0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of No2
0:00:22talking about WatchKit. Sort of a follow, I guess, in some ways of the last episode
0:00:26to that feels like it was forever ago. But anyway, so I'm going to talk a little bit
0:00:31about WatchKit. And specifically, later on in the show, I'll be talking about the economics
0:00:35of WatchKit apps, some of the more business side of things that I think lend themselves
0:00:39to a podcast rather than a blog post. But I'm also going to talk a little bit about
0:00:43a blog post series that I've started doing and not just like mentioning it in terms of
0:00:49hopefully that's kind of interesting if you're interested in developing it respective in
0:00:52the first place, but also why I'm doing it and kind of the broader lesson that I think
0:00:58I've been able to teach myself from that process that I think might be more generally applicable.
0:01:03So if you don't know, I recently started a series on my blog where I talk called As I
0:01:09Learn Watch Kit. And functionally it's really just me sitting down and probably a few times
0:01:16a week, putting something out, some kind of, you know, thoughts, ideas, half sort of finished
0:01:23concepts, things that I'm doing around WatchKit as I go between now and, you know, whatever,
0:01:29say next February when Apple Watch launches, though who knows, maybe we'll keep going thereafter.
0:01:35But the reason I'm doing it, you know, in some ways it's just to be helpful. Like, it's
0:01:39a new technology, it's exciting, it's fun, I kind of enjoy diving into it, I've been
0:01:43really, you know, I've started building some cool stuff with it and it's really kind of
0:01:46fun. But it's why am I doing this? And largely, it is because I've been, I guess you could
0:01:53say I've had writer's block recently. Like, in the back of my mind, writing on my blog
0:01:59is something that I feel like I should do more. It's something that I like looking back
0:02:05on once I've done, but often struggle to get over the sort of the activation energy of
0:02:12of actually doing it. Like, it's a kind of a tricky place for me to for me to do. I'm
0:02:17not a great writer. I don't feel like that's one of my strong suits. That's in many ways
0:02:21why, you know, I have to this is 200 and the 205th episode of developing perspective, but
0:02:26I've nowhere near that many blog posts. You know, I'm much more comfortable speaking typically
0:02:30than I am writing. But you know, writing is an important part I think of my business and
0:02:35the way that I run it. And you know, it's a very, it's a much it's a more fundamental
0:02:39way to give back to the community than what I do now, you know, just just in developing
0:02:45perspective or, you know, here and there on Twitter or in person, like, there's something
0:02:49that's much more shareable and spreadable about text. And so I wanted to write more.
0:02:56And the thing that I was kind of going back and forth about with WatchKit was how I do
0:03:00that. And I came up with this idea of tricking myself into writing more, which is funny to
0:03:07say, but let me explain. So that's why I can be a concept of like, let me do this thing
0:03:12called as I learn watch kit, which is more like trying to open up my journal, like if
0:03:19I kept a diary of like, what am I doing? Each day, it's showing that diary to the world,
0:03:26rather than kind of making it feel like it's something more polished, more finished, you
0:03:31know, like, trying to lower the bar for myself, it maybe is one way to say it like, I want
0:03:36to lower the bar so low for myself that any idea that I have that I think could be helpful
0:03:41or relevant or interesting to someone else, I just put out into the world. And so far,
0:03:47it's been going pretty well. Like, it's a funny thing to say, but I needed to give myself
0:03:51permission to put less than 100% polished, amazing things out into the world. And in
0:03:58many ways, that's part of what makes podcasting so compelling in the first place for me is
0:04:02is that podcasting is sort of necessarily, at least in the format that I do it, is less
0:04:06polished. It's not, you know, I'm not going in and doing tiny micro edits, and I'm trying
0:04:10to build something that's like NPR quality audio. It's me sitting at my desk with a microphone
0:04:16talking. And I'll mumble every now and then I'll follow, you know, my words will, you
0:04:21know, fall over themselves. And that's fine. That's natural. And I wanted to kind of give
0:04:27myself permission to do that same kind of thing in writing, where I don't have to this
0:04:32In my head, I always have this thing with writing that like it needs to be so super
0:04:35polished and so super like comp, fully thought out and rich and detailed.
0:04:41And I'm trying to give myself permission to not do that.
0:04:43And it's a lesson that I think I'm trying to share more generally here because I think
0:04:48it's something that you can try and you can often in building things, whether it's building
0:04:52an app, whether it's writing on a blog post, doing a YouTube video, doing a podcast, whatever
0:04:57it is. I think we often think of our think of these things as more, more fancy than they
0:05:04really need to be more fancy than is actually helpful. Like, if you think of something as
0:05:09this amazing thing that you're aspiring towards, and you're not going to build it until you
0:05:14can build the thing that you are aspiring at, you'll never actually do anything because
0:05:19the process of getting there is one of is messy and is going to involve putting out
0:05:24lots of less than great things in, you know, between here and there. And missing or some
0:05:29people would say, Oh, well, you should do all that privately and then you know, show
0:05:32the world your successes. And maybe that's works for some people. But for me, it's true.
