Developing Perspective

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

00:00:02 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note, and iOS development, Apple,

00:00:05 ◼   ► and the like.

00:00:06 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia, just outside of Washington,

00:00:12 ◼   ► DC.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This is show number 88, and today is Monday, October 15th.

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

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, first, if I sound a little rough or I'm slightly coarse in my voice, it's because

00:00:22 ◼   ► I spent all week at least last weekend at the Singleton Symposium in Montreal, which

00:00:26 ◼   ► is an Apple technology conference, I guess you could say.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And as always, when you go to a conference, you end up spending a lot of time talking

00:00:32 ◼   ► loudly in loud places.

00:00:35 ◼   ► So just apologies for that, but maybe it just gives a nice, coarse, gritty feel.

00:00:40 ◼   ► But anyway, as I was at Singleton, there were a couple of things that I wanted to talk about.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I'll be talking a bit more about the weather app as it goes on this week, if those are

00:00:48 ◼   ► interested.

00:00:49 ◼   ► But today, I have a slightly totally different topic that I was going to talk about.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And it really is two parts.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And the first, I want to talk a little bit about tech conferences, and specifically about

00:00:57 ◼   ► something that I personally struggle with a lot

00:01:02 ◼   ► when I go to tech conferences.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And I figure this is a good audience

00:01:06 ◼   ► to talk about it too, and hopefully have some solidarity

00:01:09 ◼   ► with some of the people who listen to this.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And so tech conferences are a funny thing.

00:01:16 ◼   ► So I went to Singleton, it's a great conference

00:01:19 ◼   ► with a lot of really great people.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And the conference itself was very well run,

00:01:22 ◼   ► was very well organized, put together,

00:01:23 ◼   ► very thoughtful speakers and talks.

00:01:26 ◼   ► They're going to be available, I believe, on video when that happens.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Definitely watch them all. It was a really solid conference

00:01:32 ◼   ► from a conference perspective. But conferences are kind of these two

00:01:35 ◼   ► sides to that conference coin.

00:01:38 ◼   ► There's the conference that's the going to learn

00:01:41 ◼   ► from people sitting on a stage

00:01:44 ◼   ► to go and have that conference process.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Then there's the interpersonal part of it.

00:01:50 ◼   ► And in many ways, that's what a lot of people go to conferences for.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And in many ways, that's what I go for.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I mean, the stuff you get from the stage is helpful,

00:02:00 ◼   ► but usually it's available on video,

00:02:07 ◼   ► which you may or may not watch.

00:02:08 ◼   ► But really, the real crux of going to a conference, though,

00:02:09 ◼   ► is about it's a rare opportunity for a lot of people

00:02:14 ◼   ► to be in the same room as people who do things

00:02:16 ◼   ► similar to what they do.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I mean, I'm an independent iOS developer.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I have some friends locally,

00:02:23 ◼   ► some really good friends and some really good developers locally

00:02:26 ◼   ► who I hang out with and I talk about

00:02:28 ◼   ► and do those kinds of things.

00:02:30 ◼   ► But most of my days, I don't have any direct human contact

00:02:31 ◼   ► with people who care about the things that I care about

00:02:36 ◼   ► in the same way that I care about them.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I have friends and family and people

00:02:42 ◼   ► and they're interested in what I'm doing,

00:02:43 ◼   ► but it's not the same as people who really get it.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Who when I can go off and talk about some strange thing

00:02:45 ◼   ► about UIKit or about the Mac development or app review

00:02:50 ◼   ► or things like that that they'll get,

00:02:51 ◼   ► they'll be interested in and sympathetic,

00:02:53 ◼   ► but it's not the same.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And so it's lovely to go to a conference

00:02:56 ◼   ► and talk to people who are like that.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And I think especially, I find for myself,

00:03:00 ◼   ► not working for a bigger company, it's even more valuable.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It's kind of that water cooler or that experience

00:03:06 ◼   ► that is nice to have.

00:03:09 ◼   ► But that said, it's also a tricky thing

00:03:13 ◼   ► because in a traditional sense,

00:03:15 ◼   ► like if I was a marketing guy with greased hair

00:03:19 ◼   ► and kind of a,

00:03:20 ◼   ► I don't know, it's like,

00:03:23 ◼   ► you know, that classic marketing sales guy,

00:03:25 ◼   ► I'd be talking about how it's like,

00:03:26 ◼   ► oh, it's important when you go to conferences

00:03:27 ◼   ► to make sure you're doing excellent networking.

