Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to the fifth

00:00:04 ◼   ► in the Developing Perspective Interview Series.

00:00:06 ◼   ► The Developing Perspective Interview Series

00:00:08 ◼   ► is something that I do to break out of the 15-minute mold

00:00:11 ◼   ► of just me talking and to hopefully talk

00:00:12 ◼   ► with interesting developers about how and why they work.

00:00:15 ◼   ► And today I'm delighted to be joined by Marco Orment,

00:00:17 ◼   ► who I'll introduce more fully in a moment.

00:00:19 ◼   ► And we're gonna talk about just how he works

00:00:21 ◼   ► and why he does the things that he does.

00:00:23 ◼   ► So first I wanna thank you for taking the time

00:00:24 ◼   ► to be on the show.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Anytime.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - So probably the best place to start off

00:00:29 ◼   ► is just to give a little bit of a background of who you are

00:00:33 ◼   ► and what you do.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Sure.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Well, I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:39 ◼   ► I currently work on a few projects.

00:00:41 ◼   ► I have Instapaper, the magazine, Marco.org,

00:00:45 ◼   ► the neutral.fm podcast, and wasting all my day on Twitter

00:00:49 ◼   ► at Marco Arment.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And I've currently forgotten about app.net.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Haven't we all?

00:00:56 ◼   ► Unfortunately.

00:00:57 ◼   ► You know, I'm kind of upset about that, because I got a really good username there.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I just got Marco.

00:01:06 ◼   ► And I joined Twitter too late for that, so I had to take Marco Arment on Twitter.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And I kind of feel bad that App.net didn't take off and replace Twitter for me,

00:01:11 ◼   ► because I just have a way better username there.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Well, I think it's the kind of thing for me that I'm glad that it's there.

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's the fallback position.

00:01:22 ◼   ► It reminds me a little bit about Pinboard and Delicious,

00:01:24 ◼   ► that I feel like at some point there'll be a day in the future

00:01:24 ◼   ► where there'll be this mass exodus of nerds from Twitter

00:01:29 ◼   ► for some reason that they're doing.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And we'll all go there, and I'll be glad it's there,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and you'll have your great username.

00:01:38 ◼   ► I hope so, yeah, I hope that happens.

00:01:41 ◼   ► We'll see, I guess.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So anyway, that's what I do.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I waste time on the internet,

00:01:46 ◼   ► and when I'm not wasting time on the internet

00:01:48 ◼   ► for about a half hour a day, I do some work.

00:01:50 ◼   ► So when you're doing that work,

00:01:53 ◼   ► what kind of, if you just kind of work through,

00:01:51 ◼   ► What is that, sort of the physical environment

00:01:54 ◼   ► and sort of the computers and things that you use,

00:01:56 ◼   ► what's that kind of setup look like for you?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - It's pretty straightforward.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I work from home and I have a home office,

00:02:02 ◼   ► so it's just a room in my house that is called the office.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And it contains, my wife and I each have a Mac Pro

00:02:08 ◼   ► and a desk and a monitor in this room,

00:02:10 ◼   ► so it's just a room with two desks and computers.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And really, for the most part, for most of the day,

00:02:18 ◼   ► I'm sitting here in headphones.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Generally speaking, if I'm not wearing headphones,

00:02:23 ◼   ► I'm not working, because it helps to block out

00:02:27 ◼   ► both ambient noise and noise, we have a baby,

00:02:30 ◼   ► so he's occasionally noisy, and just noise from the house,

00:02:33 ◼   ► and UPS deliveries and stuff like that.

00:02:36 ◼   ► So headphones help prevent distraction for me.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Yeah, so basically watching me work looks like

00:02:43 ◼   ► a guy typing while wearing headphones,

00:02:45 ◼   ► and not really moving until it's time for chicken salad.

00:02:47 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And is that, that sounds basically like the same environment

00:02:52 ◼   ► that you would have if you were working in a,

00:02:54 ◼   ► like a traditional office too, right?

00:02:56 ◼   ► That sounds like, almost every time I've ever seen

00:02:59 ◼   ► a software engineer working in a normal cube farm

00:03:02 ◼   ► or something like that, that's exactly the same thing.

00:03:06 ◼   ► - Not only is it similar, it is my desk from Tumblr.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I took it with me when I left.

00:03:11 ◼   ► The actual physical desk.

00:03:13 ◼   ► - Did they know about that?

00:03:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I negotiated on my way out.

00:03:18 ◼   ► it was, 'cause it's an electrically raising

00:03:20 ◼   ► and lowering desk, and it's very nice,

00:03:22 ◼   ► and I like being able to raise it

00:03:24 ◼   ► to a standing position occasionally.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It is very convenient.

00:03:27 ◼   ► So I took that home with me, and yeah,

00:03:31 ◼   ► and even when I was working there,

00:03:33 ◼   ► I would always try to have an exact clone

00:03:36 ◼   ► of my work hardware set up at home.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So at work, at first I had a laptop

00:03:41 ◼   ► I'd bring between both places,

00:03:42 ◼   ► just a 15-inch MacBook Pro, put it on a stand,

00:03:46 ◼   ► have an external keyboard, a mouse, and a 24 inch monitor.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And then eventually I upgraded to a Mac Pro at home

00:03:52 ◼   ► and went to two 24 inch monitors

00:03:54 ◼   ► and I convinced my boss at Tumblr

00:03:57 ◼   ► to upgrade us there to the exact same thing.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And so I always tried to keep parody

00:04:01 ◼   ► of the hardware in both places

00:04:02 ◼   ► because as a computer nerd,

00:04:06 ◼   ► I'm sure you've always had a really nice monitor at home.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Well, what if you go to work somewhere

00:04:10 ◼   ► and you have this tiny little 17 inch monitor at work

00:04:14 ◼   ► and you go home to your 30 inch?

00:04:15 ◼   ► I was like, that sucks, you know?

00:04:17 ◼   ► It sucks to have worse equipment in one place or the other.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I try to make it as work-like as possible.

00:04:25 ◼   ► There are some people who, in fact,

00:04:28 ◼   ► my boss at Tumblr, David, was like this,

00:04:30 ◼   ► who are very comfortable working on a laptop,

00:04:32 ◼   ► like on a couch, and I really can't do that for very long.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I'll do it if I'm on vacation somewhere

00:04:38 ◼   ► and I have to get something done

00:04:39 ◼   ► or I wanna type something up,

00:04:40 ◼   ► but I really prefer working at a desktop,

00:04:45 ◼   ► at a desk with a full-sized keyboard, a mouse,

00:04:48 ◼   ► and a giant monitor.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And it feels-- whenever I do it, like, the only things

00:04:53 ◼   ► that I can do in that kind of environment, if I'm not sitting

00:04:57 ◼   ► in my fancy chair with my Microsoft

00:05:00 ◼   ► keyboard and my particular mouse and the whole thing,

00:05:03 ◼   ► the only thing I can do there is I

00:05:04 ◼   ► can be sending email, maybe, Twitter or something like that.

00:05:08 ◼   ► But it doesn't feel like work, unless I'm

00:05:10 ◼   ► in that particular place in my particular setup, I find.

00:05:15 ◼   ► - Right, and also because I have a giant monitor at my desk,

00:05:20 ◼   ► every laptop screen feels cramped to me.

00:05:22 ◼   ► So every laptop screen feels like, just like what you said,

00:05:25 ◼   ► it's like I can get some stuff done here,

00:05:28 ◼   ► but I'm not gonna really get any, quote, real work done

00:05:31 ◼   ► until I get back to my giant setup at home.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And it really has nothing to do with synchronizing files

00:05:37 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:05:38 ◼   ► I mean, those are all minor things

00:05:40 ◼   ► when you have multiple computers versus single computers.

00:05:43 ◼   ► There are some minor issues like that,

00:05:44 ◼   ► but for me, really, the biggest thing is just

00:05:46 ◼   ► I need a whole bunch of space

00:05:48 ◼   ► and I need the comfortable ergonomic setup.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it just allows you to,

00:05:54 ◼   ► there's something, I don't even know if it's,

00:05:56 ◼   ► it's almost like Pavlovian or whatever, right?

00:05:58 ◼   ► Like, I don't know for you, but for me,

00:05:59 ◼   ► it's like when I'm in that environment,

00:06:02 ◼   ► that's where I can become productive,

00:06:04 ◼   ► even if I'm not in the mood to be productive

00:06:05 ◼   ► by putting myself in that place

00:06:08 ◼   ► in a way that's more difficult if I was just like,

00:06:10 ◼   ► pick up my MacBook Pro and just sit down

00:06:12 ◼   ► and try and do something.

00:06:14 ◼   ► It doesn't feel as,

00:06:16 ◼   ► it doesn't put me in that kind of mindset

00:06:19 ◼   ► or in that frame of like, okay, I need to do some work,

00:06:21 ◼   ► let's get this done.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - And again, back to the headphones,

00:06:24 ◼   ► that really helps isolate myself from the outside world,

00:06:27 ◼   ► whereas when you're like on a captured laptop,

00:06:30 ◼   ► that's harder to do.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And my headphones usually are at my desk

00:06:33 ◼   ► 'cause they're tremendous.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And so, just like everything else on my desk,

00:06:36 ◼   ► Tremendous headphones, giant monitor,

00:06:39 ◼   ► ridiculously giant keyboard,

00:06:41 ◼   ► 'cause it's all big, split ergonomic.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Yeah, ergonomics are very important to me.

00:06:47 ◼   ► I had a brief RSI scare during about my second year

00:06:51 ◼   ► out of college when I was two years into working full time,

00:06:55 ◼   ► where I started getting some pretty bad wrist pains,

00:06:56 ◼   ► and it freaked me out so much,

00:06:59 ◼   ► 'cause RSI is such a big problem in our field,

00:07:03 ◼   ► that I quickly switched my whole setup over

00:07:07 ◼   ► to using a split keyboard and sitting properly

00:07:10 ◼   ► with proper posture and knowing the proper height

00:07:12 ◼   ► for desks and monitors and everything.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And what a lot of people don't realize is like,

00:07:16 ◼   ► if you use a laptop on a desk all day just by itself,

00:07:19 ◼   ► that's really terrible for ergonomics.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Like it's one of the worst things you can do.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause your monitor's at the wrong height,

00:07:25 ◼   ► your keyboard's at the wrong height, your--

00:07:27 ◼   ► - Right, and your wrists are bending in and yeah,

00:07:29 ◼   ► and yeah, just having the monitor at the wrong height,

00:07:31 ◼   ► you're going to mess up your neck and shoulders probably.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And I've talked to a lot of people who do work that way,

00:07:38 ◼   ► and then at the end of the day, they have a sore neck

00:07:41 ◼   ► or a headache and they don't know why.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, laptops are really,

00:07:46 ◼   ► and I think this is going to be an increasing problem

00:07:48 ◼   ► because laptops are so popular these days

00:07:50 ◼   ► as people's primary or only computers,

00:07:53 ◼   ► but they're really not designed ergonomically

00:07:55 ◼   ► to work on for long periods.

00:07:58 ◼   ► they're really designed for occasional or portable use.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And so if you do work on a laptop all day,

00:08:06 ◼   ► at the bare minimum, you should really put it up on a stand

00:08:09 ◼   ► and get an external keyboard and mouse.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And ideally, you can even get a bigger monitor then too.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And that's a very good setup for a lot of people.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I used that setup for years before I switched to a Mac Pro.

00:08:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's what I use right now.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I have my Retina Mac Pro connected to a 27-inch

00:08:24 ◼   ► cinema display, and it's strange because

00:08:27 ◼   ► The Retina display is so nice, but I just find that looking at a huge display feels

00:08:31 ◼   ► more comfortable.