0:05:37It's very reinforcing when you put something out there. And you initially have this kind
0:05:41of timid, like this timidity about it of like, Oh, this is actually very good. And you started
0:05:46here from back from people and said, that was great. I mean, it's always weird when
0:05:49I put out an episode of developing perspective. And I think it was kind of, you know, one
0:05:53one of my not so great episodes. And the feedback I get back is like, oh, man, that was great.
0:05:58That really resonated with me, you know, awesome. And you start to realize that you're in some
0:06:02ways your worst critic because you have a different expectation in your mind of what
0:06:07you were trying to accomplish when you did it. Whereas people who are coming to your
0:06:11work just have no expectation in some ways. And you're just your job is to set that expectation
0:06:16and you're setting it with whatever the level of work you produce. And so if it's any good,
0:06:21going to resonate with people.
0:06:22So that's what I'm trying.
0:06:24And it's just I wanted to encourage other people.
0:06:26Like, if you think of things that you're good at, that you'd like to share with the world
0:06:28about, just go for it and try.
0:06:30I mean, I even took this to the kind of crazy extreme that I'm not sure if I'm going to
0:06:35regret this afternoon or this morning when I recorded my first YouTube video.
0:06:39I was like, "You know what?
0:06:40I'm going to do a YouTube video of me playing with WatchKit, and I'll be linking the show
0:06:44notes to this episode about that or to it."
0:06:47But like, I put it together.
0:06:49It took maybe, you know, it took like an hour or so to put together this 20 minute video.
0:06:52Like it's kind of rough, but maybe it's useful.
0:06:54Maybe it's not.
0:06:55I don't know.
0:06:56But I'm giving myself permission to just try and see what happens.
0:07:00And I think you can really end up with some really cool things as a result from that if
0:07:03you don't get stuck into your own head about having to have only be able to do things once
0:07:10you're like competent and mastered them.
0:07:13So you know, just give yourself permission to put whatever you want out into the world.
0:07:18you know, you'll get better. So anyway, that's kind of what I'm doing about that series.
0:07:22I'll have links in the show notes, too. I highly recommend that if you're all interested
0:07:26in WatchKit that you read them. And today, and this is actually part of that, you know,
0:07:30this will be part of the As I Learn WatchKit series. I'll be kind of interweaving the two
0:07:34on the podcast as well as on my blog, and apparently now YouTube channel. What am I
0:07:38thinking? Anyway, so but what I want to talk about today on the WatchKit side is about
0:07:42the economics of building a WatchKit app. And there's a lot of discussion that always
0:07:46comes up with anything like this.
0:07:47You know, like when Apple announced that they're going to allow us to build WatchKit apps,
0:07:50some people were like, oh, is there going to be like a store on the phone or on the
0:07:55watch specifically for this?
0:07:57As best we can tell, there isn't.
0:07:59You know, WatchKit apps, at least as they are now, are simply extensions of iOS apps.
0:08:04So if you build something, you put it out in the store, all of the same economics and
0:08:09processes and things you can and can't do that you would apply to an iOS app with an
0:08:13extension, I seem to apply to watch kit apps. And so there's no specific store for it. I
0:08:18imagine there'll be like a featured section on day one where people can go and find things
0:08:22or like those kinds of things. But it's not a specifically like totally separate place.
0:08:27It's just they'll go to the app store and search for, you know, watch app and see what
0:08:30comes up. And that's that's good and bad. I've heard a lot of people be like, Oh, how
0:08:35is this actually going to make me any money, I'm going to spend the time building all this
0:08:37stuff out. And it's just going to be like a free add on essentially to my app. And if
0:08:41that's a bad thing or a good thing. And so what I'm going to kind of do today is I'm
0:08:46going to unpack that in two directions. One is whether it makes sense to build a watch
0:08:50kit extension to an existing app, and the other thing is sort of the different dynamics
0:08:54on a new app. So if you have an existing app, whatever that may be, you know, say in my
0:08:58case I have things like feed wrangler, pod wrangler, but on our plus plus, like the,
0:09:02you know, apps that already exist as iOS apps, does it make sense to build something? And
0:09:08All of the business arguments that I've heard about this, they kind of fall short in my
0:09:12mind because the fundamentals are basically the same.
0:09:15It's like if you had a viable product from a business perspective before Apple announced
0:09:22Watch Kid, it would only be made more viable by adding an extension to it, by making that
0:09:28app better.
0:09:29Like, sure, it's sort of you have the paid upgrade problem in that people who've already
0:09:34paid for your app aren't going to be necessarily paying for the extension, but I don't think
0:09:41that's any different than like, is it worth updating your app for iOS 8? Is it worth updating
0:09:45your app in general? Like, why do you do bug fix updates? People didn't really pay for
0:09:50those. Like it's, there's always that kind of a feeling of part of making software and
0:09:56making it but you continue to make it better in the hopes that it continues to grow and
0:10:00develop your market and your brand and what people expect of your application. And if
0:10:04was viable before, I think adding a WatchKit extension would doubly do that. It gets you
0:10:09exposure of both from Apple and the press, people looking for like, oh, what are the
0:10:12cool WatchKit apps? And, you know, as far as I can tell, you know, until we have iTunes
0:10:18Connect Analytics and they can prove me otherwise, I think most of the advertising and the people,
0:10:23the downloads of my apps are coming from word of mouth. And anything I can do to enhance
0:10:28word of mouth is like a delightfully multiplicative effect on my sales. And so if it was viable,
0:10:34before, it should be doubly so with the WatchKit app.
