Developing Perspective

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

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:07 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 93, and today is Thursday, November 1st.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, so this is going to probably be a one-episode week, just in case you were

00:00:23 ◼   ► wondering why I'm doing the first episode this week on Thursday.

00:00:27 ◼   ► As you may know, there was a hurricane that blew through the East Coast, and while, thankfully,

00:00:31 ◼   ► I'm fine, it was certainly something that knocked my schedule out of whack for a little

00:00:37 ◼   ► bit, being hunkered down for the better part of Monday and Tuesday.

00:00:42 ◼   ► So anyway, that's why everything's going on, everything's good, but we'll be just one show

00:00:48 ◼   ► this week.

00:00:49 ◼   ► And this week, I think it's probably the last in the Weather App series.

00:00:54 ◼   ► There may be one more, but this is probably

00:00:57 ◼   ► going to be the last one.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And so what I'm going to talk about

00:00:59 ◼   ► is kind of the road from here.

00:01:01 ◼   ► There may be one more about sort of planning

00:01:04 ◼   ► for big future releases.

00:01:05 ◼   ► But what I want to talk about today

00:01:07 ◼   ► is about things like Universal Apps

00:01:09 ◼   ► and talking about making light versions

00:01:13 ◼   ► and those types of considerations

00:01:15 ◼   ► as you have a established code base, an existing application.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And what do you do with that?

00:01:21 ◼   ► With that brand, with that presence, with that code,

00:01:24 ◼   ► once you have it in the store for a little bit.

00:01:29 ◼   ► So if you've been following along,

00:01:32 ◼   ► I've been working on a weather app.

00:01:34 ◼   ► It's called Check the Weather.

00:01:36 ◼   ► It's in the App Store.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And it's been doing fairly well,

00:01:38 ◼   ► fairly well received.

00:01:40 ◼   ► I'm pretty happy with how it's gone.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And now I'm in that funny phase.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I've just got out version 1.1,

00:01:45 ◼   ► which was actually created before the app launched, I think.

00:01:47 ◼   ► And it was submitted back then,

00:01:52 ◼   ► but that's just the way these things go.

00:01:51 ◼   ► version 1.2 is already on its way in review.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And I'm kind of in that funny phase where you start to get through

00:01:59 ◼   ► all the little bugs, nagging problems, things that you didn't really expect

00:02:03 ◼   ► or know about, and you kind of get those knocked out. I mean it's great when I go through

00:02:07 ◼   ► Help Desk now, because rather than having to

00:02:11 ◼   ► actually answer a lot of questions, most of the questions either have sort of an established

00:02:15 ◼   ► answer for, like coming in the next version, or no I'm not going to do that,

00:02:19 ◼   ► or whatever, those types of questions.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So it's nice to settle down.

00:02:27 ◼   ► There's not a lot of new problems, new issues,

00:02:28 ◼   ► new questions, things starting to settle down,

00:02:30 ◼   ► which is great.

00:02:33 ◼   ► And it creates this interesting thing

00:02:34 ◼   ► of what do you do next?

00:02:37 ◼   ► And specifically for me, there's a couple, two questions

00:02:39 ◼   ► that I needed to ask myself, and I was going to walk

00:02:41 ◼   ► through my thought process on the show,

00:02:43 ◼   ► because I thought that would be helpful.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So first and foremost was, do I make an iPad version of it?

00:02:46 ◼   ► now the app's iPhone oriented?" and the answer is yes.

00:02:49 ◼   ► And sort of, spoiler alert, the next version at 1.2 when it comes out will be universal.

00:02:55 ◼   ► So it'll be a universal app.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And that was a very tricky thing for me.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Not whether or not to make an iPad version, because the iPad is definitely a big market,

00:03:05 ◼   ► especially from the App Store.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I feel like in the paid area, the iPad seems to be a little bit stronger, that there's

00:03:10 ◼   ► There's a bit more tolerance for price on the iPad side.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And so it's nice to be in that market.

00:03:18 ◼   ► But the reality is I wanted to have an iPad app because I

00:03:24 ◼   ► feel like it's useful there.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And it was an opportunity for me to leverage a lot of what

00:03:29 ◼   ► I've already done in a way to create value for my customers.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Probably as simple as that.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I really struggle with it.

