Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a near daily podcast

00:00:05 ◼   ► discussing the news of Note in iOS, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number five,

00:00:15 ◼   ► and today is Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011. The format of Developing Perspective is basically

00:00:21 ◼   ► that I will cover a handful of links and articles and things that I found interesting in roughly

00:00:25 ◼   ► the last 24 hours, and then move over into a more general discussion towards the end.

00:00:30 ◼   ► The discussions and links are oriented towards someone who is interested and involved in

00:00:35 ◼   ► things like Apple, iOS development, and the like, which is what I do.

00:00:39 ◼   ► All right, the show will never be more than 15 minutes long and will never include third

00:00:43 ◼   ► party advertising.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So without further ado, let's get to it.

00:00:47 ◼   ► First off, the first link I have is a link entitled "Essential Text-Made Shortcuts, Tips,

00:00:54 ◼   ► techniques. So as I've mentioned before, I'm an avid TextMate user. I've been using it

00:00:59 ◼   ► for years and years since my early days in Rails. And there's basically just a walk-through

00:01:04 ◼   ► of some of the things you may not know that you were able to do in TextMate. Some of them

00:01:09 ◼   ► I've--were surprised to run into myself. It's definitely worth checking out if you use TextMate.

00:01:14 ◼   ► A lot of little things that in aggregate will probably dramatically improve your productivity.

00:01:20 ◼   ► All right, next, over on the giant robot smashing into other giant robots blog, which is just

00:01:29 ◼   ► an awesome name for a blog.

00:01:31 ◼   ► There's an article, I think it's a little bit older, but I ran into it the other day,

00:01:36 ◼   ► called "Streamline Your Git Workflow with Alias."

00:01:39 ◼   ► And it's just a really good sort of walkthrough of, it's an example of how the guys at Thoughtbot

00:01:46 ◼   ► use Git in their workflow, and then they create aliases

00:01:50 ◼   ► to speed that up.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So rather than having to type a variety of operations--

00:01:55 ◼   ► say, for example, when they finished adding functionality,

00:02:00 ◼   ► they get AA.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And that removes old files, adds new files.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Then does it get status?

00:02:07 ◼   ► And then they have one for creating a new branch,

00:02:09 ◼   ► one for Git up, for fetching from origin

00:02:12 ◼   ► and rebasing, those types of things.

00:02:14 ◼   ► And it's just a really clever way of just saving you

00:02:17 ◼   ► a little bit of time, and even probably beyond that,

00:02:19 ◼   ► making it very formulaic and precise about what

00:02:23 ◼   ► it is you're doing when you're trying

00:02:25 ◼   ► to go through the various stages of your version control

00:02:30 ◼   ► workflow.

00:02:30 ◼   ► So for example, rather than having to remember, OK,

00:02:33 ◼   ► whenever I need to get my upstream changes,

00:02:37 ◼   ► these are the three to four commands that I need to run.

00:02:39 ◼   ► You turn that into an alias, and that makes your workflow much

00:02:42 ◼   ► more repeatable.

00:02:43 ◼   ► and you're far less likely to forget to accidentally pull

00:02:46 ◼   ► something in or merge it in the wrong way or something

00:02:48 ◼   ► like that, or miss a file, for example, when you're adding it.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So definitely worth checking out if you're a Git user.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Next, over on Macworld, they published their review

00:02:59 ◼   ► of the new MacBook Airs.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And what's mostly significant about this,

00:03:04 ◼   ► other than just to say the new MacBook

00:03:06 ◼   ► Airs are amazing machines.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I had the privilege of playing around with a couple of them.

00:03:11 ◼   ► And if you're looking for a small laptop,

00:03:13 ◼   ► a really better way to say is if you're looking for a laptop,

00:03:16 ◼   ► definitely get a MacBook Air.

00:03:17 ◼   ► They're just amazing machines.

00:03:19 ◼   ► But it's quite impressive that I thought they gave them

00:03:22 ◼   ► five mouses, which Macworld rates computers and hardware

00:03:27 ◼   ► and software in mice.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And so it's the equivalent of giving it five stars, which

00:03:31 ◼   ► is a pretty impressive thing, given that there's

00:03:33 ◼   ► very few pieces of technology that have been given five mices.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So definitely, if you're in the market for a laptop,

00:03:40 ◼   ► get a MacBook Air.

00:03:41 ◼   ► If you want a really small one, get an 11.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Get a 13.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Doesn't really matter.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It's a great machine.

00:03:47 ◼   ► All right, and next, there's an article

00:03:49 ◼   ► by Nick Farina talking about his experience working on Android.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And this is an article that's made the rounds a little bit.

