Developing Perspective

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

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

00:00:08 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia. This is show number 68 and today

00:00:13 ◼   ► is Thursday, July 26th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes. So let's

00:00:18 ◼   ► get going. All right. So first, a little minor note, as you all probably know, yesterday

00:00:22 ◼   ► was Mountain Lion Day, which I'm sure we all celebrated in our own ways. For me, the thing

00:00:26 ◼   ► that I honestly look most look forward to is reading all the reviews. Not

00:00:30 ◼   ► necessarily because they have new information. Sometimes I do, sometimes I

00:00:33 ◼   ► learn things, sometimes I don't. But they're just delightfully geeky and I'm

00:00:38 ◼   ► a geek, I'm a nerd, I love look for this stuff, this is what I enjoy, and so it's

00:00:42 ◼   ► kind of like, it's almost like reading fiction or a pleasure book for me. It's

00:00:46 ◼   ► like it's a great thing to enjoy. Of course John Siracusa, you know, world

00:00:50 ◼   ► famous reviews and that's certainly, so far it's the one that I've enjoyed the

00:00:55 ◼   ► most, though I must say I haven't gotten through all the ones that I have queued up to read,

00:01:00 ◼   ► so I'm looking forward to read the rest of them. But anyway, so Mountain Lion launched

00:01:03 ◼   ► yesterday and I didn't upgrade. And I feel like it's an interesting thing to talk about

00:01:09 ◼   ► why I didn't, and so I will. So basically today, or sort of right now, what I'm working

00:01:16 ◼   ► on is I have three major updates that I'm trying to ship out before I go on vacation

00:01:21 ◼   ► to the beach, not next week but the week after.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And these are some big updates to all my apps, my main bread

00:01:27 ◼   ► and butter income generating apps

00:01:29 ◼   ► that I'm working on these updates for.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And my goal is to get these updates out

00:01:34 ◼   ► before I go on vacation.

00:01:35 ◼   ► Great, so Apple can do the review while I'm away,

00:01:37 ◼   ► and so on.

00:01:38 ◼   ► So that's sort of my high level goals right now.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And the last thing I want to do as I'm sort of heading down

00:01:46 ◼   ► that path is to make a change that has the potential

00:01:50 ◼   ► to mess up my toolset.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Because while being frustrated, fixing a problem,

00:01:55 ◼   ► or having issues in development can be annoying,

00:01:58 ◼   ► what's really, really, really annoying

00:02:00 ◼   ► is when you're fighting your tools, when

00:02:02 ◼   ► you're doing things that aren't productive that you just never

00:02:05 ◼   ► know.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Well, I don't think the main tools that I use, like Xcode

00:02:08 ◼   ► or Photoshop, those types of things,

00:02:11 ◼   ► I don't think will have problems on Mountain Lion.

00:02:13 ◼   ► But the area that I'm most nervous about

00:02:15 ◼   ► is always things that I do on the command line,

00:02:18 ◼   ► and things that just get weird and messed up

00:02:20 ◼   ► whenever you would upgrade your OS.

00:02:22 ◼   ► So there's a project I have for my web service stuff that's

00:02:25 ◼   ► all Rails-based, and it has a MySQL.

00:02:28 ◼   ► And if it's anything like when I installed Lion,

00:02:30 ◼   ► all of a sudden my MySQL server may stop working.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Maybe it won't.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Maybe all my homebrew installations

00:02:35 ◼   ► will get messed up, or my path gets changed,

00:02:38 ◼   ► or all these weird things that can drive you crazy

00:02:41 ◼   ► and just totally make you lose a day, or two days,

00:02:43 ◼   ► of just what's going on.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And there's no reason for me to have Mountain Lion.

00:02:48 ◼   ► It's cool.

00:02:49 ◼   ► It's great.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I look forward to getting it and I have it right now.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Like it's sitting on one of my old laptops

00:02:55 ◼   ► that I can use and play with.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I just submitted an update for Five Live

00:03:00 ◼   ► which is approved with the full notification center support.

00:03:02 ◼   ► So I know Mountain Lion.

