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Under the Radar

201: Widgetsmith

 

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

00:00:04   I'm Mark O'Arment.

00:00:05   And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06   Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10   So David, a bit of a big episode.

00:00:13   Big, yes.

00:00:14   Before I pour congratulations all over you, tell me, what are these apps that I'm about

00:00:19   to read off have in common?

00:00:21   Gmail, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Zoom.

00:00:29   They're all free?

00:00:32   Those are all apps that your app, WidgetSmith, is getting more downloads than right now.

00:00:40   You are ahead of Gmail, Instagram, Facebook, you're ahead of all of those apps.

00:00:46   Your app, WidgetSmith, is number one in the App Store, has been number one in the App

00:00:51   Store for, what, about a week as we record?

00:00:54   It's hit number one Friday, September 18th, and we're recording on Monday, September 28th

00:01:00   now, so about 10 days, and it's been number one the whole time.

00:01:04   That is incredible.

00:01:06   You're telling me.

00:01:08   Oh my god.

00:01:09   I am so happy for you.

00:01:11   I have so many questions, but I really just want to hear from you.

00:01:15   How did this happen, and then what is this like?

00:01:19   Under the Radar is a tricky venue to do the long, long version of something when it's

00:01:23   only been 13 minutes or less.

00:01:24   I was saying, "The funny thing about this, I feel like I've been in training for this

00:01:28   for almost a decade now."

00:01:32   In July of 2011, I started a show called Developing Perspective, and that was never longer than

00:01:37   15 minutes.

00:01:38   Then 200 episodes ago, we started Under the Radar, which is never longer than 30 minutes.

00:01:44   That was all in training and preparation for this.

00:01:48   There is too much.

00:01:49   Let me sum up.

00:01:50   It's crazy, yes.

00:01:53   I talked about WidgetSmith on Under the Radar a couple months ago, and it wasn't a secret.

00:02:02   It wasn't this big novel thing that I've been tinkering away with in obscurity and suddenly

00:02:11   showed to the world.

00:02:12   It's like, "No, I've been talking about this for a long time in public, working on it,

00:02:16   sharing screenshots, talking about it."

00:02:20   The last week and a half ago, iOS 14 suddenly appeared, and we all frantically ran around

00:02:28   trying to get our builds done and submitted.

00:02:30   I launched WidgetSmith, and it launched the way I expected it to, which is the way most

00:02:35   of my apps launch.

00:02:37   They initially go out into the world, and the initial audience for them is the Apple

00:02:44   tech world.

00:02:45   That's the group of people that I'm a part of, and it seemed to be relatively well-received

00:02:51   there.

00:02:52   I kind of had the usual level of interest.

00:02:56   Then, like I said, on Friday the 18th, it got picked up on TikTok of all places.

00:03:04   It started being shared in a number of videos on TikTok, and it just kind of kept growing

00:03:11   from there.

00:03:12   It very quickly became this thing where the tool and the ability that I feel like all

00:03:18   summer, the developer community and the tech world has been viewing in this very utilitarian,

00:03:25   very like, "Oh, Widget are interesting because of how much data I can show on them, and I'm

00:03:33   going to do all this clever, and it's all about glanceable information."

00:03:38   Once that got into the hands of the general public, and they realized that they could

00:03:41   make their home screen look just the way they wanted and express themselves creatively and

00:03:47   make it exactly how they wanted, it's one of those things where so often I make apps

00:03:54   and people have to explain it or you have to talk about it to someone.

00:03:59   The impression I've gotten now from millions of people is, as soon as they saw this, they're

00:04:06   like, "I want this.

00:04:07   I get it.

00:04:08   I want that on my home screen.

00:04:09   I want to put a picture of my kid here.

00:04:11   I want to put the date here.

00:04:12   I want it to be just the shade of green or just the shade of pink, and I want it to look

00:04:16   just so."

00:04:17   As soon as they realized that they can do that and Widget Smith allows them to do that,

00:04:21   they're excited.

00:04:22   The app has just taken off and taken off in a way that I genuinely never thought would

00:04:28   happen.