00:08:32 ◼   ► There's just things being un-cramped about it, even though the Retina actually has more

00:08:36 ◼   ► pixels I think, but it feels different because it's just spaced out.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It definitely pains me that the Retina MacBook Pro screen is so nice, but there is no big

00:08:48 ◼   ► desktop version of it yet.

00:08:52 ◼   ► That's one thing that I really hope is fixed soon in the computing world, because there's

00:08:57 ◼   ► this awesome screen that I want to use full time,

00:09:00 ◼   ► but ergonomically I kind of can't,

00:09:02 ◼   ► and practically it's kind of too small for me.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And so just please fix this.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Especially because we know it's possible.

00:09:09 ◼   ► It's just a question of timing and technology.

00:09:14 ◼   ► It's some inconceivable technology

00:09:16 ◼   ► that we're asking for.

00:09:17 ◼   ► It's like the same thing, just stretch it out

00:09:20 ◼   ► by an extra, what is that, 12 inches or something.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:24 ◼   ► It's like going all SSD for your storage.

00:09:27 ◼   ► A lot of people can already do it, a lot of people can't.

00:09:32 ◼   ► They need more space.

00:09:35 ◼   ► You know that in five years you can probably go all SSD

00:09:36 ◼   ► if you can't do it today.

00:09:41 ◼   ► But just from now to then it's going to be this weird transition.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Same thing with retina.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:49 ◼   ► So moving in from the physical hardware,

00:09:50 ◼   ► when you're actually working,

00:09:54 ◼   ► what are the software, the tools, the things that you use

00:09:54 ◼   ► outside of maybe the traditional ones like Xcode and Photoshop?

00:09:59 ◼   ► Well, first of all, TextMate, of course, as my text editor,

00:10:02 ◼   ► I'm actually using the TextMate 2.0--

00:10:05 ◼   ► I don't know, is it an alpha? Is it a beta? I don't know.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I'm using the TextMate 2.0 development branch, whatever it is.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And it's usable. It's surprisingly fun.

00:10:14 ◼   ► In fact, I would say it's no more buggy than TextMate 1.0, whatever.

00:10:19 ◼   ► point, whatever.

00:10:24 ◼   ► So I think if you're a TextMate user

00:10:25 ◼   ► and you want to try out the newest stuff with TextMate,

00:10:27 ◼   ► I think it's pretty, I would very safely recommend it

00:10:30 ◼   ► at this point.

00:10:32 ◼   ► I've been using TextMate 2.0 for about a year now,

00:10:33 ◼   ► ever since the alpha came out,

00:10:37 ◼   ► I've been using it full-time and it's fine.

00:10:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do as well.

00:10:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's good.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And then, you know, kind of other software.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I use desktop Twitter clients.

00:10:46 ◼   ► I don't really like using Twitter much on my phone

00:10:46 ◼   ► anywhere else. The desktop is my primary environment. That's where I use it most.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And I do have to use Twitter, or have to with air quotes, I have to use Twitter a lot for work.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Because I have to use Twitter to self-promote.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And so I have an account for the magazine, I have an account for Instapaper, an account for neutral,

00:11:04 ◼   ► an account for my website separately, for the feed people to follow.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And so I use Twitter as a promotional channel very heavily.

00:11:13 ◼   ► So my Twitter client's always open, and Solver's always open.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Got to have Solver.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Solver, Solver, I don't know how it's said,

00:11:21 ◼   ► but you know what I'm talking about.

00:11:23 ◼   ► We'll put a link in show notes or something.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Do you have show notes?

00:11:25 ◼   ► Yes, I do.

00:11:26 ◼   ► OK, we'll put a link in show notes.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And I cannot undersell this program to the audience.

00:11:34 ◼   ► It is so good, especially for programmers.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Anybody who works with numbers all day,

00:11:41 ◼   ► even basic math.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Solver, to give a quick description,

00:11:48 ◼   ► is kind of the hybrid between a spreadsheet

00:11:51 ◼   ► and a text editor.

00:11:53 ◼   ► It's like a line editor almost.

00:11:54 ◼   ► But you gotta see it, you gotta play with it.

00:11:57 ◼   ► If you haven't tried it yet,

00:12:01 ◼   ► delete calculator off your computer somehow.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Either hide the icon, move it, somehow get rid

00:12:04 ◼   ► of the calculator app.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Never launch the calculator app again.

00:12:07 ◼   ► Leave a Solver document open as a number scratch pad,

00:12:07 ◼   ► and you'll be sold, trust me.

00:12:12 ◼   ► The thing that I use solver for,

00:12:14 ◼   ► the thing that absolutely sold it for me was when I first realized that it did variables.

00:12:16 ◼   ► That I could say, "width equals 320,"

00:12:21 ◼   ► and then width becomes a token that I can use elsewhere in the document.

00:12:25 ◼   ► That just blew me away for usefulness for programming and for those types of things.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Because A becomes basically a programming language at that point.

00:12:34 ◼   ► It doesn't have iteration, but it has the ability to store things up and move them around in that way.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And I was like, that's perfect.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, not only will it replace calculator

00:12:42 ◼   ► for most people, but it will also

00:12:44 ◼   ► replace a lot of basic uses of spreadsheets, which is really--

00:12:48 ◼   ► at this point, I use spreadsheets

00:12:50 ◼   ► for very little casual, everyday stuff,

00:12:53 ◼   ► because Solver is so good for that.

00:12:55 ◼   ► So I cannot recommend this program highly enough.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I've been beating this drum to death for, I don't know,

00:13:02 ◼   ► five years.

00:13:03 ◼   ► But eventually, I will get everybody to use this program.

00:13:06 ◼   ► It really is that good.

00:13:08 ◼   ► In fact, I almost developed the iOS version of it.

00:13:11 ◼   ► I was back about a year after Instapaper launched

00:13:15 ◼   ► on the App Store, so around 2009 or so.

00:13:19 ◼   ► I've been using Solve for forever,

00:13:21 ◼   ► and not a lot of people were using it at that point.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And I went to the developers and I said,

00:13:26 ◼   ► "Hey, there really needs to be an iOS version of this,

00:13:29 ◼   ► and I would love to make it,

00:13:31 ◼   ► and I would love to license the engine from you

00:13:33 ◼   ► from you and whatever else, and here's how I think

00:13:37 ◼   ► the interface would look, and they're like,

00:13:40 ◼   ► you know, well, we have these concerns about the market,

00:13:43 ◼   ► and I'm like, look, whether you do it or I do it,

00:13:46 ◼   ► I just want it to exist, and I just want to use it.

00:13:50 ◼   ► And they're like, all right, we'll do it.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Okay, that was it.

00:13:54 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:13:55 ◼   ► That's all the push they needed was to know that someone,

00:13:58 ◼   ► it's like that there was a market for at least one person

00:14:00 ◼   ► to use it on iOS.

00:14:02 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:14:03 ◼   ► So when you're sort of doing something new,

00:14:07 ◼   ► when you're laying out a new,

00:14:09 ◼   ► whether it be a new app or a new part of an app,

00:14:12 ◼   ► what's your workflow in doing that?

00:14:15 ◼   ► So you start from an idea of I need a screen

00:14:17 ◼   ► or I need an interface or I need something that does that.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Are you a pen and paper person?

00:14:21 ◼   ► Do you get into something to mock it up in Photoshop

00:14:24 ◼   ► or one of the other image editors?

00:14:26 ◼   ► Do you just dive into code and just start building it?

00:14:28 ◼   ► What's your kind of workflow for you have a new idea

00:14:30 ◼   ► and do you want to kind of get it going?

00:14:33 ◼   ► I would love to be a pen and paper person, but I'm not.

00:14:36 ◼   ► I would love to be a Photoshop person, but I'm not.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I have Photoshop, I use Photoshop,

00:14:41 ◼   ► but not for any kind of mock-ups.

00:14:43 ◼   ► I really, I may just get in there and code it person.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I tend to have some idea of how I want something to look,

00:14:50 ◼   ► but for the most part, I just dive in there

00:14:53 ◼   ► and I code it from the bottom up.

00:14:54 ◼   ► So the data model, the views, kind of from the bottom up.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And then I put the pieces together afterwards,

00:15:01 ◼   ► which actually does help in a lot of ways,

00:15:04 ◼   ► keeping the MVC roles separate,

00:15:07 ◼   ► because I'm kind of forced to by the way I make things.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But really for the most part,

00:15:13 ◼   ► I really just kind of build it.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I jump right in, and I know a lot of people say

00:15:17 ◼   ► you aren't supposed to do that,

00:15:17 ◼   ► and they're probably right.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I just don't have the artistic skills or the self-control

00:15:25 ◼   ► to go to paper or Photoshop first and make prototypes

00:15:29 ◼   ► and throw three of them away.

00:15:30 ◼   ► I don't do that.

00:15:31 ◼   ► I just go right into the feature and just make it.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And if it sucks, I don't ship it.

00:15:38 ◼   ► But for the most part, if I'm going to make something,

00:15:40 ◼   ► and most of what I make, I do ship.

00:15:44 ◼   ► If I'm going to make something,

00:15:47 ◼   ► I just jump right in and do it.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - And I think a lot of that speaks to,

00:15:50 ◼   ► it's wherever you're going to be fastest in,

00:15:52 ◼   ► or whenever you're going to be able to go most quickly

00:15:56 ◼   ► from your idea to some realization of it,

00:15:56 ◼   ► to see if it's a good idea.

00:15:59 ◼   ► I'm the same as you.

00:16:00 ◼   ► I just code things.

00:16:01 ◼   ► I remember I was writing for Check the Weather, a weather app

00:16:03 ◼   ► I recently launched.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I drew one picture on a piece of paper.

00:16:09 ◼   ► And I still have it, just this tiny little sketch,

00:16:12 ◼   ► essentially on a napkin, but it was just

00:16:14 ◼   ► in a notebook in my office.

00:16:15 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► And then everything else was just in code.

00:16:18 ◼   ► I just needed that concept of, yep,

00:16:20 ◼   ► it's going to have a panel to the side, the bottom,

00:16:22 ◼   ► and the other side.

00:16:23 ◼   ► OK, that's it.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And you have to kind of try it.

00:16:28 ◼   ► For a lot of people, myself and it sounds like you included,

00:16:31 ◼   ► you kind of have to try something, a working prototype,

00:16:35 ◼   ► before you really know whether it's good or not.

00:16:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, especially for something as tactile as iOS.

00:16:42 ◼   ► There's something different of,

00:16:43 ◼   ► will it even work in your hand is,

00:16:46 ◼   ► you hear by people, a lot of designers have those tools

00:16:48 ◼   ► that mirror the interface on their device

00:16:50 ◼   ► to get some sense of it, but there's that sense

00:16:54 ◼   ► if you want it to see if your idea will actually work,

00:16:59 ◼   ► and when you're actually touching it and playing with it

00:17:00 ◼   ► and seeing, you know, putting it into reality.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:17:05 ◼   ► - And then it's like, so then on the other end of that,

00:17:11 ◼   ► what's your workflow when you're,

00:17:15 ◼   ► once you've built something in terms of testing

00:17:16 ◼   ► and debugging on the back end of creating an app?

00:17:19 ◼   ► Obviously you've launched enough apps

00:17:21 ◼   ► or on enough platforms, sort of enough,

00:17:24 ◼   ► they've been doing this for a long enough time

00:17:25 ◼   ► that in terms of dealing with compatibility,

00:17:27 ◼   ► dealing with all the kinds of challenges that you have

00:17:30 ◼   ► in terms of making sure that what you think is gonna work

00:17:32 ◼   ► will actually work for everybody.

00:17:34 ◼   ► - Part of how I do that is just by keeping

00:17:38 ◼   ► the feature set relatively light.