00:03:30 ◼   ► You want to be hitting all the big hitters in the room

00:03:32 ◼   ► and you want to be making sure you know

00:03:33 ◼   ► exactly what's going on.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Like, no, that's not me.

00:03:37 ◼   ► You know, networking is probably

00:03:40 ◼   ► one of the most terrifying concepts of social interaction

00:03:45 ◼   ► that I could think of.

00:03:47 ◼   ► The concept of walking around a room trying to

00:03:52 ◼   ► sort of like schmooze them and ultimately turn conversations

00:03:56 ◼   ► into things that allow you to talk about your products

00:03:58 ◼   ► and those types of things.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Like that's terrifying and awful to me.

00:04:04 ◼   ► I don't want to do that.

00:04:05 ◼   ► And so what I've found over the years though

00:04:09 ◼   ► I used to go to conferences with kind of that expectation that I had to do that.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's a rare opportunity to be in a room with people who like what I do, people from the

00:04:19 ◼   ► press.

00:04:20 ◼   ► There's a lot of things there, so there's this opportunity.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I used to kind of try that, but I really don't anymore.

00:04:29 ◼   ► And the big reason and part of why I try not to do that so much is often I think you just

00:04:36 ◼   ► come off like a jerk.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And I'd rather be sort of, I mean, it's like, I know, I meet new people, but my goal in

00:04:45 ◼   ► meeting new people is to try and understand them, what they're doing, what they're interested

00:04:51 ◼   ► in, and to learn about them.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I know about me.

00:04:56 ◼   ► I don't know about them.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And typically, having that kind of a mindset and that kind of an approach means you meet

00:05:02 ◼   ► a lot of interesting people and you get to know about them and you get to sort of, you

00:05:06 ◼   ► Typically people respond very well to people who are interested in what they're doing and what they're working on.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And that'll often come back to what you're working on and that's great.

00:05:16 ◼   ► But ultimately I find it very frustrating if I set out with a goal of saying, "Oh man, I want to make sure that these people, X, Y, and Z, are aware of what I'm doing and know that I'm watching an app on Wednesday."

00:05:30 ◼   ► I mean, it was very tangible for me this weekend.

00:05:33 ◼   ► But the reality is, I don't want to be that guy.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I don't want to be the person who, everyone's like, "Dude, have you seen that Dave guy?

00:05:41 ◼   ► He keeps showing up everywhere and then talking to me about his weather app."

00:05:45 ◼   ► No, I would hate to be that person.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And so I don't.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I just kind of hang around, and I'm a fairly low-key person at conferences.

00:05:53 ◼   ► You know, talk to people.

00:05:54 ◼   ► I ran into a lot of listeners.

00:05:55 ◼   ► There are a lot of people who are probably listening to this who are at Singleton.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And I, you know, it's like some of whom I can remember your name, some of whom I only

00:06:03 ◼   ► remember your face, but, you know, I'm glad I met you.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And it was awesome to be sought out and to talk to you about what you're working on and

00:06:12 ◼   ► to kind of have those dialogues.

00:06:15 ◼   ► But it's just one of those things that I've started to give myself a little, cut myself

00:06:19 ◼   ► a little slack, where for a while I always had this feeling like if I went to a conference

00:06:22 ◼   ► and I didn't make a pitch to a heavy hitter, whatever that means.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I wasn't, you know, I was wasting my time there, or I wasn't making as full use of

00:06:34 ◼   ► the time there.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And I mean, the reality is, also to keep in mind, and this is sort of a more broader comment,

00:06:39 ◼   ► is a lot of the time people at conferences have existing relationships with other people

00:06:47 ◼   ► that they've had for years.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And for them, it is a rare treat for them to be in the room

00:06:52 ◼   ► with someone else that they may not always get to see.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And so being respectful of that, I think,

00:06:59 ◼   ► is a very wise thing.

00:07:01 ◼   ► There are a lot of people, any conference,

00:07:03 ◼   ► I mean, we're all human beings,

00:07:04 ◼   ► it's very easy for us to kind of do this,

00:07:06 ◼   ► where there's an old phrase about,

00:07:09 ◼   ► anytime you walk into a room,

00:07:10 ◼   ► you can very quickly determine the average

00:07:13 ◼   ► and see if you're above or below it.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And that average could be anything.

00:07:18 ◼   ► It's like, look, success, money, prestige, fame, notoriety,

00:07:23 ◼   ► like whatever it is, it doesn't really matter.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Pretty much, you walk into a room, like human nature,

00:07:27 ◼   ► you know what the average is,

00:07:29 ◼   ► and you know if you're above it or below it.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And there's this, and there's that natural indication,

00:07:35 ◼   ► who I want to see, and I want to shake hands

00:07:37 ◼   ► with the people who do all these cool things.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And that's cool, and that's great,

00:07:40 ◼   ► and it's something to do.

