Under the Radar

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 never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So this is an interesting time of year for me, and I think in some ways for you, because

00:00:14 ◼   ► I've been realizing that I am coming up in just a couple of weeks on my 10-year anniversary

00:00:21 ◼   ► in the App Store, which is kind of a remarkable and scary thing. And I believe your anniversary

00:00:27 ◼   ► actually was like a month ago, if I remember right?

00:00:30 ◼   ► Mine was in July.

00:00:31 ◼   ► July, yeah, yeah, a couple of months ago. So you're well past this. You've gone through

00:00:35 ◼   ► all your nostalgia. For me, I'm in the thick of my nostalgia as I kind of start thinking

00:00:40 ◼   ► about coming up to this—having had this job now, I guess, for 10 years. And one of

00:00:47 ◼   ► the things that that is making me think about that is interesting, like not necessarily

00:00:52 ◼   ► negative or positive, but just really interesting for me is the realization that I, 10 years

00:00:57 ◼   ► ago, I had absolutely no expectation that this is what I would still be doing in 10

00:01:02 ◼   ► years. That while I enjoyed making apps back then, and it was an exciting new opportunity,

00:01:09 ◼   ► it was kind of really like it felt like it had a future and a growth, I would have been

00:01:15 ◼   ► very surprised if someone had told me 10 years from now, this is how you'll be making your

00:01:20 ◼   ► living and have been making your living this way for many years. And it just kind of makes

00:01:26 ◼   ► me think about the future and maybe some worries that I have for the platform, some hopes that

00:01:32 ◼   ► I might have for the platform, and kind of like what this might look like 5, 10 years

00:01:37 ◼   ► from now going forward. Because sometimes these things feel like they're just kind

00:01:41 ◼   ► of like, they'll last forever, and it'll be this inevitable thing that I will continue

00:01:47 ◼   ► to have a venue and a platform and a viable place to make a living forever, or at least

00:01:53 ◼   ► for my lifetime, which is really what I care about for the purposes of something like this.

00:01:57 ◼   ► But at the same time, I'm also aware that many platforms have come and gone over the

00:02:06 ◼   ► course of history, and there are many people who have had to make changes and adapt to

00:02:12 ◼   ► those changes as things go. And as someone who is very, very focused on essentially one

00:02:18 ◼   ► platform, like the iOS, even more specifically probably iPhone platform, is my livelihood

00:02:26 ◼   ► and is something that I as a result have a strongly vested interest in its future. And

00:02:33 ◼   ► so I think it's just an interesting thing to kind of think about some of the things

00:02:36 ◼   ► that I worry about, and then some of the things that give me hope. And I think the first place

00:02:40 ◼   ► to start is even just the question of the iPhone itself as a consumer platform that

00:02:47 ◼   ► is desirable and active and has lots of users. And that is probably the area of all of these

00:02:53 ◼   ► things that I have the least worries about, that it seems so ingrained in so many people's

00:02:58 ◼   ► lives, even sometimes in a problematic way. The iPhone is so stuck into so many people's

00:03:05 ◼   ► lives that that not happening, that people turning away from the iPhone or I guess going

00:03:11 ◼   ► to other platforms or other smartphones or things, it feels like a very far from now

00:03:16 ◼   ► problem for me. It doesn't seem like the iPhone is going to have big issues. There

00:03:22 ◼   ► were times over the last ten years where people were talking, "Oh, cheap Android phones

00:03:27 ◼   ► are going to come in and they're going to undercut the iPhone and Apple's going to

00:03:32 ◼   ► fall apart." Or "Android's going to catch up and get good and that's going to happen."

