00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.
00:00:05 ◼ ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
00:00:09 ◼ ► So for today's topic, it's going to be a bit more kind of a, I don't know, a squishy in the feelings, non-specific, non-technical topic,
00:00:19 ◼ ► which is one of the slightly funny things to say because I've heard from a variety of people over the years.
00:00:24 ◼ ► Some people listen to Under the Radar for the technical, like deep in the weeds, Xcode stuff.
00:00:30 ◼ ► And there are people who only listen to Under the Radar for the squishy, emotional, business-y, kind of philosophical side of things.
00:00:41 ◼ ► But specifically, this is something that I find a podcast is a useful venue to talk through, you know, sort of feelings you have.
00:00:51 ◼ ► We've often referred to this show as, you know, our sort of, our fortnightly group therapy session.
00:00:56 ◼ ► And it's a useful tool, just in general, to talk out feelings you're having because it helps them to not be these kind of amorphous specters in the back of your mind
00:01:06 ◼ ► that can, you know, sort of be lurking and, you know, the amorphousness of them makes them feel bigger and scarier.
00:01:15 ◼ ► So if you can instead try and turn that into words, you can address it and you can think about it and you can have strategies to address and, you know, improve your perspective on them.
00:01:24 ◼ ► And so specifically, I'm just wondering, there's something that I've been feeling, you know, and I was going to say recently, but it's not even particularly recently.
00:01:31 ◼ ► It's just like generally for a while, is that it's been a trickier thing to be as excited about being an Apple developer.
00:01:42 ◼ ► Like, and this is some of the things like over the, like the DMA last year or all kinds of other Apple policies.
00:01:48 ◼ ► Or, I mean, in some ways, it's never been that easy to be an Apple developer, you know, with all the app review dramas over the last, like, almost two decades.
00:01:55 ◼ ► But there's, it's been recently, it's been something that has been feeling, I've been feeling more acutely.
00:02:01 ◼ ► It's been something that I've been aware of that I don't feel as excited about some aspects of my job and the parts of it that are related to being an Apple developer specifically as much as I used to.
00:02:18 ◼ ► And I would get a lot of joy and satisfaction in my work as part, and that Apple, being an Apple developer as part of my identity was something that I was really proud of and really, you know, it was meaningful to me.
00:02:28 ◼ ► And it's the things like I noticed that, like, this year, like the afterglow feeling of WBDC last year in 2024 was probably the shortest it had ever been.
00:02:39 ◼ ► And then it's, like, a week later, that sort of lovely feeling that you often, I often would get after WBDC, which would often carry me all the way through to September, like, through the hard months of getting things ready.
00:02:57 ◼ ► This is the thing that I've chosen to become an expert in and have spent literally two, you know, almost two decades becoming, you know, skilled at.
00:03:04 ◼ ► And so it's not great if you don't have, you know, sort of that sweet feeling about it as much anymore.
00:03:11 ◼ ► And recently, like, you know, as I said, I've been trying to kind of put handles onto that feeling and to make it more specific rather than just this general feeling because the reasons for that change, I think, seem like they're going to be continuing to exist and change endlessly.
00:03:30 ◼ ► And this is not a great show to dig into, you know, the topic du jour for why that may be tricky.
00:03:36 ◼ ► You know, this is not a politics show or it's not really a place that – it's a short-form podcast.
00:03:48 ◼ ► And specifically, what I've ended up on is I think what I realized is previously in my life, there's been – if you sort of imagine a Venn diagram with two circles.
00:03:57 ◼ ► And there's a circle that's me and the things that are important to me and the things that I enjoy and the things that I'm good at and the things that I value.
00:04:07 ◼ ► And in the early stages of my indie developer career, it felt like there was my circle and Apple's circle.
00:04:21 ◼ ► You know, it's like the old thing that Apple cares about itself, its users, and then its developers, you know, and that's sort of in that order.
00:04:27 ◼ ► And so given that developers was very big in my circle and that was, you know, not in their circle very much, there was never a full overlap there.
00:04:38 ◼ ► And recently, I think what I've been realizing is there's just been this slow shift of those overlaps where it feels like less and less the things that really value and are important to me matter as much to Apple as they used to.
