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.
00:00:21 ◼ ► which is kind of remarkable and kind of wild, and something that I'm just fascinated to hear how that's gone.
00:00:27 ◼ ► I knew that you had started this thing, but it has now been, I think, a couple of months, a couple of weeks at least.
00:00:37 ◼ ► But I guess it's been fascinating to see that you've created a new place and venue for people to talk to you about Overcast.
00:00:50 ◼ ► And, like, I know you had a Slack room for a while, which I'm not sure if you still do.
00:00:56 ◼ ► And, like, it's just an interesting way in the way that you're pulling in feedback from people
00:01:03 ◼ ► Yeah, I've been kind of on a journey with that, and I don't think that journey is over.
00:01:11 ◼ ► But over time with my apps and with feedback channels and everything, I have found a lot of things don't work for me.
00:01:39 ◼ ► I tried a few different services and people to help answer them for me, and I just had horrible experiences.
00:01:46 ◼ ► Like, and I don't know if I just picked the wrong people or had bad luck or whatever it was.
00:01:51 ◼ ► So I decided with Overcast, I'm going to try to do it all myself, but I'm going to set expectations clearly in the app.
00:02:05 ◼ ► This is feedback, and I'm probably not going to be able to respond to the thing you're writing.
00:02:21 ◼ ► Like, if you're out there as a developer and you're drowning in email with people who literally want you to call them and walk them through how to install your app, like, I want you to know that that's, for most apps, that's optional.
00:02:34 ◼ ► You can do that if you want to, if you find that worthwhile, if you, you know, find it joyful, you can do that.
00:02:44 ◼ ► You can just say, I'm sorry, I don't offer that kind of support or literally just not even respond because that is kind of an unreasonable thing to ask a developer of a free app or, you know, an app that, you know, that you've got for a dollar.
00:02:58 ◼ ► And so, anyway, so you can go all in and you can make yourself very available that way.
00:03:03 ◼ ► And then, you know, Twitter came around and then later on, you know, other, now that Twitter has broken up in a way and everyone's scattered all over the place.
00:03:12 ◼ ► You know, you can make presences in all these different places and all the different ways that you give people access to your attention and you give them ways that they can expect to hear from you.
00:03:28 ◼ ► As soon as your app has any users whatsoever, I don't know how you keep up with multiple channels of feedback, how you, like, different emails, different posts.
00:03:48 ◼ ► Like, I don't know how you do that and have any other part of your life or work because it just takes over.
00:03:57 ◼ ► Like, one of the things I've decided is, like, on these new kind of, you know, Twitter explosion social networks, the only one I have a presence on is Mastodon and even then just barely.
00:04:15 ◼ ► That's, like, I'm not, like, I'm not really trying to use it as much of a, like, broadcast reach kind of way.
00:04:33 ◼ ► I only have a personal presence on Instagram and even then it's, like, currently deleted off my phone.
00:04:45 ◼ ► And as a result, like, people, when you are not on a social platform, it doesn't mean people won't talk about you.
00:04:53 ◼ ► It just means, generally speaking, they'll talk about you as if you're not there because you're mostly or entirely not there.
00:05:11 ◼ ► If you don't form your own community on Reddit, and sometimes even if you do, but if you don't have an official presence on Reddit, what happens is once you have enough users or fans, people will make one.
00:05:30 ◼ ► It will become a space where people are gathering to talk about how much they hate you or how much you suck or your work sucks or this thing is a problem.
00:05:38 ◼ ► And if you aren't there, that dynamic seems to get worse because not only do they think you are ignoring them, merely – not even by any action of you, merely by you not participating or responding or being there.
00:05:56 ◼ ► And also, by you not being there, it kind of gives people almost like the freedom of, like, how people, when they are driving in their cars, do things that are kind of, you know, nastier or more selfish than they would do face-to-face with somebody, like, standing in line at the bank.
00:06:18 ◼ ► But in their cars, they're, like – they're protected from the humanity of other people.
00:06:22 ◼ ► Well, in an online community, like Reddit or something like that, in an online community, if you aren't there and they're talking about you, they will tend to be meaner and more harsh to you because you aren't seen as a person who will read that.
00:06:38 ◼ ► You're seen as, like, you know, just this entity that they are all complaining about but you're not there.
00:06:44 ◼ ► There's a shift that happens, like, back during the Twitter days, like, there was a shift of, like – you used to be able to, like, rant about, oh, I was on this United flight and it sucked.
00:06:55 ◼ ► And then anytime you mention something happening with a brand, you know some customer support rep would send you a response.
00:07:12 ◼ ► Like, once the company or creator that you are ranting about shows up, everyone kind of, like, pulls back on the nastiness a little bit and is, like, oh, now the dynamic is different.