00:03:05 ◼   ► But this is more just a cautionary tale.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And if you've already installed Mountain Lion

00:03:09 ◼   ► and you're in a similar situation, I hope for the best.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I hope you didn't get sort of caught out

00:03:13 ◼   ► by any weird gotchas.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But moreover, it's just one of these things

00:03:17 ◼   ► of being very, very protective of your tool chain,

00:03:21 ◼   ► of how you build your apps.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And I talked about this a little bit before an earlier episode.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I'll have a link in the show notes.

00:03:29 ◼   ► But I was talking about how I do SDK betas and things.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And this falls right into that in the same way.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Fair enough, Mountain Lion is a GM now.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And typically my policies, my main machine is only GMs.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But that's the only thing I ever run on them.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I have betas and things.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I'll typically run those on a secondary laptop.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Sometimes with Xcode, the way they do it now,

00:03:51 ◼   ► I may, as we get close to iOS 6, I

00:03:54 ◼   ► may have two versions of Xcode installed

00:03:56 ◼   ► because they're fairly well separated.

00:03:58 ◼   ► But even that, I feel really nervous about.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And what I'll likely end up doing instead

00:04:02 ◼   ► is doing something like cloning my hard drive

00:04:06 ◼   ► and running off an external one when I'm working on it.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I just always want to have a known working toolset just up

00:04:12 ◼   ► and ready to go.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And so even now that Mountain Lion's out,

00:04:16 ◼   ► it's no longer beta, the Xcode 4.4.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I mean, all these things, I just don't want to change anything

00:04:22 ◼   ► when I'm in one of these crunch zones.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Once I get back from vacation, when I'm on vacation,

00:04:27 ◼   ► it's like, whatever.

00:04:28 ◼   ► If I'm fiddling around at the terminal for a while,

00:04:31 ◼   ► working out why my SQL won't start, it's like, OK,

00:04:33 ◼   ► that's fine.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I don't really have a deadline.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I don't really have a goal.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I don't really have anything that I'm pressed on.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So anyway, that's the way I do--

00:04:43 ◼   ► so it's sort of how I'm handling Mountain Lion,

00:04:45 ◼   ► how I'm handling this upgrade process.

00:04:48 ◼   ► But Mountain Lion looks awesome, and I can't wait to get it.

00:04:52 ◼   ► All right, and so the main topic for today's show

00:04:55 ◼   ► is I'm going to talk about studying the App Store.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And specifically, this got started from a tweet

00:05:02 ◼   ► that I tweeted out.

00:05:02 ◼   ► There was a lot of discussion this week, a lot,

00:05:05 ◼   ► a lot of discussion about Sparrow and David Barnard's

00:05:09 ◼   ► article about if, in some ways, it's like,

00:05:12 ◼   ► is it the end of the indie, or the gold rush is over,

00:05:15 ◼   ► and those types of questions.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And so my response to that was to say,

00:05:20 ◼   ► the way that you-- the path to success in the App Store

00:05:22 ◼   ► hasn't changed.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Like, the way in which you actually

00:05:25 ◼   ► make your money in the App Store to be successful

00:05:29 ◼   ► hasn't changed.

00:05:30 ◼   ► It's hard, detail-oriented work, which

00:05:33 ◼   ► is simple and straightforward.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I keep at it and work on it.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Studying the App Store, which is what

00:05:40 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about for the rest of the show,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and then two other attributes-- being flexible and being

00:05:46 ◼   ► patient.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Being flexible is just understanding

00:05:49 ◼   ► that when you try things, they may fail,

00:05:51 ◼   ► and just being flexible about that.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I mean, like, all right, that didn't work.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Try something else.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Let's try something else.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I mean, I have shipped literally dozens of apps.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And part of that is that flexibility of, like,

00:06:01 ◼   ► I try something, it doesn't work, whatever, I'll move on.

00:06:04 ◼   ► And not getting too stuck on things.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And then patience is understanding and looking

00:06:08 ◼   ► for the fact, knowing that being successful will just take time.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And there are no overnight hits.

