Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note,

00:00:07 ◼   ► tonight's development, Apple, and the like.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This is show number 150.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Today is Friday, November 8th, 2013.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes,

00:00:21 ◼   ► so let's get started.

00:00:23 ◼   ► It's been an interesting day for me.

00:00:25 ◼   ► So as I just said in the intro,

00:00:26 ◼   ► this is episode 150 officially of Developing Perspective.

00:00:28 ◼   ► perspective.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I've had more than 150 episodes, including various other side

00:00:31 ◼   ► projects and things that were part of the stream.

00:00:33 ◼   ► But officially, this is episode 150.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And rather interestingly, that coincides exactly

00:00:38 ◼   ► with the five-year anniversary of my first app being accepted

00:00:42 ◼   ► by Apple for the App Store.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Back on Saturday, November 8, 2008, five years ago,

00:00:48 ◼   ► my first app, which is whose name was Perdium FY09,

00:00:52 ◼   ► was released.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And so I was going to do today-- and there's

00:00:57 ◼   ► a companion blog post that goes along with this episode that I'll have a link to in the

00:01:00 ◼   ► show notes.

00:01:01 ◼   ► But essentially what I was going to talk about is I spent all of today just sort of being

00:01:06 ◼   ► retrospective and thinking about what that experience has been like, what it's been like

00:01:12 ◼   ► to take five years of focused effort developing apps for primarily the iOS app store.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Back when I started it was the iPhone OS app store, I suppose.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And it's kind of an interesting thing for me, because I've spent--

00:01:27 ◼   ► it's by far the longest career or job or whatever you want to call it

00:01:31 ◼   ► that I've ever had.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Prior to this, I worked a couple of jobs that lasted a couple of years,

00:01:35 ◼   ► a few years.

00:01:36 ◼   ► But the reality is I'm 30 years old, and for five years I've been doing this.

00:01:40 ◼   ► And so the majority of my adult life I've been making apps.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And so it's interesting to look back and to see what are the trends that I've

00:01:48 ◼   ► learned?

00:01:48 ◼   ► are the lessons that I can take from that,

00:01:53 ◼   ► from those experiences and all the various failures

00:01:57 ◼   ► and the triumphs and things that I've had,

00:01:58 ◼   ► hopefully I can kind of bundle it

00:02:00 ◼   ► into some interesting stories.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And so the blog post that goes along with this,

00:02:03 ◼   ► which is called Five Years in the App Store-- like I said,

00:02:06 ◼   ► it's on the link in the show notes to it--

00:02:08 ◼   ► is kind of a narrative history of the last five years,

00:02:11 ◼   ► what that's been like from the experience of getting set up

00:02:14 ◼   ► on the platform to my first app, my first real success,

00:02:18 ◼   ► some of the failures I've had, et cetera.

00:02:20 ◼   ► But rather than doing the narrative part on the show,

00:02:23 ◼   ► which I think would be quite as interesting,

00:02:24 ◼   ► I'm going to take the step back.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And I'm going to talk about some of the high level trends

00:02:28 ◼   ► and things that I would say I've learned over the last five

00:02:31 ◼   ► years.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And there's probably about five or six of them.

00:02:34 ◼   ► And I'll just kind of walk through them in order.

00:02:37 ◼   ► So the first one I'm going to talk about

00:02:38 ◼   ► is that having done this for as long as I have,

00:02:41 ◼   ► the reality is I've found you can never really predict

00:02:44 ◼   ► the next trend.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Anybody who says they can is typically selling you something.

00:02:49 ◼   ► But there's a great degree to which

00:02:54 ◼   ► you can get too caught up in trying to predict whatever

00:02:58 ◼   ► the next big thing is.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Is it going to be a new platform?

00:03:00 ◼   ► Is it a new app?

00:03:02 ◼   ► Is it a new whatever?

00:03:03 ◼   ► I mean, there are some times that new things come out

00:03:05 ◼   ► like the iPad, where I think everyone thought

00:03:07 ◼   ► it was going to be a success.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And it turned out it was a pretty big success.

00:03:10 ◼   ► There are other times, for example,

00:03:11 ◼   ► like the Mac App Store, where it launched,

00:03:13 ◼   ► and it's been kind of difficult.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And it's been kind of a challenge.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And you can look at either one, and there

00:03:17 ◼   ► are people predicting both ways.