00:04:29   I've been making iOS apps for over 12 years now, and it's something that I have had a

00:04:38   lot of success in that time and in that process, and I'm very fortunate for that.

00:04:43   I've been very grateful for being able to do this for 12 years, that I think there are

00:04:47   a lot of people who have started in this business trying to make it work and it just doesn't

00:04:51   work out.

00:04:52   I've been very fortunate to just keep hustling along over the last 12 years.

00:04:57   In my mind, that was the level of success or whatever I was ever going to get.

00:05:04   I was making something that I'll find my niches and I'll build them out, and that's fine because

00:05:12   it's just me.

00:05:13   I'm just a one-man shop coding in my basement, and I don't need more than a niche in order

00:05:18   to make a business because it's just me.

00:05:22   And I'm not supporting a big team.

00:05:23   I can just make this work.

00:05:24   And I never expected that I would make something that became whatever the opposite of a niche

00:05:30   is.

00:05:31   It's clearly this.

00:05:32   I hit a mainstream success.

00:05:36   I don't know what the words are for this thing, but it's really weird when I see my name quoted

00:05:40   in an article in Glamour magazine.

00:05:46   Widdjesmith has been all over the place, but that was the one that totally was just like,

00:05:51   "What?"

00:05:52   That's fantastic.

00:05:53   Of all the places that I could ever imagine seeing my name show up somewhere, that is

00:05:59   the opposite of whatever it is.

00:06:02   If I've ever saw myself in Macworld or something, it's like, "Okay, yeah, that's cool.

00:06:06   I'm super excited to be in Macworld, but it makes sense."

00:06:10   But the places this app has gone and the attention it's gotten, and in many ways, honestly, just

00:06:16   the most gratifying thing is the amount of happiness it seems to have brought people.

00:06:22   In a time when there's not so much that's super happy and fun going on, it's been an

00:06:28   outlet for people, I think, to be able to express themselves.

00:06:32   Every time they pick up their phone, they smile because it looks just the way they like

00:06:36   it.

00:06:37   It shows them a picture of their kid, or it shows them a quote that gives them inspiration,

00:06:41   or whatever it is they're doing.

00:06:44   The things people are doing to come, or making their phone look like Windows 95 or Windows

00:06:48   3.1, if that's what makes you excited and happy, more power to you, man.

00:06:54   It's just really cool to see.

00:06:56   Something that I spent the summer making, just casually in my basement, has now been

00:07:01   able to bring that much creativity into the world.

00:07:06   It's just staggering.

00:07:07   Yeah, I mean, there's so many angles to this that we could talk about that we probably

00:07:12   will eventually.

00:07:13   It might take multiple episodes.

00:07:14   It might be more than 30 minutes' worth.

00:07:18   I love that this happened to you, because you have done so much out there, and you really

00:07:28   have worked to this point.

00:07:30   Like you said, there was this great clip where you were saying, "No one's going to out

00:07:34   underscore, underscore," and that was a month or two ago, talking about how Widget

00:07:39   Smith is the culmination of so much that you've done over the last few years, and the skill

00:07:44   set you've built up over so many years to be able to get out there on day one and have

00:07:49   something ready to go for new features of the OS.

00:07:52   This whole practice and skill set you've developed over time has led to optimize you

00:07:57   for success at this point.

00:08:00   So that's wonderful.

00:08:01   I'm also just so happy for you as your friend that this happened to you.

00:08:04   This is amazing.

00:08:05   I guess one thing I want to—and by the way, what the app does is great.

00:08:09   As you said, just enabling all this creativity, that's fantastic.

00:08:13   I absolutely love that.

00:08:14   We did a whole bunch on ATP last week about how awesome this creativity is that people

00:08:18   have unleashed.

00:08:19   I will say something on that point, though.

00:08:21   It's just something that you touched on that I just wanted to mention as something

00:08:26   that is worth saying in this context.

00:08:31   You just said some nice things about Widget Smith, and when you say it, and you say it's

00:08:36   a nice app, and you say it's a good app, I still, in the back of my mind, think you're

00:08:40   just being nice.