00:03:37 ◼   ► The hardest part of this is when you say, OK, I'm going to

00:03:40 ◼   ► make an iPad app, there's customers that could do something cool and interesting on it.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Do you make it a universal app, which would be essentially free

00:03:48 ◼   ► for people who bought your iPhone app, or alternatively people who bought your iPad app

00:03:52 ◼   ► get your iPhone app free. It's got two apps for the price of one. Or do you split them up

00:03:56 ◼   ► and have the Check the Weather HD version?

00:04:00 ◼   ► And I wrestled back and forth with this a lot. It was something that I

00:04:04 ◼   ► ran into with a lot of, talked to a lot of my friends, talked to a lot of

00:04:08 ◼   ► kind of people that you have business conversations with and things.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And it's a tricky thing.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And the reality is, if you split the apps up,

00:04:18 ◼   ► you gain a couple of things.

00:04:22 ◼   ► You gain probably, at least in the near term, more revenue,

00:04:24 ◼   ► because your group of people who like the current version

00:04:27 ◼   ► are likely to buy the new version, the HD version.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And so you get a little bit of extra money from that.

00:04:34 ◼   ► You also benefit from potentially having the ability to offset release schedules.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So you can release the iPad individually independent of the iPhone.

00:04:45 ◼   ► You can add features to one but not the other in a way that is a bit more complicated with the Universal app

00:04:50 ◼   ► because people have different expectations.

00:04:52 ◼   ► You also have the ability to have differentiated pricing,

00:04:55 ◼   ► that you could have the iPad version be more expensive than the iPhone version.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And those are all definitely good pluses.

00:05:01 ◼   ► On the downside, you have two apps which doesn't necessarily benefit you from combined things,

00:05:08 ◼   ► like combined sales ranking or search ranks or things which seem to be often volume driven,

00:05:14 ◼   ► and so it's nice to have those all bundled into one app.

00:05:17 ◼   ► It's a little bit simpler in the sense that you have a single app that you are supporting,

00:05:22 ◼   ► maintaining, and focused on rather than having two different things that you're splitting your time between.

00:05:30 ◼   ► You also have the benefit, I think, of having just an easier time explaining what the app is and does to the user, to the customer.

00:05:42 ◼   ► It's like, here's the app, go buy it. It's not, if you have an iPad, go buy this.

00:05:47 ◼   ► What do you link to? It's always a little complicated if you have two versions.

00:05:52 ◼   ► for something like this where it's not, the apps are very fundamentally similar.

00:05:56 ◼   ► It's not like the iPad app necessarily does a lot of different things than the iPhone

00:05:59 ◼   ► version.

00:06:00 ◼   ► But in the end, I decided to do, make it a universal app for one reason, and that's pretty

00:06:05 ◼   ► straightforward is it's an, I think it's an opportunity to create the light and surprising

00:06:14 ◼   ► happiness or hopefully a little bit of

00:06:20 ◼   ► to make my customer happy that they bought the app in the first place.

00:06:25 ◼   ► And it's one of these things that is not necessarily the best for monetarily, at least in the short term.

00:06:29 ◼   ► But I feel like long term is the kind of business I want to do.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Where by making it a universal app, which is what I decided to do, everybody who's bought my app, all the people who are in there from day one,

00:06:41 ◼   ► Everybody who's bought my app, all the people who are in there from day one, are going to get essentially a free bonus.

00:06:48 ◼   ► They bought it not necessarily expecting it to be an iPad app, and now they just one day will hopefully, probably next week, they'll get a notification in the app store, they'll open it up, and it's like, boom.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Check the weather, it's now universal. It's optimized to work on your iPhone or iPad.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And hopefully that's a big positive.

00:07:10 ◼   ► That's like, wow, that's pretty cool.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I bought this app a couple of weeks ago,

00:07:14 ◼   ► and now I got this other app for free.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And that's one of those things that you can't,

00:07:18 ◼   ► it's like money can't really buy you

00:07:23 ◼   ► that amount of goodwill, I think.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Or it's one of the easiest way you can demonstrate

00:07:26 ◼   ► the kind of app developer you are to your customer

00:07:30 ◼   ► by not trying to nickel and dime them

00:07:30 ◼   ► and feel like you're always asking for more money.

00:07:34 ◼   ► It's one of those things if at the end of the day

00:07:39 ◼   ► I'm in this business because I like making apps

00:07:42 ◼   ► and I'm not in it necessarily to make money.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I need to make enough money to have a sustainable business

00:07:48 ◼   ► that I can pay for my living expenses and things.