00:03:20 ◼   ► But the reason that I bring that up

00:03:21 ◼   ► is that I think what I've learned

00:03:23 ◼   ► over a long period of time is that the reality is you just

00:03:25 ◼   ► have to kind of make choices that make sense for you

00:03:28 ◼   ► and not worry too much about if you're going to miss out.

00:03:32 ◼   ► There's this great opportunity, and you're going to miss out.

00:03:35 ◼   ► You'll never-- it'll be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

00:03:39 ◼   ► You just never know.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And so you're going to drive yourself crazy

00:03:42 ◼   ► if you start sort of chasing your tail.

00:03:45 ◼   ► for all the little opportunities or things

00:03:47 ◼   ► that you think you're missing out.

00:03:50 ◼   ► The reality is things move slowly, more slowly

00:03:54 ◼   ► than you actually think they are.

00:03:55 ◼   ► And these things take time.

00:03:57 ◼   ► And more often than not, you don't miss the big boat

00:04:00 ◼   ► if you are delayed slightly or if you miss time something.

00:04:03 ◼   ► The reality is focus on making your product

00:04:06 ◼   ► and making your product good, making your product fit

00:04:09 ◼   ► the market, understand your users,

00:04:10 ◼   ► those types of things, the kind of universal truths

00:04:12 ◼   ► that I talk about all the time on this show.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And don't worry too much about the trends.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Because as I look back over the last five years,

00:04:17 ◼   ► there have been a lot of times that I thought

00:04:19 ◼   ► that I had to jump on a boat.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I had a couple of apps available for the iPad App Store

00:04:25 ◼   ► when I first launched, for the Mac App Store

00:04:26 ◼   ► when I first launched.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And in all those cases, none of those apps

00:04:28 ◼   ► have ever done well.

00:04:29 ◼   ► It's always the thing two or three later

00:04:31 ◼   ► where I had the time, I had the perspective

00:04:34 ◼   ► to take a step back and say, you know what?

00:04:36 ◼   ► This could be better if I did this.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Or this idea that I've kind of been mulling over

00:04:40 ◼   ► and that I've spent several weeks, months working out

00:04:44 ◼   ► is much better.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So don't worry too much about those trends,

00:04:47 ◼   ► or catching the wave, or whatever you want to say,

00:04:49 ◼   ► in that way.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Next thing I was going to say is that it's incredibly difficult

00:04:54 ◼   ► when you're close to a project to have

00:04:56 ◼   ► any amount of confidence or accuracy

00:05:01 ◼   ► in trying to predict its success.

00:05:03 ◼   ► This is something that I've seen so often in my experience.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And I'm somebody who's known for being a little bit--

00:05:09 ◼   ► I don't even know the right word--

00:05:10 ◼   ► prolific, maybe, in development, where

00:05:13 ◼   ► I've probably released somewhere in the order of probably 80

00:05:16 ◼   ► unique app concepts onto the App Store in the last five years,

00:05:19 ◼   ► which is a lot.

00:05:20 ◼   ► That's far beyond what is probably reasonable or sane

00:05:24 ◼   ► or good, for me anyway.

00:05:26 ◼   ► But that's just the way that I work.

00:05:28 ◼   ► That's the way that my mind works.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I get an idea, and I just want to run with it.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And the thing that I found that's interesting,

00:05:33 ◼   ► though, is I have a terrible track record

00:05:36 ◼   ► of predicting which of those ideas

00:05:38 ◼   ► are going to be successes and which ones aren't.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Now obviously, to some degree, I thought all of them

00:05:41 ◼   ► are going to be successes, or I wouldn't have put in the effort

00:05:45 ◼   ► in the first place.

00:05:46 ◼   ► But there are some of them that I've launched with just

00:05:49 ◼   ► a speculative curiosity.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Say something like Podometer, which I recently launched,

00:05:53 ◼   ► which is an app that-- Podometer++ is just

00:05:55 ◼   ► an app that takes some data and shows it to people.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I thought it would be interesting.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It's just a speculative curiosity.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I put it out there.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And it's been very well received.

00:06:03 ◼   ► For other apps, I've spent months, probably five or six

00:06:06 ◼   ► months, working on an application,

00:06:08 ◼   ► working on something.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I think it's amazing.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I'm using it all the time.