00:07:24 ◼ ► Now I know that they will see this probably or there's a decent chance they will see this.
00:07:32 ◼ ► And it changes both what you choose to rant about, like, kind of, you know, whether it's, like, small stuff or big stuff.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And it changes kind of just the basic tone and civility that you do it with if you have a pretty good idea that that company is going to see what you're writing.
00:07:49 ◼ ► And so what I decided to do, I decided for a number of reasons, I wasn't happy with a situation where there's a Reddit group of people who mostly don't like me and are complaining about me.
00:08:04 ◼ ► And then also I am trying to have, like, a more public communication platform that is not just, like, my blog or a mastodon channel that only nerds follow.
00:08:26 ◼ ► And I certainly went into it very nervously because the only thing I had seen from Reddit up to that point was people who mostly hated me and complained about me and were pretty rude about it.
00:08:50 ◼ ► I decided to create my own Reddit instead of joining the kind of fan-created one that was our – fan.
00:09:08 ◼ ► Like, because if the creator of the app all of a sudden shows up, I think that changes the dynamic quite a bit.
00:09:15 ◼ ► And if there's a group of people there who has something going already, like, I don't want to invade that and take it over.
00:09:32 ◼ ► And we can each have them be the mood and the people and, you know, the kind of community that we want them to be.
00:09:56 ◼ ► And what I have found over time is that it was just shrinking, you know, traffic was dwindling down.
00:10:04 ◼ ► Like, you know, sometimes they work and they take off and they stick around, like, forever.
00:10:20 ◼ ► And also, what's nice about Reddit also is that whatever you write there is searchable by search engines and AI.
00:10:29 ◼ ► I figured, like, if I'm going to do something that is – like, if I'm going to give an answer to a question, I want future people to be able to benefit from that in some way.
00:10:38 ◼ ► Because that's, you know, the whole problem with email is that you write an email and one person sees it, you've wasted a lot of that time, basically.
00:10:43 ◼ ► But whereas, like, if you can document things in some kind of public forum, then they can be findable by others.
00:10:50 ◼ ► And even if it's not, like, super easily findable, at least, you know, ask any AI a question that's, like, a factual answer.
00:10:58 ◼ ► And the answer you will get is often a Reddit post that they have indexed and that they are spitting out back to you.
00:11:04 ◼ ► So I figured Reddit was a good place for, you know, kind of knowledge base accumulation.
00:11:16 ◼ ► Obviously, like, doing all these things would be better, but I'm not going to because I mean I know myself pretty well at this point.
00:11:33 ◼ ► There's a lot of, like, a lot of the, you know, negative reviews or support emails that I get, feedback emails that I get, are kind of of the nature of, like, this thing doesn't work and it's your fault.
00:11:50 ◼ ► And part of it is, you know, that's largely on me because I need to communicate that better or, like, you know, show it in the app better or things like that.
00:11:56 ◼ ► But a lot of times it might help if people could have a thing to point to and say, oh, well, if you're having this problem, this is actually an iOS 26 bug that's fixed in 26.1 beta.
00:12:15 ◼ ► By having an official presence and by engaging directly, the negativity that I expected to be there and that largely was there before was significantly diffused.
00:12:30 ◼ ► And part of what happened is because I was directing people there from my own official channels, part of it is some of, like, you know, quote, my people went to Reddit or went to that Reddit.
00:12:41 ◼ ► And so part of it was it was more people going in who are largely fans of my app because they follow me on social media or whatever.
00:13:02 ◼ ► People sometimes get those answers like, oh, this thing that you thought was the app's fault.
00:13:12 ◼ ► And I think it's it's largely because I just stepped right into it and engaged directly and positively.
00:13:24 ◼ ► Like, people people who have posted questions like, I think it should work this other way.
00:13:28 ◼ ► A lot of times I just post an answer of like, well, here's why I made it work this way.
00:13:38 ◼ ► You know, it's so diffuses that anger and that frustration to be there and to explain myself, to explain why things are the way they are.
00:14:14 ◼ ► Things is one of those great apps that's always ready for the new Apple OSs on day one.
00:14:19 ◼ ► Of course, Things has been thoroughly updated for iOS 26 with a fresh new look and loads of great little improvements.
00:14:36 ◼ ► You've got, you know, the more rounded corners for Windows, to-dos, controls, you know, wider spacing kind of matching the 26 aesthetic.
00:14:45 ◼ ► And, of course, if you're on iPad, Things also supports all of the Mac improvements on iPad as well.
00:14:51 ◼ ► So, the new windowed apps mode on iPadOS, multiple window support, new menu bar support.
00:14:57 ◼ ► It is one of the best productivity apps for iPad with deep integration with all the new iPadOS 26 features.