00:07:50 ◼   ► But I like making apps, this is what I do.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And so what I want to do is to make,

00:07:55 ◼   ► I'd rather have a smaller group of people

00:07:58 ◼   ► feel like they are getting absolutely huge value from the applications I make and are

00:08:03 ◼   ► very loyal to them.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And then if I ever need to tap into that well, if I hit a bad spot and I do something in

00:08:13 ◼   ► the app that I'm going to be asking for more money from, then they're going to feel like

00:08:17 ◼   ► I'm building up this storehouse of value with those customers that I can tap into later

00:08:25 ◼   ► rather than always breaking even with them of every time I

00:08:29 ◼   ► do anything interesting or cool, I'm

00:08:30 ◼   ► opening up my hand and saying, hey, give me some money.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Give me some money.

00:08:34 ◼   ► And that's where I fall in this thing.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And it seems-- I think it just feels like the kind of business

00:08:41 ◼   ► I want to be in.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So I'm making it universal.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I'm essentially giving something away for free.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But it's not that much work.

00:08:49 ◼   ► It's not like I've spent another six weeks working on this app

00:08:54 ◼   ► and now it's the iPad version.

00:08:56 ◼   ► You know, my universal version is very similar to the iPhone version.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Interestingly, by adapting an app that is adaptable to iPhone 5,

00:09:05 ◼   ► the 16 by 9 resolution, as well as the traditional one,

00:09:08 ◼   ► makes it really easy to make an iPad app,

00:09:09 ◼   ► because everything is already flexible and fluid.

00:09:11 ◼   ► So it wasn't too bad.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And I think it's just the right choice to make.

00:09:15 ◼   ► If there are certain instances where maybe it wouldn't make sense,

00:09:20 ◼   ► but generally speaking, I'm always going

00:09:23 ◼   ► to choose a decision that makes my customer happy over a decision that makes me a little

00:09:28 ◼   ► more money.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And that's just the kind of business I want to be in.

00:09:31 ◼   ► As long as I can make a living doing this, I'm happy.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And I'd rather make more people happy as a result.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Any time I've seen people who do their thing where they split it up, it's like you'll always

00:09:41 ◼   ► get a series of one-star reviews and angry people who are saying, "Oh man, why didn't

00:09:48 ◼   ► you just make it universal?

00:09:49 ◼   ► Now I've got to buy it again?"

00:09:52 ◼   ► And fair enough, maybe those users are a bit entitled, maybe those customers are having

00:09:57 ◼   ► unrealistic expectations, but the reality is they're my customers.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Whether their expectations are reasonable or not, whether they're entitled or not, doesn't

00:10:05 ◼   ► really matter.

00:10:06 ◼   ► They're still my customers, and my job is to make them happy.

00:10:09 ◼   ► That's what I'm trying to do.

00:10:11 ◼   ► All right, so that's on the universal side.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And then on the flip side of that is I'm talking a little bit about a light version of Check

00:10:18 ◼   ► the Weather.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And this is something that I think is slightly different.

00:10:22 ◼   ► It's similar to the universal discussion, but very different,

00:10:25 ◼   ► in that the purpose of making a light version, which I have

00:10:28 ◼   ► plans to do in a rough-- almost finished--

00:10:31 ◼   ► is to take the existing code base

00:10:34 ◼   ► and to allow people who don't buy apps to still use it,

00:10:40 ◼   ► to still benefit from it, and for me

00:10:41 ◼   ► to make a little money from them.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And in general in the App Store, free apps do very well.

00:10:45 ◼   ► There's a lot of volume for free apps.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And so what I'm working on right now

00:10:49 ◼   ► is check the weather light.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And essentially this will be ad supported with an in-app purchase to unlock additional functionality.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And the advantage of taking this approach, one, is making a light version is by definition very easy,

00:11:05 ◼   ► because you are taking away functionality rather than adding new functionality.

00:11:09 ◼   ► The only new stuff I had to do was the ads and the in-app purchase, which I've done before and isn't too hard.

00:11:15 ◼   ► But the core functionality is all still there.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And so by creating a light version,

00:11:19 ◼   ► and check the weather light, if you're

00:11:21 ◼   ► someone who's never going to buy an app,

00:11:24 ◼   ► you can still use what I'm making,

00:11:26 ◼   ► and I can still make a few pennies off you.