00:04:54 ◼ ► So much of these things are very kind of vibes-y and perceptions and marketing and things that are not straightforward and not, you know, clear.
00:05:04 ◼ ► And I think it's important to remember that, that like these things aren't straightforward and binary, whatever the kind of, as the dynamic shift.
00:05:11 ◼ ► Like sometimes it was you felt something that wasn't true or sometimes it was true but you didn't feel it.
00:05:18 ◼ ► But as Apple's circle has shifted in my perception of it, I think what I, for a while I was getting really bummed out because it felt like I could feel that drift.
00:05:35 ◼ ► And I think that feeling on my side when I was projecting it into, you know, against myself that way, it felt bad.
00:05:43 ◼ ► It felt like I was doing something wrong or that something was changing in me that I didn't like.
00:05:47 ◼ ► And I've had a lot of sort of, you know, wrestling with this, as you can probably tell as I ramble on for, you know, nearly a third of the episode or whatever so far, is that I realized that wasn't actually what was happening.
00:06:14 ◼ ► It's like the reason that that affected me is because my circle was the same things that really mattered to me.
00:06:21 ◼ ► And so when it felt like the large organization that has tremendous control over my life and work was shifting away from those things, it, you know, it was meaningful.
00:06:38 ◼ ► And if I instead find that I focus on those things, if I focus on the things in my circle rather than wherever Apple's projected circle happens to feel like it is right now, I felt a lot better.
00:06:50 ◼ ► And it's been really helpful in the last few weeks since I really kind of codified this, you know, that metaphor in my mind of the two circles really helped me for some reason.
00:06:58 ◼ ► So that's part of why I wanted to share it here is my, you know, if I can focus on my own circle and the things that matter to me, like things like I really care about making quality,
00:07:08 ◼ ► software that's well-designed, that's accessible, that is useful, that does things in ways that improve people through my users' lives.
00:07:25 ◼ ► And if I continue to focus on those, like my satisfaction goes up dramatically rather than be worrying about the degree to which those things potentially are not as valuable to the parent organization that, you know, sort of manages the ecosystem in which I live in.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And I'm not saying they don't care about those things anymore, but at least the perception I get more recently is that there is a much more complicated interplay between all those factors.
00:07:47 ◼ ► But like I said, if I focus on my own circle, like life has gotten a lot better and it's made me more productive and it's made me less distracted as a result because that's ultimately the only part of this that I can control.
00:07:59 ◼ ► The only part of this that I have agency over is it's like what matters to me, what do I value, and if I focus on doing those things, like whatever else is happening around me, like I'm much more stable and much more sort of whole as a result.
00:08:16 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm glad you're bringing this up because I have had a lot of similar feelings and it was hard to kind of nail them down or be able to put them into words or solidify them.
00:08:30 ◼ ► It's actually – I've been feeling more and more jaded or disappointed in the broad tech industry as a whole like for a while now.
00:08:41 ◼ ► And I think this is part of – this is kind of related to it just being a matured industry.
00:08:52 ◼ ► Like they're just – they're intertwined with each other so much now because the tech companies are so big.
00:08:59 ◼ ► And so we're just dealing with giant corporations now doing what giant corporations do.
00:09:04 ◼ ► You know, a few minutes ago you said the word the parental organization referring to Apple like over the ecosystem.
00:09:10 ◼ ► That struck me because I think my relationship with Apple over time such as it is – I mean I think they – Apple thinks very little about me but I think a lot about them.
00:09:23 ◼ ► But my relationship with them, I think it has served somewhat of a parental role in the past in the sense that like – and I think it's true for a lot of us.
00:09:33 ◼ ► That growing up as Apple fans or having this be a big part of what we focus on, who we are, how we identify, it is almost a parental style of relationship in the sense that like we look to them for guidance and for approval.
00:10:07 ◼ ► Like that's like my crowning, you know, achievement that I could possibly have professionally.
00:10:18 ◼ ► But what I have felt I think would be somewhat similar to if you started having a like disappointment with who your parents are turning into.
00:10:28 ◼ ► Maybe that's more serious than it has to be but like the role that Apple has served for me, you know, emotionally and mentally, was more parental in the past.