00:06:14 ◼   ► You know, it's very rare.

00:06:15 ◼   ► It's typically, it's like, oh, you know, whatever, Rovio,

00:06:18 ◼   ► the classic example, like, oh, man, they hit it big with Angry Birds.

00:06:21 ◼   ► They're an overnight success.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Well, Angry Birds may have been an overnight success,

00:06:24 ◼   ► but the studio, you know, whatever, it's their 12th app.

00:06:27 ◼   ► But anyway, the thing that I want to focus on now--

00:06:29 ◼   ► And I've got a lot of people asking me about this when I say,

00:06:33 ◼   ► it's really important that you're a student of the App

00:06:35 ◼   ► Store.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And what do I mean when I say you have to study the App Store?

00:06:39 ◼   ► What is there to study?

00:06:41 ◼   ► It's a store with lots-- it's like going into Target

00:06:43 ◼   ► and saying, I'm going to study Target.

00:06:46 ◼   ► That's a little weird.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And Target is a big department store

00:06:49 ◼   ► if you're outside the US.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Anyway, so what I mean by that is

00:06:53 ◼   ► it is very important for you as a developer

00:06:56 ◼   ► to really have a good grasp of what's going on in the store.

00:07:00 ◼   ► That you are not blindly building things and creating things.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Just sort of often a vacuum with the hopes

00:07:05 ◼   ► that they'll hit and resonate with your audience.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So you need to know what other developers are doing.

00:07:11 ◼   ► You need to know what customers are liking, what they're not liking,

00:07:14 ◼   ► what are opportunities, what are things that have already

00:07:16 ◼   ► been filled and saturated.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And the way that I kind of study that-- and I spend a lot of time on this.

00:07:22 ◼   ► It's probably not insubstantial, like probably maybe a half a day

00:07:25 ◼   ► a week.

00:07:26 ◼   ► I spend just sort of studying the App Store

00:07:29 ◼   ► to try and make sure that I'm not missing a trend.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I'm not losing it.

00:07:35 ◼   ► There's a cusp of something that's coming,

00:07:36 ◼   ► and I'm going to get sort of fall behind and then end up

00:07:40 ◼   ► sort of lost behind that.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And so what I do is there's three main ways that I do this,

00:07:46 ◼   ► and I'll walk through them sort of each.

00:07:47 ◼   ► The first and most important is just

00:07:49 ◼   ► to spend a lot of time browsing the App Store,

00:07:52 ◼   ► whether it's on your phone, whether it's on your iPad,

00:07:54 ◼   ► whether it's in iTunes, especially iTunes.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I really like browsing the App Store on iTunes on my Mac

00:08:00 ◼   ► just because you can get so much information so much more quickly.

00:08:02 ◼   ► You can look at a list of 50 apps, 100 apps very easily,

00:08:05 ◼   ► whereas on your phone you're kind of always adding next page, next page,

00:08:09 ◼   ► next page.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And so what I'm doing there is I'm looking primarily

00:08:14 ◼   ► at whatever the top lists are.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So top free, top paid, and especially top grossing.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And I'm trying to understand what's working right now.

00:08:22 ◼   ► What's resonating with customers?

00:08:24 ◼   ► What are people interested in?

00:08:25 ◼   ► And often what I'll do is-- it's funny.

00:08:28 ◼   ► I don't typically read a lot of my own reviews for my own apps

00:08:30 ◼   ► because that's just depressing and kind of sad.

00:08:32 ◼   ► But I like reading other people's reviews.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I like understanding what the customers don't like and do

00:08:37 ◼   ► like about the apps that are being successful

00:08:40 ◼   ► and to try and pull little nuggets from that that'll

00:08:42 ◼   ► help me make my apps better.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And so I work on just sort of reading through a lot of that.

00:08:48 ◼   ► And you're especially spending a lot of time

00:08:49 ◼   ► in top grossing, which is really what I want to--

00:08:52 ◼   ► top grossing is great, because that's where I make the most--

00:08:55 ◼   ► those are the people who make the most money,

00:08:57 ◼   ► and that's a variable I'm trying to optimize

00:09:00 ◼   ► to make the most money.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So one thing to keep in mind, though, with grossing

00:09:04 ◼   ► is that it does not include things like I-Ad or advertising.