00:06:11 ◼   ► It's great.

00:06:11 ◼   ► I put it out there, nothing, just crickets.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And I found that there's not really--

00:06:16 ◼   ► I can't, in my own experience or in my own strength

00:06:19 ◼   ► or my own understanding, predict that.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I can't say which of these applications

00:06:23 ◼   ► is going to be better.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Ultimately, I just need to worry about making it good

00:06:29 ◼   ► and putting it out there, and then

00:06:31 ◼   ► being patient or understanding about why it succeeded

00:06:33 ◼   ► or why it failed.

00:06:34 ◼   ► If it succeeded, I can learn about some attributes of it

00:06:36 ◼   ► that made it succeed and apply this to my next project.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Awesome.

00:06:40 ◼   ► If I put something out there and it fails,

00:06:42 ◼   ► and I can learn just as much from that for like,

00:06:44 ◼   ► why do I think it failed?

00:06:45 ◼   ► Talk to some of the people who tried and didn't like it.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Or just see-- whatever I can do to learn from that experience

00:06:53 ◼   ► is still valuable.

00:06:54 ◼   ► But I can't, at the end of the day,

00:06:56 ◼   ► predict the success that I'm going to have to something.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And I think that's ultimately taught

00:07:00 ◼   ► me to make fewer smaller bets than I would potentially

00:07:03 ◼   ► otherwise.

00:07:03 ◼   ► That I think it's a very dangerous thing

00:07:06 ◼   ► for an independent developer to put too many eggs in one

00:07:08 ◼   ► basket.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Especially if you say the classic thing of you're

00:07:11 ◼   ► going to take--

00:07:13 ◼   ► so if you save a bunch of money, quit your job,

00:07:16 ◼   ► go work for a few months working on something.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Working on-- the probability of that working out is so low.

00:07:23 ◼   ► I always kind of struggle when people ask if that's a good idea

00:07:26 ◼   ► or they're telling me that they're going to go do that.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And the reality is every project you're working on

00:07:33 ◼   ► has just as much likelihood of failing as it does to succeed.

00:07:37 ◼   ► You can do things to influence it, certainly,

00:07:38 ◼   ► but more likely than not, the best you're ever

00:07:40 ◼   ► going to get is a 50/50.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And so how that mentality, I think,

00:07:44 ◼   ► helps you to be thoughtful about how you develop things,

00:07:48 ◼   ► I think it helps you to be ruthless as you scope projects,

00:07:51 ◼   ► initially version ones, that you can look at it and say,

00:07:53 ◼   ► if I think there's a 50/50 chance that all this work is

00:07:56 ◼   ► just going to be for nothing, for nothing in the sense of,

00:08:00 ◼   ► monetarily, your success in the store,

00:08:02 ◼   ► then I'm going to be very ruthless about what

00:08:05 ◼   ► it is that I put out there.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And I want to put out the best thing I can,

00:08:09 ◼   ► but scope it down and scale it back to such a degree

00:08:12 ◼   ► that you have this nugget of a great idea that's

00:08:15 ◼   ► really developed, rather than trying to hit everything

00:08:17 ◼   ► and spend all this time on features and functionality

00:08:20 ◼   ► that ultimately isn't necessary to get you to that point.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Along those lines, I also have kind of gradually

00:08:27 ◼   ► discovered that I'm at my best developing when I'm building

00:08:32 ◼   ► something that I want to use, something

00:08:34 ◼   ► that I think is useful, something that I think--

00:08:37 ◼   ► an app that I will have on my home screen

00:08:39 ◼   ► that I will be in and out of throughout the day.

00:08:41 ◼   ► As soon as I start to be speculative about things

00:08:43 ◼   ► and developing applications that are things that I'm like, huh,

00:08:47 ◼   ► I think there might be somebody who could use this.

00:08:49 ◼   ► But I'm not actually that person.

00:08:51 ◼   ► I really start to run into trouble,

00:08:53 ◼   ► both in terms of motivation.

00:08:55 ◼   ► It's hard to stay motivated on something

00:08:56 ◼   ► that you're not actually going to be used.

00:08:58 ◼   ► It's hard to maintain that kind of an application.

