110: Workouts++ 2.0 Launch Diary
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Hello and welcome to a slightly different episode of Under the Radar.
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If you're a long time listener to the show, you might remember that back last December
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when I launched Workouts++, I kept a kind of a lunch day diary of the experience that
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I think ended up turning into a pretty interesting episode.
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I'm honestly personally very glad to have recorded it just because so often for these
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kinds of things you have this experience and honestly with independent development you
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often have the experience by yourself largely and you never really get the benefit of recalling
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and remembering and having this memento going forward.
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And so it was very great to record it.
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And so today, this is December 12th, 2017, about a year later I'm launching the 2.0 update
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of Workouts++.
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And as a result it seemed like a good opportunity to record my experiences again.
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And hopefully this is interesting and somewhat instructive.
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It's a funny thing launching a 2.0 update as opposed to a version 1.
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I've re-listened to a bit of the first launch day diary for Workouts++ and there's a lot
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of apprehension and a lot of this sense of complete unknown about how people will react
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to it, about how it's going to go.
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It felt like there was a lot more writing on it.
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A 2.0 update feels different.
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This is a substantial update and it's something that I've been working almost exclusively
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on for three or four months now.
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It's a large substantial investment of my time.
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But I'll say that I'm less worried about it than I was for version 1 just because I know
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the core concept sort of works.
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I had the experience of Workouts++ 1.0 to tell me that and then I think also I'm just
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feeling liberated by the fact that as I discussed I think on three or four episodes ago, "Free
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with Benefits" I think was the name of the episode, I made the decision that for this
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update I'm just making the app completely free.
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That I'm using this more as a marketing tool to expand awareness of my other apps to just
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in general try and see if I can make the app broadly used or get wide acceptance and focus
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on those things rather than on trying to in the short term make money.
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And that is incredibly liberating.
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It's a little weird to not have the sense of if the day goes really well, often there
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would have been some kind of, it's like this direct payday, but it's quite liberating in
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some ways to just say like, "You know, whatever the day is, this is just step one in trying
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to build a big broad audience for the application."
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And hopefully if the app does really well today, that's a good step towards that process.
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But beyond that it's quite liberating to just be able to say, "You know what?
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Let's see what happens."
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And if it doesn't quite go right, I guess I'll just continue to sort of adjust and redirect
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the app, add new features, try marketing things.
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Just I have the opportunity to do that in kind of a fun way.
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But we'll see.
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It's currently about 5.43 a.m.
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It's a bit early, but I've started working kind of early recently.
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And so I'm just doing a little bit of work before the launch gets started.
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I expect to launch the app just before nine o'clock or so.
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Or at least that's when I'll hit go in iTunes Connect and then probably a little after nine
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once everything has propagated hopefully.
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I'll actually start to promote it and talk about it.
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So at this point I'm just going through and editing my sort of launch blog post where
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I outline the features and starting to think of any kind of checklist items that I need
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Because one thing I've learned from doing several launches is it's pretty important
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for me to have a checklist of things that I want to do and think about that now when
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I'm not kind of in the anxious, excited, excitable phase and just run them all down.
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So right now I'm just going to be editing blog posts and thinking of things I might
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want to do later on today.
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And then I'll check back in a little bit as we get closer to when I hit go.
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It is now 6.35 a.m. and this is where the day transitions into kind of a, I guess, a
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true indie mode because as much as I'm excited and focused on launching the app, I am now
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going to be transitioning to family stuff and getting my kids breakfast and getting
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them ready to go off to school and then I'll go and drive my son to school and drop them
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off and then come back.
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And it is one of those things that I feel like is both lovely and complicated about
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being an independent developer where your personal life and your professional life are
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so close together.
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I try very hard to have them not overlap too much and get intermixed and that can cause
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lots of problems but they're very close together.
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I'm finishing up this update.
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It's a pretty big day for the business overall.
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I'm about to just go and make breakfast and do that kind of stuff and then I'll come
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back and I'll do some work and it's kind of one of those funny things about being in
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this role where you're never really away from work and you're never really away from
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So it is nice, I will say, on a day like this to have that balance, to have that thing that's
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grounding me that my kids know we're launching an app today and they're kind of excited and
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motivating and encouraging about that.