00:03:57 ◼   ► But it's just a really honest and in-depth discussion

00:04:00 ◼   ► of what it's like at a tactical level being an iOS developer

00:04:04 ◼   ► trying to get into Android, talking about some

00:04:05 ◼   ► of the challenges of Eclipse, some of the different API

00:04:10 ◼   ► changes, using an emulator rather than a simulator, and some of those types of changes that are

00:04:15 ◼   ► just really interesting.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And I think his experience is fairly consistent with my experience where it's not necessarily

00:04:22 ◼   ► that either one of them is categorically better than the other at an engineering level.

00:04:27 ◼   ► There's some sort of things I'd like to see, you know, which I'll actually get to later

00:04:31 ◼   ► about some of the marketplace and the actual, you know, the ability to make money on either

00:04:35 ◼   ► platform.

00:04:36 ◼   ► From a technical perspective, it's not necessarily that one totally is better than the other.

00:04:40 ◼   ► There's some things like, for example, the way that Android does layout is far more consistent

00:04:46 ◼   ► and scalable, which you'd expect it to have to do because of the fragmentation screen

00:04:51 ◼   ► issues.

00:04:52 ◼   ► But it's definitely just something that versus what you see on iOS that Android really wins

00:04:56 ◼   ► on.

00:04:57 ◼   ► But overall, if it's just something if you're thinking of doing any amount of Android development,

00:05:02 ◼   ► I definitely recommend reading this article

00:05:04 ◼   ► to get a good sense of really what it's like coming from iOS.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And lastly, there's an article called

00:05:12 ◼   ► Face Planting, an app launch horror story with a twist.

00:05:16 ◼   ► This is over on TapTapTap, the makers of all kinds of things,

00:05:20 ◼   ► Camera Plus, Classics.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Basically, it's probably some of the people who've made the most--

00:05:25 ◼   ► the single company other than some of the large game vendors

00:05:29 ◼   ► who've made the most money in the app store.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And they're talking about how the launch of their most

00:05:35 ◼   ► recent app, Faces, didn't quite go as they may have hoped,

00:05:40 ◼   ► versus some of their other things.

00:05:41 ◼   ► On their first day, they only sold 750 units,

00:05:44 ◼   ► which for most developers would be a great day.

00:05:46 ◼   ► But for them, it's in contrast to things

00:05:48 ◼   ► like the heist, which on its first day

00:05:50 ◼   ► sold almost 90,000 units.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So it's just kind of an interesting walk-through.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Even people with that kind of marketing reach,

00:05:57 ◼   ► with that kind of resources, still have challenges.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Things like they launched it-- it turned out

00:06:02 ◼   ► they launched it on Lion Day, which

00:06:05 ◼   ► has a variety of challenges and problems with it,

00:06:07 ◼   ► because I think people weren't as

00:06:08 ◼   ► interested in new applications.

00:06:10 ◼   ► But definitely just an interesting walkthrough

00:06:13 ◼   ► to kind of discuss and see what it's like.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Even if you have all of those resources,

00:06:19 ◼   ► you can still make mistakes, and hopefully there's

00:06:21 ◼   ► something there to learn from for the rest of us.

00:06:23 ◼   ► All right, and lastly, I'm going to talk a little bit

00:06:26 ◼   ► about probably the biggest bit of news

00:06:28 ◼   ► yesterday, which was a blog post that

00:06:31 ◼   ► was made by the Shifty Jelly guys who make Pocket Casts,

00:06:35 ◼   ► which originally I believe was an iOS app.

00:06:37 ◼   ► Then recently they ported it over to be an Android app.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And this talks about some of the challenges and problems

00:06:43 ◼   ► they've recently run into, where basically they

00:06:46 ◼   ► were presented by Amazon with an opportunity.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Would you like your app to take part

00:06:51 ◼   ► in our free app of the day feature placement?

00:06:55 ◼   ► Which essentially means that for one day,

00:06:57 ◼   ► their application will be given away for free to anybody

00:06:59 ◼   ► who wants it.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And in return for that, Shifty Jelly

00:07:04 ◼   ► agreed to give Amazon 0% revenue share, or essentially,

00:07:09 ◼   ► Amazon is going to give away their app

00:07:10 ◼   ► and they will receive $0 for that.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And it talks about just some of the challenges and things

00:07:16 ◼   ► they ran into with that.

00:07:18 ◼   ► There's increased support costs and all of these things.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And just generally how it's just a bad experience for them,

00:07:28 ◼   ► where they were all of a sudden--

00:07:31 ◼   ► they had 100,000 copies of their app given away,

00:07:34 ◼   ► and they didn't make anything from it.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Now fair enough, they decided to do this.