00:09:07 ◼   ► So you also need to make sure you're taking a look at a lot

00:09:09 ◼   ► Ad-free, the top free charts, because often those apps

00:09:12 ◼   ► potentially are actually making more money than some

00:09:14 ◼   ► of the things engrossing just from their advertising revenue.

00:09:17 ◼   ► So just a little side note.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Once you kind of have a good sense of that,

00:09:21 ◼   ► the second tool that I find very, very valuable

00:09:24 ◼   ► is to look at something like App Annie or App Figures, which

00:09:27 ◼   ► are tools that let you look at the historic trends of rankings

00:09:31 ◼   ► of individual apps.

00:09:33 ◼   ► And this is something that is just incredibly valuable.

00:09:37 ◼   ► When you see an app that is successful,

00:09:41 ◼   ► rather than just having a snapshot and say, OK, well,

00:09:44 ◼   ► that's number five in its category right now.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Then you can say, well, how did it get here?

00:09:50 ◼   ► Is this-- is it some update they've done?

00:09:54 ◼   ► Did it just launch and go straight there?

00:09:56 ◼   ► And you can go and look at the history of those.

00:09:58 ◼   ► And what is often really helpful as you develop

00:10:00 ◼   ► more of a portfolio of applications

00:10:02 ◼   ► and have some data yourself about what sort of a rank

00:10:05 ◼   ► correlates to in revenue, is you can sort of see

00:10:08 ◼   ► how their revenue is moved up and down,

00:10:10 ◼   ► see kind of how that's gone.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And this is often really helpful when I'm deciding

00:10:13 ◼   ► I want to make a new app.

00:10:15 ◼   ► What I'm looking at evaluating a market is,

00:10:17 ◼   ► I will look at what is a typical pattern for an application

00:10:21 ◼   ► as it goes through its lifespan from launch to stable state.

00:10:27 ◼   ► And so say I'm making a calendar app, say I'm making a weather app,

00:10:30 ◼   ► say I'm making whatever.

00:10:32 ◼   ► I'd go and look at whatever the most successful five other of those,

00:10:36 ◼   ► because almost certainly there are.

00:10:37 ◼   ► I mean, there's very few new ideas in the App Store.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It's more just new implementations and new takes on things.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And you just kind of follow that and see, OK,

00:10:45 ◼   ► these apps seem to have a big spike and then fall down.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Or they tend to never spike up big,

00:10:51 ◼   ► but they're nice and stable.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And that's really helpful for you to know in terms of,

00:10:54 ◼   ► is this a worthwhile business decision to make?

00:10:57 ◼   ► Are you pursuing something that is going to make lots of money

00:11:02 ◼   ► down in the long run?

00:11:03 ◼   ► Or is it more likely that this is going to be a quick flash?

00:11:06 ◼   ► Sort of a quick flash, you make a bunch of money

00:11:08 ◼   ► in a couple weeks, and then it really falls off.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And if that's the case, you just may tailor your development

00:11:13 ◼   ► accordingly. You're not necessarily going to want to invest heavily, for example, in

00:11:17 ◼   ► infrastructure costs or things that are going to have long-range expenses, like a big web

00:11:22 ◼   ► service or those types of things, if an app is only going to typically make you money

00:11:26 ◼   ► right up front and then fall off dramatically. It's going to be hard to support that down

00:11:31 ◼   ► the road. Whereas if apps in that category and of that type have a tendency to be fairly

00:11:36 ◼   ► stable in the long run, great. Maybe that will support that kind of thing.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And the last way that I kind of study the App Store is I make sure that I follow and

00:11:46 ◼   ► interact with people on Twitter who are, I guess you could mean like, the like, I don't

00:11:51 ◼   ► know, the cheesy PR version would be like the the thought leaders in the App Store,

00:11:56 ◼   ► people who are doing a lot of this. And I have a list in the show notes, you know, sort

00:12:00 ◼   ► of just off the top of my head, here are some of the people that I follow who I find really

00:12:04 ◼   ► helpful from like a studying the App Store perspective. It's people like Ian Marsh, David

00:12:09 ◼   ► Barnhard, Eli Haddad, Phil Ryu, Blake Patterson, Marco Arment,

00:12:13 ◼   ► Paul Haddad, Steve Stressa, and Federico Viticci

00:12:19 ◼   ► are some of the people who I just follow.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And what they do is you get these little nuggets.

