Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective, developing perspectives of podcasts, discussing

00:00:04 ◼   ► news of note in iOS development, Apple and the like.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herne, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 138.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today is Friday, August 16th, 2013.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, so I'm going to have two topics today.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about a decision I made this week to go get aggressive with iOS 7

00:00:25 ◼   ► and then talk a little bit about what cheap iPhones might mean for developers.

00:00:29 ◼   ► So first, I'm going to talk about my decision this week to--

00:00:32 ◼   ► I think it was on Tuesday, Wednesday, something like that--

00:00:35 ◼   ► I decided to then at least have to get very aggressive with iOS 7 adoption.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And the story kind of runs-- I've chronicled this on this show a little bit,

00:00:44 ◼   ► and I think two or three episodes ago, I was talking about how the iOS 7 conundrum

00:00:48 ◼   ► and how it was going back and forth, and I really decided that I was going to,

00:00:51 ◼   ► as much as I could, try and support iOS 6.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I found that technically it wasn't quite as difficult

00:00:56 ◼   ► as I thought.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And supporting BackOS is always kind

00:01:00 ◼   ► of one of these tricky things, where it's good typically

00:01:03 ◼   ► for-- it's good for existing customers,

00:01:06 ◼   ► in that obviously if you know an existing customer

00:01:08 ◼   ► of your application who is now getting a free update

00:01:11 ◼   ► to your app that continues going forward into the future,

00:01:15 ◼   ► that's good for them if they're unable to update their OS.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And mostly I focus on that on people

00:01:20 ◼   ► who are choosing to not update their OS because their device

00:01:23 ◼   ► doesn't support it.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I don't really have too much patience in terms of like, it's just too much to think about

00:01:28 ◼   ► for people who intentionally don't update their OS when it's a free update that is being

00:01:33 ◼   ► pushed by the operating system provider.

00:01:36 ◼   ► But for whatever reason, if you're just like, "Well, I jailbreak and I can't, they don't

00:01:39 ◼   ► have the right jailbreak for that yet."

00:01:40 ◼   ► It's like, "I understand that, but I'm not going to get too worried about that in my

00:01:44 ◼   ► planning."

00:01:45 ◼   ► So I won't worry about the people who are running on a 3GS, who are running on a fourth

00:01:50 ◼   ► gen iPod touch, those types of people.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And I think about that a lot.

00:01:54 ◼   ► But the reality is, and this is something that I ran into this week, is that iOS 7 is

00:01:59 ◼   ► coming hard and fast.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And it's not like it's a surprise in the sense of, I've known ever since WWDC it was coming

00:02:06 ◼   ► this fall.

00:02:07 ◼   ► It seems like increasingly though, the definition of this fall is becoming very, very soon.

00:02:14 ◼   ► The definition of this fall is not going to be sort of the end of September, beginning

00:02:18 ◼   ► of October.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And the definition this fall is potentially as early as a couple of weeks from now.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I woke up this morning to someone was quoting, I think it was a Boy Genius report saying

00:02:32 ◼   ► Goldmaster on September 5th, which who knows?

00:02:35 ◼   ► I mean, I don't put too much stock in individual rumors.

00:02:38 ◼   ► But in general, it seems like all the rumors are trending early rather than trending late.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And I think we have as far as it can be confirmed by a single word from a Canadian with a beard,

00:02:49 ◼   ► pretty sure that the event's going to be on September 10th, I think it is.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And so we're pretty much narrowing in on an early September movement on iOS.

00:03:01 ◼   ► And it wouldn't surprise me if Apple is going to end up doing the thing where they split

00:03:04 ◼   ► this into multiple events.

00:03:06 ◼   ► They may introduce the iOS hardware and iOS software and things in the early fall and

00:03:11 ◼   ► then have a device event later, say an iPad and MacBook Pro, Mac Pro event some time later,

00:03:19 ◼   ► maybe in late September, early October.

00:03:21 ◼   ► That's certainly possible.

00:03:22 ◼   ► But from my perspective, what I look at

00:03:24 ◼   ► is I've got a handful of apps to update.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I've got-- let's see, I've got audiobooks, my recipe book,

00:03:31 ◼   ► feed wrangler.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I've got PodWrangler, my latest sort of new thing.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And I've got Check the Weather.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Those five apps are the things that I'm primarily focused

00:03:39 ◼   ► on working on right now, which is quite a lot for one person,

00:03:42 ◼   ► one developer.

00:03:44 ◼   ► It's going well.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And I was sort of trucking along,

00:03:48 ◼   ► adding support for iOS 6 and keeping backwards compatibility.

00:03:52 ◼   ► We've been doing this long enough.

