0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective, developing perspective as a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:08an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia. This is show number 191. Today is
0:00:14Thursday, July 24th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes. So let's
0:00:19get started. So today I'm going to talk about perspective, which is perhaps somewhat appropriate
0:00:27given the name of the show. But it's coming from a very interesting experience I had the
0:00:32last two weeks. So as a regular listener of the show, you probably realized I was away.
0:00:37I think I mentioned in the last episode I was on vacation. I had a lovely time. But
0:00:42the interesting part of being away for about two weeks and during those two weeks being
0:00:47very intentionally and necessarily limited in terms of my access to the normal things
0:00:54that I do online in terms of things like Twitter and email and RSS feeds and so on. Some of
0:01:00it was just because I was in foreign countries and some of it was because I was busy enjoying
0:01:04family things. But being away for, that's probably about the longest I've really been
0:01:09away from the world that I typically engage with on a day-to-day basis. Our little iOS
0:01:17or Apple nerd bubble, right? I was away from that for a long enough time. It was interesting
0:01:24to see how that changed what I thought about and what I thought was important and the things
0:01:29that I was discussing, both in my own head or with other people. And it was interesting
0:01:34and rather enlightening, I hope. It's one of those things where as I come back to the
0:01:40more typical day-to-day thing, my fear, the thing that I worry about is not learning lessons
0:01:45from experiences like this, where if you can take the time to separate yourself from your
0:01:49normal habits and routines, you can look back on yourself and say, "Why do I do that thing
0:01:55that I do? Why do I do and think the things that I do?" And at some point you find that
0:02:02you don't always have a good reason.
0:02:03So as you probably just noticed, this is a very hand-wavy episode. This isn't something
0:02:08that I'm going to be talking about, anything particularly technical, or trying to expound
0:02:14something very specific. This is just trying to communicate something that I think is very
0:02:18useful to communicate to an audience of people who make things, about how careful you probably
0:02:25need to be about the way that you can... about how you draw your perspectives, how you think
0:02:32about where your opinions and decisions are coming from. It's a funny thing how your day-to-day
0:02:40interactions can mold that. So, for example, I was spending two weeks with my family and
0:02:49various family friends and so on, and during that entire interaction, I probably, I don't
0:02:54think any single person that I interacted with for a period of two weeks has ever really
0:02:58used Twitter, right? That's an interesting thing, because in the month preceding, I probably
0:03:08was using Twitter, I don't know, a hundred times a day, something like that, going on,
0:03:12checking things out. Most people didn't know what RSS was or podcasts, you know,
0:03:17and trying to describe what those are to people. Like, it is very interesting how
0:03:22insulated your perspective can become if you only hang out with people who think the way that you
0:03:29think. And this is certainly not a new concept that I've somehow discovered upon that, you know,
0:03:34know, spending time with people who only think the way you think can kind of narrow your
0:03:40perspective. But it's interesting having had that experience to then think about that.
0:03:45Like, why do I spend so much time on Twitter talking to and reading things by people often
0:03:52who I don't know? Why do I do these things? Is that instructive and improving me as a
0:03:58person? Is it helping me to have good and right perspectives or is it not? And I think
0:04:06the thing that I've been discovering, moreover, is that my perspective, and this is trying
0:04:10to tie it back down into development, it applies in a variety of ways, but around development,
0:04:14is often I develop applications from the perspective of that the people who would use my applications,
0:04:22The people who would appreciate my applications are people like me, are other developers,
0:04:28are other people who are very technically minded, other people who value the same things
0:04:33that I, you know, I valued in many ways. And the reality is that's not the world. The world
0:04:40is very different and I think the applications that the world appreciates are very different.