00:12:26 ◼   ► You get all these little bits and pieces

00:12:28 ◼   ► that allows you to piece together

00:12:33 ◼   ► what's going on on the developer side of the App Store.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And this is where you'll get complaining a lot.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And they'll be like, oh, man, app review time is terrible

00:12:41 ◼   ► right now.

00:12:43 ◼   ► That's good to know.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Or, wow, have you seen this app?

00:12:45 ◼   ► It's terrible, but it's doing really well.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I wonder how they did that.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And you'll get a good conversation about it.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And you'll get ideas.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And you'll get opportunities to interact with these people who

00:12:55 ◼   ► are successful in the store or spend a lot of time talking

00:13:00 ◼   ► about the store.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And that really just helps kind of couch and develop your

00:13:04 ◼   ► perspective on it, which is, I guess, the topic of this show,

00:13:07 ◼   ► developing perspective.

00:13:09 ◼   ► The goal, and what I say even when you're studying--

00:13:11 ◼   ► so those are the three methods.

00:13:12 ◼   ► But the goal of what you're trying to do

00:13:15 ◼   ► is that you have an understanding of how money

00:13:18 ◼   ► is made in the App Store, which is vital for you

00:13:23 ◼   ► to be able to do what you-- to make apps

00:13:25 ◼   ► and to be successful at doing this.

00:13:27 ◼   ► You're trying to look for trends.

00:13:29 ◼   ► You're trying to say, OK, it seems like apps

00:13:31 ◼   ► are heading in this direction, whether that's

00:13:33 ◼   ► from the UI side, whether that's from the marketing side,

00:13:36 ◼   ► whether that's from the revenue side.

00:13:38 ◼   ► It's like, wow, of the top 100 apps engrossing,

00:13:42 ◼   ► the majority of them use in-app purchase.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Maybe that's something I need to work on a way

00:13:46 ◼   ► to integrate into my application.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Whatever it is, you're trying to find those trends that you

00:13:51 ◼   ► can use to maximize your own revenue

00:13:53 ◼   ► and optimize your applications.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Users are saying in a lot of reviews

00:13:58 ◼   ► that, man, I really don't like this, that, or the other.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Don't do this, that, or the other.

00:14:03 ◼   ► or they're saying, wow, I love the way they did this.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Great.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Consider using that in your application,

00:14:09 ◼   ► or consider learning from that lesson.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Because ideally what you're going to do

00:14:14 ◼   ► is you're either going to learn from other people's successes

00:14:17 ◼   ► and learn from other people's mistakes.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And that means you'll hopefully have more successes yourself.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And if you are mistakes that you make yourself,

00:14:25 ◼   ► that you then have to learn from.

00:14:27 ◼   ► So anyway, that's how I study the App Store.

00:14:29 ◼   ► It's something that takes a focused effort that you

00:14:32 ◼   ► You need to spend the time doing something I spend a lot of time when I have a spare

00:14:36 ◼   ► moment.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I'll just go into the app store, top charts, and just be thumbing through, looking at things,

00:14:41 ◼   ► seeing what's going on.

00:14:42 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:14:44 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, concerns, complaints, hit me up on Twitter.

00:14:48 ◼   ► I'm @_davidsmith on Twitter, the Twitter feed for this show.

00:14:52 ◼   ► If you'd like to get updates whenever new episodes are posted, which is typically Tuesdays

00:14:55 ◼   ► and Thursdays now, just as a reminder, is @devperspective.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you have a good week.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Happy coding, and I will talk to you next Tuesday. Bye!