00:17:40 ◼   ► You know, I try to reduce the number of possible

00:17:43 ◼   ► configurations and conditions that my apps can be in,

00:17:46 ◼   ► just so that I don't have to test so many different things.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And so for example, I've been much more aggressive

00:17:53 ◼   ► than you recommend with the iOS version updating

00:17:57 ◼   ► and requiring minimum iOS versions.

00:18:00 ◼   ► I was requiring iOS 5 for Instapaper I think a year ago.

00:18:03 ◼   ► And I required iOS 6 from the magazine's launch

00:18:07 ◼   ► in October, which wasn't that long after iOS 6 came out.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I think it was a few weeks after it came out, actually.

00:18:15 ◼   ► It really was not very long at all.

00:18:16 ◼   ► And for the most part, the reasons why I do that

00:18:21 ◼   ► are to reduce testing and to reduce bug potential, really.

00:18:27 ◼   ► So that's part of my approach.

00:18:28 ◼   ► And the other part is I just use these apps a lot.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So you have a little bit of a different problem,

00:18:34 ◼   ► because you do a lot more apps than I do,

00:18:36 ◼   ► and you at least used to do a lot of consulting.

00:18:39 ◼   ► For me, I only make two apps, and I use them both

00:18:42 ◼   ► all the time.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And so pretty much almost any problem

00:18:46 ◼   ► that I'm going to run into with the apps,

00:18:51 ◼   ► I'll run into myself during development.

00:18:53 ◼   ► It's very, very rare that a bug in production comes out

00:18:55 ◼   ► that I didn't know about in development

00:19:00 ◼   ► or that never happened to me in development.

00:19:01 ◼   ► I might not have known how to fix it yet,

00:19:03 ◼   ► or I might have thought I fixed it,

00:19:05 ◼   ► or I might have thought the conditions that lead to it

00:19:07 ◼   ► are so rare that it would never be a problem.

00:19:09 ◼   ► But usually I have at least seen every bug in development,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and usually I try to fix most of them.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Do you find that works well in terms of both the split between iPhone and iPad?

00:19:19 ◼   ► In terms of using them both enough to get good coverage that way?

00:19:22 ◼   ► Because the other thing that I struggle with is I use my iPhone all the time.

00:19:25 ◼   ► It's within arm's reach essentially 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And yet my iPad I use very sparingly.

00:19:33 ◼   ► And so I always struggle with that on the-- like my apps, all the iPhone's versions tend

00:19:37 ◼   ► to be 10 times better than the iPad versions just because that's where I'm used to and

00:19:40 ◼   ► in this where I'm working.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I have a little bit of that problem.

00:19:45 ◼   ► I don't think it's as bad as what you're saying,

00:19:47 ◼   ► because, well, with the magazine,

00:19:51 ◼   ► if I'm gonna ship a really terrible bug on the magazine

00:19:53 ◼   ► that only happens on one platform, it'll be the iPhone,

00:19:56 ◼   ► because I hardly ever use the magazine on the iPhone.

00:19:58 ◼   ► That's almost always iPad.

00:19:59 ◼   ► And Instapaper, I kinda use half and half,

00:20:03 ◼   ► so it's not, I don't think it's really a problem

00:20:06 ◼   ► for me that way, because I use it on both platforms

00:20:09 ◼   ► pretty reliably.

00:20:10 ◼   ► And if I ever made any more apps, that would be a problem.

00:20:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing that actually, honestly,

00:20:18 ◼   ► as I think about it even more,

00:20:19 ◼   ► that I struggle with recently has been

00:20:21 ◼   ► making iPhone apps look good on the old stubby screens.

00:20:26 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:20:26 ◼   ► - Because I never--

00:20:27 ◼   ► - Well, no one's buying those anymore.

00:20:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, I just never see it.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, I have testing devices and things,

00:20:35 ◼   ► but the phone that I use all the time

00:20:36 ◼   ► that I'm doing most of my testing is an iPhone 5.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And so it's like, it's always a little awkward when I run out.

00:20:43 ◼   ► You turn it around, run it on the old screen.

00:20:46 ◼   ► It's like, oh, that doesn't work.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Right, like the keyboard slides up and something's covered,

00:20:50 ◼   ► or some minor layout problem like that.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that is a good point, actually,

00:20:55 ◼   ► now that we have a different size screen

00:20:57 ◼   ► that we're not really using reliably anymore ourselves.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess I probably have bugs I don't know about.

00:21:06 ◼   ► It helps me a little bit that I designed Instapaper

00:21:08 ◼   ► for that old phone.

00:21:11 ◼   ► So it was more like the iPhone 5.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I just had to stretch everything out and stretch

00:21:15 ◼   ► some flexible borders, and that was about it.

00:21:19 ◼   ► But if you started out on the iPhone 5 with a new app,

00:21:22 ◼   ► I could see where that could be a problem.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And I mean, it also depends a lot

00:21:26 ◼   ► on the content of your app, too.

00:21:27 ◼   ► If it's something that's vertically scrolling,

00:21:29 ◼   ► it's usually a lot better.

00:21:30 ◼   ► The place that I struggle with it--

00:21:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Yeah, so you'll have a profile screen,

00:21:33 ◼   ► or you'll have some kind of informational screen.

00:21:35 ◼   ► and you want that layout to look perfect,

00:21:38 ◼   ► and it's very hard to make it work perfectly

00:21:40 ◼   ► on both platforms.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Because like, which one are you going to make look best?

00:21:44 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And I found, too, over time that at first I

00:21:50 ◼   ► was designing for the iPhone and just kind of blowing it up

00:21:53 ◼   ► for the iPad.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And then over time, I've switched to the opposite,

00:21:56 ◼   ► where now I'm mostly designing for the iPad

00:21:58 ◼   ► and then trying to figure out how to shove it into the iPhone

00:22:01 ◼   ► after I know what it wants to do and what it's going

00:22:03 ◼   ► on the iPad first.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And that probably isn't great, honestly,

00:22:08 ◼   ► but it depends on the kind of app you're doing.

00:22:10 ◼   ► For a reading app, like both of mine,

00:22:13 ◼   ► I think the iPad experience really matters more.

00:22:18 ◼   ► - Sure, and it's even where, from a business side of it,

00:22:20 ◼   ► it's where most of your customer's going to be,

00:22:22 ◼   ► where's most of your usage going to be coming from.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It matters far more than anything else,

00:22:28 ◼   ► because your ultimate goal is to make the most customers

00:22:33 ◼   ► happy as possible.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Wherever they're going to be using it is where they want the most optimal and best experience.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:22:42 ◼   ► All right.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And then moving out of the workflow side of things, one of the things I always try to

00:22:53 ◼   ► get into is the why you work or where you see things on that side of things.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And what I was curious is where do you see,

00:23:05 ◼   ► as someone who's been, I think if I'm remembering right,

00:23:08 ◼   ► Instapaper launched on the first day

00:23:10 ◼   ► the iOS App Store launched.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Do I remember that right?

00:23:12 ◼   ► - It was like the third day.

00:23:14 ◼   ► It was annoying.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I got there in time for the deadline,

00:23:16 ◼   ► but they had too many apps than they expected,

00:23:18 ◼   ► so I got bumped.

00:23:20 ◼   ► - But you've essentially been in there from the beginning.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And it's obviously, the App Store today

00:23:24 ◼   ► is a totally different beast than it was back then.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And I've been curious from your take on

00:23:32 ◼   ► Where do you see the biggest opportunities

00:23:34 ◼   ► in the App Store these days?

00:23:36 ◼   ► Specifically, sort of focused on more of the smaller,

00:23:40 ◼   ► independent style of developer shop.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - Sure, I think it's important, you know,

00:23:47 ◼   ► I hear all the time from people, from bloggers,

00:23:50 ◼   ► from developers, I hear all the time this idea that

00:23:55 ◼   ► all the low-hanging fruit is gone,

00:23:57 ◼   ► and that the App Store is now so big

00:23:59 ◼   ► that little people can't get noticed anymore.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And I don't think that's the case, I really don't.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I think that's crap, and I think people say that

00:24:09 ◼   ► either to discourage themselves from taking an effort

00:24:12 ◼   ► or to excuse poor sales of something that just

00:24:16 ◼   ► wouldn't have sold well regardless of when it was released.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I really don't think that's true at all.

00:24:21 ◼   ► I think there is still tons of potential

00:24:24 ◼   ► in the App Store, and one of the easiest examples

00:24:28 ◼   ► of that to point out is how you,

00:24:30 ◼   ► I think you and Brent talked about this last week,

00:24:35 ◼   ► or whenever you're releasing that time interval,

00:24:37 ◼   ► talked about Clear, the to-do list

00:24:41 ◼   ► with its all gesturey and orange and gradient.

00:24:43 ◼   ► And Clear came out with a very small team

00:24:45 ◼   ► and it got noticed and it exploded,

00:24:48 ◼   ► because it was good, it was noteworthy.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I actually still use Clear as my shopping list app.

00:24:52 ◼   ► It's a good app.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And there are a million to-do apps in the app store,

00:24:56 ◼   ► all with check mark icons.

00:25:01 ◼   ► There's a million of them.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And yet, there is still room for new ones

00:25:05 ◼   ► that do something interesting or that are different

00:25:11 ◼   ► from the other ones in some way that people want.

00:25:13 ◼   ► So I think there's infinite potential.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I don't know if that's mathematically true,

00:25:20 ◼   ► but there's a lot of potential out there

00:25:21 ◼   ► still left to be tapped for not only creating new kinds

00:25:26 ◼   ► of apps, but for creating just new takes on common apps.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I've talked a lot how if I ever get free time,

00:25:36 ◼   ► which is unlikely, honestly, but if I ever get

00:25:39 ◼   ► some free time, I'd love to do my own podcast client.

00:25:42 ◼   ► And there's a million podcast clients already out there,

00:25:45 ◼   ► some of which I like a lot.

00:25:47 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:25:48 ◼   ► And there's a few that are really successful

00:25:51 ◼   ► in the App Store.

00:25:53 ◼   ► In fact, I think Instacast and Downcast sell about as well

00:25:57 ◼   ► as Instapaper most of the time, if not better.

00:26:00 ◼   ► They're very successful and I would love to do

00:26:05 ◼   ► my own podcast client someday because I have some ideas

00:26:08 ◼   ► that I'm not going to tell everybody, but I have some ideas

00:26:11 ◼   ► on things I would do differently

00:26:13 ◼   ► than what everyone else is doing.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And I think you can point to almost any app category

00:26:17 ◼   ► in the App Store as a user of these platforms.

00:26:20 ◼   ► you can say, you know, if I was making this kind of app,

00:26:23 ◼   ► I would do things differently in this way.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Or I would add this one feature that none of these apps

00:26:28 ◼   ► really have.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Or even a simpler thing, I would totally

00:26:33 ◼   ► change the visual design to a different type of mood

00:26:37 ◼   ► or theme or style.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Those are all-- I mean, look at Clear.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Clear is-- it's a very simple type of app, in theory,

00:26:45 ◼   ► it's a to-do list.

00:26:47 ◼   ► And they did a really radical visual design,

00:26:50 ◼   ► really radical functional design with the gestures

00:26:52 ◼   ► and everything, and that was compelling for people.

00:26:55 ◼   ► Even though it lacked most of the features

00:26:56 ◼   ► of the advanced to-do apps, and in many ways,

00:26:59 ◼   ► that was a feature.

00:27:01 ◼   ► - It seems like a lot of that is finding

00:27:02 ◼   ► the right niche there.

00:27:04 ◼   ► You don't have to address the entire market,

00:27:06 ◼   ► you only need probably a few hundred people a day

00:27:10 ◼   ► to like it.