00:11:28 ◼   ► If you're just going to look at the ads,

00:11:30 ◼   ► or maybe a certain percentage of people

00:11:32 ◼   ► will likely upgrade to the full version that

00:11:34 ◼   ► unlocks the additional functionality and features

00:11:36 ◼   ► that-- it's never going to be better than the main app.

00:11:40 ◼   ► It's just a way that you can-- it's almost like a trial

00:11:42 ◼   ► for those people.

00:11:43 ◼   ► So essentially it's shareware or adware, I guess, but not adware in the negative malware connotation.

00:11:52 ◼   ► But that's essentially the approach I take.

00:11:57 ◼   ► And I think it makes a lot of sense for a lot of applications to have a free ad-supported version of it

00:12:03 ◼   ► that lets you just tap into this whole other market.

00:12:08 ◼   ► A lot of my income comes from advertising, and a lot of it comes from free apps,

00:12:11 ◼   ► because I think there are a lot of people.

00:12:16 ◼   ► I mean, I remember when I first made this weather app,

00:12:18 ◼   ► there was a friend of mine who, you know,

00:12:20 ◼   ► I showed her the app, she looked at it, and it's cool.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And she's like, "But what does it do that the free apps don't?"

00:12:25 ◼   ► And that's just the way she, you know,

00:12:29 ◼   ► the way her mind works is she looks at an application

00:12:30 ◼   ► and her comparison is to something else that's free,

00:12:34 ◼   ► not is this worth $2 or is this worth $3

00:12:38 ◼   ► or whatever the cost I'm putting on it.

00:12:39 ◼   ► It's how is this better than what's free?

00:12:41 ◼   ► And often that's a very hard calculus to come out ahead in.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Because a lot of the free apps do a lot of things.

00:12:48 ◼   ► The things they're buying with, hopefully with this app,

00:12:50 ◼   ► is performance and thoughtfulness

00:12:51 ◼   ► and streamlined functionality.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And those types of things that aren't necessarily

00:12:57 ◼   ► checkmark, checklist features.

00:12:59 ◼   ► That if you're doing one of the product matrix things

00:13:01 ◼   ► that Apple loves doing, or sorry,

00:13:03 ◼   ► that Microsoft loves doing in trying to lampooning Apple.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's one of those things that you're just not going to win on, but I can put my app

00:13:15 ◼   ► in front of those people and just cut down on a few functionality.

00:13:18 ◼   ► The key with the liked version, I think, is having the additional functionality be compelling enough

00:13:23 ◼   ► that a reasonable number of people will buy it.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And exactly how you do that will depend.

00:13:28 ◼   ► In this case, I'm still working on exactly where I draw the lines,

00:13:31 ◼   ► but the goal is that the app is useful without the in-app purchase,

00:13:35 ◼   ► and with the in-app purchase, it feels compelling.

00:13:38 ◼   ► It feels like you're missing out.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Or if you're a frequent user of the application,

00:13:43 ◼   ► you're really going to want to pony up the extra couple bucks

00:13:47 ◼   ► and unlock it.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And hopefully at that point, that person

00:13:52 ◼   ► is already invested in the app.

00:13:54 ◼   ► That if they've spent enough time playing with it and using it,

00:13:57 ◼   ► and they like it, at that point, if you go and ask them

00:13:59 ◼   ► for a couple bucks, they're going

00:14:01 ◼   ► to be far more open-handed with it than if you're just

00:14:03 ◼   ► coming at them from a couple screenshots and a description

00:14:05 ◼   ► in the App Store.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So anyway, that's a couple of thoughts I have about Universal Apps and Light.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I'm probably winding down this weather app series and trying to talk about other topics thereafter.

00:14:17 ◼   ► But anyway, I hope you've enjoyed that, and I hope you enjoyed today's show.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And as always, if you have questions, comments, or concerns, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I'm on AppNet @davidsmith.

00:14:27 ◼   ► The Twitter feed for the show is @devperspective, which is where just basically I post either updates about the show

00:14:34 ◼   ► the show and whenever a new episode is available, in case you're curious about that.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Otherwise, I hope you guys have a great week, a great weekend.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Happy coding, and enjoy your iPad minis, which I imagine for many of us will be arriving

00:14:45 ◼   ► tomorrow.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Bye.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Bye.