00:08:43   And I just want to say that because—and I think this is just something that—I mean,

00:08:47   we've talked about it countless times on the show, but I think it's important to

00:08:49   say that feelings of being an imposter or being like, "One day you're going to get

00:08:55   found out," and like, "I see all the problems in Widget Smith, and I know that it's in

00:09:02   some ways not my best work.

00:09:03   I made this at a time when the world was falling apart in a lot of ways, and I was horribly

00:09:08   distracted, and the timelines were all weird, and I know I could have done better."

00:09:13   And so I see it through that lens, and I still feel in some ways like an imposter as a result.

00:09:19   But at the same time, I can also have the wherewithal to say that this is my—I counted

00:09:27   it this week—this is the 59th app I've made.

00:09:32   And it took 59 apps to actually have that breakaway hit.

00:09:36   And it's sort of just that reminder to people who are starting out in this field—because

00:09:41   I forget the impression that a lot of under-the-radar listeners are the kind of people who are like

00:09:45   me 12 years ago, wanting to get into this, wanting to do it.

00:09:49   And when they make something and they want to show it to the world, they feel like—they

00:09:53   see all the flaws in it, and they see all the problems.

00:09:56   And I just want to say, it's like, that doesn't go away.

00:09:59   I have an app that has tens of thousands of five-star reviews, which is the most five-star

00:10:06   reviews I have ever had for anything.

00:10:08   It's probably more than the number of five-star reviews I've ever had for any of my other

00:10:11   products put together.

00:10:13   And I still feel like, "What are these people seeing in this app?"

00:10:17   There's always that part of me that is going to focus on the negative, and I'm trying

00:10:21   to tell myself in this process that that's not true.

00:10:25   Clearly, it's not like I've somehow bamboozled the world and made this, and they're all

00:10:32   downloading this app that's actually not good.

00:10:34   It's like, no, people are liking it.

00:10:35   People love it.

00:10:36   It's making them happy and joyful, and that's great.

00:10:41   But I just wanted to mention that don't feel like if you launch something and have

00:10:45   those feelings, that's totally natural.

00:10:47   That's totally normal.

00:10:48   It happens—now I can say it—it happens at all levels of this game.

00:10:53   Those feelings are going to be universal.

00:10:56   And the reality is, that's not what defines your app.

00:10:59   That's not what defines you as a person.

00:11:01   Don't dwell on it, maybe.

00:11:05   It's just the advice I have, because that's what I have to keep telling myself.

00:11:08   Well, and you're never going to have the perfect app.

00:11:12   If you think your app is perfect, you're not wired up right.

00:11:16   You never have a perfect app.

00:11:17   Software is never done.

00:11:18   There's always more you wish you could have done, but deadlines happen, and events happen,

00:11:23   and at some point you have to ship.

00:11:25   And if you try to hold everything back until the absolute perfect time, you will never

00:11:29   ship.

00:11:30   I mean, I look at my app, and I have tons of things that I look at, and I'm like,

00:11:34   "Oh, I wish I had made that better," or "I wish I had time to make that better,"

00:11:38   or "I'm making that better, but it's killed me every minute.

00:11:40   It's not ready yet."

00:11:42   My app is hopelessly broken and out of date in lots of ways, and I know that because it's

00:11:47   my app, but yet it's still out there on the store, and people like it, and they use

00:11:51   it every day, and I just have to deal with that.

00:11:54   I'm very glad you brought up the imposter syndrome angle, because that never leaves

00:11:58   you.

00:11:59   At any level, you're right.

00:12:00   That never leaves you.

00:12:01   Although, the rate at which you are getting downloads and attention and everything on

00:12:05   this is so much more than what I've ever seen.

00:12:09   For reference, you have more than three times the number of ratings that my app that's

00:12:14   been in the store for six years has, and you've gotten that in a week and a half.

00:12:19   Oh, sure.

00:12:20   I mean, the scale of it is staggering.

00:12:23   It's one of those things that there have been points in this process where the hourly

00:12:30   downloads of WidgetSmith are exceeding the annual downloads of all my other apps.

00:12:38   That kind of thing.

00:12:39   It's rates and numbers that just don't make sense.