00:27:11 ◼   ► And so that helps a lot with that.

00:27:15 ◼   ► It's like even if there's a million podcast clients

00:27:18 ◼   ► or a million to-do clients.

00:27:23 ◼   ► You only need a few hundred people a day

00:27:25 ◼   ► to say, "Hey, I like that," for it to be

00:27:26 ◼   ► a sustainable, reasonable business.

00:27:29 ◼   ► - Right, because if a few hundred people a day

00:27:31 ◼   ► give you a few dollars each, that's a job.

00:27:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - That's a pretty good job, usually.

00:27:36 ◼   ► You know, that's all you need to do.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And the iOS market is so big.

00:27:41 ◼   ► There are so many people using iOS devices,

00:27:44 ◼   ► and it is still fairly routine for people

00:27:45 ◼   ► to spend money on apps.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And I'm not sure that's always going to be the case.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I think it probably will be for a while more,

00:27:54 ◼   ► and then it'll switch more to in-app purchase stuff

00:27:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:27:59 ◼   ► But we're seeing the beginnings of that now.

00:27:59 ◼   ► But I still think you can, either way,

00:28:01 ◼   ► whether it's in-app purchase or up front,

00:28:05 ◼   ► I think it's very clear to everyone in this business

00:28:07 ◼   ► that people are spending real money on iOS

00:28:11 ◼   ► to solve problems, or just for fun, for entertainment.

00:28:11 ◼   ► So apps are like the new going out to see a movie.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Like if you have some free time with your phone or your iPad

00:28:20 ◼   ► and you want to try out some new stuff,

00:28:22 ◼   ► you'll go to the app store and you'll go spend

00:28:24 ◼   ► five or six bucks on a few new apps.

00:28:27 ◼   ► That's a form of entertainment now for so many people.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I do it, do you do it?

00:28:30 ◼   ► - Sure, yeah.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - Lots of people do this.

00:28:32 ◼   ► And so even with that, you don't even need to have

00:28:37 ◼   ► a groundbreaking bombshell of an app

00:28:39 ◼   ► that's going to get on all the sites in CNN reporting on it and everything,

00:28:44 ◼   ► you just have to have something interesting that people haven't seen before

00:28:49 ◼   ► or that does something a little bit differently that kind of looks like,

00:28:51 ◼   ► "Oh, hey, maybe I'll try that."

00:28:54 ◼   ► I mean, I bought tons of apps that I don't have on my phone anymore.

00:28:55 ◼   ► I don't regret having bought them.

00:28:59 ◼   ► I bought them to try them.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And that's the fact, that's iOS business.

00:29:02 ◼   ► That's it right there.

00:29:04 ◼   ► People do that all the time.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So you don't have to think in these giant terms like,

00:29:06 ◼   ► oh, what am I going to do entering this market with a big competitor?

00:29:11 ◼   ► Or what happens if someone else comes in here and kills my app?

00:29:15 ◼   ► You know, kill in quotes.

00:29:18 ◼   ► And I don't think people have to really think that way.

00:29:21 ◼   ► I think it's very apparent that there's room on iOS

00:29:23 ◼   ► for lots of different interpretations of the same concept.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And there's tons of potential concepts,

00:29:33 ◼   ► some of which have been discovered already and beaten to death,

00:29:33 ◼   ► but even those have some life left in them,

00:29:35 ◼   ► and some of them people haven't even thought of yet.

00:29:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, I think, it makes me think so much of the,

00:29:44 ◼   ► how I think so often people get too wrapped up

00:29:46 ◼   ► in how they define being successful in the App Store,

00:29:50 ◼   ► that you can get so wrapped up into trying to

00:29:53 ◼   ► be the next whatever it is.

00:29:55 ◼   ► It's the next, I want to be the next camera plus.

00:29:57 ◼   ► I want to be the next clear, or whatever it is,

00:29:59 ◼   ► that it's like the sort of the more runaway hits.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And the reality is, you can build a very, very good business

00:30:06 ◼   ► not being anywhere near there, just by doing the basics right

00:30:10 ◼   ► over and over again, and building a small

00:30:14 ◼   ► but consistent user base.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And a lot of people just don't see that option.

00:30:22 ◼   ► They only see what becomes big and famous, because that's what gets

00:30:26 ◼   ► to them press-wise or attention-wise, and they don't see all these

00:30:30 ◼   ► all these jobs in the middle.

00:30:32 ◼   ► It's like when you're in high school

00:30:34 ◼   ► and your parents start asking you

00:30:36 ◼   ► what kind of job you want to do for the rest of your life,

00:30:39 ◼   ► and at that point, you're aware of maybe 30 jobs that exist.

00:30:43 ◼   ► And so you've got to pick between these 30 jobs

00:30:46 ◼   ► that you know of that exist.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Well, do I want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher?

00:30:51 ◼   ► There's not that many that you know of.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And then you get into the real world and you realize,

00:30:56 ◼   ► wow, there is somebody who has to climb up

00:31:00 ◼   ► on that bridge and paint it.

00:31:05 ◼   ► That's a job I didn't know existed until high school,

00:31:07 ◼   ► or if I watch the Discovery Channel.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Or you guys are the workforce and you see people who are like,

00:31:11 ◼   ► "I don't really think they do anything all day."

00:31:15 ◼   ► It sounds like their job is really easy,

00:31:18 ◼   ► but someone's paying them a full-time salary to use Twitter.

00:31:20 ◼   ► There's all these jobs that you don't see

00:31:25 ◼   ► until you're in it.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And that's how iOS apps are.

00:31:27 ◼   ► From the outside, you see the big hits.

00:31:30 ◼   ► You see the top grossing list, which as you said last time,

00:31:32 ◼   ► I agree, is mostly useless.

00:31:34 ◼   ► You see the high profile stuff,

00:31:38 ◼   ► but there's this entire massive world

00:31:41 ◼   ► of the middle class of iOS apps.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And it's really a massive middle class.

00:31:48 ◼   ► There is so much potential there.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And yeah, I'm not going to be the next Angry Birds

00:31:54 ◼   ► by any means with any of the apps I make in all likelihood,

00:31:59 ◼   ► and neither will anybody who's hearing this in all likelihood.

00:32:02 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean that you can't make a good living

00:32:05 ◼   ► on the App Store, just making a handful of apps

00:32:08 ◼   ► or even one app that people like.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And it doesn't have to be half the world who likes it.

00:32:14 ◼   ► It can just be a few hundred thousand people who like it.

00:32:16 ◼   ► That's a good living.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's that difference of,

00:32:21 ◼   ► I think it's so easy to be distracted by the concept of being,

00:32:22 ◼   ► It's like the App Store millionaires, right?

00:32:27 ◼   ► As a concept.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Whereas there's far more,

00:32:31 ◼   ► and it's probably a better thing to aim for,

00:32:34 ◼   ► to be an App Store 100,000-er or whatever it is.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I was going to say it if you weren't.

00:32:40 ◼   ► It's like you want to do, to have that goal.

00:32:42 ◼   ► I remember when I first started out,

00:32:44 ◼   ► and I was trying to convince my wife,

00:32:46 ◼   ► we're talking to her about, oh, I want to make apps.

00:32:47 ◼   ► At the time, I was doing Rails work for a larger company,

00:32:48 ◼   ► and I was like, I just want to, I want to do,

00:32:51 ◼   ► sort of make something, I want to do something on my own.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And originally, sort of the deal in some ways

00:32:57 ◼   ► was I could focus on it fully.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I think it was once I made, I had to consistently make

00:33:01 ◼   ► $200 a day in the app store, which isn't easy by any means.

00:33:06 ◼   ► It takes a lot of work to get to there.

00:33:08 ◼   ► But that was my goal, which works out to be,

00:33:11 ◼   ► I think about, what, $70,000 a year or something like that.

00:33:13 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:33:14 ◼   ► That was the, because like, OK, that's a salary.

00:33:16 ◼   ► That's what I need to--

00:33:18 ◼   ► And that goal, when you kind of squish it down in that way,

00:33:22 ◼   ► makes it so much more attainable and tangible

00:33:25 ◼   ► for what you're trying to do.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It's not, I'm trying to meet millions of users

00:33:29 ◼   ► or have a system or an infrastructure that

00:33:31 ◼   ► can scale for that.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It's like, it's just a few hundred people a day.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And there's a lot of-- I know this

00:33:38 ◼   ► is going a little off track, but I think it's fun anyway.

00:33:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of stress.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Before I took InstaHaper full time,

00:33:46 ◼   ► I was really scared to do it.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And I probably should have done it a year earlier

00:33:53 ◼   ► than I actually did, but I was too scared

00:33:54 ◼   ► to leave my full-time job with health insurance.

00:33:57 ◼   ► And so when I took it full-time,

00:33:59 ◼   ► I had to do crazy, scary things

00:34:03 ◼   ► like address the health insurance problem

00:34:07 ◼   ► and do my own taxes and stuff like that.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And I was doing some of that beforehand,

00:34:12 ◼   ► but not most of it.

00:34:14 ◼   ► And then I realized once I was going,

00:34:17 ◼   ► like okay, well health insurance, that's just a number.

00:34:19 ◼   ► You know, I gotta pay, well here,

00:34:22 ◼   ► I pay a ridiculous amount because it's New York.

00:34:25 ◼   ► So I pay like 2,000 bucks a month

00:34:27 ◼   ► for health insurance for my family.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it's like, well, that's a lot of money,

00:34:31 ◼   ► that's really scary, but that's just a number.

00:34:32 ◼   ► So that's okay, if I wanna do this full time,

00:34:35 ◼   ► I have to make whatever I wanted to make before

00:34:37 ◼   ► plus $2,000 a month.

00:34:39 ◼   ► And okay, then that's X dollars a day, whatever that is.

00:34:42 ◼   ► And okay, so you figure it out.

00:34:44 ◼   ► It's just a number.

00:34:46 ◼   ► And just like, you know, starting a business

00:34:48 ◼   ► was this intimidating thing for me.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Well, it's just paperwork that you gotta file.

00:34:51 ◼   ► That's it.

00:34:52 ◼   ► You filed some paperwork and you are officially a business.

00:34:55 ◼   ► You know, like that's it.

00:34:56 ◼   ► - It's almost scary how easy it is to do that.

00:34:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And I actually, yeah, I feel bad for people

00:35:02 ◼   ► who live in countries where it's a lot harder to do.

00:35:05 ◼   ► 'Cause I know in the US it's almost notoriously easy.

00:35:09 ◼   ► But yeah, the fact is in the US,

00:35:11 ◼   ► starting a business is really, really simple.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Making money is not so simple,

00:35:15 ◼   ► but having a business entity is quite easy.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And so, there was all this,

00:35:23 ◼   ► I was so scared to do it, and before I did it full time, I was so scared

00:35:27 ◼   ► because I had always just heard, or there was this mythos around

00:35:31 ◼   ► going on your own, you got to do everything yourself, and oh, what do you

00:35:35 ◼   ► do about benefits, and all these big questions.

00:35:39 ◼   ► On this topic, if the US really cared about small businesses,

00:35:44 ◼   ► we would have nationalized health insurance

00:35:48 ◼   ► for this exact reason.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But that's a different topic.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I'm going to get you so much angry emails, Dave,

00:35:54 ◼   ► but it's going to be great.

00:35:56 ◼   ► So I think starting a business

00:35:58 ◼   ► and being independent on the App Store

00:36:02 ◼   ► and succeeding, and of course, success is a variable there.

00:36:05 ◼   ► It's like, you know, people wonder,

00:36:07 ◼   ► oh, how do you succeed on the app store?

00:36:09 ◼   ► Well, what do you mean by success?

00:36:11 ◼   ► You know, I think most people mean money.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And so, and you have to be more specific.