00:10:46 ◼ ► I mean, you know, again, just the growth of everything, everything being so big and so corporate and so honestly just kind of cynical ingredient in certain ways.
00:11:00 ◼ ► Apple over time and especially recently, they have gone from a parental figure in my mind, whether subconscious or not, into just a big corporation that I am decreasingly respecting.
00:11:18 ◼ ► Like when you lose respect for someone you care about, that's a really hard thing to process and that really shakes you.
00:11:28 ◼ ► For a while, that has manifested itself in just kind of like, you know, anger, frustration, you know, trying to change them into something better by advocating for better behavior and better decision making.
00:11:46 ◼ ► And that's, you know, I've learned that too, that like I'm not going to make them better by yelling about it on a podcast.
00:11:52 ◼ ► And so my relationship with Apple has shifted into, you know, from basically a parental figure that I was respecting and trying to please into they're just the platform vendor.
00:12:38 ◼ ► You know, a lot of times, a lot of days I kind of, you know, when I'm faced with the idea of, oh, I wonder if I want to work on Overcast today.
00:12:43 ◼ ► It's like a lot of times the answer is no, I'm not feeling it because I'm so kind of, you know, getting so jaded and, you know, lost so much respect for Apple.
00:12:57 ◼ ► But then I, you know, I come back to like, well, I still do love computers and Apple makes the best computers.
00:13:28 ◼ ► It just it requires me to change my perception of my relationship with Apple from a more emotionally invested one to a more dry business one that, you know, I'm not going to carry water.
00:13:42 ◼ ► For them, if they you know, if I get some message saying, you know, some email saying come develop for the vision pro or whatever, like I'm just I don't like that's not going to sway me.
00:13:52 ◼ ► And I don't care how much you think it's going to change the world or whatever, like for me, it's it's becoming just a more straightforward, dry business relationship.
00:14:05 ◼ ► I think for the entire time, it just took me a while to realize what my role actually was and how small my role actually was that.
00:14:22 ◼ ► Like it still hurts to some degree for me to realize all of this and to try to internalize this.
00:14:34 ◼ ► Like it is probably better in a business relationship for me not to have a parental style perceived relationship with the platform owner like that is it is less fun.
00:14:53 ◼ ► So there is some value in recognizing that like that this is the reality of this relationship.
00:14:58 ◼ ► It has been the reality of this relationship for longer than I have realized it was the reality of this relationship.
00:15:16 ◼ ► But, you know, even stuff like, you know, any kind of new, you know, Apple intelligence tie in like do I need to do that?
00:15:28 ◼ ► If my customers say I want that I should do it, that is what I need to be paying attention to.
00:15:33 ◼ ► Or if it will benefit me in my life, if I will personally get satisfaction out of doing it, then that's something I can pay attention to.
00:15:41 ◼ ► The shift in this relationship, what it does for me is it dramatically deprioritizes things that Apple asks us to do or thinks we should do.
00:15:55 ◼ ► Because what Apple wants, we no longer need to pay as much attention to because that relationship is no longer what it used to be.
00:16:03 ◼ ► So, yeah, and I think something that you just said that really hit me well or was useful for me was the thinking of just like how these relationships change and evolve over time.
00:16:15 ◼ ► And that that is a natural and sort of inevitable part of anything, that it will change and develop and will not be the same thing that it was before.
00:16:26 ◼ ► And that's difficult and painful and challenging when the thing you had before was nice and had positive aspects of it.
00:16:36 ◼ ► But, you know, it's a funny thing when I think back to, I mean, you and I have been doing this a very long time.
00:16:44 ◼ ► I mentioned that mostly just because I think it is if you were starting out, you know, sometimes I talk to people who are more recently, you know, like who graduated from, you know, college a few years ago.
00:17:00 ◼ ► It's a very different world in some ways now, you know, in some ways these are people who, you know, the App Store was only just like, you know, the App Store was launched when they were like four.
00:17:15 ◼ ► Like these are people who exist and their perception of what things are and what they could be or what they might have been in the past.
00:17:23 ◼ ► Like I remember, I think part of the challenge here is because I will live through the period from the early, like maybe the first six, seven years of the App Store where there was just such like sort of almost like silly excitement about it being part of the next big thing.