00:15:03 ◼ ► On the Mac, you'll find Things now integrate to the control center with two new control buttons.
00:15:11 ◼ ► And, of course, you can put them right into the menu bar because that's how control buttons work now on Tahoe.
00:15:19 ◼ ► It has widgets there now to place around your room, support for Apple intelligence, writing tools.
00:15:55 ◼ ► Learn all the great new features and download a free trial on your Mac today at Things.app.
00:16:13 ◼ ► So your experience there is fascinating to me because I think it is definitely counter to – yeah, like in my mind, Reddit is a place that people go to shout.
00:16:26 ◼ ► And it is lovely that you have – and I guess in some ways that's what you found previously.
00:16:30 ◼ ► But it is fascinating that by creating a more official personal place for that – you know, it's one thing to be shouting into the void.
00:16:42 ◼ ► And so it is sort of refreshing to hear that civility and understanding has been something that has come out of that.
00:16:54 ◼ ► It's like the thing that I think about when I consider, oh, is this something that would be useful for my apps?
00:17:12 ◼ ► That like any online community is like a garden and you either – it's like if you tend to it and you prune it and you make sure that it's well taken care of and it's moderated correctly and all those things,
00:17:29 ◼ ► But at the same time, as soon as you stop letting – you know, you stop taking good care of it,
00:17:37 ◼ ► it will potentially be the kind of thing that goes in directions that are not so nice and not so lovely.
00:17:46 ◼ ► And I think what's been fascinating too is you've been really busy with the actual coding part of Overcast in a way that, you know,
00:17:54 ◼ ► if I think of the last year, that's definitely come in ebbs and flows for how you've been – you know, how engaged and how productive
00:18:02 ◼ ► and the number of – you know, the number of Overcast test flight builds that I'm getting on a – it feels like almost like a daily basis now – is fabulous.
00:18:11 ◼ ► And it is – like the thing I would be so worried about is that something like this would be a distraction or pull away your attention
00:18:18 ◼ ► or someone would say something mean and it ruins a day's productivity or it draws you in a direction that is not actually productive or helpful for making Overcast better.
00:18:34 ◼ ► And I think it's really interesting what you're saying though of how people are going to have that conversation regardless
00:18:46 ◼ ► And it's always one of these weird things where for us, we're like, our app and us can – at least from my perspective, they feel like they are very closely related.
00:18:57 ◼ ► But potentially from our audience's perspective or our customer base's perspective, they are completely different things.
00:19:05 ◼ ► I imagine the vast majority of people who use my apps would not recognize my name if they saw it.
00:19:15 ◼ ► But in this case, it's like Marco Arment is in Slash Overcast and is talking about his app in an official way.
00:19:30 ◼ ► Or is it a thing that is taking a lot of your time or pulling you in different directions that maybe you weren't expecting or hoping for?
00:19:39 ◼ ► I think you have to be careful to realize that in any channel that you have, that is a subset of users and it is not a random representative subset.
00:19:50 ◼ ► The Reddit users, they have kind of their own kind of preferences and types and kind of tone.
00:20:19 ◼ ► Is it the people who write the reviews in the App Store usually have very extreme feelings?
00:20:25 ◼ ► So if you cater to the App Store reviews, then what you're going to cater to is people who have extremely strong positive or negative feelings, usually negative.
00:20:36 ◼ ► And it's going to be like, you know, the entire middle, like the silent, happy middle majority, their needs are going to be mostly ignored.
00:20:46 ◼ ► If you cater to a place that has a more nerdy audience, like Mastodon, you're going to do nerd features, you're going to do nerd requests, and you're going to ignore all the non-nerds needs.
00:20:58 ◼ ► One thing that I found recently is there were some dust-up with Pocket Casts and their users.
00:21:05 ◼ ► And as a result, I got a bunch of people coming from Pocket Casts to Overcast over the last couple of weeks.
00:21:13 ◼ ► And what I keep hearing basically is complaints that Overcast is not like Pocket Casts.
00:21:25 ◼ ► They want my app to replace the app they were using, but to be the app they were using.
00:21:33 ◼ ► Like it's a different app with different styles and different choices, different functionality.
00:21:40 ◼ ► And if I listen to some of these – like this big burst of recent feature requests that basically are like, can you please make your app Pocket Casts?
00:21:47 ◼ ► Then I would be doing a disservice to all of my other users who chose my app because of what my app was and wasn't.
00:21:59 ◼ ► So in Reddit in particular, what I have found is that instead of being distracting and taking me in these different side quests of doing features
00:22:10 ◼ ► that only these 10 people will want, I've actually found it's actually helping to focus me because I'm starting to see what are the common themes?
00:22:19 ◼ ► What do people in this Reddit group report or request that I have also been hearing about in email for years or months?