00:07:42 ◼   ► But I try very hard these days to just,

00:07:46 ◼   ► some point to just kind of get over that and be like, you know, we're all people here,

00:07:50 ◼   ► we're all hanging out.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And I'll introduce myself to people who I think are interested and do cool stuff.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Maybe I'll give them, you know, do the classic like, "Hey, I love what you do."

00:08:01 ◼   ► But I'm typically not going to seek out too much beyond that, unless I'm kind of, there's

00:08:07 ◼   ► a strong reciprocation there.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Because the reality is, there are, it's like, we're all just people here going to a conference.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And for a lot of those people, it's a rare treat for them to meet people who they look

00:08:18 ◼   ► up to or friends they've had for five, 10 years.

00:08:24 ◼   ► The worst thing, pretty much in general, for all social interactions, is to be the third

00:08:28 ◼   ► wheel.

00:08:29 ◼   ► You don't want to be that guy.

00:08:30 ◼   ► It's better to be sought out and talked to than it is to be ditched or to be someone

00:08:36 ◼   ► who is just a hanger on.

00:08:40 ◼   ► That doesn't feel great.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And I've tried very hard over the years

00:08:45 ◼   ► to just kind of accept and move on

00:08:49 ◼   ► from any kind of desires I used to have to do that.

00:08:51 ◼   ► 'Cause I've definitely done that kind of thing.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And you start getting, I mean, you can get crazy with it.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Where you're hanging around like,

00:08:56 ◼   ► "Okay, I think, you know, not that person,

00:08:58 ◼   ► "I'd love to talk to that person over there.

00:08:59 ◼   ► "Okay, maybe if I stand here between them and the bathroom,

00:09:04 ◼   ► "maybe they're going to walk past me

00:09:06 ◼   ► "and we can start our conversation."

00:09:08 ◼   ► Like, no joke, I've, in years gone past,

00:09:11 ◼   ► stuff that I've done because that's the kind of feeling of like, "Oh, I need to make sure

00:09:15 ◼   ► I do it.

00:09:16 ◼   ► And it would be so much better if I did it subconsciously or like it just happened organically.

00:09:22 ◼   ► We met up and we had this great conversation."

00:09:25 ◼   ► But the reality is, I mean, I am and I'm sure many of you are, we're kind of socially awkward

00:09:30 ◼   ► people in some ways.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And whenever we try and be smooth, we're probably not going to succeed.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And so that's just something that I wanted to say.

00:09:38 ◼   ► it was fresh, I'd fresh my mind out of a conference,

00:09:40 ◼   ► but go to a conference and seek to just have organic

00:09:45 ◼   ► interactions with people, seek to understand what people

00:09:49 ◼   ► are working on more than try and talk about what you

00:09:52 ◼   ► are working on or try and understand what they would

00:09:56 ◼   ► want to pitch to you rather than try and pitch to them.

00:09:59 ◼   ► And ultimately I feel like you end up with a happier result

00:10:03 ◼   ► for yourself, a less frustrating result,

00:10:05 ◼   ► and you meet a lot of interesting people,

00:10:07 ◼   ► And that's awesome.

00:10:09 ◼   ► All right, that's the first topic.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And I have a very brief second topic I want to talk about.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And that's talking about finding opportunities in the App Store.

00:10:17 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is a thought I've had for a while.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I was doing a show of topic about--

00:10:23 ◼   ► and it was strongly reinforced last weekend

00:10:26 ◼   ► when the magazine launched, which is Mark Rormant's

00:10:28 ◼   ► new self-publication.

00:10:32 ◼   ► We're trying to collect articles from individuals

00:10:35 ◼   ► who are geeky but not really necessarily writing about technology.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And awesome, definitely check it out.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I'm not going to go into great detail of it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► It was talked about on Hypercritical this last week, and I'm sure it will be talked

00:10:48 ◼   ► about in the Build and Analyze episode being recorded in about an hour.

00:10:52 ◼   ► But the reality is, what I want to talk about, and I think the genius of a lot of what it

00:10:57 ◼   ► does, is that there's so many of these little things in the App Store where there are strange

00:11:01 ◼   ► policies or strange technology choices that Apple makes

00:11:06 ◼   ► that create unique, often time-limited and specific

00:11:10 ◼   ► opportunities for app developers.

00:11:15 ◼   ► In this case, there's Newstand,

00:11:19 ◼   ► and there's recurring subscriptions.