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But at the same time, it's not something that they're really understanding.
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It's still just another day for them in a lot of ways and they're going to, we're just
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going to go have breakfast like we normally do, have a normal morning and then I'll be
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coming back to work and it's a significant day and that grounding effect is definitely
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very nice and it helps me from getting too in my head or too concerned or worried about
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what the day's going to look like.
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All right, it is 8.29 AM.
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I am sitting in traffic coming home from dropping my son off at school.
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A lot of mixed feelings because essentially as soon as I get home, I will be launching
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the app so I'm thinking about it a lot.
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It's probably worth mentioning briefly.
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The reason it might sound different beyond just being me rather than me and Marco this
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week is I'm recording on a mobile recorder just so that I can do things like this, that
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it can be a diary throughout the day wherever I am, not just every moment that I'm stuck
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at the desk.
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So if it sounds a little different, if the quality isn't quite what you're used to, understand
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that's what's going on there.
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I also thought it'd be an interesting, probably good time to talk a little bit about the update
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itself and why I'm excited about it and what's happening with this update.
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So Workouts++ 2.0 is the three main features, like the marquee features, are watch-based
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podcast playback, location tracking, and swim support, as well as there's a whole bunch
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of other stuff.
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But those are the big three.
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And in a lot of ways it's kind of finishing the app that I started with Workouts++ 1.0
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because in Workouts++ 1.0 a lot of those things just weren't really possible.
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Things like swimming support wasn't great until watchOS 4.0, location tracking just
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wasn't possible before 4.0, and podcast playback support was sort of possible before but wasn't
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really quite as compelling until we got the LTE Apple watches.
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So those are now sort of the big main features.
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And in addition to that, there's just a whole host of other stuff.
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It has Siri integration and new design.
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I did a lot of work on the charting that I do in the app to display your heart rate and
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your speed over time.
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There's a lot of other kind of things like that.
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But those are the three main features.
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And it's funny because I think the thing that most people are probably-- like in the initial
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audience of the app, my guess-- I mean, this is entirely speculative-- but my guess is
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that most people are going to be interested in the watch-based podcast playback because
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it's a really tricky problem to solve.
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It's kind of hard.
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And anytime I'm able to solve a problem that ostensibly isn't solvable, I always am excited
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I was able to, because of a lot of the weird mechanics of how a workout apps work, I was
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able to get podcast playback working pretty well on the watch.
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In practice, I imagine the actual number of people who use the app for podcast playback
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is going to be relatively small.
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In my own experience, it's really, really, really nice in a really narrow use case to
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have podcast playback on the watch, things like going out for a run.
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It's delightful if you have an LTE watch to just go out and run with just your watch.
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No phone, you just put your AirPods in and off you go.
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That's delightful.
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But that's a relatively small number of people who I think are going to be using it for that
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Like the location tracking and the swimming support is actually probably much more important
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to most of my customers.
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But I think it's going to be funny today because I think more attention is going to come from
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the niche feature rather than the core feature.
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That part of why I made the niche feature is because it's good for press.
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And also, it's something that I just wanted for myself.
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When I started off making podcast playback for Workouts++, I started off doing it not
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really expecting necessarily that I was going to ever be able to ship it, that it would
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ever be good enough to actually release because I thought there was going to be too many weird
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caveats and quirks and things that had to work around.
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But in the end, it actually did work out.
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It's shippable and it works.
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But I created it mostly for myself, for those rare situations where I'm going to be wanting
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to go for a run and don't want to carry my phone because I really hate having the little
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pouch that I have to strap onto my arm or onto my waist.
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So it's quite nice to not have that.
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But yeah, so it's kind of the core features.
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And then it's just a lot of other stuff.
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It's one of these updates where I've probably added 40, 50 features in total over the course
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of the update.
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And in aggregate, it dramatically changes the way that the app feels and the way that
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the app behaves.
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But no one of them other than those three are these kind of huge, big marquee features.
