Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing

00:00:04 ◼   ► news of note and iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:08 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia. This is show number 147. Today is

00:00:13 ◼   ► Friday, October 18th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's

00:00:17 ◼   ► get started.

00:00:18 ◼   ► All right, so I've got a couple of little things I'm going to run through. It's going

00:00:21 ◼   ► to be a bit more of a grab bag show. Like I said, if you're wondering why there was

00:00:24 ◼   ► no show last week, it's because I was over at the Singleton Symposium in Montreal, which

00:00:29 ◼   ► which was an excellent time.

00:00:30 ◼   ► And I got to meet many listeners there.

00:00:32 ◼   ► So thanks if you were one of the people who stopped by,

00:00:35 ◼   ► introduced yourself, and let me know that you were a listener

00:00:38 ◼   ► and talked a little bit about what you do and things.

00:00:40 ◼   ► It's always just an absolute delight to meet you and talk

00:00:44 ◼   ► to you.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Just to be able to put a face, put a story,

00:00:49 ◼   ► essentially on a download number, which otherwise

00:00:52 ◼   ► is about all I get.

00:00:53 ◼   ► So it was definitely great.

00:00:55 ◼   ► The actual conference itself is my second time

00:00:58 ◼   ► going to Singleton and it was great.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I'm not a huge conference goer.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I'm not one of these, and I know some people,

00:01:04 ◼   ► some people I work with or know,

00:01:06 ◼   ► who especially in the fall it seems

00:01:08 ◼   ► are going to a different conference every other week

00:01:10 ◼   ► and they're all over the place.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I personally, I just, I'm not a huge,

00:01:14 ◼   ► I don't like that kind of travel too much,

00:01:16 ◼   ► you know, being away from friends and family

00:01:17 ◼   ► as well as just in general, they're a tricky thing,

00:01:21 ◼   ► I think, to find in terms of justifying the time

00:01:24 ◼   ► and energy and expense of going.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So I try to limit how many I go to and try

00:01:29 ◼   ► to be really focused about the ones that I go to

00:01:31 ◼   ► or the ones that I think I'm going to get the most out of.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And for Singleton, what I think that I find most interesting

00:01:36 ◼   ► is that the talks are good.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And as conferences go, they're very good.

00:01:40 ◼   ► The thing that I find that's most interesting, though,

00:01:42 ◼   ► is it seems to self-select for a very good group of people.

00:01:45 ◼   ► That there's a very solid base of people

00:01:48 ◼   ► who are doing interesting things, who

00:01:50 ◼   ► are thinking in interesting ways.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And so it's kind of awesome to sit down and just spend

00:01:54 ◼   ► weekend talking to them around the table, in the hotel,

00:01:59 ◼   ► just throughout the weekend, to be talking about what's going on and to understand from different people's perspective

00:02:04 ◼   ► what they're thinking about the industry, what they're thinking about their jobs, what they're thinking about in all areas.

00:02:09 ◼   ► And so that's kind of exciting and that's kind of cool. And so I've been pretty psyched to go and if they do it again next

00:02:16 ◼   ► year, I'll probably be there again. It's a good time.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Next thing I want to talk into is--

00:02:22 ◼   ► this is an expansion of what I talked about last episode,

00:02:25 ◼   ► two weeks ago, I think it was-- where so pedometer++'s update

00:02:29 ◼   ► when one was approved.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And this includes a whole bunch of features and things,

00:02:35 ◼   ► including the tip jar that I had talked about before.

00:02:38 ◼   ► And since I submitted it, there's

00:02:40 ◼   ► definitely been a little bit of a back and forth.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I've been talking to a lot of different people.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Some people were like, oh no, that'll never get approved.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Some people said, oh yeah, I've used apps

00:02:47 ◼   ► that had to have that same concept or do that same thing.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And long story short, I said it was approved.