00:36:16 ◼   ► You have to say, okay, well, you know,

00:36:17 ◼   ► how much money do you need to make

00:36:19 ◼   ► to consider it a success?

00:36:22 ◼   ► And again, it's not some big scary thing.

00:36:24 ◼   ► You just add up all these numbers,

00:36:25 ◼   ► say, all right, well, if I have this much coming in,

00:36:27 ◼   ► then I have to spend this much on health insurance,

00:36:30 ◼   ► this much on accounting, this much on taxes,

00:36:31 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah, you go down the list,

00:36:33 ◼   ► and then you have at the end a number,

00:36:35 ◼   ► and that's roughly what you get to keep.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And then you can say, all right, well,

00:36:40 ◼   ► in order to get there, I have to make this.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And if you make it, you're succeeding.

00:36:44 ◼   ► And you have about as much job security

00:36:46 ◼   ► as you have at any real job anyway.

00:36:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I was going to say,

00:36:49 ◼   ► the biggest part, I remember when I was going out on my own,

00:36:51 ◼   ► I've been out on my own, I think, for about seven years now.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And it's, the biggest part of that

00:36:56 ◼   ► was the real understanding that,

00:36:59 ◼   ► if at the end of whatever it was,

00:37:01 ◼   ► a few weeks, a few months, a few years,

00:37:04 ◼   ► If those numbers all suddenly crossed over

00:37:07 ◼   ► and I was unable to keep doing it,

00:37:09 ◼   ► it's not like I have a gap in my resume that I've created.

00:37:12 ◼   ► If anything, I'm more desirable to most smart companies

00:37:17 ◼   ► as somebody who's gone through that experience

00:37:19 ◼   ► and tried to be entrepreneurial,

00:37:22 ◼   ► who understands all these other different parts

00:37:23 ◼   ► of what being a successful business looks like

00:37:27 ◼   ► than I would have if I'd just stayed at my old job

00:37:30 ◼   ► writing code, being like one of a dozen programmers

00:37:33 ◼   ► sitting there working on a project.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And I think understanding that it's like the worst case,

00:37:38 ◼   ► the absolute, probably the worst case scenario

00:37:40 ◼   ► for if this happens is I'll end up with no job

00:37:45 ◼   ► and I'll have to go find one, which okay,

00:37:48 ◼   ► but I'll be coming at that from a position

00:37:50 ◼   ► of a lot of really interesting, recent, good experiences.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Exactly, and you'll have your name on all those things.

00:37:59 ◼   ► If you spend seven years working at a big company,

00:38:03 ◼   ► a lot of times, depending on what you're doing,

00:38:05 ◼   ► you can't really put your name on anything big

00:38:07 ◼   ► that an outside employer would have heard of,

00:38:09 ◼   ► or can easily see or view or browse.

00:38:13 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons why people in our field

00:38:15 ◼   ► are so often encouraged to contribute

00:38:16 ◼   ► to open source projects,

00:38:18 ◼   ► because then potential employers can at least look

00:38:20 ◼   ► and see, okay, here's what you've done,

00:38:22 ◼   ► here's an example of your code,

00:38:24 ◼   ► here's a product that you helped contribute to

00:38:27 ◼   ► or designed entirely yourself.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Those are all very helpful to look at.

00:38:31 ◼   ► When you work at a big company,

00:38:32 ◼   ► a lot of times you aren't allowed to disclose

00:38:34 ◼   ► what you worked on, or you can't show the code

00:38:36 ◼   ► that you worked on or things like that,

00:38:38 ◼   ► or what you worked on is just some boring internal thing

00:38:41 ◼   ► that no one even cares to hear about.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Whereas, yeah, if you have to go get a job,

00:38:46 ◼   ► you can show them this giant pile of apps

00:38:48 ◼   ► that you've made entirely yourself and say,

00:38:50 ◼   ► "Hey, here's everything I did in the last seven years."

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, and as soon as I got my head around that,

00:38:57 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, that's not so scary."

00:38:59 ◼   ► I don't have any, I have the illusion of job security

00:39:04 ◼   ► working a corporate job in the sense of,

00:39:07 ◼   ► I feel like it's stable just because every month

00:39:10 ◼   ► they've direct deposited into my bank account.

00:39:13 ◼   ► But there's nothing to say that they can't just,

00:39:16 ◼   ► the next day I show up they're like,

00:39:19 ◼   ► "Hey, sorry, the contract was canceled, you're out."

00:39:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think a lot of people overestimate

00:39:24 ◼   ► their job security until there's something like that

00:39:25 ◼   ► happens.

00:39:30 ◼   ► A lot of people think that any full-time job is inherently secure,

00:39:31 ◼   ► and it really isn't.

00:39:35 ◼   ► And I would say that the job security of most full-time jobs,

00:39:37 ◼   ► especially in our business, is roughly the same as your

00:39:43 ◼   ► self-employment job security, unless you're really terrible

00:39:47 ◼   ► at it or something.

00:39:50 ◼   ► But for the most part, I think it's pretty much the same

00:39:51 ◼   ► where, yeah, if you're self-employed, maybe you

00:39:51 ◼   ► couldn't run at the same job for eight years,

00:39:54 ◼   ► working for yourself.

00:39:55 ◼   ► If you're employed at a big company,

00:39:56 ◼   ► maybe you can go there for eight years

00:39:58 ◼   ► before you get laid off or fired,

00:39:59 ◼   ► or driven to quit because it's so miserable.

00:40:02 ◼   ► So you have about the same job security,

00:40:04 ◼   ► I think, in both conditions.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's just-- I don't know.

00:40:09 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, I think we're both in the same boat

00:40:11 ◼   ► of enjoying it.

00:40:12 ◼   ► But I think the upsides of having control over what you do

00:40:17 ◼   ► and the final say on the quality of it,

00:40:20 ◼   ► on the nature of what you're doing,

00:40:23 ◼   ► and the motivations behind it,

00:40:25 ◼   ► is ultimately even a bigger incentive

00:40:29 ◼   ► than it's not like the two are even neutral

00:40:30 ◼   ► in terms of one being out the same as the other.

00:40:33 ◼   ► At least from my perspective,

00:40:35 ◼   ► I don't know why, at this point I'm unemployable, I think.

00:40:37 ◼   ► I don't think I could go and work at a regular job

00:40:39 ◼   ► and be happy. - I sure could.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I definitely couldn't.

00:40:44 ◼   ► I'm totally with you on that.

00:40:45 ◼   ► I mean, and I would imagine you're probably a control freak,

00:40:49 ◼   ► 'cause I know I sure am.

00:40:51 ◼   ► Is that fair?

00:40:52 ◼   ► - It's just certainly in the area of software.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Maybe not as much in other parts of my life,

00:40:58 ◼   ► but definitely in terms of--

00:40:59 ◼   ► - Well, in the area of what you do.

00:41:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like--

00:41:02 ◼   ► - I never really liked being told what to work on.

00:41:05 ◼   ► And I imagine this is very common,

00:41:08 ◼   ► especially in software developers,

00:41:09 ◼   ► because usually, most software developers,

00:41:13 ◼   ► I would imagine, I guess I don't have any data

00:41:15 ◼   ► back this up, but I would imagine most software developers

00:41:18 ◼   ► started at a young age programming as a hobby.

00:41:21 ◼   ► And when you have started that way,

00:41:24 ◼   ► it's probably, I know, like some of the best programmers

00:41:28 ◼   ► I've worked with were very difficult to employ

00:41:31 ◼   ► because they always wanted to go off on some tangent

00:41:35 ◼   ► doing their own thing with something

00:41:37 ◼   ► that was technically interesting.

00:41:39 ◼   ► And it was really hard to get them to meet a deadline.

00:41:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:41:42 ◼   ► Or work on some really boring feature

00:41:44 ◼   ► or some back end stupid administrative thing,

00:41:47 ◼   ► or fix some really obnoxious bug,

00:41:50 ◼   ► because they instead wanted to be working

00:41:51 ◼   ► on the cool new thing, the interesting thing.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And that's, I think, so prevalent in our industry.

00:41:57 ◼   ► It kind of helps to, it helps us have

00:42:00 ◼   ► so many independent workers,

00:42:02 ◼   ► because there's so many people who, like,

00:42:05 ◼   ► I want to work on what I want to work on, dammit,

00:42:06 ◼   ► and you can't tell me what my homework is.

00:42:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there's an opinionation about,

00:42:12 ◼   ► or like being a very opinionated person, I find.

00:42:14 ◼   ► seems to be also another attribute of a lot of

00:42:17 ◼   ► the kind of software developers who end up

00:42:18 ◼   ► going into independent work.

00:42:21 ◼   ► There is so many different ways to solve a problem

00:42:24 ◼   ► in software that in my mind there's almost always only one

00:42:29 ◼   ► that's correct and the rest are terrible ideas.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Intellectually I know that's not right

00:42:36 ◼   ► and that probably somewhere in the middle

00:42:38 ◼   ► there might be something there,

00:42:39 ◼   ► but I'm just an opinionated person.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I'm like, nope, that's the way I do it

00:42:42 ◼   ► because that's better.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And because you work for yourself,

00:42:49 ◼   ► you can do it exactly that way.

00:42:51 ◼   ► A long time ago, Merlin Mann on Back to Work, his podcast,

00:42:53 ◼   ► a long time ago there was three episodes in a row

00:42:57 ◼   ► about the concept of agency and being in control

00:43:00 ◼   ► of what you're working on and being in control

00:43:03 ◼   ► of your destiny professionally, basically.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And how when you're just somebody's employee,

00:43:10 ◼   ► you have given up some of that control

00:43:15 ◼   ► in exchange for less risk-taking, less liability,

00:43:17 ◼   ► a more stable paycheck, et cetera,

00:43:22 ◼   ► the benefits of working for somebody else.

00:43:24 ◼   ► But if you really want that control,

00:43:26 ◼   ► that's always going to be a friction point

00:43:28 ◼   ► in that relationship where if you are the kind of person

00:43:30 ◼   ► like you and I, if you're the kind of person

00:43:34 ◼   ► who really wants to work on what they want to work on

00:43:36 ◼   ► and doesn't want to do the boring homework,

00:43:37 ◼   ► then every single time your boss tells you to do something,

00:43:42 ◼   ► it's going to kind of hit that nerve.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And you're probably not going to do as good of work there

00:43:47 ◼   ► as you could because you're going to be working on stuff

00:43:50 ◼   ► you don't want to be working on.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And for a lot of people, I know, certainly myself included,

00:43:53 ◼   ► that means less productivity.

00:43:56 ◼   ► When your heart's not in it,

00:43:58 ◼   ► that means you don't do as good of work,

00:44:00 ◼   ► or at least as much work.

00:44:02 ◼   ► And so for me, I always kind of found,

00:44:04 ◼   ► like at Tumblr, I was at Tumblr for the longest part of my,

00:44:05 ◼   ► It was the longest uninterrupted part of my career.

00:44:10 ◼   ► I was lucky there that I could pretty much invent

00:44:12 ◼   ► whatever I was working on.

00:44:14 ◼   ► There were some problems that I'd have to solve

00:44:17 ◼   ► just out of necessity, but a lot of times

00:44:21 ◼   ► I basically had the freedom there to say,

00:44:22 ◼   ► "You know what?

00:44:24 ◼   ► "I want to spend the next two weeks

00:44:25 ◼   ► "designing a new cache layer,"

00:44:27 ◼   ► or doing something like that,

00:44:29 ◼   ► something that I found interesting.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Certainly not all the time, but it was a lot of the time.

00:44:34 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons why I was so happy there

00:44:35 ◼   ► for so long.

