll have a person with a hat and all that.

00:07:39 ◼   ► But there's no real color or richness or texture to it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► It's just a structure.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And at this point, you're proofing sizes, layout,

00:07:48 ◼   ► those kinds of things.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And once you settle on that, they'll

00:07:51 ◼   ► often then move to what I used to call a colored mockup.

00:07:55 ◼   ► And this is where you're getting close to what the actual final

00:07:57 ◼   ► thing will look like.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And so it's that same concept or implementation

00:08:02 ◼   ► that was in the rough mockup phase,

00:08:04 ◼   ► but it now has richness and texture and color

00:08:07 ◼   ► and is getting very close to what the final product will

00:08:09 ◼   ► look like.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And at each step in this process,

00:08:12 ◼   ► the designer is typically saying, what do you like?

00:08:14 ◼   ► What don't you like?

00:08:15 ◼   ► What should I change?

00:08:16 ◼   ► And the goal really, as a developer in this process,

00:08:19 ◼   ► is to try and make changes as early as you can.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Identify problems, identify things that you're not

00:08:24 ◼   ► going to want to do, things that won't work,

00:08:27 ◼   ► as early as you can.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Because the more you are invested

00:08:31 ◼   ► into the process down the road, the harder

00:08:33 ◼   ► it is for your designer to make changes,

00:08:35 ◼   ► or at least the more expensive it's going to be for your designer

00:08:37 ◼   ► make changes because they essentially

00:08:39 ◼   ► have to start all over again.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And so be very careful of that.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And also it's something you want to be thinking of in terms

00:08:47 ◼   ► of with your designer about the timeline, costing, et cetera,

00:08:51 ◼   ► for your application.

00:08:52 ◼   ► This icon is you want to make sure

00:08:54 ◼   ► that you have some understanding of how many iterations you

00:08:57 ◼   ► can do at each step, how long you can take.

00:08:59 ◼   ► If you get all the way to the end, you're like, actually,

00:09:02 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:09:03 ◼   ► What do you do?

00:09:03 ◼   ► Because obviously they've spent a lot of time and work,

00:09:05 ◼   ► and so you don't necessarily-- it's not really fair

00:09:07 ◼   ► to be like, OK, well, let's start again,

00:09:09 ◼   ► and that doesn't count.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And then once you get to this phase,

00:09:14 ◼   ► hopefully you like what you see, you know what

00:09:16 ◼   ► it's going to look like.

00:09:17 ◼   ► And then they'll typically start doing finals.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And there's a variety of different formats,

00:09:22 ◼   ► and especially for something like an app icon,

00:09:24 ◼   ► because the app icon is going to be rendered

00:09:26 ◼   ► into a variety of different sizes.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I think right now in iOS, it goes from 1024 is the biggest

00:09:33 ◼   ► down to-- I think it's 40 pixels.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I'm not sure though, it's in that ballpark.

00:09:38 ◼   ► It's a pretty small version of the icon.

00:09:41 ◼   ► So what your designer is going to do is render the icon at

00:09:44 ◼   ► those images, making adjustments as needed.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Because obviously if you have a very rich and detailed

00:09:48 ◼   ► version at 1024 by 1024 pixels, if you squeeze that

00:09:52 ◼   ► down to 40 by 40, you're going to be losing a lot.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And so often your designer will just simplify elements or

00:09:57 ◼   ► throw things out or those kinds of things to make it

00:09:59 ◼   ► work at the small stage.

00:10:02 ◼   ► And if everything looks good, you say ship it,

00:10:03 ◼   ► and off you go.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And so that's kind of the process that I went through with my recipe book,

00:10:09 ◼   ► with the Icon Factory.

00:10:10 ◼   ► It went basically in that process.

00:10:11 ◼   ► We had a few mistakes along the way.

00:10:13 ◼   ► I ended up changing my mind about my recipe book.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Luckily, we caught that early enough in the process

00:10:19 ◼   ► that I sort of-- in the early wire framing rough mock-ups phase.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So we went back, and it wasn't a huge deal for the designers,

00:10:25 ◼   ► because they hadn't really done the coloring, or the richness,

00:10:27 ◼   ► or the multi-size stuff yet.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So we caught it pretty early.

00:10:30 ◼   ► But overall, the process went great.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Hopefully, I've had a lot of good responses so far from my users

00:10:35 ◼   ► that like the icon, and what it was replacing

00:10:37 ◼   ► was something that I think I did with ClipArt or something

00:10:40 ◼   ► back when the app first launched, which is kind of awful.

00:10:43 ◼   ► So I'm glad it actually has something designed and proper

00:10:45 ◼   ► in there now.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And OK, so that's how you design an icon.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Again, I highly recommend the Icon Factory.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Other people I've heard are really good are Pacific Helm.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I've heard they're really nice.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And there's a lot of freelance developers.

00:10:56 ◼   ► If you go in Dribbble, you can see tons and tons

00:10:58 ◼   ► of freelance designers who will make great icons for your apps.

00:11:03 ◼   ► It's for the last and the third and final topic for today.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about app acquisitions.

00:11:09 ◼   ► This is also actually relevant to me.

00:11:10 ◼   ► One of my apps was recently acquired.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I'm not going to talk about the details of that yet.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It's not yet public.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Nothing major, nothing dramatic.

00:11:18 ◼   ► It's one of my more minor apps, at least in terms

00:11:20 ◼   ► of from a business perspective for me.