00:02:52 ◼   ► There was no fuss.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Apple didn't give me any questions,

00:02:55 ◼   ► and there was nothing at all.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And I think just generally, either it's a change in policy,

00:02:59 ◼   ► or it's more likely than not, it seems,

00:03:02 ◼   ► it's a change in enforcement in terms of if there ever

00:03:04 ◼   ► was a time when something like a tip jar or sort of pay

00:03:08 ◼   ► what you want kind of scheme didn't fly in the App Store,

00:03:11 ◼   ► that seems to have been passed now.

00:03:12 ◼   ► That I think at this point, it seems that's OK.

00:03:14 ◼   ► And I think largely that it probably

00:03:16 ◼   ► has to do with the general movement in the App Store

00:03:19 ◼   ► towards things like in-app purchases and consumable in-app purchases and people buying Smurf Berries

00:03:25 ◼   ► and those types of things.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And I think generally speaking, the policy now is there are still some restrictions on

00:03:32 ◼   ► what you can use for in-app purchases.

00:03:33 ◼   ► You can't use them for charitable donations.

00:03:36 ◼   ► You can't use them to buy physical goods.

00:03:38 ◼   ► There's things that if you look in the app review guidelines, there are very specific

00:03:41 ◼   ► things that it says you can't do.

00:03:42 ◼   ► But I think otherwise, it's up to us as developers to be creative, to think about how we can

00:03:47 ◼   ► can you use that to leverage our audience

00:03:52 ◼   ► and to make a good living from an app,

00:03:59 ◼   ► or to maximize the income that we get from it.

00:04:02 ◼   ► It's definitely not like taking the approach that I took

00:04:05 ◼   ► of having kind of a tip jar, a gratuity,

00:04:07 ◼   ► kind of a pay what you want type of scheme,

00:04:10 ◼   ► isn't definitely not for every app.

00:04:12 ◼   ► There are some apps where it just wouldn't make sense,

00:04:14 ◼   ► some apps where it wouldn't work.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I think, for example, of my weather app, Check the Weather,

00:04:15 ◼   ► which it would be very difficult to have this kind of a scheme

00:04:18 ◼   ► work because I have to pay for the data sources and things

00:04:23 ◼   ► that I use for it.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And so there's a fairly high infrastructure cost per user.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Not massive by any means, but easily overcome

00:04:30 ◼   ► by just a basic purchase of the application or something

00:04:35 ◼   ► like that.

00:04:35 ◼   ► But it would be very complicated, I think,

00:04:37 ◼   ► if I was basing the entire income of the app

00:04:40 ◼   ► just sort of a vague solicitation for revenue. But one thing that I will mention, and I'll

00:04:48 ◼   ► probably, I want to give it a couple weeks before I actually kind of draw conclusions

00:04:53 ◼   ► about its performance. I'd say the Tipjar kind of concept has been performing well,

00:04:57 ◼   ► in line roughly with what I was hoping you were expecting. But I want to give it a little

00:05:01 ◼   ► bit because whenever you launch something new, there's always a big spike at the beginning,

00:05:05 ◼   ► and I want to see where it settles down before I start drawing conclusions. The one thing

00:05:09 ◼   ► that I do think I can draw some conclusions about, and this was something that I saw in

00:05:13 ◼   ► the, or I intentionally did in the way I structured it, that I thought would work and it seems

00:05:17 ◼   ► to have worked, is I split it into three groups. This is kind of the classic, there's an economics

00:05:25 ◼   ► or a psychology term for this, but essentially what I did is I split it into three groups

00:05:30 ◼   ► primarily to try and steer people towards the middle group. And so I have it, you know,

00:05:36 ◼   ► Basically, I think in the app, you can do a $2, a $5, or a $20 tip.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And I've had some of each.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And the interesting thing that I find, though, is that the volume of $5 tips,

00:05:47 ◼   ► the one sort of in the middle, is roughly equal to that of the $2 tips so far.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And it's sort of what I would have hoped to happen,

00:05:57 ◼   ► because what I'm trying to do is you're trying to say that if the person is willing to give you any money,

00:05:59 ◼   ► then there's a good chance they're willing to give you $4 or $5.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And so I'm raising that up rather than just offer--

00:06:04 ◼   ► if I just had a tip jar with a $2 thing,

00:06:09 ◼   ► I wouldn't get quite as much out of that.