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But anyway, so I'm driving home.
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I'll be home soon.
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And then I'll be flipping the switch.
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So unless I just-- it's a little bit scary.
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I'm delighted and excited to go home.
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But I'm also a little bit nervous because once I flip the switch, then it's out in the
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And in kind of a weird way, it's sort of like-- I don't know.
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It's like asking someone out on a date or something where you have to sort of put yourself
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But anytime I launch an app, it's not just this thing that is between me and some of
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my close friends.
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Now everyone is going to see it.
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And I hopefully like it, but maybe not like it.
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And so those kind of feelings are really complicated.
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But anyway, I'll be home soon.
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And we'll go from there.
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So it is now 855 AM.
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And I'm here with my wife.
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Because I was going to ask her if she wanted to push the button.
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She's been the very supportive wife who's born with me as I've gone through this update.
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So it seemed only right that she would push the actual "release this version" button.
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I'm pretty actually very honored and excited to do this because I have never shipped an
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So I've already launched an app.
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There you go.
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You're about to ship it.
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You're about to go, "Duh-duh-duh, release this version."
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I see the spinning.
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This is very exciting.
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Lots of spinning.
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And there you go.
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What does that say?
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Whoa, ready for sale.
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And they're off.
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And they're off.
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The incredibly anticlimactic part of this is just like, and then nothing happens.
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At least not right away.
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So now we just wait and see for how long it takes to propagate through the App Store.
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It is now 9/12 AM.
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And I'm just sitting here refreshing the App Store page in a browser.
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I used to do this in iTunes.
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Then iTunes got rid of the App Store.
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So now I'm just sitting here in a browser.
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You know, refresh, refresh, refresh.
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Hoping that it comes out and hits the App Store soon so I can sort of get out of waiting
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But yeah, otherwise, this is the weird part of the day where you hit go and then you have
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no idea how long it'll be until it's actually go time.
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It is 9/22 AM.
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Still frantically refreshing.
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Getting close to an hour now since I hit go.
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And I'm still waiting.
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All right, it is now basically 10 o'clock.
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Thanks for getting serious.
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I'm still waiting for it to propagate to the App Store.
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But I'm giving my command and my R key a rest by I created a pingdom alert now for the App
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So once a minute it's checking it and will alert me when it's 2.0 finally appears in
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the App Store.
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In desperate times, call for desperate measures.
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So this morning is not going at all how I expected it would be.
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So it's still not showing up in the App Store and I had planned already to go and run a
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few errands and then go to the gym.
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At this point I figured things would have settled down.
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So I'm still just going to go run my errands, go to the gym.
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I guess I could say I'm doing some field testing for Workouts++ during that.
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And then just wait and see.
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Hopefully I'll get an alert at some point that it's up.
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But yeah, not exactly how I expected my morning to go.
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So it is now midday, noon, and still no sign of it appearing in the App Store.
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I've run all my errands.
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I'm at the gym about to go do a workout.
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If that would mean everything or nothing to you, the workout I'm about to go do is a very
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eternal fight gone bad.
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So I will be thoroughly worked out and I guess testing my app over the next hour or so.
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And then hopefully eventually it will appear in the App Store and I can move on.
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So it's now 4pm and I realize this does not make good radio whatsoever to just hear report
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after report of the app never propagating.
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But at least on the plus side, in a weird way, I've gotten a lot of reports that other
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apps are also having the same trouble.
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So it seems like I just picked a bad day in the App Store, for some reason having a massive
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hiccup today and not updating and not propagating.
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So I don't really know what that means.
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It's kind of an awkward thing.
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At some point it will just appear and so that might just be in the middle of the night.
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I don't really know.
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But yeah, it's a bit frustrating.
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Alright, it is now 5pm and I guess I'm going to take a break from my vigil.
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I mean, I've been able to do a few other things work-wise today, but overall it's been a bit
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of a waste of a day so far.
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Alright, it is 6.30pm and finally progress.
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Many, many, many hours later we finally have some progress.
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The app seems to be starting to propagate.
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I now have new screenshots but old version text in the App Store, which makes me think
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that finally it's coming.