00:44:37 ◼   ► But now it's even better because now I decide

00:44:41 ◼   ► everything I do and don't do for the most part.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And of course, you know, there's always,

00:44:45 ◼   ► even when you run your own business,

00:44:46 ◼   ► there's always things that you have to do

00:44:48 ◼   ► just as part of reality or, you know, the law,

00:44:52 ◼   ► like counting paperwork.

00:44:54 ◼   ► There's always stuff you have to do.

00:44:55 ◼   ► There's some overhead.

00:44:56 ◼   ► But there's a heck of a lot less stuff that you have to do

00:44:59 ◼   ► that you don't want to do for the most part

00:45:01 ◼   ► if you've set it up that way.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So it does make me, this is something that I struggle with

00:45:06 ◼   ► and I'm curious how you tackle this.

00:45:09 ◼   ► The most difficult part I find of being independent

00:45:12 ◼   ► is dealing with the concept of software maintenance

00:45:15 ◼   ► or you're doing work that isn't that interesting

00:45:19 ◼   ► new problem, that isn't that interesting new app,

00:45:22 ◼   ► that isn't that interesting new concept.

00:45:23 ◼   ► That it's going back and doing compatibility updates

00:45:27 ◼   ► for an older app or making it doing,

00:45:30 ◼   ► I mean even you imagine an app like Instapaper

00:45:33 ◼   ► point. There's a certain amount of the reality of a lot of the interesting problems have

00:45:40 ◼   ► already been solved, but you're still working on maintaining it and keeping it going. How

00:45:43 ◼   ► do you balance those two, the urge to be always be on working on the interesting thing and

00:45:50 ◼   ► the necessity to be, you're the only person who can work on it, so you just have to?

00:45:56 ◼   ► It's occasionally hard. I think in the case of Instapaper, what helps a lot is that the

00:46:01 ◼   ► the app is pretty mature at this point.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I don't really have to do much to it to just keep it going.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And I've set up the servers in sexuality

00:46:08 ◼   ► to be pretty low maintenance,

00:46:09 ◼   ► 'cause that's how I have always done things

00:46:11 ◼   ► out of added necessity.

00:46:13 ◼   ► And so I've really kinda set up the whole product

00:46:17 ◼   ► to be low maintenance, relatively low cost of running it,

00:46:22 ◼   ► low overheads.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Really, Instapaper's biggest cost every month

00:46:28 ◼   ► the servers that it runs on.

00:46:30 ◼   ► If I have the urge to add a new feature to it, I can do it,

00:46:38 ◼   ► but at the same time, I decided this past summer and fall

00:46:42 ◼   ► to start up the magazine, and one of the reasons

00:46:45 ◼   ► I was able to do that was because the paper was

00:46:47 ◼   ► at this point where I could kind of de-emphasize it

00:46:51 ◼   ► for a while, and I don't intend for that to be permanent,

00:46:55 ◼   ► and I intend to reemphasize it soon,

00:46:58 ◼   ► because the magazine is now reaching a stable point,

00:47:00 ◼   ► but I had that freedom because the app

00:47:04 ◼   ► is pretty low maintenance.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And so when I jump back into it and start really working

00:47:11 ◼   ► on this big upgraded version full time,

00:47:15 ◼   ► I wish I still haven't done, but once I start doing that,

00:47:23 ◼   ► First of all, I have the freedom now

00:47:26 ◼   ► that I have an additional source of income,

00:47:28 ◼   ► which then, it kind of frees me up with Instapaper

00:47:32 ◼   ► to be a little more experimental.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Because when Instapaper was my only income,

00:47:38 ◼   ► it was very, very hard for me to take any risks with it.

00:47:42 ◼   ► If I wanted to remove a feature that was really old

00:47:46 ◼   ► and crufty and causing lots of problems

00:47:48 ◼   ► and making it hard to move forward,

00:47:50 ◼   ► Like a long time ago, I did that with the RSS folder feature,

00:47:53 ◼   ► which was a terrible idea.

00:47:56 ◼   ► When I wanted to remove a feature, that was a really,

00:47:58 ◼   ► really hard thing to do, because I knew it would anger people.

00:48:01 ◼   ► When I wanted to raise the iOS minimum bar,

00:48:04 ◼   ► that was a really hard thing to do.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Because I was afraid, this is my only income.

00:48:07 ◼   ► What if I anger everybody?

00:48:09 ◼   ► Everyone's going to go jump to Clipped or whatever,

00:48:13 ◼   ► if I anger them, whatever my new competitor this month is.

00:48:17 ◼   ► And that was always a big stress point.

00:48:19 ◼   ► And now, I have the magazine income,

00:48:22 ◼   ► and I have my blog income,

00:48:24 ◼   ► and I have occasional podcast income.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And so now, I have something else to fall back on,

00:48:32 ◼   ► so I can say, you know what, with Instapaper,

00:48:35 ◼   ► I'm gonna do what I wanna do here.

00:48:36 ◼   ► And I know a lot of people are gonna follow me on it,

00:48:39 ◼   ► I know a lot of people are going to love what I'm doing,

00:48:42 ◼   ► and I'm gonna get some new customers.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And if I anger a handful of existing customers,

00:48:46 ◼   ► that's just the cost of the progression of time here.

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I've had a very similar experience in that.

00:48:53 ◼   ► The biggest peace of mind I've been able to grow

00:48:56 ◼   ► in my business is by diversification,

00:48:58 ◼   ► into having all my eggs in many baskets.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And so you can be more,

00:49:06 ◼   ► even just from a peace of mind perspective,

00:49:08 ◼   ► it's like in aggregate, you'll probably end up the same,

00:49:11 ◼   ► even if one thing's going down,

00:49:13 ◼   ► there's a good chance something else will be going up.

00:49:15 ◼   ► - Exactly, and again, if I really screw up big time

00:49:20 ◼   ► and I somehow kill Instapaper by trying to update it,

00:49:24 ◼   ► then I'll make a podcast client.

00:49:26 ◼   ► You know, there's always more to do.

00:49:29 ◼   ► I mean, every time I need an app for something,

00:49:31 ◼   ► this happens a lot, like if I go on a trip somewhere

00:49:34 ◼   ► or if there's some kind of like single,

00:49:36 ◼   ► specialized purpose single use that I have for an app

00:49:39 ◼   ► and I go to the store and try to download something,

00:49:41 ◼   ► I'm always appalled at how bad most of the options are.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And so like almost every month I run into some situation

00:49:49 ◼   ► like this where I need a new app for something

00:49:50 ◼   ► and I think, man, if I had the time,

00:49:53 ◼   ► I would make the crap out of an app that does this.

00:49:56 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:49:57 ◼   ► And just really do this right, you know?

00:49:59 ◼   ► And I don't have time because I'm working on the other apps.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So if I really screw up royally and somehow torpedo

00:50:05 ◼   ► one of my main apps, well then I'll have some free time.

00:50:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:50:09 ◼   ► And it's not that big of a problem.

00:50:12 ◼   ► - Just move on and--

00:50:13 ◼   ► and make something else.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - And I think the last area I wanted to talk about

00:50:19 ◼   ► I thought was really interesting is if you kind of think

00:50:21 ◼   ► about you've been doing this for long enough

00:50:24 ◼   ► that you've probably made a few mistakes.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And I'm curious if you could talk about,

00:50:30 ◼   ► it's like, it's always a funny question to say

00:50:31 ◼   ► what's the biggest mistake you've made,

00:50:33 ◼   ► whether it's sort of business or technically,

00:50:34 ◼   ► but an interesting mistake that resulted in a lesson

00:50:38 ◼   ► that was worth learning, that you,

00:50:41 ◼   ► as you go forward you're thinking about,

00:50:42 ◼   ► I definitely don't want to do that again.

00:50:46 ◼   ► - I definitely think, it's hard to say

00:50:50 ◼   ► because I haven't fixed this mistake yet,

00:50:52 ◼   ► so it's hard to say whether it was a mistake, I think.

00:50:55 ◼   ► In retrospect, what I'm going to regret the most

00:50:59 ◼   ► with Instapaper especially,

00:51:02 ◼   ► is not having hired help earlier.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Because I've been doing Instapaper mostly myself.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I have somebody else, the awesome Richard Dunlop Walters,

00:51:12 ◼   ► who does the feature, formerly give me something to read,

00:51:15 ◼   ► who picks the stories for that and edits that whole thing.

00:51:17 ◼   ► In fact, he even does the site layout for that now.

00:51:20 ◼   ► He took the whole thing over, he's awesome.

00:51:22 ◼   ► And he does all that and all the support emails.

00:51:25 ◼   ► But beyond that, and beyond occasional design contracting

00:51:29 ◼   ► for mostly little things, I really have done

00:51:32 ◼   ► all of Instapaper myself.

00:51:34 ◼   ► That's partially because I'm a control freak

00:51:38 ◼   ► and partially because I am scared to delegate,

00:51:41 ◼   ► but also partially because I'm scared of the cost

00:51:43 ◼   ► of bringing on anybody else full-time.

00:51:45 ◼   ► You've talked a lot about having had full-time employees

00:51:47 ◼   ► in the past or even having worked with just contractors

00:51:50 ◼   ► on a long-term basis.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I've never done that really, and so that does scare me.

00:51:55 ◼   ► But with the magazine, putting together a magazine

00:51:59 ◼   ► turns out to be so much work.

00:52:01 ◼   ► I mean, the app is easy.

00:52:02 ◼   ► The app I've been working on, but it's, you know,

00:52:04 ◼   ► the app is gonna be done, for the most part,

00:52:07 ◼   ► quote, done relatively soon,

00:52:09 ◼   ► as soon as I fixed the main bugs left.

00:52:11 ◼   ► But the editorial side of it is just so much work

00:52:15 ◼   ► that I had to hire Glenn Fleischman, the editor,

00:52:18 ◼   ► almost full-time already.

00:52:20 ◼   ► And once I hired him, I realized,

00:52:22 ◼   ► and part of this is just 'cause Glenn's ridiculously awesome,

00:52:25 ◼   ► but I realized just how awesome it is to have help.

00:52:29 ◼   ► 'Cause when I hired Richard to do the feature

00:52:33 ◼   ► and the inspaper support,

00:52:36 ◼   ► those were things I was barely doing anyway.

00:52:38 ◼   ► So support I was mostly ignoring, which I know is terrible,

00:52:43 ◼   ► but that's the reality.

00:52:47 ◼   ► I was mostly ignoring support emails,

00:52:48 ◼   ► and the feature was relatively quick to do.

00:52:51 ◼   ► So when he took over, it wasn't that big of a problem.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Just, you know, I saved a little bit of time every day

00:52:59 ◼   ► from not doing the feature,

00:53:02 ◼   ► and all the support emails started getting answered.

00:53:04 ◼   ► But I wasn't doing that before,

00:53:06 ◼   ► so it wasn't that big of a savings.

00:53:05 ◼   ► When I hired Glenn for the magazine though,

00:53:07 ◼   ► doing all the editorial work,

00:53:09 ◼   ► I was doing the editorial work

00:53:11 ◼   ► for the first couple of issues,

00:53:12 ◼   ► and it was so much more work than I thought it would be.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Once I hired him, it was a massive burden

00:53:18 ◼   ► lifted off of my shoulders.

00:53:20 ◼   ► And I realized then the value of help,

00:53:24 ◼   ► the value of having somebody who's doing work for you.

00:53:29 ◼   ► And he took things in a direction

00:53:32 ◼   ► that he did things a little bit differently

00:53:33 ◼   ► than I would have done them.

00:53:35 ◼   ► turns out I like the way he does things.

00:53:40 ◼   ► So I would like to hire help for Instapaper, I think.

00:53:43 ◼   ► And maybe this is how I get to do my podcast client.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I don't know yet, I haven't decided all this yet.