00:22:31 ◼ ► And it serves a decent function of beta feedback that, again, like I was hoping the Slack was going to do a better job on beta feedback.
00:22:39 ◼ ► But over time, it really did – it kind of got too small to be relevant and important and useful.
00:22:51 ◼ ► So if there's a problem with a build, I'm usually – I usually know about it within a few hours.
00:22:59 ◼ ► And then for, like, the feature kind of direction, it really does help to see, like, oh, this is something – like, I keep seeing these same posts over and over again or these same complaints.
00:23:09 ◼ ► And sometimes, like, to have the engagement, to have the back and forth, like I was saying earlier, like, you know, there's been – there's issues with, like, you know, priority podcast sorting in playlists.
00:23:25 ◼ ► There's these edge cases that are really hard to know what to do, and there's kind of no right answer in some of them.
00:23:38 ◼ ► And to have that back and forth with multiple people in public, that actually helps me understand my users better.
00:23:55 ◼ ► Like, people think this, you know, this term that I'm using in the app, they're misinterpreting it to mean this other thing.
00:24:08 ◼ ► So it's almost serving as a form of user testing and of, like, collaborative brainstorming.
00:24:14 ◼ ► As long as I keep in mind what I was saying a minute ago about, like, this is just a subset of users.
00:24:31 ◼ ► But it does – once I've decided what to do and I'm trying to figure out how to do it or I'm trying to, you know, see how certain things fly with the users, it's great for that.
00:24:44 ◼ ► And that kind of discussion and collaboration angle of it is pretty unique to that form.
00:24:48 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think what you're getting at there that I do think is really – like, there are many ways that I've gathered feedback on my apps over the years.
00:25:00 ◼ ► And I think the thing that is most complicated sometimes is to feel like you understand the actual user of your app.
00:25:10 ◼ ► Not the extreme user, but, like, someone who's within that, like, one standard deviation above the mean of your app because they are so quiet.
00:25:19 ◼ ► Like, it is less likely that you're going to run into them, that you're going to be able to have a conversation.
00:25:24 ◼ ► Like, I remember – I think I remember where I heard this, but I remember someone saying that they, like, were trying – they were trying to understand their users.
00:25:33 ◼ ► And so they just, like, went and sat at a McDonald's with a sign that was, like, try our app.
00:25:41 ◼ ► And it was just a way to talk to just random people about what they thought, what they expected.
00:25:50 ◼ ► Because I think it was getting at the – which I'm not saying it's a great idea, but it is something that gets at this idea that it is so difficult often to really understand the typical user.
00:26:04 ◼ ► And obviously, like, in this case, Reddit's not necessarily the typical user, but it is a different kind of interaction that you're having with a different kind of group.
00:26:12 ◼ ► And there's an element of – on the one hand, you want to have lots of interactions with lots of people to have a wide thing that you can pick up trends and see lots of things.
00:26:20 ◼ ► Obviously, the wider you – you're growing wide in some directions but narrow in others.
00:26:30 ◼ ► Like, sometimes I'd be – I wish I could just have, like, a tenth of a percent of my users just randomly have to have a conversation with me, like, on iMessage.
00:26:52 ◼ ► And so it's fascinating and not necessarily all that surprising that you've been having – that it can be useful to you and that it can be helpful.
00:27:04 ◼ ► But it's like the only thing that is always in the back of my mind with these types of discussions is being – you and I have to be very careful and protective of the voice of our apps and what they do and how they do it.
00:27:21 ◼ ► Because there are so many different voices that we can listen to that are telling us things.
00:27:26 ◼ ► And if we always are doing what the last person complained about, the app is unlikely to be getting better.
00:27:41 ◼ ► Like, someone will complain about something and I'm like, you know, oh, I don't want to hear that complaint anymore.
00:27:47 ◼ ► But at the same time, it's also important, I think, for us to understand that we need to have a voice in this ourselves.
00:27:53 ◼ ► We need to be – I guess having a conversation with ourselves, if that doesn't sound confusing.
00:27:58 ◼ ► But that voice that we're having is also, like, we're making these apps for our own reasons or for our own perspective on what the best version of this is.
00:28:08 ◼ ► And sometimes it's useful to be able to have a conversation and someone says, why doesn't it do it this way?
00:28:18 ◼ ► I still just want it to work that way regardless of why that technically would be really complicated or there's some kind of performance issue or some other reason why that isn't the case.
00:28:26 ◼ ► But I think if we can keep our own inner voice, like, strong in these conversations, like, it is certainly useful to have these things and it's really encouraging.
00:28:36 ◼ ► And, you know, I think when you mentioned a while back that you were thinking of getting into Reddit, I was very nervous for you.