00:03:37 ◼   ► Or "Windows Phone or something else is going to come along," or whatever. And it seems

00:03:41 ◼   ► like the platform has weathered all of those things and Apple's growth may vary. Some

00:03:49 ◼   ► years they may have a better run than others, but the overall fundamental mechanics of there's

00:03:56 ◼   ► whatever a billion active iOS devices in the world doesn't seem like something that's

00:04:01 ◼   ► going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

00:04:02 ◼   ► E: Whenever anybody looks at technology and tries to make predictions about the present

00:04:07 ◼   ► of the future, it's really tempting to go to one extreme or the other. It's really

00:04:11 ◼   ► tempting to both not think anything will ever change from where it is now and whatever conditions

00:04:17 ◼   ► are now, that is the right way to be and that will be that way forever, which as we know

00:04:22 ◼   ► is never the case in technology. But it's also tempting to go the other way with predictions

00:04:28 ◼   ► and say, "Well, everything always changes and things we know today are never going to

00:04:31 ◼   ► change." Because actually, tech has a large degree of both extremes and then a lot of

00:04:38 ◼   ► things in the middle. Tech has a lot of things that are in flux, especially when markets

00:04:43 ◼   ► and roles and everything are young. When things aren't mature yet, when things are still

00:04:48 ◼   ► very much in flux, there could be a lot of change with new markets, emerging markets,

00:04:53 ◼   ► things people hadn't thought of yet.

00:04:55 ◼   ► But once things get established in tech, not everything sticks around for the long term,

00:05:02 ◼   ► but a surprising amount of stuff does. If you look at long term stuff, if you learned

00:05:08 ◼   ► web programming in the late 90s, a lot of that, things have gotten more complex since

00:05:15 ◼   ► then, but if you have been doing web programming that entire time, you can keep up with it.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And web programming is still here and doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And that's been there for, what, 30 years almost? 20 years? And I don't think web programming

00:05:35 ◼   ► is going to go away in the next 10 to 20 years and possibly even longer than that. And so

00:05:43 ◼   ► if you hitch yourself to the right boat or whatever the phrase is, I'm not good at phrases,

00:05:51 ◼   ► if you pick the right cart to sail on, then you can have most or all of a career doing

00:06:00 ◼   ► one of those things that sticks around for the long term. It's hard to necessarily see

00:06:04 ◼   ► those when they're emerging, like see what's going to be there long term, but there are

00:06:07 ◼   ► things that are there long term. If you are a low level systems programmer and you wrote

00:06:13 ◼   ► things in C, there's going to be jobs for you, there have been jobs for you for about

00:06:18 ◼   ► 50 years, and there will be jobs for you for probably the next 50 years. Even though there's

00:06:23 ◼   ► other things that come along that try to replace it, either they're not going to be as popular

00:06:28 ◼   ► as C or they're not going to fully replace it, or being a systems programmer, you'll

00:06:32 ◼   ► be able to learn them and you'll be able to just move to a different language and it's

00:06:35 ◼   ► no big deal. There's going to be low level systems programming forever. There's going

00:06:39 ◼   ► to be web programming for a very long time, and there has been. There's going to be mobile

00:06:46 ◼   ► programming for a long time. The iPhone is just one example of mobile programming, that's

00:06:51 ◼   ► what we have today, but if another major mobile platform came along in a few years and severely

00:06:57 ◼   ► disrupted the iPhone such that we would have to start using it for market reasons and start

00:07:03 ◼   ► developing for it for market reasons, then we would just transfer our skills. People

00:07:09 ◼   ► can learn a new language, it's no big deal. Our skills would transfer in the same way

00:07:14 ◼   ► that people who have web programming skills know about things like layout and page markup

00:07:20 ◼   ► and on page logic and back end logic and probably some stuff with databases and stuff. That's

00:07:26 ◼   ► all regardless of the language that is being used and some of the platform details that

00:07:34 ◼   ► are being used. You can be a web programmer, but that doesn't mean that you have to always

00:07:41 ◼   ► use JavaScript or that you have to always use CSS or HTML. Those skills can transfer.

00:07:46 ◼   ► You know the vocabulary, you know what you're looking for, and you can easily pick up new

00:07:49 ◼   ► things as they come. Just like us, as mobile developers, if we have to all of a sudden

00:07:54 ◼   ► tomorrow switch to Android and right now we're focused on iOS, it's going to be disruptive

00:07:59 ◼   ► for a little while, but it's not going to make it so that we don't have a career anymore.

00:08:04 ◼   ► It would just be a new platform to learn, but we would already know about things like,

00:08:07 ◼   ► "Well, we're going to have to have somewhere to display the UI and different screen sizes.