00:17:40 ◼ ► And it kept becoming the next, like even bigger and bigger over time that like it started off like, oh man, mobile apps are cool.
00:17:49 ◼ ► And it was really cool and fun to be like on the cusp of that wave as it just like crushed over the entire world and became so important and essential to everything.
00:18:01 ◼ ► Like you said, it is a much more mature, you know, situation than we find ourselves in.
00:18:08 ◼ ► Like everything, you know, there's, you know, there's the old thing of like, you know, there's an app for that.
00:18:12 ◼ ► It's like now there really is an app for everything and every probably a hundred apps for everything.
00:18:17 ◼ ► Like there are attributes and aspects of this that are just so mature and success is measured and sort of a result of things that are now not necessarily our specialty that are like about business and about being slightly more cynical and slightly more focused on metrics and things that are, you know, aren't necessarily our focus.
00:18:40 ◼ ► And that's, you know, and by that, I mean, if we want traditional success, which we certainly want to some degree in terms of like, you know, being highly downloaded or having lots of income, like those things become a little bit more cynical now than it used to be that there really was a bit more of a meritocracy to things that people were looking, you know, that if you were the best, it would, you would have a much higher chance.
00:19:02 ◼ ► Whereas now it's not really about necessarily the best, it's about the best marketing or the best acquisition or the best addiction mechanic in your application to pull people back into the app time and time again.
00:19:11 ◼ ► Like there's things about this situation that are, are different, but that change, you know, and that evolution is tricky.
00:19:22 ◼ ► I mean, this was, I think, back in like 2014 or something like, I mean, you know, almost 11 years ago.
00:19:27 ◼ ► I remember when Facebook bought WhatsApp and at the time it kind of felt like the start of a new phase of the app store because it sort of changed into the app store was changing from lots of small little fish into this kind of conglomerate phase.
00:19:45 ◼ ► Where the big fishes were starting to, you know, acquire anything that had traction and, you know, sort of turning it from lots and lots of small players into fewer and fewer bigger players.
00:19:57 ◼ ► And I think, you know, I think that that thought has just certainly proved to be true that there are fewer and fewer big players in the app store that it is, you know, you look at the top downloaded list and the parent companies of each of those apps.
00:20:14 ◼ ► And so in some ways that's liberating, like in the sense of, it's like, I'm not, I'm not even playing the same game they're playing.
00:20:21 ◼ ► And like, there was a time when I kind of was like where you, as in smaller indie developer, you could really be playing the same game and have a reasonable expectation to be a player.
00:20:30 ◼ ► Now it's like we have our own little worlds and, you know, some of that is, you know, it's like it's easy and convenient for you and me in some ways because we have our own little worlds that we established much earlier on.
00:20:43 ◼ ► And at times when it was perhaps easier to get those, you know, to establish a beachhead from which we could work from.
00:20:49 ◼ ► And that evolution is the part that, you know, is weird and different, but it is kind of nice to, in some ways, it's also liberating to be like, things have changed.
00:20:57 ◼ ► Like things aren't the same as they were 10 years ago, five years ago, whatever that is.
00:21:07 ◼ ► I think it's, I find it very helpful to me when it's like, yeah, things, things aren't going to be like they were back then.
00:21:12 ◼ ► And the more I hold on to it or the more that, you know, to your point about trying to like change Apple or whatever that might, you know, they think, I think we think might think about or look at.
00:21:22 ◼ ► It's like the less we try and think in those terms, because like we're trying to reclaim something, you know, it's just ultimately like going to be very counterproductive.
00:21:37 ◼ ► And I think we both, and I know many people in this community who've kind of gone through that feeling in a weird, painful way.
00:21:53 ◼ ► There's, you know, like I love that I'm in a community of people who seem to care about the same things that I care about.
00:21:59 ◼ ► Who, if I, you know, if I poke about, ask a question online, I'll get answers that are focused and kind of geared in that same direction.
00:22:06 ◼ ► And like that culture, at least in the group of people who I tend to interact with exists.
00:22:11 ◼ ► And I think some of it may have originated in people, you know, who were copying Apple in a parental way.