00:11:21 ◼   ► So these are two interesting things where Newstand

00:11:24 ◼   ► is a whole framework and a whole different,

00:11:27 ◼   ► almost class of app that lets you do background updating,

00:11:27 ◼   ► that has a special place in the store, a special non-removable folder

00:11:32 ◼   ► that people are always going to have on their phone talking about it.

00:11:37 ◼   ► It's a very specific thing.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And then recurring in-app purchases, which are awesome,

00:11:42 ◼   ► it's a great concept to have as a developer,

00:11:46 ◼   ► are only allowed for news publications, essentially,

00:11:50 ◼   ► or in magazines, whatever it is called.

00:11:52 ◼   ► In that case, Marco saw an opportunity to use those two things to make an app rather

00:11:58 ◼   ► than doing it in a traditional sense.

00:12:02 ◼   ► This is kind of like Instagram in that it's a publication whose primary interface is an

00:12:07 ◼   ► app through the store.

00:12:08 ◼   ► It means that he can do all the credit card processing and all that stuff, and the subscription

00:12:13 ◼   ► management is all done for him.

00:12:15 ◼   ► He's just paying Apple 30% of revenue to do that.

00:12:19 ◼   ► But it just reminded me though of,

00:12:22 ◼   ► there's a lot of times that I've seen these go,

00:12:24 ◼   ► some of them you see you go by,

00:12:26 ◼   ► some of them I've acted on and have been successful with,

00:12:29 ◼   ► but it's being very, a student of the store

00:12:32 ◼   ► in so much as understanding when those opportunities exist

00:12:37 ◼   ► and where those unique things that not everyone

00:12:40 ◼   ► will be able to or could take care of are.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And so like, I'm just remembering,

00:12:46 ◼   ► I actually, when Newsstand first came out

00:12:48 ◼   ► looked at it, I was like, "Oh my goodness, this is awesome. There are so many cool things

00:12:52 ◼   ► you could do with this." And at first, I didn't really know all of what Apple was doing in

00:12:55 ◼   ► terms of their policies around it that limited what I was doing. But I actually built an

00:13:02 ◼   ► Instapaper client that I was structuring as, and it's built, I just sort of built and never

00:13:09 ◼   ► polished it or released it. But basically, I built an Instapaper client that would present

00:13:14 ◼   ► your last day's links as a magazine for you in Newsstand.

00:13:19 ◼   ► That was sort of the concept of the app.

00:13:24 ◼   ► So it's like you would,

00:13:26 ◼   ► because to try and get around some of the publisher rules

00:13:28 ◼   ► and it has to be in publication, in a magazine,

00:13:30 ◼   ► and things like that, it's like, okay,

00:13:32 ◼   ► so I wanted an Instapaper client

00:13:33 ◼   ► that would update in the background.

00:13:35 ◼   ► That was my goal.

00:13:36 ◼   ► 'Cause at the time, this was before the location-based

00:13:40 ◼   ► updating and things that make a lot of these things

00:13:42 ◼   ► go away, but I was like,

00:13:44 ◼   ► I wanted the background loading, and you could do that with a new stand app.

00:13:49 ◼   ► So I was like, "Okay, I'll do that, and I'll build it."

00:13:53 ◼   ► And it's sort of a magazine because the content changes, and it's issue-based.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Every day it has a new set of content.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Ultimately, I didn't ship that because it seemed very strongly that Apple was not real.

00:14:03 ◼   ► That was not a new stand app as far as Apple was concerned.

00:14:09 ◼   ► I never didn't test that with the app review process, but ultimately it was just,

00:14:13 ◼   ► I don't think that's going to fly.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I'll turn my efforts elsewhere.

00:14:20 ◼   ► But I just wanted to mention it as there are often these little things,

00:14:21 ◼   ► these strange technologies or APIs, these things on the edges that you can take advantage of,

00:14:25 ◼   ► that can really enhance your apps or create new app opportunities.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Even look at what I just talked about, location-based updating is part of it.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Using geofencing to do background updates is a really clever thing.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And I think it was the news.me people who did it first.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Like, that's a genius thing.

00:14:41 ◼   ► And always be looking for those opportunities.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Always be looking for the thinking outside the box

00:14:46 ◼   ► options for doing that.

00:14:47 ◼   ► All right.

00:14:47 ◼   ► That's it for today's show.

00:14:48 ◼   ► As always, questions, comments, concerns, complaints.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I'm on Twitter @_DavidSmith.

00:14:52 ◼   ► I'm on AppNet @DavidSmith.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And otherwise, have a great week.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Happy coding.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I'll see you later.