00:03:53 ◼   ► That's actually not as difficult as it used to be in terms

00:03:55 ◼   ► of I'm pretty comfortable with making sure I do all

00:03:58 ◼   ► my things conditionally.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And it kind of reminds me a little bit of memory management

00:04:04 ◼   ► where back in the pre-arc days, you just kind of get

00:04:06 ◼   ► used to all the kind of retain release, auto release,

00:04:09 ◼   ► retain release, auto release kind of stuff.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And it became just kind of second nature.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And in a very similar way, that's

00:04:15 ◼   ► how it felt with backwards compatibility for me now.

00:04:18 ◼   ► I've just gotten used to it.

00:04:20 ◼   ► But now, essentially what I decided

00:04:22 ◼   ► is I don't have time to continue that backwards compatibility

00:04:25 ◼   ► support.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And it's not so much on the technical side.

00:04:28 ◼   ► It's mostly, and I think most significantly,

00:04:30 ◼   ► on the testing side and on the verifications side.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And all the things that you need to do--

00:04:34 ◼   ► I have a wide array of devices in my office

00:04:36 ◼   ► of all different versions and all kinds of things

00:04:38 ◼   ► that I try and test my apps on.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And having to test them on more than one thing

00:04:44 ◼   ► become-- it can very quickly become very problematic

00:04:47 ◼   ► in terms of the time and energy and effort it takes.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And so I just don't have time.

00:04:52 ◼   ► And so it's one of these things I'm kind of sad,

00:04:54 ◼   ► but I'm going to be dropping iOS 7-- or iOS 6 with support

00:04:57 ◼   ► on everything except for probably audiobooks

00:05:00 ◼   ► and potentially my recipe book.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Those two, they're the least amount of work

00:05:04 ◼   ► to support the new stuff, because they're not

00:05:08 ◼   ► the kind of applications that will take advantage of things

00:05:11 ◼   ► like the new multitasking or any of those kind of big,

00:05:13 ◼   ► features in iOS 7, and their UIs are fairly straightforward to update.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And so I think I'll probably be able to move those up or leave those supporting old past

00:05:23 ◼   ► OSs.

00:05:24 ◼   ► With audiobooks, I want to keep old OSs even if just because my iOS stats page that I publish

00:05:30 ◼   ► where I keep track of all the iOS version stats are coming from audiobooks, and the

00:05:34 ◼   ► data becomes fairly meaningless if I only support a single version in the same way.

00:05:38 ◼   ► But anyway, so that's what I'm doing there.

00:05:41 ◼   ► But I'm getting aggressive on the other ones.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And I think it's one of these things that, overall, makes

00:05:46 ◼   ► me a little bit sad.

00:05:47 ◼   ► I always try and do what's good for customers.

00:05:50 ◼   ► And I think in this case, the best thing for customers

00:05:52 ◼   ► is that I'm dropping it, because the app will be better

00:05:54 ◼   ► as a result.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But I know there's going to be people

00:05:56 ◼   ► who that's going to disappoint, who are looking forward

00:05:59 ◼   ► to the app but won't be able to use it now,

00:06:01 ◼   ► or have supported me in the past, have bought my apps,

00:06:04 ◼   ► and now aren't going to.

00:06:05 ◼   ► But I have to be forward looking.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I have to understand that what I really need to do

00:06:09 ◼   ► is ship really quality apps on day one.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And I think that's really what I'm going to do.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And that's where my focus is going to be.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And I will say, it is kind of fun.

00:06:18 ◼   ► See, in the last couple days since I dropped support,

00:06:21 ◼   ► it reminds me very, very much of switching to Arc,

00:06:24 ◼   ► where suddenly you're able to focus in a slightly better way.

00:06:29 ◼   ► The fundamentals don't change, and you're still

00:06:31 ◼   ► doing a lot of the same work.

00:06:33 ◼   ► But it really helps me to be able to just do whatever

00:06:36 ◼   ► need to do in a short term, and it kind of works.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's what I'm doing.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And so if you're listening to this kind of in order,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and potentially the timing may be kind of funny,

00:06:50 ◼   ► because if you just listen to 136, where I said, hey,

00:06:52 ◼   ► I've decided I'm going to support iOS 6,

00:06:54 ◼   ► and I'm coming back and saying not so much.

00:06:56 ◼   ► So that's kind of an interesting thing, but that's what's

00:06:59 ◼   ► happened.

00:07:00 ◼   ► All right, next thing I was going

00:07:01 ◼   ► to talk about a little bit is the-- oh, one thing I should

00:07:06 ◼   ► I was going to mention before I dive into my next topic,

00:07:09 ◼   ► I've gotten a lot of people asking questions

00:07:10 ◼   ► about how the process typically works

00:07:13 ◼   ► with submissions for new OS.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And so I just want to walk through that quickly.

00:07:16 ◼   ► So in the last-- I don't know, for most of the major OSes,

00:07:20 ◼   ► application submission opens, if not on the day

00:07:22 ◼   ► or very soon after, the goldmaster ships.