00:08:10 ◼   ► We're going to have to have certain concepts of buttons and switches and navigation structures,

00:08:16 ◼   ► and we're going to have to deal with things like push notifications and background updates."

00:08:21 ◼   ► Those are things that are just kind of inherent to being a mobile app, and so our skills would

00:08:26 ◼   ► just transfer. On some level, a lot of the stuff sticks around for a very long time.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Even a lot of that stuff, a lot of the mobile stuff came from desktops or came from web

00:08:38 ◼   ► stuff. You don't have to necessarily think you're going to be an iPhone developer forever

00:08:43 ◼   ► to think that you probably have a pretty good career for the foreseeable future of being

00:08:47 ◼   ► a mobile developer.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think what's interesting to me is the... I think all that is absolutely right.

00:08:53 ◼   ► It's the fascinating thing, too, of... It's kind of a scary realization that I now, if

00:08:59 ◼   ► I ever needed to put a resume together again, I would say, "I have 10 years iPhone experience."

00:09:05 ◼   ► Mobile development for the iPhone or for iOS. I remember early in my career having that

00:09:11 ◼   ► sense of when you'd see a job offer and it would be like, "Looking for 10 plus years

00:09:18 ◼   ► of experience with X platform." It's like, "Wait, that's me now. I'm that person."

00:09:25 ◼   ► That always seemed so impossible to achieve back when I... Because when I was looking

00:09:29 ◼   ► for jobs, I had three to four years experience at most in anything. It was the idea of having

00:09:36 ◼   ► 10 years. "Man, those people are so old." Now that's us.

00:09:40 ◼   ► Yeah, now that's us. I guess it's the reassuring thing that... A, I think what you're saying

00:09:46 ◼   ► is right, that in the sense that, broadly speaking, technology and the broad areas that

00:09:51 ◼   ► we're working in, I think, are fairly much established. Mobile programming seems to be

00:09:56 ◼   ► something that is here to stay for my lifetime. And then I think what's even more comforting

00:10:01 ◼   ► is that I'll probably be able to just continue to set up camp in the Apple ecosystem and

00:10:07 ◼   ► just stay here. As much as I think I could transfer to go somewhere else, it seems like

00:10:14 ◼   ► for my goals in terms of just being a small independent software company, finding a home

00:10:21 ◼   ► here is likely gonna be something that I can continue to do. I'm encouraged in many ways

00:10:26 ◼   ► by the Mac, and while it's had a complicated history recently, there are many people I

00:10:34 ◼   ► know personally who have been making... They're now on their 20, 30 year Mac programmer developer,

00:10:42 ◼   ► and even as that platform maybe has evened out or stagnated or whatever you wanna say

00:10:49 ◼   ► about the Mac, there's people still just steadily making a good solid living there. And so I

00:10:55 ◼   ► think as long as Apple continues to want to have a developer ecosystem for iOS, it seems

00:11:03 ◼   ► like something that should be viable for us. And I think in many ways what that makes me

00:11:08 ◼   ► start to think about is then it's the like, "What is Apple going to do within this ecosystem?

00:11:14 ◼   ► What are the things about that that give me pause or give me hope?" And I think about,

00:11:20 ◼   ► for example, Apple recently has been having a massive push on subscription pricing. It's

00:11:26 ◼   ► something that they seem like they have... It's like secret, not secret, meeting with

00:11:32 ◼   ► a bunch of app developers in New York, and there's a general sense that that's the thing

00:11:37 ◼   ► that they're pushing towards, which seems aligned with the general goal that Apple has

00:11:41 ◼   ► to increase their services revenue, and having this broad base of recurring revenue is good

00:11:48 ◼   ► for them, it's good for us. That's interesting in terms of, "Is that good for the platform?