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The moment is finally here.
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It's a little awkward that it's 6.30pm at night, but we'll just do our best.
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So I thought about it a while.
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It's about 6.54pm now, about exactly what I was going to do.
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And I think I've decided I'm going to do kind of a soft launch tonight, just like a tweet,
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just putting it out there that, "Hey, the update's out.
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It includes some basic features."
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And then tomorrow morning I'll do kind of a more concerted push and effort.
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But I want to kind of just put it out there in the world that this update is there, it's
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My thinking there is just I don't want to have anybody who is potentially thinking of
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linking to it or in press or something.
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It's something like it's kind of in this weird embargoed state.
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I'd rather just kind of say, "Hey, it's out there," but do my big push in the morning.
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I don't know if that's the right idea, and honestly at this point I'm just kind of exhausted,
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but that's what I've decided to do.
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So we'll do that and see where to go next.
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So it's now 7.54pm.
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The tweets are tweeted.
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Things are going pretty well, I'd say.
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The reception so far has been generally pretty positive and encouraging, which is lovely.
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It is kind of funny though, because I've been doing this kind of App Store stuff for so
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much longer now that I'm at a point where while I'm excited about the launch, while
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it's a really fun and important part of the process, the actual importance of it to me
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is dramatically reduced compared to what it may have been a few years ago.
00:18:23
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Because while I know it's an important part of building an apps audience, the real test
00:18:30
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for the app and the real importance for the app is not how it performs in the next 24
00:18:34
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hours, it's how it performs the next 24 weeks.
00:18:38
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And I'm making choices and directing things to hopefully allow it to be sustainable in
00:18:43
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the long term.
00:18:44
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So the temper is in a weird way my enthusiasm for today, because I realize that it's a long
00:18:51
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journey from here, but nevertheless today going well is nevertheless very encouraging.
00:18:57
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I gotta say, real time analytics are both the most wonderful and the most awful terrible
00:19:09
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thing in the world.
00:19:15
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You might not know this, but if you go into the affiliate console, so if you have like
00:19:20
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a link to something in the App Store, you can create an affiliate link where you get
00:19:24
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a little commission, but mostly I use it so I can kind of keep track of where my links
00:19:28
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are coming from.
00:19:29
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And inside of that panel, there's a real time tracker of clicks on those links, which is
00:19:36
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great, except it also just means that I'm just sitting here and have been sitting here
00:19:42
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for the last five minutes just watching this ticker go by every time someone clicks on
00:19:47
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a link to Workouts++ in the App Store.
00:19:50
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So yeah, wonderful, but also terrible, certainly if I was trying to get some work done.
00:19:56
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All right, it is coming up on 10 o'clock at night.
00:20:02
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Things are settling down.
00:20:04
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It's kind of nice.
00:20:05
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I'm up later than I usually am.
00:20:07
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It's well past my bedtime, but I wanted to just sort of be aware if there was any issues
00:20:13
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that jumped up.
00:20:14
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I am honestly kind of nervous about in the morning when I had a lot of people who say,
00:20:19
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"Hey, can't wait to use it.
00:20:20
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It's the first thing in the morning for my morning run."
00:20:21
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While I've tested the app as much as I can, I take it very seriously the responsibility
00:20:30
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of people recording their workouts in the app and expecting it to work flawlessly.
00:20:35
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And so I'm a little nervous now and will hopefully feel a bit better in the morning when I get
00:20:42
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a few reports back of things working correctly.
00:20:45
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But right now I'm just tired.
00:20:47
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I've been up for a long time at this point.
00:20:50
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Had kind of a rough day, middle of the day anyway.
00:20:54
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But overall things are going good.
00:20:56
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I'll check in in the morning.
00:20:57
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I'm going to do my little publicity push and kind of move on to the next phase of things.
00:21:05
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It is now about 8.30 on Wednesday morning, so the day after the launch, I suppose.
00:21:13
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And yeah, things are good.
00:21:14
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Things went well overnight.