00:07:25 ◼   ► And that depends on if it's an actual goldmaster

00:07:27 ◼   ► or if we've had a couple of fake goldmasters

00:07:29 ◼   ► where there's a goldmaster and then there's a goldmaster II.

00:07:32 ◼   ► But typically, when they're in the goldmaster ships,

00:07:36 ◼   ► Then maybe a few hours later, potentially a day later,

00:07:38 ◼   ► something like that, pretty soon thereafter,

00:07:40 ◼   ► iTunes will begin accepting submissions for that version.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And typically, the OS will be launched about a week later.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And so typically what you really need to do

00:07:50 ◼   ► is have your app updates as ready as you can possibly

00:07:53 ◼   ► have them, so that as soon as they open the floodgates,

00:07:57 ◼   ► you're downloading the GM, you're

00:08:02 ◼   ► recompiling your app, doing some quick smoke tests,

00:08:05 ◼   ► and then submitting it.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And typically in my experience, that's kind of what I do.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I want to make sure that on the previous version,

00:08:10 ◼   ► whatever the most recent beta is,

00:08:12 ◼   ► I want to have it as ready as possible,

00:08:15 ◼   ► have everything ready to go,

00:08:16 ◼   ► and I'm mostly just recompiling and submitting.

00:08:19 ◼   ► And then at that point, I do the intensive,

00:08:21 ◼   ► the slightly more intensive testing,

00:08:23 ◼   ► and if I need to, I'll reject a binary and resubmit it.

00:08:26 ◼   ► But I'd rather be as early in that queue as I possibly can,

00:08:29 ◼   ► because being, sort of having one of the few apps

00:08:33 ◼   ► on the first day is sometimes helpful.

00:08:35 ◼   ► You don't want to get too crazy about that.

00:08:36 ◼   ► If your app's not ready, it's not ready.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And don't push it.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But if you're trying to get something in on day one,

00:08:41 ◼   ► you want to be ready when the GM ships, which

00:08:43 ◼   ► seems like going to be early September, very early September.

00:08:47 ◼   ► So get cracking.

00:08:48 ◼   ► All right, so I'm going to talk a little bit about what

00:08:50 ◼   ► a cheaper iPhone, I think, means for developers and for me

00:08:53 ◼   ► as a developer.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So it's interesting, first in one sense,

00:08:56 ◼   ► I'm going to end up having to buy probably two iPhones

00:08:58 ◼   ► this fall, which is always kind of funny,

00:09:00 ◼   ► Because I usually try to have all the different devices

00:09:04 ◼   ► that I'm targeting, and especially the ones that are

00:09:06 ◼   ► going to be most used by most of my users.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And so in this particular case, it

00:09:13 ◼   ► seems like this new device that's widely rumored--

00:09:16 ◼   ► whatever the government calls it, the 5C.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Who knows if that's actually going to be the name.

00:09:21 ◼   ► But a lot of people are talking about Apple introducing

00:09:23 ◼   ► a brand new device that's going to be relatively inexpensive,

00:09:26 ◼   ► that's going to let Apple attack a different part of the market

00:09:32 ◼   ► than they do currently and in a different way.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And so it'll be a lower cost device potentially sold

00:09:37 ◼   ► without contract or those types of things

00:09:40 ◼   ► in order to try and keep the prices as low as they can.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And I think that's exciting.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I think as a developer, what I really want

00:09:46 ◼   ► is I want as broad of an audience

00:09:47 ◼   ► as possible for my applications.

00:09:49 ◼   ► And the more people who are on that platform, my chosen

00:09:53 ◼   ► platform, which is iOS, the better for me

00:09:56 ◼   ► in terms of I think about Android,

00:09:57 ◼   ► or I think of multi-platform.

00:09:58 ◼   ► I think of all those kinds of questions.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And they come up.

00:10:01 ◼   ► There are things that I think about that there's

00:10:03 ◼   ► a lot of people who use Android on a regular basis.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And I think a lot of those people

00:10:07 ◼   ► use it because it was the free, cheap option for them.

00:10:10 ◼   ► And it was pushed by their carrier onto them.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And so I'd love for Apple to be able to attack that

00:10:14 ◼   ► and potentially broaden my customer base as a result.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And so that's, I think, at a pure numbers perspective,

00:10:21 ◼   ► is really exciting.

00:10:22 ◼   ► That I think having a cheaper device out there,

00:10:25 ◼   ► That's almost potentially in the same ballpark as an iPod Touch

00:10:29 ◼   ► in cost will be really, really powerful.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And I'd be really curious to see what they end up

00:10:34 ◼   ► doing with the iPod Touch.