00:12:43   I thought I have in my mind a certain concept of what an app looks like, and what it looks

00:12:48   like to have a support queue, maybe as a slightly comedic example of this.

00:12:54   For all my apps, I have a little button in it that says, "Would you like..."

00:12:57   It's like, "Get help."

00:12:58   You push a button, and it sends me an email.

00:13:00   I use a help desk system to manage that.

00:13:05   For WidgetSmith, I had the same thing, had it in the system.

00:13:09   In the first week since this all hit, it's received something like 36,000 support requests.

00:13:16   That's my nightmare.

00:13:18   What was fascinating, and this is a good little thing to mention on the show, is there are

00:13:25   certain things about being an independent that I love, about being a boutique experience

00:13:33   in many ways.

00:13:35   Sometimes I like to imagine myself as the handcrafted artisanal app creation, and what

00:13:41   comes with that is you send an email and a person will read it and respond to you.

00:13:47   That's part of that artisanal experience that you're getting from my little boutique.

00:13:54   We started out that way, and I'm sitting there and we're trying to respond to these help

00:13:58   desk requests, and at some point they start to be coming in at multiple per second.

00:14:03   The help desk system that I use and my wife and my father were actually helping me with

00:14:08   was trying to keep up.

00:14:11   The help desk system couldn't manage it.

00:14:13   They were coming in to the top of the list faster than you could click on something inside

00:14:17   of it.

00:14:18   It was just a nightmare.

00:14:19   Wow.

00:14:20   Now we've hit the point where suddenly we're not that boutique anymore.

00:14:26   We can't respond to all these people, and we just had to replace that with it's now

00:14:29   if you email support, you get an autoresponder that has the FAQs in it, has a link to a video

00:14:37   in it, and that's what people get.

00:14:40   If you respond to that, essentially if you send us tube emails, there's a chance that

00:14:45   someone might look at it just because you don't get the autoresponder twice and it goes

00:14:49   to a different queue that we may or may not be able to look at, but it's a different thing.

00:14:58   That scale is not indie scale.

00:15:00   Indie scale is the place where I've been and I've hung out for a long time, and a busy

00:15:05   day of support queue is like 100 emails, not like 100 emails a minute.

00:15:13   I can't fathom this kind of thing.

00:15:15   You're telling me I can't fathom what this is like.

00:15:19   It probably does give you an appreciation for why bigger companies and services have

00:15:24   things like autoresponders.

00:15:26   As a customer, it kind of sucks when you hit that and you were hoping for an immediate

00:15:29   human, but now you're kind of seeing why that has to exist.

00:15:34   Because certain things just don't scale.

00:15:39   It's the funny things too, of the number of just...

00:15:41   I'm going to say I am so glad that this app does not rely on a web service that I have

00:15:48   to manage.

00:15:51   Whatever it was, even my little...

00:15:54   If you go to the FAQ section, it's just a plain static HTML page on my website.

00:16:01   That was putting...

00:16:03   My website could manage it, but it was something that was up to 30-40% CPU utilization, just

00:16:09   serving a single static HTML page that is pure text with no images.

00:16:15   That's a lot for that.

00:16:17   That's a lot.

00:16:18   And it was fine, but I got to say, the few services that I do use...

00:16:23   I use Dark Sky for my data still.

00:16:26   I use RevenueCat, previously a sponsor, but not sponsoring this episode.

00:16:31   I use them for my subscription management system.

00:16:33   They held up great.

00:16:34   I use World Tides as my Tide provider.

00:16:38   They all stood up great.

00:16:39   But I am very glad that I'm not the networking engineer.

00:16:42   I have tremendous thanks and gratitude for the networking engineers who made all those

00:16:46   services work, because I don't think they were expecting this colossal spike all of

00:16:50   a sudden on a random Friday afternoon.

00:16:52   But yeah, things are at a different scale than I've ever dealt with before.

00:16:59   In a way, you're so fortunate that this happened to blow up for this type of app, where you

00:17:05   don't have a lot of support work to do for it on the back end.

00:17:09   You don't have a web service that you're running for.