00:11:53 ◼   ► Is that good for me? Is that..." Right now, I don't really... I make the majority of my

00:11:58 ◼   ► income not from subscription pricing. And so it's interesting to me that that's something

00:12:03 ◼   ► that Apple is going to want or to push towards, or is there a point at which I could imagine

00:12:09 ◼   ► that that's something that they start to require? It's interesting to think about how... Not

00:12:16 ◼   ► that I think Apple is going to try and be malicious in any of their choices, but if

00:12:20 ◼   ► they're pushing in a direction that isn't something that I necessarily wanted to be

00:12:24 ◼   ► in or was in currently, they have a tremendous amount of control over me in that way, and

00:12:30 ◼   ► that is kind of worrying in so far as... It's never nice to feel like you're kind of obliged

00:12:36 ◼   ► to do something, but at the same time, in the specific case, I say subscription pricing,

00:12:41 ◼   ► it's like, "Okay, if that's something that they're emphasizing, eventually I'll probably

00:12:44 ◼   ► just find a way to make that happen." And in my apps that have a tip jar, maybe they'll

00:12:50 ◼   ► just end up having... There'll be a subscription rather than a kind of a one-time consumable

00:12:54 ◼   ► in-app purchase. And maybe that is ultimately more fundamentally better, maybe it's not,

00:13:00 ◼   ► but there's ways to adapt to those kind of changes or pushes or emphasis that Apple's

00:13:06 ◼   ► going to do. But at the same time, maybe subscription pricing is going to be the same kind of thing

00:13:10 ◼   ► as IAD was, where it's something that... The platform is old enough that there have been

00:13:16 ◼   ► things that were areas of emphasis for Apple that came and then weren't anymore, so it's

00:13:23 ◼   ► hard to know.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Apple has... Apple runs a tight ship, and they have very strong opinions. If you can

00:13:33 ◼   ► forgive the kind of awkward and uncomfortable metaphor, when you're training a puppy to

00:13:39 ◼   ► walk on a leash, the puppy has a lot of opinions about what it wants to do. And dogs do not

00:13:44 ◼   ► take to leashes automatically, it isn't instinctual to them. They will first bite the leash and

00:13:50 ◼   ► try to run in every different direction and will be very upset about the leash, and eventually

00:13:53 ◼   ► they learn to walk on the leash and you find, hopefully, you find a happy medium where both

00:14:00 ◼   ► of you are satisfied with the arrangement you have, but you are really the one in charge

00:14:04 ◼   ► as the owner, and the dog is subject to that and giving in to that at some point. Boy,

00:14:10 ◼   ► this is uncomfortable as a developer and a dog owner.

00:14:15 ◼   ► But that's kind of like... Apple holds the leash here on this entire industry, the inherent

00:14:19 ◼   ► industry of iOS app developers. We fought and fought for a while at the beginning, don't

00:14:24 ◼   ► have app review, and we ultimately had no control, and then ultimately lost that battle,

00:14:30 ◼   ► and now we kind of have to just follow Apple's lead, literally. And if they are directing

00:14:38 ◼   ► us in a certain way as developers, there is some degree of fighting we can do, there's

00:14:43 ◼   ► some degree of non-compliance that we can get away with, but in broad strokes, we still

00:14:49 ◼   ► basically have to do what they want. So subscription pricing is... Some of those areas that we

00:14:55 ◼   ► can't fight are things like app review, like, "Hey, you know what? We're stuck with app

00:14:58 ◼   ► review. We're stuck with in-app purchase rules," and stuff like that. That's fine. And then

00:15:03 ◼   ► there are certain things that we can disobey them or go a different way, but it's going

00:15:09 ◼   ► to be difficult for us. So that's things like paid up front apps versus free with in-app

00:15:15 ◼   ► purchase or something later. You can still have a paid up front app, but certain things

00:15:19 ◼   ► will be harder for you if you do. And over time, that ratchet just keeps getting tighter

00:15:24 ◼   ► and tighter and tighter. And I think subscription pricing is just one of those things. It's

00:15:29 ◼   ► the kind of thing where you can keep not doing that, and you don't have to do subscription

00:15:34 ◼   ► pricing, but over time, I think they're going to make it increasingly compelling to do that.