0:04:45And I think where this, like, say a simple example of this is understanding, you know,
0:04:50example, why a lot of people don't buy apps. They only ever download free things. And there's
0:04:55a perfect few reasons for that. And while I myself will download and buy lots of software,
0:05:03a lot of people don't. And the tricky thing is, if I don't understand their point of view
0:05:07or their mindset, I'm not necessarily going to be able to make good decisions about my
0:05:12applications. And the more we talk, if I'm in this world where everyone's always bemoaning
0:05:17that no one buys software anymore, I may be missing the actual reason and just focusing
0:05:23on that complaint or on that whining or that ranting or whatever it is. There's people
0:05:28who are making decisions for what's best for themselves, and those people are just average
0:05:36typical people. I know this is a bit hand-wavy and I'm struggling a bit to try and put this
0:05:42but I wanted to make an episode about it because it's, I think, very, it's been very impactful
0:05:47to me for how I'm, when I'm looking at software, the perspective I'm trying to take. And maybe
0:05:54here's an interesting story that I think will illuminate a lot of these points. And for
0:05:58me personally, it was very impactful. So you may remember a few months ago, there's an
0:06:02app that came out called Threes. And I've mentioned it a few times on the show. It's
0:06:06great. It was a very interesting game and very novel in a lot of ways. And it came out
0:06:10and it did fairly well. And then very quickly there was an app that came out called 2048,
0:06:15which took the core concept of Threes and simplified it, essentially, and made it a
0:06:21free app. And I think it was even an open source thing that someone put out that very
0:06:26quickly kind of took off and I imagine to this day is still very popular on the App
0:06:31Store. And I remember reading a long article written by the people who created Threes and
0:06:36And they were talking about how bad that made them feel in some ways or whatever, like how
0:06:41it feels like they got ripped off. And in some ways they did. They spent all this time
0:06:46and energy polishing every little detail of this app. And this beautiful work of art they
0:06:51created won an Apple design award, I think. I mean, it's fantastic. But it was then someone
0:06:58else created this app, or this variant of it that kind of took the legs out from under
0:07:02their own development. And there's a part of that that is kind of tragic. And I remember
0:07:08kind of feeling, as part of our community, kind of having that like, "rah, rah, this
0:07:13isn't right." You know, you've got to respect what people create and so on. And while there
0:07:20is a validness to that, I think I was missing part of the story. And this is where the little,
0:07:30experience I had fairly recently at a family gathering that I thought was kind of enlightening
0:07:35to me on this perspective. So I was at a sort of a fine family function and I was interacting
0:07:41with somebody, and that's someone I don't spend too much time with, but who is a fairly,
0:07:47it's funny you say, like a typical person in terms of he's, you know, sort of average
0:07:51intelligence, has a fairly average job, works, works for, you know, works, works just normally,
0:07:57And when I mentioned to him that I make apps, he got a big smile on his face and said, "Oh,
0:08:08you should check out this new app that I have. I love it. I really enjoy playing this." And
0:08:12he pulls out a phone, and I think it was probably an iPhone 4. It was a fairly old phone, but
0:08:17he was, you could tell there was a little bit of pride about having an iPhone in the
0:08:22first place, which is something that, you know, it's so easy when I go to WDC and everyone has
0:08:29an iPhone 5S for the most part, like, that even having an iPhone is an accomplishment for a lot
0:08:34of people, is something to keep in mind. But first, you know, so he pulls out his iPhone,
0:08:38he's kind of proud about having it, and shows it to me. He pulls out 2048. And he starts showing it
0:08:44to me and kind of explaining it to me as though I didn't know what it was. And to be fair, I hadn't
0:08:47actually really played 2048. I've been playing Threes. And the thing that was fascinating
0:08:52about it is the way that he described his experience with playing 2048 radically changed
0:08:59my view on that situation, on being ripped off, on these types of things. Not to say
0:09:05that it diminishes the actual impact of what happened to those, you know, the developers
0:09:09of Threes. But what's interesting is I discovered that the reason he liked 2048 was because
0:09:15it made him feel smart. And as soon as I realized that, it changed quite dramatically my view
0:09:21on the thing. So Threes is a well-designed game that is incredibly challenging and is
0:09:28very good at, it's a funny thing to say, but almost like punishing you for when you make
0:09:33a mistake. 2048 is much more forgiving. And you could argue, like if you're sort of from
0:09:39an ivory tower looking down, like it's a simpler game. Like there's the thing, you know, if
0:09:42just go right left right left right left in 2048 you'll do pretty well, right?