00:06:12 ◼   ► A lot of people want the middle.

00:06:13 ◼   ► They see the $20, they're like, I'm

00:06:14 ◼   ► not going to give $20 for an app.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I've had a few of those, and I'm very appreciative for them.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But I think by staking out the middle ground,

00:06:23 ◼   ► then oh, I can just-- I could do $2, $5, or $20?

00:06:26 ◼   ► Maybe I'll do $5.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And that seems to have been worked,

00:06:29 ◼   ► It's just a little validating to see that actually happen.

00:06:32 ◼   ► All right.

00:06:33 ◼   ► And then the last topic I want to talk about

00:06:35 ◼   ► is the Apple event next Tuesday.

00:06:37 ◼   ► That's kind of interesting.

00:06:38 ◼   ► This Tuesday I'll be away on travel,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and so I won't actually be around to see the event itself

00:06:44 ◼   ► or the live stream of it or whatever ends up happening.

00:06:47 ◼   ► If it's a live stream, if it's a live blog, whatever.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I'll actually just sort of be gone for most of the day.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And so it'll be kind of interesting.

00:06:53 ◼   ► I may actually just sit down and watch it

00:06:55 ◼   ► end-to-end live from the podcast that's distributed afterwards.

00:06:59 ◼   ► which could be kind of fun.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I have something I haven't really done ever.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I've always been just in the moment of it,

00:07:04 ◼   ► following what's going on on Twitter,

00:07:06 ◼   ► following the news and the write-ups and the opinion.

00:07:08 ◼   ► It could be kind of interesting to-- I mean,

00:07:10 ◼   ► I guess other than when I was actually in the room,

00:07:12 ◼   ► it's going to be kind of fun to just sit down, sit on a sofa,

00:07:15 ◼   ► sit back and watch the event.

00:07:16 ◼   ► But I think it's going to be an interesting event.

00:07:19 ◼   ► There's a lot going on.

00:07:20 ◼   ► There's not a huge amount necessarily

00:07:22 ◼   ► that's super relevant for developers.

00:07:24 ◼   ► The most relevant developer part,

00:07:26 ◼   ► as I was thinking about it, beyond just

00:07:28 ◼   ► like we all want a retina cinema display, we all want Mac Pros,

00:07:33 ◼   ► those types of things.

00:07:34 ◼   ► But the thing that I think from a development side

00:07:37 ◼   ► that I'm most interested in is whether they take the iPad

00:07:41 ◼   ► Mini and make it retina.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Because if they do that, I think it will wrap--

00:07:45 ◼   ► it will help next-- it will sort of be

00:07:49 ◼   ► the end of non-retina development on iOS

00:07:54 ◼   ► at some level.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Because at that point, I believe, all of the new devices

00:07:57 ◼   ► that they're going to be selling are probably going to be Retina.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Which is interesting if you are in a situation right now where, for example, on the iPhone

00:08:09 ◼   ► all devices that support iOS 7 are only Retina devices.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And so it's kind of an interesting asset in developing where in theory I could remove

00:08:21 ◼   ► non-Retina assets from the app to save a little space.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I haven't actually done that because it just feels a little foolish at this point.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It's a little too early in that there may be instances where they're used or just--I

00:08:34 ◼   ► don't even know exactly, but it feels a little funny for a savings of not a huge amount because

00:08:39 ◼   ► the retina assets tend to be the ones that really are the large-sized ones.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But if they do that on the iPad--and this is actually probably why I keep them in too,

00:08:46 ◼   ► because if you run an iPhone app, you can still run it on a non-retina iPad.