00:15:39 ◼   ► They've already done that in a large degree with lots of other factors of it. But it's

00:15:44 ◼   ► important, I think, broader picture than just this one topic, broader picture, I think it's

00:15:49 ◼   ► important to look at where Apple seems to be directing us and try to find ways to minimize

00:15:58 ◼   ► how you have to fight them on things. Make decisions in what you build or how you build

00:16:04 ◼   ► it or how it looks or how it works or certain business decisions, how it makes money. Try

00:16:10 ◼   ► to align most or all of those decisions with what is Apple making easy and encouraging

00:16:17 ◼   ► today, because it's so hard to fight them on really any front very hard, and it's especially

00:16:24 ◼   ► hard to fight them on multiple fronts. And so if you kind of read the tea leaves, which

00:16:29 ◼   ► usually they make pretty clear, and try to figure out what do they want us to be doing,

00:16:35 ◼   ► what are they promoting, what are they encouraging, if you can make yourself and your apps fit

00:16:40 ◼   ► into that, you're generally better off.

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00:18:01 ◼   ► So what I also think is interesting is what Apple is, like there's things like subscription

00:18:06 ◼   ► pricing or things that are more businessy in their emphasis. And I also think about

00:18:11 ◼   ► things that are Apple's interests that are more technical. I keep seeing Apple seems

00:18:18 ◼   ► to care so much about AR and ARKit. And it's this thing that I have no feelings for this

00:18:28 ◼   ► platform. It doesn't really make sense to me when I use it. It's kind of awkward and

00:18:32 ◼   ► weird. And maybe this is the thing where it's like, "Oh, in two or three years, technology

00:18:36 ◼   ► will be different and it'll make more sense. And this is just the early stages." But I

00:18:40 ◼   ► will say it makes me feel weird when something is clearly an emphasis for Apple, that they

00:18:46 ◼   ► put a lot of time, energy, stage time, like they are banging on that AR drum steadily

00:18:53 ◼   ► and to not feel like I have any part of that, really. I've made like one toy project in

00:18:59 ◼   ► ARKit just to try it, but I've never gone anything farther than that. And that feels

00:19:04 ◼   ► really weird and awkward and makes me kind of nervous. And especially when it contrasts

00:19:09 ◼   ► with something that's on the flip side, where health and fitness as a flip side, where

00:19:15 ◼   ► that is also an emphasis and something that Apple built an entire—well, I don't think

00:19:19 ◼   ► they knew it at the time necessarily, but they built an entire device that's focused

00:19:23 ◼   ► on health and fitness in the Apple Watch. That has whatever it's asserted its life

00:19:28 ◼   ► as. That is primarily how it is marketed now, that it is a health and fitness tool, it is

00:19:33 ◼   ► a smart health guardian, it's doing a tremendous amount of stuff. Doing work and some of my

00:19:39 ◼   ► apps being in the health and fitness area feels super comfortable, feels like a really

00:19:43 ◼   ► nice cozy place to have there. And it's just interesting how it contrasts so strongly

00:19:49 ◼   ► with something like ARKit, where it's like, "I got nothing. If this is what the future

00:19:55 ◼   ► is, then I'm missing this boat because I don't get it."

00:19:59 ◼   ► - I think some degree of that kind of concern is always a healthy thing to have, I think,

00:20:06 ◼   ► to be a little bit worried that, "I wonder if I'm missing the next big thing." Because

00:20:11 ◼   ► part of something I should have said earlier but forgot to is when you're looking at

00:20:16 ◼   ► your career and trying to figure out, "Can this technology last your entire career?"

00:20:22 ◼   ► Whether it's, as I mentioned earlier, web programming or mobile programming or low-level

00:20:26 ◼   ► programming or whatever else it is. One thing to consider is the stage in your career that

00:20:32 ◼   ► you are at and the stage in its life cycle that technology is at. Ideally, you align

00:20:40 ◼   ► those things as much as possible. Ideally, when you are early in your career, you get

00:20:45 ◼   ► it on something that is in its early stages. And then you kind of ride it as your career

00:20:50 ◼   ► goes. So today, if you're 17, today is probably not a great time for you to invest heavily

00:20:59 ◼   ► in web programming. Because even though I think it's going to be here a while, it's

00:21:03 ◼   ► going to be here a while in more of a boring way, more of a flat, low-growth way. If you