00:09:00 ◼   ► I find that it's often the hardest things for me

00:09:03 ◼   ► to get motivated about maintaining an app

00:09:05 ◼   ► is when it's an app that I don't use.

00:09:06 ◼   ► People are using it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► There may be a reasonable-sized user base,

00:09:10 ◼   ► but I'm putting myself in an awkward position

00:09:12 ◼   ► when I make something that I don't use.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And so what I've been trying to do over the--

00:09:17 ◼   ► and I ran into this a lot earlier in the last five years.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Where early on, I would develop almost any application

00:09:22 ◼   ► that I could think of, something that I thought

00:09:24 ◼   ► there might be an audience for.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Where's our net?

00:09:26 ◼   ► What I do now is I'm gradually, systematically, essentially,

00:09:28 ◼   ► going through my home screen, replacing every app

00:09:31 ◼   ► I use on a regular basis.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And that's been much more successful for me.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It's been much more exciting and motivating

00:09:36 ◼   ► in terms of my ability to make things.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And it's also been worked out pretty well,

00:09:42 ◼   ► because the apps that I end up creating

00:09:44 ◼   ► are useful in a tangible, practical way that I think

00:09:47 ◼   ► really shows through to your customers when they try the app.

00:09:50 ◼   ► They can tell that someone's actually used this,

00:09:52 ◼   ► and used this day in and day out for an extended period of time,

00:09:56 ◼   ► and shaved off all the rough edges,

00:09:57 ◼   ► and really polished it down into a good, useful idea.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Next is one of the things that, having done this for five years,

00:10:07 ◼   ► that I heard a lot throughout the process.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I'd be listening to people say like the class,

00:10:11 ◼   ► so like a Merlin man kind of people.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Like people who've been doing this for a while

00:10:15 ◼   ► and have gone through a lot of the process of kind

00:10:18 ◼   ► of how you become independent.

00:10:20 ◼   ► How do you take ownership of your career?

00:10:23 ◼   ► Maybe there's a better way to say it rather than being independent.

00:10:25 ◼   ► You don't have to be independent to do that.

00:10:27 ◼   ► But how do you take ownership on your career?

00:10:29 ◼   ► And everyone kept saying this.

00:10:31 ◼   ► there's no such thing as an overnight success.

00:10:33 ◼   ► You just kind of get discovered.

00:10:34 ◼   ► It's not that somebody just rolled out of bed

00:10:36 ◼   ► and became successful.

00:10:39 ◼   ► You even say a great example recently

00:10:42 ◼   ► is the Tapbots guys, right?

00:10:43 ◼   ► Paul and Mark, who-- Tweetbot is wildly successful.

00:10:47 ◼   ► It's a great app.

00:10:48 ◼   ► It's been doing very well.

00:10:49 ◼   ► But if you look at their other apps,

00:10:50 ◼   ► it took them a long time to get there.

00:10:52 ◼   ► They had Waitbot, Convertbot, Pastebot,

00:10:55 ◼   ► all kinds of other bots that they

00:10:56 ◼   ► made before they hit on that thing that

00:10:58 ◼   ► really got traction.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And that patience is something that is very hard to learn.

00:11:03 ◼   ► And that's the thing that I think if you can get over,

00:11:06 ◼   ► you'll have a much better satisfaction about things.

00:11:10 ◼   ► That it takes a lot of trying and failing--

00:11:12 ◼   ► or not necessarily failing, but trying and being slightly

00:11:15 ◼   ► disappointed, and then trying again, and trying again,

00:11:19 ◼   ► and trying again, and trying again, and trying again,

00:11:22 ◼   ► and trying again, until you get to that point

00:11:24 ◼   ► that you finally hit some traction.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I think about even a show like this, Developing Perspective.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I've been doing this now for 150 episodes, plus or minus.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And at this point, it gets a pretty reasonable audience.

00:11:35 ◼   ► There's a fair number of people who tune in every week

00:11:38 ◼   ► to listen to me.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And that's something that I wanted.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily to say it as a humble brag,

00:11:44 ◼   ► but I think it makes the point of it took a year, probably,

00:11:48 ◼   ► of doing this-- essentially just talking to myself,

00:11:52 ◼   ► and a few friends, and a few family members,

00:11:55 ◼   ► before it started to get any amount of traction.