00:17:10   You have outsourced these key parts of it.

00:17:12   These other services that held up great.

00:17:14   This could have gone so wrong.

00:17:18   It's a nice problem to have.

00:17:20   When you have so many new customers getting your app that it breaks something, that is

00:17:23   a nice problem to have.

00:17:24   But that doesn't make it any less stressful and painful when it happens.

00:17:28   And so the fact that that didn't happen here, with the exception of your deluge of support

00:17:32   email, but with that exception, how did it go?

00:17:36   Were there any critical bugs that were being a big problem for you?

00:17:40   So there are a couple issues that are just, A, the first thing I want to say is it is

00:17:45   so hard to work out the scale of a problem in this kind of context.

00:17:51   Because in a normal app, if I have three people emailing me about a bug on Twitter, that feels

00:17:59   like it's a pretty big thing and I need to take a look at it.

00:18:03   So if you're in a situation where you have hundreds of people telling you about a bug,

00:18:08   but it turns out that it's a bug that, if you look in your analytics, the crash reports,

00:18:13   is actually only affecting a few thousand people, but that's actually a pretty small

00:18:18   percentage of the user base, all of the numbers get completely strange and complex to work

00:18:22   out.

00:18:23   And there's a few couple iOS bugs that I've had to work around, just because I'm pushing

00:18:28   the widget system to its absolute limits, and that's part of what makes WidgetSmith

00:18:33   work.

00:18:34   But there's definitely a few bugs there.

00:18:36   I had one slightly amusing and very costly bug that I didn't realize at first, where

00:18:41   typically the way that my system works is I show example weather data in the app until

00:18:48   you're a member.

00:18:50   And so rather than hitting dark sky for the actual weather, I just show, essentially I

00:18:55   have some example data that I have just pre-baked into the app.

00:18:59   So it turns out that the line of code that shows the example data was commented out,

00:19:05   because I had to comment it out until I finished something in the membership system, and then

00:19:08   I forgot to go and do it.

00:19:10   So my day one bill to dark sky, substantial.

00:19:15   Very substantial.

00:19:16   I was able to fix it, and it's fine.

00:19:19   Like it's not like it's some crushing amount of money that I've had to pay, but

00:19:22   it was just this like, you know, sort of many thousands of dollar mistake that I don't

00:19:26   use.

00:19:27   Usually my mistakes like that, I would have caught it eventually when I'd be like, "This

00:19:30   number seems high," but it was very, very high for the first few days until I found

00:19:36   that, incorporated that into a bug fix update.

00:19:39   And now it shows example data rather than actual data.

00:19:43   So that's the example of something where it was the sort of slightly comedic version

00:19:46   of a bug in this first version.

00:19:50   And it's the crazy thing too of how I am so thankful for phased releases now.

00:19:57   I have never been more thankful for Apple's system where you can phase out a release.

00:20:01   So I submit an update, it goes out, and it goes to, you know, it goes to like 1% of people

00:20:07   in the first day, then 2%, then 5%, and it kind of slowly trickles out.

00:20:11   Because the thought of pushing out like accidentally pushing out a crashing bug or some like crazy

00:20:16   thing where, you know, I've, over my 12 years, I have shipped many, you know, many updates

00:20:20   that turned out to be horrible mistakes.

00:20:24   Like the thought of doing that and it going out to this kind of scale of users is kind

00:20:29   of terrifying.

00:20:30   And so I'm very glad that I can push it out very slowly.

00:20:33   You know, like all my updates have gone out in the phase thing and it's just, you know,

00:20:37   so far so good.

00:20:38   I've been able to not accidentally like brick millions of people's phones, but that's good,

00:20:43   you know, like it's always in the back of my mind now that one day that is going to

00:20:46   happen.

00:20:47   Yeah, I would imagine that any update you issue has got to be quite stressful when you're

00:20:51   dealing with that kind of numbers.

00:20:52   Yeah.

00:20:53   At the same time, I also feel urgency to get it out because some of the issues are like

00:20:56   things that I need to, you know, like pretty quickly get out or adapt the app to make it

00:21:00   actually do what people care about.