00:21:09 ◼   ► want to both be relevant and be a hot, hireable talent, and if you want to maximize your chances

00:21:16 ◼   ► in making a lot of money, you want to be in something that is early in its stages. Because

00:21:20 ◼   ► then, as it matures and as it grows and as its market gets shaken out, you are right

00:21:27 ◼   ► there riding that early wave as you are early in your career. And then as you're later

00:21:31 ◼   ► in your career, you will be an expert in that thing because you will have been doing it

00:21:34 ◼   ► for a long time as it starts leveling off and maturing and kind of cooling. And then

00:21:40 ◼   ► you can decide whether you want to jump to something else at that point or you might

00:21:43 ◼   ► decide when you're like in your 40s, you might decide, you know what, you don't want

00:21:47 ◼   ► that much turbulence in your career. You're happy to be in that stable place because maybe

00:21:52 ◼   ► you focus more on family and stuff and you don't want to be super turbulent at work.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And you don't want to have crazy long hours working at startups. This is a very common

00:22:00 ◼   ► pattern people take, right? And so it is nice to align your career timing with the timing

00:22:08 ◼   ► of whatever industry that you are trying to be in here. Anyway, so all that being said,

00:22:13 ◼   ► with something like AR and your comparison of having not much interest in AR but a lot

00:22:19 ◼   ► of interest in health and fitness and those being Apple's seeming interest right now,

00:22:24 ◼   ► I would say there's a whole lot of stuff that Apple is interested in that doesn't go anywhere.

00:22:29 ◼   ► That they try it and it kind of peters out really early and it's fine. Health and fitness

00:22:35 ◼   ► I think is going to always be a baseline. It's going to be there for a very long time

00:22:38 ◼   ► and I think you're totally fine there. AR is a huge question mark right now. It might

00:22:44 ◼   ► be really big in the future but it doesn't seem like that's a given. It seems like that's

00:22:48 ◼   ► a maybe and we just don't know yet. If AR does get really big in the future, we might

00:22:56 ◼   ► decide to adopt it or we might decide, you know what, we're old, we're tired, we're going

00:23:02 ◼   ► to just let that one go and we're going to stick over here in our nice safe areas that

00:23:07 ◼   ► we know that will probably still be good sized markets in themselves.

00:23:12 ◼   ► The other thing is the world of technology is so big that even among the field of iOS,

00:23:18 ◼   ► you mentioned health and fitness is your safe area. Well, right now audio is my safe area.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Those are both things that a lot of people use but are not the hot thing anymore. Maybe

00:23:31 ◼   ► yours is at least more recent than mine. Mine was the hot thing like 20 years ago but in

00:23:36 ◼   ► neither case are we at the bleeding edge. But that's okay because the world of technology,

00:23:42 ◼   ► especially the world of what Apple is doing in mobile, is so big. You can't be super involved

00:23:48 ◼   ► in all of it. There's tons of stuff that iPhones can do that neither of us have ever, well

00:23:54 ◼   ► maybe not you, maybe not me, that neither of us have currently working on apps for.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Heck, there's the whole world of games which is massive and neither of us are in it at

00:24:07 ◼   ► all. That's not going away anytime soon but we're just not in it. That's okay. It might

00:24:12 ◼   ► turn out that AR does come out and maybe does get really big but we don't necessarily have

00:24:17 ◼   ► to do it because it's a big world. We can't do everything. To some degree, you have to

00:24:22 ◼   ► be able to look at something that is an incoming wave and decide whether to try to ride it

00:24:28 ◼   ► or not. You can't catch them all. Yeah, no. And of course, it's an interesting analogy

00:24:34 ◼   ► because it also reminds me of Pokemon Go which was a big flash, super exciting, and then

00:24:41 ◼   ► it disappeared. It still exists but it's not really a thing. It's still bigger than anything

00:24:46 ◼   ► you and I will probably ever work on but it seems like it's disappeared. It's good to

00:24:52 ◼   ► have that mindset that you don't have to catch them all. You're not going to be able to do

00:24:56 ◼   ► everything and it's okay to find something. I think as long as you find something that