00:22:28 ◼ ► Like those values still value, are still just as valuable now as they were when they were directly and obviously being generated from them.
00:22:44 ◼ ► Like I wouldn't have expected this relationship in some ways to have lasted for 17 years, 18 years.
00:22:52 ◼ ► And I hope, you know, I very much hope that there is, you know, a long career and path ahead of me doing this because I do enjoy it.
00:23:01 ◼ ► But it's I'm going to have to find my own joy inside of that rather than, you know, being able to lean on the sort of having that be externally brought to me by the platform.
00:23:13 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think that that is the key of like, you know, how we move forward, how we how we keep motivating ourselves and validating what we make is just without Apple.
00:23:29 ◼ ► So to speak, like there is no like obvious platform owner or source of that motivation and validation.
00:23:47 ◼ ► You're making it for yourselves, your customers, maybe people you respect, people whose opinions you respect.
00:23:58 ◼ ► No, you're seeking it from like users and, you know, people other people you respect, people whose opinions you respect.
00:24:05 ◼ ► And so that's where we have to, you know, where we're ending up now with Apple platform development is that we are making we need to be making things for our own reasons and seeking external validation outside of Apple because their validation, you know, if it's if it's going to be something that we no longer seek or that we no longer respect or it's coming from a place that we no longer respect.
00:24:34 ◼ ► We know we like we can look around for tons of examples of like places where people make stuff not to please some big company, but for their own satisfaction and satisfaction of their customers and users.
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00:26:00 ◼ ► The other thing is, like, over time, tech changes and we don't always go along for the ride.
00:26:16 ◼ ► And over time, as it gets bigger, I've had to specialize and narrow the parts of it that I was really in or cared about or qualified to do.
00:26:27 ◼ ► And I'm always having to narrow my focus, narrower and narrower and narrower, just to keep up.
00:26:45 ◼ ► Like, eventually, like, you know, you mentioned the young people who were born in the App Store time.
00:26:49 ◼ ► Like, yeah, eventually, we're going to be gone from this world and they're going to be in it.
00:26:59 ◼ ► Like, so we can decide, you know, during our working ages, like, we're going to be in this for a while.
00:27:15 ◼ ► So, you know, eventually, the relationship that we have – that we used to think we had with Apple, eventually, there won't be anybody left in the Apple ecosystem who even remembers that time or whoever felt that way.
00:27:28 ◼ ► To them, it will just be like, yeah, well, that's the big company that gives us the developer tools and they take a third of our money and that's it.
00:27:36 ◼ ► So, you know, I think it's wise for us to kind of, you know, jump in and start that progress – start the process now of that migration because that's where it's going with or without us.
00:27:48 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think there's just something in that of just the fundamental reality of we have more agency than sometimes I think – at least I can say for myself, I have more agency than sometimes I give myself credit for.
00:28:01 ◼ ► And I think the places I often find myself struggling is when I am unintentionally giving up that agency.
00:28:09 ◼ ► And in this case, it was sort of like giving some of my identity and focus to a company rather than being self-directed.
00:28:17 ◼ ► And part of that was just laziness, part of that was just because it was fun and, like, there's lots of things that go into that.
00:28:21 ◼ ► And I think it's the reality of understanding that I have agency over what I think is important, what I value, what I do with my time, what I look at and, I mean, you know, sort of engage in.
00:28:31 ◼ ► And I think there's still parts of Apple who care about those things too, and that's awesome.
00:28:36 ◼ ► And, like, I have interactions with people, you know, developer relations is an organization that generally seems to care still about a lot of those things.
00:28:42 ◼ ► And a lot of the, you know, teams within Apple or the things that they put out, like, it's not that this, you know, relationship is, like, cut off and it's never going to work.
00:28:49 ◼ ► But it's, like, I think I'm, it's, like, realizing that I have the ability to, you know, understand what's important to me and the degree to which and the places where that overlaps with Apple, you know, focusing on my circle, where, you know, wherever Apple's circle happens to overlap is fine.
00:29:04 ◼ ► And I will, you know, enjoy those parts when it align, but when they don't, I don't need to feel that, like, some part of me is deficient or out of step or, you know, in any way sort of impinged by that.