00:08:50 ◼   ► But right now, if the mini goes retina,

00:08:55 ◼   ► then probably the entire lineup

00:08:57 ◼   ► of currently being sold devices will be retina.

00:08:59 ◼   ► So I think it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I think there will potentially be a point

00:09:04 ◼   ► where we drop support here,

00:09:06 ◼   ► where we just sort of drop non-retina graphics.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And so like add2x becomes this kind of strange thing

00:09:11 ◼   ► that if you're a new developer,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you're like, "Why do I have to add 2x to everything?

00:09:15 ◼   ► And why are we dealing in, why is everything,

00:09:15 ◼   ► why are all the-- everything's in points,

00:09:18 ◼   ► but a point is half of a pixel.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Or, I'm sorry, a point is two pixels.

00:09:24 ◼   ► And if that's what it always is, it seems kind of silly.

00:09:27 ◼   ► So I think that's where we'll be heading.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And if I had-- I bet a sandwich on that's

00:09:32 ◼   ► where they're heading, because I think

00:09:35 ◼   ► as I was traveling back from Singleton, we took the train,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and my wife was reading a book on her iPad Mini, which

00:09:41 ◼   ► is a great device for that.

00:09:42 ◼   ► But I was looking at it, and it just seems like, oh, it

00:09:44 ◼   ► It would be so much nicer if it was a retina display.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Especially for those kinds of text oriented and reading

00:09:51 ◼   ► applications, it would be amazing.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I think iOS 7 especially looks really--

00:09:56 ◼   ► it looks pretty rough on a non-retina device,

00:09:59 ◼   ► because there's a lot of thin lines and a lot of things

00:10:01 ◼   ► that work well when you have a really high DPI.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Something that's probably coming.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Personally, I think as I'm looking to this event,

00:10:09 ◼   ► the thing that I will-- it's like in rough order of what

00:10:12 ◼   ► would expect to buy out of it.

00:10:15 ◼   ► If they do anything new with the Cinema Display,

00:10:17 ◼   ► I'll almost certainly get one.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Hopefully it would be a 4K display or something

00:10:21 ◼   ► like it, a retina Cinema Display.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Honestly, at almost any price, I'd

00:10:26 ◼   ► probably buy one of those, because I

00:10:28 ◼   ► love my Retina MacBook Pro.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's a beautiful display, but I end up

00:10:34 ◼   ► spending most of my time, though,

00:10:35 ◼   ► sitting in front of a non-retina LED display.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I think I have the one with the generation

00:10:41 ◼   ► before the Thunderbolt display, which works well.

00:10:45 ◼   ► It works well enough, but I really would love to have Retina,

00:10:48 ◼   ► especially as development is going more and more Retina,

00:10:51 ◼   ► whenever I run the simulator and it accidentally launches on my non-Retina display,

00:10:55 ◼   ► it looks, you know, either if it's an iPad, it jumps up to huge.

00:10:59 ◼   ► A Retina iPad is bigger, essentially, than my massive 27-inch display,

00:11:05 ◼   ► which is a little bit absurd.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So I'd definitely buy one of those almost at any cost.

00:11:11 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is an interesting question.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I'll get one.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I'll definitely wait and see how benchmarks come out,

00:11:18 ◼   ► how usability of it works out, those types of things.

00:11:21 ◼   ► And honestly, how the pricing works out, especially

00:11:24 ◼   ► compared to the Haswell Retina Mac Pros that are likely coming.

00:11:28 ◼   ► The thing that is funny about a Mac Pro to me

00:11:31 ◼   ► is that it's not mobile.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And while I don't work-- increasingly,

00:11:36 ◼   ► I've been working from one place.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I've been working from home more since I recently moved house.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And generally, I can work-- I do probably 80% of my work,

00:11:45 ◼   ► 85% of my work at one place now.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And so I could probably justify getting a Mac Pro.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And honestly, the new Mac Pro is small enough

00:11:53 ◼   ► that if you wanted to take it with you

00:11:55 ◼   ► on a semi-temporary basis, you probably could pretty easily.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I mean, you could basically just put it in a backpack,

00:12:01 ◼   ► it looks like.