00:25:08 ◼   ► isn't actively working against Apple's interests or your platform of choice's interests, that

00:25:15 ◼   ► if you are vaguely instantly butting up against edges, you're probably in a good place. It

00:25:22 ◼   ► doesn't have to necessarily be the new hotness. It can just be something that is likely going

00:25:27 ◼   ► to be a stable part of this thing that will be kind of boring in some ways. But honestly,

00:25:34 ◼   ► in some ways, I kind of like the boringness in the sense that I remember the early days

00:25:40 ◼   ► like 10 years ago where it felt like I was in a constant race. That I was actively racing

00:25:47 ◼   ► against these unnamed forces that were all just scrambling to find our place. I'm sure

00:25:57 ◼   ► in some ways there's new platforms, new interesting things, that gold rush, that land rush, that

00:26:05 ◼   ► competition is there. In some ways I kind of like that I'm working in a marketplace

00:26:10 ◼   ► that's pretty saturated. I make a step counter. It's not something that's particularly

00:26:16 ◼   ► new or novel. People have been wearing them on their belts for years. Many competitors

00:26:22 ◼   ► have come and gone. In some ways it's kind of nice to just be part of that market saturation.

00:26:29 ◼   ► I have my little place, my little niche, and it seems like it's vaguely and it's not

00:26:35 ◼   ► actively working against anything that Apple wants to do. It's kind of nice to have that

00:26:39 ◼   ► comfort and to have the sense that changes from here are likely going to be slow, more

00:26:47 ◼   ► likely than not, slow, and would be a slow decay over time rather than a sharp, abrupt

00:26:54 ◼   ► fall off a cliff kind of thing. Some new step counting technology appears and someone comes

00:26:59 ◼   ► in with a hot new step counter and it takes over the market. That seems pretty unlikely.

00:27:05 ◼   ► In the same way that podcasting at this point. There's enough players and they've been

00:27:11 ◼   ► around for long enough and there's differences in feature and capability and market share,

00:27:16 ◼   ► but things are just shifting back and forth. It's not revolutionary. It's just this

00:27:21 ◼   ► evolutionary progression over time. In some ways it's kind of not good to be in a saturated

00:27:30 ◼   ► market, but it's also kind of nice if you don't necessarily need your marketplace

00:27:33 ◼   ► to grow. I'm not trying to 10x my revenue every year. I just want to stay like I am.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Being in a saturated market is actually kind of nice.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Well, nothing will ever stay the way it is forever, but you can choose more or less turbulence

00:27:50 ◼   ► depending on what market you enter or what technology you place bets on or whatever else.

00:27:55 ◼   ► It's nice to recognize there are different levels of that turbulence depending on what

00:27:59 ◼   ► you pick. There will always be some possibility for turbulence, but you can very much choose

00:28:06 ◼   ► your class of it. The same thing applies to investing. There's so much about this world.

00:28:11 ◼   ► When you're young you can take bigger risks and you might want to, but then as you get

00:28:14 ◼   ► older or as you get more tired or as you get more busy with other things you might want

00:28:17 ◼   ► to lower the risk of certain things. It's important to just recognize that you have

00:28:22 ◼   ► lots of options out there and that things will always change. You will be able to deal

00:28:27 ◼   ► with the change ultimately and that's not a bad thing, but you do have some input about

00:28:33 ◼   ► how much change that you are likely to face.

00:28:35 ◼   ► I think the reality is that in summary it seems like 10 years in I'm still just as

00:28:42 ◼   ► sort of positive about the platform broadly. This is I think a good place to make a living.

00:28:47 ◼   ► I enjoy making my living here and it will be fascinating if in 10 years you and I can

00:28:51 ◼   ► have the same conversation with another, at that point having 20 years of experience with

00:28:58 ◼   ► this platform and with development here.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and honestly if I had to place a bet today I bet that will happen. I bet we will

00:29:05 ◼   ► still be doing this in 10 years and we will be able to have that conversation. We'll

00:29:09 ◼   ► just be older.

00:29:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and more tired.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - And more tired. Thanks for listening everybody and we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:15 ◼   ► - Bye.

00:29:16 ◼   ► [ Silence ]