0:10:36Whether or not you can specifically charge for it, like nickel and diming customers for
0:10:40technical features like that doesn't seem to resonate with me.
0:10:43And if your app wasn't viable before, adding a WatchKit extension is just magnifying that,
0:10:47I suppose.
0:10:48Like you're putting more good money after bad.
0:10:51But fundamentally, if your app is a successful thing that's making money and is worth investing
0:10:57in generally, WatchKit's a great opportunity to push that boundary in a more interesting
0:11:02way in a very personal, intimate kind of interaction model with your customer that's so far, even
0:11:07from my experience, and playing with this and learning it is really cool.
0:11:11Like why wouldn't you want to just be excited about making that?
0:11:14And you know, whether or not you'll necessarily come out specifically ahead, I think overall
0:11:20you will, because it shows that you're to your customers, that you're committed to the
0:11:24platform and you're committed to making awesome things.
0:11:26And you know, that's what I want to be known for.
0:11:29I want to be known as a guy who makes awesome things on a platform that he cares about.
0:11:33It's on the flip side about new apps.
0:11:37New apps are funny because obviously your initial thought is always something about
0:11:39like the gold rush, right?
0:11:41I mean, I have in my head like burned into the deep recesses of my psyche.
0:11:46I think it was a video for when the iPad first launched, and there's a thing with Scott
0:11:50Forstall saying, "We're expecting there to be a whole new gold rush."
0:11:56And that always bothered me in some ways, that Apple would present it as a gold rush.
0:12:02But there is sort of that mentality, right?
0:12:06Whenever there isn't anything, like there is no supply now, and then there is going
0:12:09to be some supply, there is necessarily kind of this big rush in of trying to—no one
0:12:17has any claims staked out necessarily.
0:12:19Apple has obviously their native stuff, but otherwise it's kind of like a free for all.
0:12:23And so there's opportunity there.
0:12:25And so certainly there is some very interesting economics around building a new app, putting
0:12:31it out there, and not necessarily feeling like you're competing in this massively overcrowded
0:12:35market that the regular iOS app store is.
0:12:38And so, you know, I'm doing that a lot for some of my apps.
0:12:41I have things that, you know, I'm working on that are completely new, are completely
0:12:45fresh, or I've been, some of them are outside of what I normally work on for that reason,
0:12:49that I think there's always opportunity in that newness.
0:12:54You don't want to go crazy about that because obviously it's a very short-lived window.
0:12:58You know, it's like you, if you're ready on day one, great.
0:13:02If you're not, you probably in some ways are better off just waiting back a little bit
0:13:06and seeing what, seeing how it all plays out.
0:13:08Because it's a much riskier kind of, you know, it's very, it's like I talked about with,
0:13:11a few episodes ago called speculative development.
0:13:15If you look in the archives, it's like, it's a very speculative activity.
0:13:19You're just creating something in the hopes of it potentially doing something.
0:13:22And you just need to be thoughtful about that.
0:13:24You don't want to necessarily put all your eggs in one basket, spend way too much time
0:13:28that you couldn't necessarily justify.
0:13:30But the economics of that are pretty straightforward.
0:13:32Like, build an app that you can try and keep it streamlined and focused and put it out
0:13:37there and see.
0:13:39And if it works, I think your upside potential is much bigger than putting that same amount
0:13:44of energy and effort into a regular iOS app, because that market is so incredibly crowded
0:13:49and almost like chokingly so.
0:13:51with WatchKit, even if, you know, whatever, 10,000 people launch apps on day one, that's
0:13:59still going to be a minuscule fraction compared to the millions of, you know, of apps on iOS.
0:14:06And I only see that as a good thing.
0:14:08So economically, I'm excited about WatchKit.
0:14:10I think if you have a good app already, adding WatchKit to it makes that app better.
0:14:14If you have a new idea for a watch and you can think of any way to, you know, make money
0:14:19out of that, great.
0:14:20I think it will be successful.
0:14:21I think there's a lot of promise and potential there.
0:14:24I mean, I don't think it's necessarily going to make anybody millionaires.
0:14:26Like in that sense, like, though I always hate that phrase, like, oh, it's going to
0:14:29make someone a millionaire, but like, I think there's going to be businesses built on the
0:14:33back of Watch Kid.
0:14:34And that's probably a better way to think about it.
0:14:36All right, that's it for today's show.
0:14:38As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, I'm @_DavidSmith
0:14:42on Twitter, David@DevelopingPerspective.com, and otherwise, you'll be have a great week.
0:14:46Happy coding, and I will talk to you again soon.
0:14:48Bye.
0:14:49Bye.