00:21:02   Like they don't care about all the crazy esoteric features I have in the app.

00:21:05   They want more fonts and they want more colors.

00:21:07   And so like I got to get this stuff built as fast as I can and push it out.

00:21:11   So there's definitely a funny tension that I usually don't have where, you know, it's

00:21:15   like, hey, you should, well, it's like I want to give it as much time as I can to test and

00:21:18   develop, but I also need to get it out because it's a rare opportunity.

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00:22:30   Now I'm curious, David, what you're basically doing right now is like riding a wave.

00:22:36   And I've never surfed, so forgive me if this metaphor is totally broken in some way, but

00:22:40   like you're riding this massive wave.

00:22:43   And I would imagine there's a lot going on of just like trying to stay on top or worrying

00:22:49   what's going to happen when you are no longer on top.

00:22:52   We all know like all good waves, this will come to an end at some point or it will reduce

00:22:57   down to some point.

00:22:59   How do you currently view like, are you like aggressively trying to stay on top?

00:23:03   Are you having to fend off like competitors and copycats and stuff?

00:23:07   Like how is that?

00:23:08   How are you seeing all that?

00:23:09   And what do you, how do you plan to do whatever you're going to do over the next like few

00:23:14   weeks?

00:23:15   Yeah, so I think, A, in some ways I have a benefit of the reason Widget Smith is popular

00:23:24   and doing well has nothing to do with anything that I did from a marketing perspective or

00:23:30   something, some action I took to get it where it is.

00:23:34   Like it is an app that is, as far as I can tell, just growing purely by word of mouth

00:23:40   and being something that it's just, it's become the, like, if you think of iOS 14 widgets,

00:23:46   the conversation is going to involve Widget Smith.

00:23:48   And I hear all these stories of like people's, like the crazy one for me is all these like

00:23:53   people's children who, you know, like these middle schoolers or high schoolers or whatever

00:23:56   it is who are talking about Widget Smith and you know, they're sending their parents like

00:24:00   the home sharing request to download the app and it's just out there.

00:24:05   And so in that sense, like there is nothing I know in my like indie playbook for how to

00:24:11   stay on top of something like this.

00:24:13   Like we are already well past anything in my playbook.

00:24:16   Like I am just, I'm just along for the ride in many ways.

00:24:19   And all I am doing at this point is doing my best to give the best experience to the

00:24:25   customers that I have now and to continue to kind of just fill out the app into this,

00:24:31   into these areas that clearly my customers like and want.

00:24:36   And like where this goes in, you know, that I even know like the next, like the few weeks,

00:24:41   I mean, it's kind of mind bending that it's been like a week, but it's like, I, it feels

00:24:46   like the kind of thing that while it's a fad in so far as I'm never going to have a week

00:24:52   like the last week I had, I don't expect like that's just unrealistic.

00:24:57   But I do think that if people are going to keep these widgets on their apps on their

00:25:02   home screen and they like them and they want to keep, you know, engaging with them and

00:25:06   changing them and they like having, you know, it's a picture of their kid and every time

00:25:10   they take a new picture of their kid, they're going to open up widgets Smith and change

00:25:14   out the picture in the picture frame, essentially like that.

00:25:18   There's going to be a lot of very substantial like future in this app and other people are

00:25:24   clearly coming for it.

00:25:26   You know, there are like, there are lots of copycats and people who are trying to make

00:25:31   widgets and widgets and like, that's fine.

00:25:33   Like I can't do anything about that.

00:25:35   I'm, you know, I'm trying to be thoughtful.

00:25:37   It's like I'm protecting myself from a trademark perspective, but from a people making widgets

00:25:41   perspective, like there's nothing I can do there.

00:25:45   But I explore my hope and expectation is that there's enough people who just genuinely like

00:25:51   widgets Smith and like what it does and that the, the resources and the effort it would

00:25:56   take for someone to truly just like overwhelm me is substantial.

00:26:02   And I don't know what that looks like.

00:26:03   And the reality is in some ways I kind of, I'm, I'm, I'm okay.