00:11:57 ◼   ► But keeping at it, because I thought what I was doing

00:11:59 ◼   ► would be useful, ultimately led me to this place.

00:12:03 ◼   ► And I hear from so many other developers who

00:12:05 ◼   ► kind of-- they come at me, and they're so excited,

00:12:07 ◼   ► and they have all the zeal.

00:12:09 ◼   ► They wrote their first app.

00:12:11 ◼   ► They put it out there.

00:12:12 ◼   ► And they get a little crestfallen

00:12:13 ◼   ► when it doesn't quite pan out like they wanted.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And that's the thing that you have to keep in mind,

00:12:18 ◼   ► that it takes time.

00:12:20 ◼   ► There's no way that you can rush it.

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's not-- it's the old joke about you can't have nine women

00:12:24 ◼   ► make a baby in one month.

00:12:26 ◼   ► It's going to take nine months.

00:12:27 ◼   ► No matter how you slice it, some of these things just take time.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And I've been doing this for five years, and I'm still not to where I would sort of like

00:12:34 ◼   ► to be.

00:12:35 ◼   ► But I've understood, going through that process, that all the things that I'm doing now are

00:12:39 ◼   ► building on my next thing, and then building on my next thing, and building on my next

00:12:43 ◼   ► thing.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And ultimately, you're kind of just building your audience.

00:12:45 ◼   ► You're building your skill set.

00:12:47 ◼   ► You're building up all of these failures that you can look back and say things, "I'm going

00:12:52 ◼   ► to avoid that.

00:12:53 ◼   ► I'm going to do this again."

00:12:54 ◼   ► And ultimately, you should hopefully be getting better

00:12:57 ◼   ► as a result.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And last thing I was going to talk about

00:13:01 ◼   ► is an experience that I've had about how, I think--

00:13:06 ◼   ► or especially when I was more new to the platform,

00:13:09 ◼   ► when I was new to being independent,

00:13:11 ◼   ► I so often fell into the trap of feeling like the things

00:13:16 ◼   ► that I struggled with were obvious to other people.

00:13:19 ◼   ► That you see people who-- it's like externally,

00:13:22 ◼   ► everyone else has it all together.

00:13:23 ◼   ► and I'm the one who doesn't have it all together.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I'm the one who's messing it all up.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I'm the one who can't get whatever it is right.

00:13:29 ◼   ► And it has this horrendous sort of selection bias for that,

00:13:34 ◼   ► where you see people's successes and you attribute it

00:13:36 ◼   ► to them, sort of for their genius,

00:13:38 ◼   ► and you kind of brush over people's failures,

00:13:41 ◼   ► whereas you tend to emphasize your own failures

00:13:43 ◼   ► and kind of brush off your successes, potentially.

00:13:46 ◼   ► This is my personality.

00:13:47 ◼   ► This is the way I tend to go.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And what I've found, though, is that more often than not,

00:13:53 ◼   ► What is most helpful to other people in terms of sharing and helping and being, like, whatever,

00:13:58 ◼   ► an influence for good in the community, is sharing all those things that I struggle with,

00:14:03 ◼   ► even the small things, that I think are probably obvious to everybody else.

00:14:07 ◼   ► It turns out, more often than not, they're not obvious.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And everyone else struggles with them just as much.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Even if people who I think have it all together, they still probably struggle with all these

00:14:16 ◼   ► things.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And that, I think, is the key lesson in kind of building an audience.

00:14:22 ◼   ► If you're somebody who wants to have a bit of a voice, have a bit of a reputation, start

00:14:27 ◼   ► sharing the things that you're struggling with and don't be afraid that people are going

00:14:31 ◼   ► to think you're an idiot.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Because they're not.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Because what's going to happen is you're going to hit on all these people who are struggling

00:14:37 ◼   ► with that exact same thing and even if you're just a week ahead of them, you're going to

00:14:42 ◼   ► seem like a genius.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And that's kind of cool.

00:14:44 ◼   ► So don't be afraid of that.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Just embrace it and share what you know and people will appreciate that.

00:14:49 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:50 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, I'm on Twitter @_DavidSmith,

00:14:54 ◼   ► David@DevelopingPerspective.com.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Hope you have a great weekend.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Happy coding.