00:53:49 ◼   ► But I want help for Instapaper because

00:53:51 ◼   ► I would like to free up more of my time.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So I think in retrospect I am going to have that regret

00:54:01 ◼   ► of seeing, you know what, I probably should have hired

00:54:01 ◼   ► like three years ago.

00:54:06 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:54:08 ◼   ► The interesting part I found is that,

00:54:09 ◼   ► or at least the biggest,

00:54:12 ◼   ► in that vein, the biggest lesson I found

00:54:13 ◼   ► is to try and identify the things that you do

00:54:15 ◼   ► on a repeated basis that someone else could do

00:54:18 ◼   ► as well or better than you could.

00:54:21 ◼   ► And those are the things that you want to try and,

00:54:24 ◼   ► like I have somebody who does the help desk for me.

00:54:28 ◼   ► She also does my books, my accounting, my taxes.

00:54:28 ◼   ► she's an operations wizard, that's what she does.

00:54:31 ◼   ► - That sounds awesome.

00:54:32 ◼   ► - She does it in a way that's, it blows my mind.

00:54:36 ◼   ► It's in a totally different world,

00:54:38 ◼   ► and it's at the time, when it's sort of starting out,

00:54:41 ◼   ► it's like, oh, does this make sense, is that good?

00:54:43 ◼   ► But it's like, the reality is, that's what she,

00:54:45 ◼   ► it's like, she's an expert in that,

00:54:47 ◼   ► in the same way that I am, I guess at this point,

00:54:48 ◼   ► an expert in iOS development, or something like that.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And so, finding those things, it's like,

00:54:54 ◼   ► I don't really like, I drive no joy from that work.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I don't like doing my books.

00:54:58 ◼   ► I don't like doing those kind of things.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I enjoy doing Help Desk to some degree,

00:55:04 ◼   ► especially when I first launch or something.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Maybe it's good to be in there and making sure

00:55:08 ◼   ► I really have a good sense of things.

00:55:09 ◼   ► But at the end, after a little while,

00:55:11 ◼   ► it becomes very rote and becomes just a question

00:55:14 ◼   ► of giving people some time and some reaction,

00:55:18 ◼   ► but it's the same questions every single time.

00:55:21 ◼   ► - Right, like how many password resets

00:55:22 ◼   ► do you want to answer per day?

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, or just, yeah, the same,

00:55:27 ◼   ► It's like, one of my apps is an audiobook app.

00:55:29 ◼   ► And the number of times I get an email asking me why Harry Potter is not in my app, my book

00:55:35 ◼   ► catalog.

00:55:36 ◼   ► It's not even joking.

00:55:37 ◼   ► The first autoresponder I ever wrote was, "I'm sorry.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I have been unable to secure the rights to include Harry Potter for free in my audiobook

00:55:46 ◼   ► app that you also downloaded for free.

00:55:48 ◼   ► I'm sorry that's a disappointment, but that's where we find ourselves."

00:55:52 ◼   ► Oh, that's great.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

00:55:55 ◼   ► So I definitely think the lack of,

00:55:58 ◼   ► and again, I was doing so much more of my own accounting

00:56:03 ◼   ► and bookkeeping too for a while,

00:56:04 ◼   ► and over the last two years I've finally hired an accountant

00:56:08 ◼   ► and I've finally just started using QuickBooks Online,

00:56:11 ◼   ► which is horrible, but it saves me time.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Out of curiosity, what do you use for accounting?

00:56:19 ◼   ► I know this is a bit of a derail,

00:56:20 ◼   ► but for bookkeeping, do you use a particular software package

00:56:24 ◼   ► or does your employee handle all of that

00:56:26 ◼   ► and you don't even know?

00:56:28 ◼   ► - So it's QuickBooks, that's what she uses.

00:56:31 ◼   ► - Online or local?

00:56:33 ◼   ► - Local on the Mac.

00:56:34 ◼   ► I never see it, except for probably

00:56:37 ◼   ► maybe three or four times a year

00:56:39 ◼   ► when we do kind of like a quarterly review or something,

00:56:42 ◼   ► or sometimes she'll just send me rollup reports and things.

00:56:44 ◼   ► But it's to a point now that,

00:56:46 ◼   ► yeah, she could use whatever she wants.

00:56:48 ◼   ► I know she uses QuickBooks because that's what she wanted

00:56:51 ◼   ► and what she wanted to use,

00:56:52 ◼   ► mostly because that's what our tax preparer prefers,

00:56:55 ◼   ► to get the import from.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's always the case.

00:56:58 ◼   ► But the key there was just to-- it's whatever she--

00:57:02 ◼   ► that's her specialty.

00:57:03 ◼   ► That's what she does.

00:57:04 ◼   ► She's an operations and finance person.

00:57:06 ◼   ► And so it's kind of like if she comes up and says,

00:57:09 ◼   ► I need this tool, I need this thing,

00:57:11 ◼   ► it's like, absolutely, whatever.

00:57:14 ◼   ► That's money well spent for me to make you as productive as you

00:57:17 ◼   ► as possible, because obviously that's

00:57:19 ◼   ► less time I need to be paying for.

00:57:22 ◼   ► And then on the flip side, it's like,

00:57:27 ◼   ► the better you are at your job,

00:57:28 ◼   ► the better my business is running.

00:57:29 ◼   ► - See, like in that way then,

00:57:32 ◼   ► what I just asked was actually a terrible question.

00:57:33 ◼   ► The right question is why am I still worrying about this?

00:57:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the better question.

00:57:37 ◼   ► - That's a much better question.

00:57:39 ◼   ► It's like, why should I need to care

00:57:40 ◼   ► what accounting software I'm using

00:57:42 ◼   ► because why am I doing my own accounting at all?

00:57:43 ◼   ► Because I've already outsourced like 80% of it

00:57:45 ◼   ► to my accountant, like why don't I just outsource

00:57:47 ◼   ► the rest to somebody or them also?

00:57:49 ◼   ► I guess that's a very good question.

00:57:50 ◼   ► - You can apply to a lot of different sides.

00:57:52 ◼   ► I mean, I had someone recently ask me a question about

00:57:55 ◼   ► if the icon for Check the Weather was created

00:57:58 ◼   ► in Photoshop or Illustrator.

00:58:00 ◼   ► And they're asking-- - You don't even know,

00:58:02 ◼   ► do you? - I was like,

00:58:02 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:58:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:04 ◼   ► I contacted a designer that went to the icon factory,

00:58:06 ◼   ► they did a great job.

00:58:08 ◼   ► I told them a concept, they came back with pixels

00:58:11 ◼   ► that look pretty.

00:58:11 ◼   ► I have no idea how, like,

00:58:13 ◼   ► they could have individually drawn those in MS Paint.

00:58:16 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:58:17 ◼   ► That doesn't matter to me because

00:58:19 ◼   ► that's not where I'm seeking to put my effort,

00:58:21 ◼   ► or put my time, or put my energy.

00:58:23 ◼   ► It's like, I want to focus on the things that I'm good at,

00:58:25 ◼   ► and everything else, I'll try and find someone

00:58:27 ◼   ► who can do it better than I can.

00:58:29 ◼   ► - I definitely have a lot to learn from your method.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Also, and one other thing too,

00:58:34 ◼   ► I realize it was kind of a dodge for me

00:58:36 ◼   ► to say my biggest mistake was a mistake

00:58:38 ◼   ► I'm not sure that I actually have made yet.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So, a more concrete example,

00:58:43 ◼   ► because I'm far from perfect, I've made tons of mistakes,

00:58:47 ◼   ► A more concrete example, recently,

00:58:50 ◼   ► when I launched the magazine 1.0, the data storage engine--

00:58:55 ◼   ► and I know that Brent just talked about this,

00:58:56 ◼   ► so I'll try to be brief--

00:58:58 ◼   ► the data storage engine in the magazine 1.0

00:59:01 ◼   ► was just plist files, and just with a bunch of keys and values

00:59:06 ◼   ► for each issue and everything like that.

00:59:08 ◼   ► And the reason I wrote it this way

00:59:11 ◼   ► was I didn't know core data yet.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And with Instapaper, I do everything with raw SQLite,

00:59:18 ◼   ► I don't care how it's pronounced,

00:59:20 ◼   ► with raw SQLite calls to the C library

00:59:22 ◼   ► with a few functions around them.

00:59:24 ◼   ► So I didn't want to bring all that over to the magazine.

00:59:27 ◼   ► I thought it was overkill.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So I thought, you know, this is a really simple app.

00:59:30 ◼   ► There's no real user side data, really.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Like, it's just downloading issues and showing them to you.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So it's so simple.

00:59:38 ◼   ► I'll just use plist.

00:59:39 ◼   ► It'll be fast.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And I'll be able to get this launched quickly

00:59:41 ◼   ► and find out if there's going to be any subscribers at all.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:48 ◼   ► So it was, by almost every definition,

00:59:49 ◼   ► it was quick and dirty.

00:59:52 ◼   ► And what I realized by version 1.1

00:59:53 ◼   ► was that the system was just horrible.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And because what I thought when I first started doing it,

01:00:01 ◼   ► oh, there's no user site data

01:00:06 ◼   ► that I really need to store here.

01:00:07 ◼   ► It can be really, really gross and just a big

01:00:07 ◼   ► file for each issue and a big index of the issues somewhere

01:00:11 ◼   ► and a different plist file and it'll be fine. And it turns out

01:00:15 ◼   ► that that's not the case at all.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Even though I thought it was going to be simple, there's all these complex things. Well, okay,

01:00:23 ◼   ► is it downloaded? Is it saved? Is it deleted? Was it downloaded at one time and then they deleted it?

01:00:27 ◼   ► Is it open? Is it collapsed? Are the issues

01:00:31 ◼   ► here read? And then when the server updates this article,

01:00:35 ◼   ► is it easy to re-download just that article?

01:00:40 ◼   ► So when I fix a typo in an article after it's been published,

01:00:43 ◼   ► the app will download it without downloading

01:00:46 ◼   ► the entire issue again.

01:00:47 ◼   ► There's all these things that I thought

01:00:48 ◼   ► it was going to be a simple problem,

01:00:51 ◼   ► but it really isn't simple.

01:00:52 ◼   ► And so the solution I made with the assumption

01:00:53 ◼   ► it was going to be really simple

01:00:56 ◼   ► ended up ballooning into a tremendous pile

01:00:57 ◼   ► of terrible hacks to get this stupid Pila system working.

01:01:00 ◼   ► So eventually, after, I don't know, two months maybe,

01:01:03 ◼   ► I realized this was completely unmaintainable,

01:01:06 ◼   ► threw the entire thing out and rewrote the whole thing

01:01:08 ◼   ► in core data learning as I went and it was fine.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And I felt like such a fool for not having known

01:01:14 ◼   ► core data earlier because while it isn't the solution

01:01:17 ◼   ► to every problem, it was the solution to this problem.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And I just didn't know it.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And it was definitely the solution to this problem.

01:01:25 ◼   ► And so I definitely regret that.

01:01:29 ◼   ► And that was just a huge technical architectural mistake

01:01:33 ◼   ► to try to build my own crazy system that ended up being

01:01:35 ◼   ► a massive pile of hacks because I underestimated

01:01:37 ◼   ► the complexity.

01:01:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the difficulty I always have with that kind of

01:01:41 ◼   ► thing is as you're describing it, often I will do the same

01:01:44 ◼   ► thing to start with, that almost always, whenever I'm building

01:01:47 ◼   ► an app, initially its data store is some variation on

01:01:51 ◼   ► PLists or NS user defaults.

01:01:53 ◼   ► That's where you start off.

01:01:55 ◼   ► It's super easy, you can just get up and running and go.