00:21:15
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I'm a little bit late just responding to people on Twitter and just kind of getting a general
00:21:18
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sense of things and watching those cursed real-time reports.
00:21:23
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And overall I'd say things seem well.
00:21:25
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►
There's a couple issues around podcast import and transfer, but I always knew those were
00:21:31
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going to be the rough edges.
00:21:32
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Honestly, I'm most glad that I haven't had any reports of things going on with data loss
00:21:40
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►
or things like that.
00:21:41
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That's an area that I will say, it's like the one thing I always remember when I was
00:21:46
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taking classes in college.
00:21:48
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And they would talk about real-time systems and things where it's like a flight control
00:21:55
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►
software or something where you can't make a mistake because then people will get hurt.
00:22:02
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And while I'm delighted that I don't work on any software like that and I always kind
00:22:06
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of decided that I really just didn't want to go down that road, the closest thing to
00:22:10
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►
it in a weird way that I do is safeguarding people's workout data.
00:22:15
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I take it very seriously that people take their data very seriously.
00:22:19
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►
And it took a tremendous amount of effort to make sure that even if things go funny,
00:22:24
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►
like the app crashes or your battery runs out on your watch or whatever, the data is
00:22:29
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►
safe and you'll be able to get it back.
00:22:32
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So thankfully so far that seems to have worked and I haven't had any widespread reports.
00:22:38
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►
And overall, the reception has been pretty good.
00:22:40
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►
I noticed that I was mentioned on 9to5Mac and MacRumors, which I was not expecting at
00:22:46
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►
all, which was super cool.
00:22:47
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►
And it's always exciting when you just see your app mentioned in a publication that you
00:22:54
◼
►
read normally, but I had no expectation or guess that that was going to happen.
00:23:00
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►
They just picked it up from somewhere else, I suppose.
00:23:02
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►
I hadn't reached out to them.
00:23:03
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►
So that was super cool.
00:23:05
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►
But yeah, now I'm about to publish on my blog post and I'll do a secondary push this morning
00:23:11
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►
and then just settle into it and see where the app goes.
00:23:17
◼
►
Alright, I'm going to wrap up this diary at this point.
00:23:22
◼
►
It's the day after the launch, delayed as it was, and things are settling down.
00:23:32
◼
►
I have a few kind of closing thoughts and things that are just sort of the realities
00:23:38
◼
►
And this diary didn't go exactly how I planned, but I think in many ways that's something
00:23:43
◼
►
that's interesting to discuss.
00:23:44
◼
►
Before I do that, though, I do need to mention that this episode was brought to you by Linode.
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They're great.
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They have fast, high-performance servers and lots of data centers, great tools for managing
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They can pay me to talk about them, but they can't pay me to use them.
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00:24:46
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►
So in some closing thoughts, I was trying to think of how I could wrap this up.
00:24:50
◼
►
And really, I think in many ways, the unfortunate but still meaningful lesson of this experience
00:25:01
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►
is making sure that you have manager expectations for something like this, that the launch went
00:25:09
◼
►
It was picked up in places I was not expecting to be picked up, as best I can tell from initial
00:25:13
◼
►
sales and response.
00:25:14
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►
It went as well as I could have hoped for.
00:25:18
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►
Things are good.
00:25:20
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►
But I think it's often easy to end up with kind of like a movie in your mind, right?
00:25:26
◼
►
Like you end up with this expectation that is outsized to reality.
00:25:31
◼
►
And I think that's the reality of what happened to me in this case.
00:25:34
◼
►
And you know, things like it being delayed and, you know, planning around a launch at
00:25:39
◼
►
a particular time and that not happening.
00:25:41
◼
►
But you know, that's life.
00:25:42
◼
►
That's what's going to happen.
00:25:45
◼
►
But I think the thing that is probably most important to remember is that, you know, it's
00:25:51
◼
►
like the, this is just day one, this is the first couple days, it doesn't actually matter,
00:25:58
◼
►
probably in practice or in reality.
00:26:00
◼
►
You know, what matters in practice is what happens over the next few weeks, few months.
00:26:04
◼
►
Like that's the life of the app, not today.