00:10:35 ◼   ► I wonder if they push the iPod Touch even lower

00:10:38 ◼   ► in terms of if they can do things with the iPod Touch

00:10:42 ◼   ► to drive its price even lower in comparison to the 5C

00:10:46 ◼   ► so that people who are really budgetarily constrained

00:10:51 ◼   ► are able to do it.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And that'd be even better.

00:10:53 ◼   ► I want lots of users because at the end of the day,

00:10:56 ◼   ► it's very hard to make a living in the app store.

00:10:58 ◼   ► It's incredibly difficult.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I know very few people who are able to do it

00:11:02 ◼   ► because it is a very competitive place.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And there's a tremendous supply of apps.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And so if you look at the sort of supply and demand side

00:11:12 ◼   ► that drives prices down, drives margins down.

00:11:15 ◼   ► And so what I wanted-- anything Apple can do to raise the demand

00:11:17 ◼   ► side, to increase the demand for applications,

00:11:20 ◼   ► definitely a good thing in my books.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Definitely something that I'd encourage and look forward

00:11:23 ◼   ► to Apple doing.

00:11:24 ◼   ► So generally, that's, I think, a good thing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► I do think it's going to be interesting.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And I'm still toying around with this.

00:11:30 ◼   ► But I am very curious if I should make my day-to-day carry

00:11:34 ◼   ► phone the 5C.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And I wonder about that, mostly because I

00:11:37 ◼   ► think it's potentially going to become the most widely used

00:11:42 ◼   ► device, certainly of new devices, this fall.

00:11:45 ◼   ► There's certainly going to be a lot of people who

00:11:47 ◼   ► buy whatever the new one is, the 5S,

00:11:49 ◼   ► or whatever you want to call it, kind of its working name.

00:11:52 ◼   ► But I think there's going to be a tremendous swell of people

00:11:55 ◼   ► working on this cheaper device.

00:11:57 ◼   ► And I want to make sure that I have a good understanding

00:11:59 ◼   ► of their experience.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And exactly what that means-- I may end up having both

00:12:02 ◼   ► and switching between them.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Hopefully their SIM cards are compatible with each other.

00:12:08 ◼   ► But it's an interesting thing that I

00:12:09 ◼   ► think we're going to potentially have, for the first time,

00:12:13 ◼   ► an environment where there's an underpowered or a less

00:12:18 ◼   ► powered device is potentially the best selling device.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And especially in the context right now,

00:12:24 ◼   ► so you could say that to some degree with the older ones,

00:12:27 ◼   ► the 4 and the 4S.

00:12:28 ◼   ► But everything I've always heard is

00:12:29 ◼   ► that they don't sell quite as well as the new one.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And I wonder if this will be a changing point there,

00:12:34 ◼   ► because it will be differentiated in a different way.

00:12:36 ◼   ► It won't be an old iPhone.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It'll be a brand new iPhone that's just different.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And I think different is easier to sell to a customer

00:12:43 ◼   ► than old.

00:12:43 ◼   ► That's the phone now my friends had

00:12:47 ◼   ► a couple years ago.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I want something new.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Whereas none of their friends have a 4C with a purple back

00:12:54 ◼   ► and a flare all over it.

00:12:57 ◼   ► So I think it'll be interesting.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And I think generally what that means is I'm just going to--

00:13:02 ◼   ► I think it really reinforces, I think, my gut that, oh,

00:13:06 ◼   ► well, it's a little bit wary of it in the near term.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Going iOS 7 only is going to be fine,

00:13:13 ◼   ► because I think the market is opening up

00:13:17 ◼   ► in front of it, rather than necessarily having

00:13:19 ◼   ► to worry too much about the behind side of things.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And I think it'll be really interesting.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I think if they can really drive the-- be aggressive on price,

00:13:26 ◼   ► which seems like they're trying to do,

00:13:28 ◼   ► I think it would be only good for developers.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I mean, I would love for the default device someone

00:13:34 ◼   ► gets who doesn't really care to be an iPhone 4C.

00:13:37 ◼   ► If that's the case, that's great for me as a developer.

00:13:40 ◼   ► It means I can just kind of stop thinking too much about Android,

00:13:43 ◼   ► or I can stop thinking too much about Windows Phone,

00:13:45 ◼   ► or all these other things that I kind of, I wonder about.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I don't think I'll ever get there, but I wonder about.

00:13:51 ◼   ► I think in general it would be nice to not really have to wonder about it or think about

00:13:55 ◼   ► it too much and just understand that, you know, it's like a high enough percentage of

00:14:00 ◼   ► people are on my platform.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I can just worry about my platform and be driving ahead as a result.

00:14:06 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:08 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:13 ◼   ► email me, david@developingperspective.com.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Otherwise, have a great week, have a great weekend, happy coding, and good luck with

00:14:18 ◼   ► all your iOS 7 updates.