0:09:48There's a mindlessness to it that isn't quite as sophisticated as threes, but what I found
0:09:54is that I was focusing in some ways on the wrong part of that situation. Here's an app
0:09:58that has made someone who has perhaps not necessarily always felt like he's the smartest
0:10:03person in the world finally, you know, there's this little phone, little app that he can
0:10:07get for free and put on his phone, it makes him feel smart. Because the nature of the
0:10:13dynamic involves a bit of math, involves a little bit of thinking, but then it's easy
0:10:17enough to really reinforce and engage that. And that is in many ways much more valuable
0:10:25than perhaps the artistry of threes. It's complicated, I'm not trying to say that threes
0:10:31is a bad app or game or anything, but hopefully you can kind of see what I'm driving at. That
0:10:36is a fundamental thing that happened in that person's life, that this piece of software
0:10:40made them feel smart in a way that another game, like the thing that it was derived from,
0:10:46probably wouldn't. My suspicion is if I response to that situation and been like, "Oh, you're
0:10:52playing 2048? No, no, no, no. That's a ripoff. What you want to go is go get threes." I get
0:10:57him threes, I set him up, I have him start playing. I think he would have been frustrated,
0:11:02And he would have been, you know, felt worse off as a result of that interaction, versus
0:11:08coming back and having this tremendous pride on the time that he got whatever it was, 40,
0:11:1348, or whatever it was, his high score. And he was talking about him and his wife competing
0:11:18on this and like the actual just the happiness and the joy that were coming from that piece
0:11:22of software. And I mentioned that story because it is something that is, that it was impactful
0:11:28for me at that moment of seeing how I can so often be focused on completely the wrong
0:11:33thing. That I'm building software that will engage and interact with people's lives. And
0:11:38I can structure and value and put importance on things in my software that can genuinely
0:11:44improve people's lives. Or, and what I can sometimes do, is I can get too wrapped up
0:11:51on things that kind of the group of people that I tend to hang out with think is important,
0:11:56in the real world maybe isn't so important. Things like I can get too wrapped up around
0:12:00tiny bits of typography and tiny bits of graphic design or all these types of things that I'm not
0:12:05saying don't have value, but don't have value in the way that they're actually going to be
0:12:10affecting and improving people's lives in quite the same way. And I think about that and I'm
0:12:15thinking, trying to think this through in the projects I'll be taking on this rest of the
0:12:19summer and into the fall. Thinking it through in terms of the way that I structure my business
0:12:24and my app updates, and things like that. How can I build software that will most strongly enrich
0:12:30people's lives and have that be perhaps the goal that is worth striving towards? That have that
0:12:36perhaps be the thing that I'm working towards? Making apps sort of uncommon apps, uncommonly
0:12:42good apps for the common man, maybe should be my new motto, right? I want to make things that
0:12:47typical people will enjoy and will enrich their lives and will make them feel smart, will make
0:12:52make them feel loved, will make them feel happy, will make them feel healthy, right?
0:12:56So the most practical example that I could perhaps draw quite directly is investing time
0:13:02and energy into pedometer++ to make it help people be healthier more and more and more.
0:13:08So there's functions and things that I've been thinking about that I can work and push
0:13:11into that. But if it can apply in a game, something as silly as just a number game where
0:13:17you're sliding tiles around and around, that can be impactful and meaningful in someone's
0:13:21life? Why not other pieces of software? Why can I take that perspective of how is my software
0:13:27making someone's life better, not just how am I making something more complicated, useful for
0:13:34a very narrow and small group of people, etc. These are the things that I'm thinking about.
0:13:40And I know that was a bit roundabout, but hopefully I got my point across. Taking a
0:13:45break from your work, and especially from the community, the kind of insulated community in
0:13:50which I know many of the people who listen to this show operate in, is very constructive.
0:13:55It's something that I would encourage you to think about doing yourself. Have you ever tried
0:14:00taking Twitter off your phone and RSS off your phone for a couple of days and seeing how that
0:14:05changes things? Putting your phone down in a few more contexts than you may have it currently,
0:14:11or those types of things. It's important, I think, to make sure you're taking those steps back in
0:14:16your own life to make sure that the reasons you have for the opinions and perspectives you have
0:14:22are actually valid and important. Whatever those whatever is valid and important for you.
0:14:27All right, that's it for today's show. As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns,
0:14:30complaints, email me David at developing perspective.com. Otherwise, you have a great
0:14:34week. It's good to be back. Good to be coding and I hope you're doing the same. Happy coding. Bye.