01:01:58 ◼   ► And I think the danger is at what point,

01:02:01 ◼   ► It's having the awareness to say,

01:02:03 ◼   ► at what point does that just completely break down?

01:02:05 ◼   ► At what point is it no longer kind of prototyping,

01:02:08 ◼   ► and at what point is this like,

01:02:09 ◼   ► will this really stand up down the road?

01:02:12 ◼   ► Because it's valuable to start where you started.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I'm sure it helped you get off your feet

01:02:18 ◼   ► and be like, okay, this is going to work,

01:02:19 ◼   ► I'm going to build it, here it is,

01:02:21 ◼   ► I can play with it much more quickly

01:02:23 ◼   ► than if you had to start learning.

01:02:25 ◼   ► If you had said at the beginning,

01:02:27 ◼   ► in order for me to do the magazine,

01:02:28 ◼   ► and they need to learn core data,

01:02:31 ◼   ► that may have been much more intimidating

01:02:32 ◼   ► and something that you would have been more resistant

01:02:34 ◼   ► to diving into.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah, and it would have,

01:02:39 ◼   ► you know, when I was starting it,

01:02:40 ◼   ► this is one of the reasons I keep using PHP

01:02:42 ◼   ► for all my server stuff, when I started it,

01:02:44 ◼   ► I was just like, alright, I, again,

01:02:46 ◼   ► like I have to get this out quickly,

01:02:47 ◼   ► I don't know if it's going to have any subscribers,

01:02:49 ◼   ► so I don't want to spend six months making the app

01:02:51 ◼   ► before I know what, if it's, you know,

01:02:53 ◼   ► if it's going to flop on its second week,

01:02:54 ◼   ► I want to know that sooner rather than later.

01:02:57 ◼   ► so I don't pour all this time into it

01:03:02 ◼   ► that I could have spent on Instapaper.

01:03:04 ◼   ► So I wanted to just get it out there

01:03:06 ◼   ► as quickly as possible.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And so the last thing I wanted to do at that point

01:03:08 ◼   ► was learn a whole new technology.

01:03:10 ◼   ► It's like, all right, and so the server side

01:03:13 ◼   ► is written in PHP using the exact same framework

01:03:15 ◼   ► as Instapaper and Tumblr.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Because that's the framework I know best

01:03:20 ◼   ► in the language I know best for the server,

01:03:22 ◼   ► and running it is really easy and really low maintenance.

01:03:23 ◼   ► because once you've designed a framework to run 150 servers,

01:03:27 ◼   ► like at Tumblr when I left,

01:03:29 ◼   ► when you bring it down to 11 servers at Instapaper,

01:03:34 ◼   ► it's really easy to run.

01:03:35 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:03:36 ◼   ► - And when you bring it down to one server,

01:03:38 ◼   ► like the magazine, it's even easier.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And so I used what I knew.

01:03:42 ◼   ► And that works great in a lot of cases

01:03:46 ◼   ► until you run into something where

01:03:48 ◼   ► something that you don't know yet is a way better solution,

01:03:52 ◼   ► but you don't know about it.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And that's why you gotta always keep broadening

01:03:54 ◼   ► your horizons so that you know what tool to use for the job.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Because if you don't even know about a whole class of tools

01:04:02 ◼   ► that could save you a lot of time on what you're doing,

01:04:04 ◼   ► then it's harder for you to make good decisions

01:04:06 ◼   ► about what to use.

01:04:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that speaks to all kinds of areas

01:04:11 ◼   ► about how you keep trying new things, keeping,

01:04:15 ◼   ► it's like learning new stuff, having projects

01:04:17 ◼   ► whose purpose is just to learn something new

01:04:21 ◼   ► and to just keep trying to stretch out of your comfort zone

01:04:26 ◼   ► so you can try and just see what's out there.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It's always kind of amazing when you find

01:04:32 ◼   ► some of the things that, you're very rarely

01:04:34 ◼   ► solving that problem for the first time.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Someone else has almost certainly already solved it

01:04:38 ◼   ► and solved it in a way that's cleverer

01:04:40 ◼   ► than you could ever come up with.

01:04:43 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:04:46 ◼   ► That being said, I still don't know

01:04:49 ◼   ► what the hell storyboards are.

01:04:47 ◼   ► - Or why I would want to use them.

01:04:50 ◼   ► - I think that's okay.

01:04:51 ◼   ► - I did just start using Arc, finally.

01:04:54 ◼   ► - Welcome to 2012.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - I'm shipping a point-to-point update to the magazine.

01:05:01 ◼   ► That changes it over to Arc,

01:05:03 ◼   ► as well as a whole bunch of other stuff,

01:05:04 ◼   ► but for marketing reasons,

01:05:06 ◼   ► it makes sense to call it a point-to-point.

01:05:08 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:05:09 ◼   ► - So it's going to be like 1.2.1 or something like that,

01:05:12 ◼   ► changing over to Arc and rewriting the whole backend.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Pretty-- it's-- yeah, it's-- again,

01:05:20 ◼   ► what I love about the technology like that

01:05:21 ◼   ► is that it let me focus on more interesting problems.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And I think that's even maybe at the undercurrent

01:05:27 ◼   ► of what you're getting at with this challenge was you

01:05:31 ◼   ► had to-- in order for you to keep advancing the app

01:05:35 ◼   ► and making it better and better, you

01:05:36 ◼   ► had to keep hacking on top of hacks in a way that was probably

01:05:41 ◼   ► a distraction from what you're actually trying to accomplish.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Your goal wasn't to try and work out a way to store this data.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Your goal was to enable a user-facing feature that

01:05:49 ◼   ► would make the experience better when reading.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And so that's always the thing that's so bad.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Like, I live up on Arc is I don't

01:05:55 ◼   ► have to worry about memory management nearly as much

01:05:57 ◼   ► as I used to.

01:05:58 ◼   ► And obviously, you have to have an understanding

01:05:59 ◼   ► of the fundamentals, and et cetera, et cetera.

01:06:01 ◼   ► But in general, it's one less thing

01:06:02 ◼   ► that I have to worry about.

01:06:04 ◼   ► I have less code to write, and I can just focus on stuff

01:06:07 ◼   ► that users will actually care about.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Because if you put in your release notes,

01:06:11 ◼   ► migrated from retain release to Arc.

01:06:16 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure nobody's going to care.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Maybe your techie followers or someone

01:06:22 ◼   ► would be interested about it, but it's like,

01:06:25 ◼   ► otherwise, no one cares.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Well, you know what?

01:06:28 ◼   ► The reason why I switched to Arc is pretty embarrassing.

01:06:29 ◼   ► You have massive memory leaks?

01:06:33 ◼   ► No, because I've actually, I don't do that much crazy stuff

01:06:35 ◼   ► with how I manage my objects and my code.

01:06:38 ◼   ► So for me, the regular retain release and conventions

01:06:42 ◼   ► around that, auto-release stuff, that's

01:06:44 ◼   ► always worked pretty well.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I very rarely had memory leaks in my shipping code.

01:06:49 ◼   ► It was fairly easy for me to do the old model.

01:06:52 ◼   ► The main reason, the only reason I switched to Arc,

01:06:56 ◼   ► the driving force here-- because again, I

01:06:58 ◼   ► didn't want to learn anything new up front.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I just wanted to push through and release this thing.

01:07:02 ◼   ► The reason I switched to Arc for this version

01:07:06 ◼   ► is because I added, for the first time,

01:07:11 ◼   ► AF networking to my project.

01:07:14 ◼   ► And the current version of AF networking requires Arc.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, I could just enable it

01:07:20 ◼   ► for this file, but that's kind of hacky.

01:07:22 ◼   ► And I don't really trust that to not,

01:07:26 ◼   ► I know this is probably superstition on my part.

01:07:28 ◼   ► I know in reality it's probably very well isolated,

01:07:31 ◼   ► but I didn't want to just have Arc enabled

01:07:32 ◼   ► were part of my code.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I thought, that's gonna cause problems later on,

01:07:36 ◼   ► or that's gonna at least cause annoyances.

01:07:38 ◼   ► So I thought, you know what,

01:07:39 ◼   ► let me just convert the whole thing.

01:07:41 ◼   ► So that's why I'm using Arc,

01:07:44 ◼   ► because I added AF networking for some conveniences.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Now, I'm not even using most of what it can do.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I added it for some conveniences,

01:07:51 ◼   ► and I realized, you know what,

01:07:54 ◼   ► let me just switch the whole thing over now.

01:07:56 ◼   ► That's how I started learning Arc and using Arc.

01:08:01 ◼   ► And imagine it lets you, once you do it, you move on,

01:08:06 ◼   ► and now you can focus on whatever it was,

01:08:09 ◼   ► adding AF networking, adding more rich media support

01:08:12 ◼   ► or whatever it is.

01:08:13 ◼   ► It's not--

01:08:14 ◼   ► - Oh, it's really boring.

01:08:15 ◼   ► It's working around newsstand bugs.

01:08:17 ◼   ► That's the reason I'm adding AF networking.

01:08:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:08:19 ◼   ► Is because working around the newsstand asset download,

01:08:22 ◼   ► the NK asset download class, which is limited.

01:08:27 ◼   ► - Limited, limited.

01:08:28 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:08:29 ◼   ► - Is this the politically correct or the gentle way

01:08:32 ◼   ► of saying it, it's limited?

01:08:34 ◼   ► - Somebody said recently, I forget who on Twitter,

01:08:39 ◼   ► you can definitely tell which APIs Apple designed

01:08:42 ◼   ► for its own use and which ones they designed

01:08:45 ◼   ► for others to use.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Newstand is very clearly not used by Apple.

01:08:51 ◼   ► It is very, very apparent that they don't have

01:08:54 ◼   ► any of their own apps using Newstand.

01:08:57 ◼   ► And it kind of makes sense, like why would they?

01:08:59 ◼   ► You can understand why they wouldn't have newsstand apps,

01:09:01 ◼   ► but yeah, it's very clear that they don't use newsstand.

01:09:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's just part of being on the platform,

01:09:09 ◼   ► I suppose, that's just the kind of thing you just learn,

01:09:11 ◼   ► and you're just like, alright, well,

01:09:12 ◼   ► I'll work my way around.

01:09:15 ◼   ► - And the advantage is, I'm very unlikely

01:09:16 ◼   ► to ever be Sherlocked here.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - That's true, that's right, you're not in a path

01:09:21 ◼   ► that's likely for them to get into.

01:09:23 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:09:24 ◼   ► - Alright, so I think that's probably a good point

01:09:27 ◼   ► to wrap it up.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Before we do, though, I just wanted to give you,

01:09:33 ◼   ► if people wanted to follow you, follow your work,

01:09:35 ◼   ► follow your apps, where would be the best place for them

01:09:38 ◼   ► to find you online?

01:09:40 ◼   ► Craig: Go to Marco.org or Marco Arment on Twitter.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Or if you want to be mostly ignored for a long time,

01:09:46 ◼   ► Marco on app.net.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Peter: Excellent.

01:09:51 ◼   ► So anyway, thank you so much for taking the time.

01:09:52 ◼   ► I think it was a, I definitely learned a few things,

01:09:54 ◼   ► which is always great, and I hope everyone else did too.

01:09:53 ◼   ► - Oh, I have a TENTUS account.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - Oh, a TENTUS account.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - That's a real way to be ignored,

01:09:57 ◼   ► because I at least have an app.net client

01:09:59 ◼   ► that I can occasionally remember to launch.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I don't even remember how to log into TENTUS.

01:10:04 ◼   ► So if you find me there somehow,

01:10:06 ◼   ► that's the best way for me to never find that information.

01:10:10 ◼   ► - That's kind of like leaving a treasure buried somewhere

01:10:13 ◼   ► that one day you may discover.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - Exactly.