00:26:07
◼
►
And what's really probably important for today, and this is something that I would encourage
00:26:11
◼
►
anyone launching anything to do is to just celebrate the accomplishment of getting to
00:26:17
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►
My wife is incredibly good at this.
00:26:19
◼
►
And you know, like, we're having a fancy steak dinner tonight at home just to celebrate this.
00:26:26
◼
►
And she makes a big deal out of, you know, getting to this point because, you know, especially
00:26:31
◼
►
when you're an independent developer, you know, your family is your team in that way.
00:26:36
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►
And you know, if I was working at a bigger company, maybe we would, you know, I'll go
00:26:39
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►
out to a nice lunch or go out to a happy hour or something like you might have a celebrate,
00:26:44
◼
►
you know, have a cake in the break room.
00:26:47
◼
►
Whatever it is, like you may have something that you would do.
00:26:49
◼
►
But you know, being a one man shop, like it was, you know, if you remember back to the
00:26:54
◼
►
beginning of this episode, you know, I had my wife push the release button, which was
00:26:58
◼
►
kind of exciting.
00:26:59
◼
►
And then also, like, you know, we're celebrating it tonight.
00:27:03
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►
And it, by making a big deal out of it, by being intentional about that, I think is an
00:27:07
◼
►
important part of, you know, it's like you can only do so much.
00:27:13
◼
►
And I think we were saying we always, it's based, but it's parenting advice.
00:27:16
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►
But we always talk about in my family about, you know, we praise performance, not outcome.
00:27:25
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►
We focus on, you know, the input, the effort, the how much effort you put into something,
00:27:32
◼
►
your intention about it.
00:27:34
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►
And we try and focus on that rather than the outcome.
00:27:36
◼
►
You know, it makes no sense to have your goal be tuned.
00:27:40
◼
►
If your goal is to have a number one app, say, for whatever definition of number one
00:27:45
◼
►
that is, the unfortunate thing about having that as a goal is you have no control over
00:27:50
◼
►
that directly.
00:27:51
◼
►
You can't do anything to make that happen.
00:27:54
◼
►
It may happen or may not happen.
00:27:56
◼
►
But most of the reasons why it would happen are outside of your control.
00:28:00
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►
You know, you say I want to have I want to hit number one on launch day, like if that's
00:28:04
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►
your goal, then the reality is, what if someone else launches on that day and they have a
00:28:11
◼
►
better app than you?
00:28:12
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►
You're not going to meet your goal, but you did everything you could, right?
00:28:17
◼
►
Focus on the input.
00:28:18
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►
And like, I'm very proud of that work I put into this.
00:28:21
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►
The effort it took, the, you know, the patience it took, my goodness, there was so much testing
00:28:25
◼
►
with this app update.
00:28:28
◼
►
But the focusing by focusing on those things, and this is a hard thing, like it's so easy
00:28:34
◼
►
to just focus on the tangibles and the measurables, because I think it's easy, it's easier to
00:28:40
◼
►
do and if there's a natural inclination to focus on something that's a bit more measurable,
00:28:44
◼
►
but you know, focus on the outcome, or focus on the performance of the work that I did.
00:28:49
◼
►
We're going to celebrate, we're going to hopefully, you know, and then move on from
00:28:55
◼
►
And I think that that's what I'm doing this, I'd encourage anyone to do, make sure you
00:28:59
◼
►
manage your expectations, and you know, hopefully that will be enough to have a good launch
00:29:05
◼
►
and to finally having a good launch as you know, things not falling apart when it gets
00:29:09
◼
►
out into the world.
00:29:10
◼
►
Like that's something that you have control over and some that you can do.
00:29:13
◼
►
So anyway, hopefully this diary was interesting.
00:29:15
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►
I know these episodes are a bit different than what normal, Marco and I will be back
00:29:19
◼
►
to our normally scheduled program next week.
00:29:21
◼
►
So if this is not your thing, don't worry.
00:29:24
◼
►
And I will talk to you next week.
00:29:26
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►
Thank you so much for listening.
00:29:27
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►
And thank you to Linode for supporting the show.