00:07:38 ◼   ► It wasn't that Amazon went behind their back to do it.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But still, they had basically a whole bad experience,

00:07:44 ◼   ► and it's definitely a sour taste in their mouth about it.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And generally, they talk that the Amazon App Store is just

00:07:51 ◼   ► awful place to do work. I have some apps in there myself, and I couldn't agree more with

00:07:55 ◼   ► that. I sort of have a blog post on my side talking about sort of some of the challenges

00:08:01 ◼   ► about it. But I think at the end of the day that I think is most striking is just that

00:08:05 ◼   ► there isn't really a market on the Amazon side. If you look at, for example, there on

00:08:10 ◼   ► their blog posts, they talk about, oh, we have, you know, sort of what their sales were

00:08:14 ◼   ► to date. And they have, you know, two sales, two sales, 14 sales, 20 sales, and then the

00:08:20 ◼   ► it was featured, they had 100,000 sales.

00:08:23 ◼   ► So fair enough, at the high end, with the most visibility

00:08:27 ◼   ► in the store on a free app, the best you could do

00:08:30 ◼   ► is 100,000 downloads.

00:08:32 ◼   ► That seems pretty small.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I mean, I think, as best I understand,

00:08:38 ◼   ► many of the top 25 paid apps on the App Store

00:08:42 ◼   ► do that kind of volume every day.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And so if that's the best you can do as the most featured

00:08:47 ◼   ► app for free on the Amazon side, you're

00:08:49 ◼   ► of getting a sense of just how small that market is

00:08:53 ◼   ► and how likely as a developer it's not really worthwhile.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Especially some of the other challenges

00:08:57 ◼   ► that I think you're going to run into,

00:09:01 ◼   ► the actual terms of the developer agreement with Amazon

00:09:04 ◼   ► is very restrictive, and specifically

00:09:06 ◼   ► in relation to how you can then do things on Google Market.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Technically, if I remember correctly,

00:09:12 ◼   ► in order to remove your app from one,

00:09:14 ◼   ► you'd have to remove it from both.

00:09:15 ◼   ► So if you add an app to the Amazon App Store,

00:09:18 ◼   ► You then, in theory, need to-- you cannot remove it unless you

00:09:22 ◼   ► move it from all marketplaces, which is a pretty rough thing

00:09:26 ◼   ► that Amazon can exert that much control over you.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Similarly, Amazon has some crazy things where

00:09:32 ◼   ► they can adjust your price however they want.

00:09:34 ◼   ► You say, oh, it's a $10 app.

00:09:36 ◼   ► And they can say, actually, maybe it

00:09:37 ◼   ► should be a 99 cent app.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And you really don't have any control over that.

00:09:42 ◼   ► So it's definitely just something that I would say,

00:09:44 ◼   ► at this point, if you're a developer,

00:09:45 ◼   ► if you're thinking about getting into Android

00:09:47 ◼   ► and you're thinking about Amazon and Google Market, at this point, it's just stay away.

00:09:53 ◼   ► It's just not worth your time, your effort, you're not going to make nearly enough money

00:09:55 ◼   ► from it to for it to be worthwhile in general. And then moreover to that, unless Amazon is

00:10:03 ◼   ► able to expand its reach, it's just not going to be worthwhile. If the absolute max that

00:10:08 ◼   ► you can from a volume perspective is 100,000 copies a day. So when you get towards the

00:10:14 ◼   ► a long tail of that.

00:10:16 ◼   ► If you're not all the way at the peak,

00:10:18 ◼   ► you're looking at very small revenues for your application.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And so it's just not going to be worthwhile.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Maybe if Amazon comes out with an Android device, a tablet,

00:10:27 ◼   ► something new comes out in this holiday lineup,

00:10:30 ◼   ► and so they start having a bit more pull,

00:10:31 ◼   ► like all the new Kindles have the App Store on them

00:10:35 ◼   ► or those types of things, it may be worthwhile.

00:10:38 ◼   ► But at this point, I would just say stay away.

00:10:41 ◼   ► If you're going to do Android, focus primarily

00:10:43 ◼   ► on Google Market, which has its own problems,

00:10:45 ◼   ► but is at least generally a lot better.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And in general, I would just still say,

00:10:50 ◼   ► if you're starting out, if you're like,

00:10:52 ◼   ► hey, mobile development's what I want to do,

00:10:54 ◼   ► just stick with iOS.

00:10:55 ◼   ► You'll have a far more nice time,

00:10:58 ◼   ► higher chance of success, and generally just probably

00:11:00 ◼   ► be happier.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Unless Android's the thing you like for other reasons.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Anyway, so that's my general discussion

00:11:07 ◼   ► talking about my thoughts on their experience.

00:11:10 ◼   ► If you have any sort of thoughts, comments, corrections, hit me up on Twitter.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm @_davidsmith.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Otherwise, have a good day.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I'll talk to you tomorrow, and happy coding.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Bye.