00:26:07   Like if I never got another download of widgets Smith and this was it, like I have more customers

00:26:13   that I know what to do with as it is.

00:26:15   So I'm not super worried about that future.

00:26:17   And I just want to keep giving these people what it is they want, like making, giving

00:26:23   them more tools to make their phone something that they love and, and, you know, make, makes

00:26:27   them smile when they see it.

00:26:30   And I feel like the reality is like, if I keep doing that, then hopefully it'll continue

00:26:35   to grow and it will continue to find, you know, find new audiences.

00:26:40   And I have certainly the great benefit that I was like, I think Apple for the lot of my

00:26:45   customers don't like is every one of these widgets says widget Smith right underneath

00:26:49   the widget.

00:26:50   Exactly.

00:26:51   Every time someone shows a screenshot, it tells you what app it is.

00:26:54   It's got it right there.

00:26:55   And it's like the name of many of my, many times when I've been naming apps, like I've

00:27:00   missed the mark.

00:27:01   This one, I feel like, you know, watch Smith was the, you know, the, the origin of the

00:27:06   name, but applying the same name to widget Smith.

00:27:08   Like it's, it's, it's a easily spellable, memorable, straightforward name.

00:27:13   You know, it's not something that you have to like, think about how you spell.

00:27:16   It's just like widget Smith and you put it into the app store and it'll be my Apple show

00:27:20   up.

00:27:21   And I love that because it's there.

00:27:23   Yeah.

00:27:24   If you see it and you, if someone used to, you know, someone shows you their screenshot,

00:27:27   their, their home screen, it says widget Smith right there.

00:27:30   And then you go and go to the app store and get it.

00:27:32   And so I hope that it's just going to keep going.

00:27:34   And I imagine there's going to be a lot of sharks in this water because, you know, there's

00:27:39   clearly an interest in a market here.

00:27:41   And you know, I'm not a shark.

00:27:43   That's not me.

00:27:44   I'm not a, I'm not going to sort of, I don't even know, like go fight the shark games.

00:27:49   I'm going to keep doing my own thing in my own way.

00:27:51   And hopefully enough people like that.

00:27:54   And clearly, you know, to our point at the beginning of the show, like as much as I can

00:27:57   sometimes see the, the, see the flaws in the app, there are clearly lots of people who

00:28:02   see the benefits and see the attention and see the care and the craftsmanship hopefully

00:28:06   that I try and put into my products.

00:28:09   And hopefully the future will continue to be bright as a result.

00:28:13   And like, I don't even know what kind of time horizons I can think about for an app like

00:28:18   this.

00:28:19   Like, I, you know, it's like, it's a week in and a week is nothing in the app store.

00:28:24   You know, I've been doing this for 12 times, 365 days, not seven days.

00:28:29   So I have a long enough memory to know that, you know, things will come and things will

00:28:33   go in the app store, but hopefully, you know, my future with WidgetSmith is going to be,

00:28:37   you know, bright and continuous.

00:28:39   And if I can't make a good business out of an app like this, like I don't deserve to

00:28:43   be a businessman, I suppose.

00:28:45   Well, I'm just, I'm so happy for you.

00:28:48   This couldn't have happened to a better person and you deserve all of this.

00:28:51   And you just huge congratulations to you.

00:28:54   My final question, and you know, we'll have more to talk about in later episodes.

00:28:59   My final question though, is, you know, you are not one to indulge yourself in ridiculous

00:29:04   things too often.

00:29:06   What did you do to celebrate?

00:29:09   I celebrated with my family and we talked about it and we were excited about it and

00:29:14   we had a lot of like looking at numbers change rapidly and we just, it was really nice that

00:29:20   I was able to be with my family when we were doing that.

00:29:23   And we celebrated as a family and kind of be able to recognize the fact that, you know,

00:29:28   while it was the thing that like I made when I was sitting at the desk, it was supported

00:29:32   and encouraged by the people around me.

00:29:34   And so that's what we did to celebrate.

00:29:35   It wasn't some big grand thing.

00:29:37   It was just, we shared the moment together and I think that was really special.

00:29:43   Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you in two weeks.

00:29:46   Bye.

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