00:11:22 ◼   ► It was acquired by someone else.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And I thought it would be interesting to talk

00:11:26 ◼   ► about the process of how that works

00:11:28 ◼   ► and the rules that Apple establishes for the App Store.

00:11:31 ◼   ► So really, if someone wants to acquire your app, which

00:11:34 ◼   ► is for the concept what we're going to talk about is someone's

00:11:36 ◼   ► going to take financial ownership and responsibility

00:11:38 ◼   ► for the application, there's really

00:11:40 ◼   ► three ways they can do that.

00:11:42 ◼   ► They can do what you call, as you could call, a full buy,

00:11:44 ◼   ► which is where they're not really buying your application.

00:11:47 ◼   ► They're buying you and your company.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And not necessarily, I guess, you

00:11:51 ◼   ► is probably a negotiable part.

00:11:52 ◼   ► But they're buying the company that owns the application.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And so a great example of this was

00:11:56 ◼   ► Tweedy, where Twitter bought 8bits, as best I understand,

00:12:00 ◼   ► which was Lauren Brikter's company.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And they took over his developer account.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And nothing really changed in terms

00:12:07 ◼   ► of from a user's perspective for a lot of that.

00:12:09 ◼   ► The application just sort of kept running

00:12:12 ◼   ► and was rebranded.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And they took over the whole account.

00:12:15 ◼   ► That works only really well if the person

00:12:18 ◼   ► doing the acquisition wants to buy your entire portfolio.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Or if you have one app that's easy,

00:12:23 ◼   ► they just want to buy that app.

00:12:24 ◼   ► But the problem is they're also taking control

00:12:28 ◼   ► of all the other apps, all the other parts.

00:12:30 ◼   ► So for me, that would be tricky if someone, for example,

00:12:32 ◼   ► wanted to buy my recipe book.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I also have audio books.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And so what would you do in terms of-- if they bought

00:12:37 ◼   ► the whole thing, they're buying both parts,

00:12:39 ◼   ► which may not necessarily make sense for the person doing

00:12:42 ◼   ► the acquisition.

00:12:43 ◼   ► So that's one way to do it.

00:12:45 ◼   ► The second way-- and this is the way that, unfortunately, it

00:12:47 ◼   ► tends to happen most often in the App Store--

00:12:50 ◼   ► is that you essentially have to end of life your old app

00:12:53 ◼   ► and resubmit it under their developer account.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So it's the same app just moved over.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And the reason you have to do that is Apple currently does not allow apps to be transferred

00:13:02 ◼   ► from one developer account to the other.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Specifically, if you look in the iTunes Connect FAQ, they say, "No, you can't transfer an

00:13:09 ◼   ► app to another developer account on iTunes Connect.

00:13:12 ◼   ► You can add that app to another account, remove the app from your current account, and upload

00:13:15 ◼   ► it as a new app to iTunes Connect."

00:13:18 ◼   ► And that's direct out of Apple's documentation for "Is it possible?

00:13:23 ◼   ► No."

00:13:24 ◼   ► Which is a little awkward.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I'm sure there's good reasons for them to do it.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I really wish they made this possible.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It doesn't happen enough that I feel

00:13:30 ◼   ► like it would be overly burdensome for Apple

00:13:32 ◼   ► to allow them to just change an app from one developer account

00:13:36 ◼   ► to the other.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Ultimately, my guess is really it's just

00:13:38 ◼   ► there's one number in a database somewhere that

00:13:42 ◼   ► changes from this developer to that developer.

00:13:45 ◼   ► But for whatever reason, Apple doesn't do that.

00:13:47 ◼   ► So if you want to do a typical transfer,

00:13:49 ◼   ► you have to essentially end of life one of your apps

00:13:52 ◼   ► and submit it to the other one.

00:13:53 ◼   ► This is really awkward for a user

00:13:54 ◼   ► Because if it's a paid app, they would have to then repurchase it in order

00:13:59 ◼   ► to get future updates and things.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So often you'd need to do it with a major update or something that

00:14:05 ◼   ► would be a logical break anyway.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So if you were going from a version 2 to version 3,

00:14:09 ◼   ► that would be an opportunity to do it.

00:14:12 ◼   ► But otherwise, it's always a little tricky.

00:14:14 ◼   ► But that's kind of what you're stuck with.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And then the last way to do it is basically

00:14:17 ◼   ► that you would continue to manage the app,

00:14:20 ◼   ► but someone else owns it within your store, which is kind of awkward

00:14:23 ◼   ► but can work, where it's still being sold under your name,

00:14:26 ◼   ► but someone else is responsible for the money that they get,

00:14:30 ◼   ► as well as the updates being done to it.

00:14:32 ◼   ► It sort of works.

00:14:33 ◼   ► But basically what you end up doing,

00:14:34 ◼   ► if someone wants to acquire your app,

00:14:36 ◼   ► is you're going to pull your app from the store,

00:14:38 ◼   ► and they're going to resubmit it under their account.

00:14:40 ◼   ► If that doesn't work for what they're doing,

00:14:42 ◼   ► then ultimately right now, they're

00:14:44 ◼   ► going to have to purchase your entire developer

00:14:46 ◼   ► account and your entire developer portfolio.

00:14:49 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:51 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns,

00:14:52 ◼   ► I'm on Twitter @_DavidSmith.

00:14:55 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you have a good weekend.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Happy coding, and I will talk to you next week.