00:12:02 ◼   ► It's not this massive-- the old style one,

00:12:05 ◼   ► you could never really move around.

00:12:07 ◼   ► But this guy, hey, maybe just throw in your backpack

00:12:08 ◼   ► when you're going into the office.

00:12:10 ◼   ► It's not the kind of thing you can use on the go,

00:12:12 ◼   ► but if you're kind of moving from one place to another,

00:12:14 ◼   ► me and him, we could pretty reasonably do it.

00:12:16 ◼   ► You know, in kind of a crazy way.

00:12:18 ◼   ► But what I'm very most curious, though,

00:12:21 ◼   ► is to see where they end up going with the Retina MacBook

00:12:23 ◼   ► Pro and the Mac Pro.

00:12:25 ◼   ► If the new displays are only, for example,

00:12:27 ◼   ► only drivable by the Mac Pro, then they'll probably

00:12:30 ◼   ► end up getting a Mac Pro.

00:12:31 ◼   ► If they're drivable by, say, like a new Haswell Retina

00:12:35 ◼   ► and a MacBook Pro.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And I'd struggle.

00:12:37 ◼   ► I'd have to decide exactly which one I want to do.

00:12:40 ◼   ► I've been very happy with my Retina MacBook Pro.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And I do like not having to sync files back and forth

00:12:44 ◼   ► or worry about where things are.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Though a lot of that gets much simpler now

00:12:48 ◼   ► that a lot of my files are in Dropbox

00:12:49 ◼   ► or they're synced in various ways.

00:12:52 ◼   ► So it's not quite as hard as it used to be,

00:12:54 ◼   ► but it still got always kind of annoying

00:12:56 ◼   ► to have to jump between two different machines.

00:12:58 ◼   ► So I'll have to see.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Then there's all kinds of other random stuff

00:13:01 ◼   ► that we never know we'll see.

00:13:02 ◼   ► It seems like it's going to be kind of a crazy event,

00:13:04 ◼   ► the number of things that Apple's promised but hasn't shipped yet.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And we're kind of getting towards the end of the fall.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Or more honestly, really, we're getting towards the point where they'd want to get everything in, what do they call it, in channel, or in market,

00:13:15 ◼   ► so that it's there for the holiday season.

00:13:22 ◼   ► So I think it'll be an interesting event.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Hopefully, Mavericks will ship those types of things.

00:13:25 ◼   ► It doesn't really affect me too much.

00:13:27 ◼   ► I don't do very much Mac development anymore.

00:13:28 ◼   ► But yeah, so it should be interesting.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And I think the funny part, of course, is once that happens, once that Apple event happens, more likely than not, there will be a lot of

00:13:33 ◼   ► not there will be a very long, long radio silence again. I remember last year how it

00:13:38 ◼   ► was just kind of driving, I think, a lot of the tech press crazy, how Apple did all this

00:13:43 ◼   ► stuff in the fall and then it was just silent for essentially the whole rest of the year,

00:13:49 ◼   ► with a few minor updates here and there. But generally speaking, it was very quiet. So

00:13:54 ◼   ► that's kind of interesting. So we'll see. But anyway, like I said, I'll be traveling

00:13:58 ◼   ► a little bit more next week. I should have an episode though towards the end, and then

00:14:02 ◼   ► I think you should settle back into a normal schedule.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Apologies for missing last week,

00:14:09 ◼   ► but you know, these things happen.

00:14:10 ◼   ► If you want to get ahold of me,

00:14:12 ◼   ► the best way to do that is, of course,

00:14:13 ◼   ► @_davidsmith on Twitter,