Developing Perspective

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

00:00:05 ◼   ► news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm

00:00:09 ◼   ► an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia. This is show number 66, and today

00:00:14 ◼   ► is Wednesday, July 18th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's

00:00:19 ◼   ► get started.

00:00:20 ◼   ► So first, I have a couple of, I guess, sort of housekeeping or more logistical matters,

00:00:26 ◼   ► just to kind of mention.

00:00:27 ◼   ► First is I'm going to do a survey that's a little bit even

00:00:33 ◼   ► perhaps overwrought to call it a survey.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I have two questions that I'd love to hear back

00:00:38 ◼   ► from my listeners as I'm kind of doing a few things, kind of thinking

00:00:41 ◼   ► about the future of developing perspective, where it's going to go,

00:00:44 ◼   ► and kind of how people get it.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And specifically, it's really just two things.

00:00:48 ◼   ► One, how often would you like episodes to come out?

00:00:52 ◼   ► So it's like, is it once a week, twice a week, three times a week,

00:00:56 ◼   ► four times a week, or you don't care?

00:00:58 ◼   ► And really what I'm asking for that is right now I just kind of do it

00:01:03 ◼   ► a couple of times a week.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Sometimes it's once, sometimes it's three or four times, I think.

00:01:08 ◼   ► And part of my goal is that it's something

00:01:11 ◼   ► that's a constant part of the discussion between you, the audience, and me.

00:01:17 ◼   ► So it's something that I'm doing on a very regular basis.

00:01:20 ◼   ► But obviously what I don't want it to do is for it to become, I don't know, sort of overburdening

00:01:26 ◼   ► in terms of like, for it to feel like, "Oh my goodness, there's, you know, dozens and

00:01:29 ◼   ► dozens of developing perspective episodes.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I'm never going to catch up."

00:01:32 ◼   ► And then you stop listening and that's not cool.

00:01:35 ◼   ► So it's kind of just, what would be that threshold for you?

00:01:39 ◼   ► What would you like to hear?

00:01:40 ◼   ► Is it, you know, once a week, twice a week, three times a week, four times a week?

00:01:44 ◼   ► I don't think I can do more than four times a week, so that's where I'm capping it.

00:01:48 ◼   ► or if you just don't care, just put that too.

00:01:51 ◼   ► And then related to that, I've been thinking about whether it would be good or not for

00:01:57 ◼   ► the show to be published, not necessarily recorded, but published on a regular schedule,

00:02:03 ◼   ► and if that's something that people would care about or not.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And by that I mean, say for example, I get a lot of feedback and it ends up looking like

00:02:10 ◼   ► it would be best if I did say two episodes a week.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Okay, well I'm going to do those episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

00:02:17 ◼   ► and that's just sort of when they get released

00:02:20 ◼   ► and and they have made a recording of site for times but that's kind of a

00:02:24 ◼   ► schedule that you can rely on a friend in three episodes week like they're

00:02:28 ◼   ► released on

00:02:29 ◼   ► monday's wednesday and friday

00:02:31 ◼   ► for example

00:02:32 ◼   ► uh... there are there if that just doesn't matter if like the red way

00:02:34 ◼   ► they're doing it right now where they just kind of

00:02:37 ◼   ► you know they disappear

00:02:38 ◼   ► uh... yes as you want

00:02:40 ◼   ► if that if that works then great if not then

00:02:43 ◼   ► you know just let me know and some basically if it could be very helpful for

00:02:46 ◼   ► me

00:02:47 ◼   ► if you hear this to just uh...

00:02:49 ◼   ► quickly take the survey like that's two questions should take no more than about

00:02:52 ◼   ► ten seconds to do

00:02:54 ◼   ► uh... and pieces we get it

00:02:55 ◼   ► is to just go to developing perspective dot com slash survey

00:02:59 ◼   ► or the loss of the link in the show notes for this uh... this episode that

00:03:02 ◼   ► has it

00:03:03 ◼   ► they had just developing perspective dot com slash survey should take ten seconds

00:03:06 ◼   ► and it is the helpful for me to get a sense of it for cells a call is ask

00:03:09 ◼   ► people to

00:03:10 ◼   ► you know, reply to me on Twitter or something, but that's going to be hard to manage.

00:03:13 ◼   ► So that's why I just have this, you know, ridiculously simple survey.

00:03:16 ◼   ► It really would be a big help to me if you just kind of said, answer those two questions

00:03:20 ◼   ► to help me kind of, you know, form and mold the show to be best for you guys.

00:03:25 ◼   ► All right, second thing I have is a correction.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So in yesterday, in the last show, I talked about the Edge Cases podcast.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And in it, I accidentally and brutally mispronounced Wolf's name.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It is Wolf Wrench, not Wolf Resnick, and I'm not really sure where that came from, but

00:03:44 ◼   ► apologies to Wolf.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And it is Wolf Wrench.

00:03:48 ◼   ► And again, I can just mention the show.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's the Edge Cases podcast.

00:03:51 ◼   ► You can find it all over the place.

00:03:53 ◼   ► It's a great show.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And my apologies for the brutal mispronunciation, and thanks to Neylan for pointing that out.

00:04:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:04:02 ◼   ► The next thing I was going to mention is I've been thinking about doing a new icon for developing

00:04:08 ◼   ► perspective, commissioning a designer to come up with a new logo treatment for it.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Just the one I have in there now is about a year old.

00:04:16 ◼   ► I did it myself in 10 minutes in Photoshop.

00:04:19 ◼   ► It's just a picture of a cup of coffee with developing perspective written on it.

00:04:23 ◼   ► And that's OK.

00:04:25 ◼   ► But I feel like at this point, this show is something that I think has longevity and staying

00:04:31 ◼   ► power and I'm going to expect to just keep doing it.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And so I wanted to make sure it has a nice face to put forward.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And so I'm thinking of doing an icon.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And the reason I mention that here is not as a call for spec work or something,

00:04:46 ◼   ► but if you're a designer who enjoys the show and likes the show

00:04:51 ◼   ► and does freelance graphic design and logo design

00:04:57 ◼   ► and has a good portfolio that I can look at and so on,

00:05:01 ◼   ► please reach out to me either on twitter

00:05:04 ◼   ► uh... i'm underscored it's not fair

00:05:06 ◼   ► or if you go to david's david dash smith dot com slash about you can get my email

00:05:11 ◼   ► address there

00:05:12 ◼   ► uh... man i'd just you know there's part of the district would love for it to be

00:05:17 ◼   ► uh... for for the logo treatment to come from a listener

00:05:20 ◼   ► i would just be awesome and so that i mentioned here

00:05:23 ◼   ► uh...

00:05:23 ◼   ► they said it's not like a alone with the president of some of the committee free

00:05:26 ◼   ► be a look into do not pay you normal rate and so on

00:05:29 ◼   ► uh... and you have looked for yourself with your portfolio but it's just the

00:05:32 ◼   ► best way for me i think to get a lead would be to look at

00:05:36 ◼   ► yes it's true of my audience see if there's anybody out there

00:05:39 ◼   ► you know from who would like to do who would like to do a logo treatment for

00:05:42 ◼   ► the podcast

00:05:43 ◼   ► and answer start from there

00:05:46 ◼   ► all right so the topic

00:05:47 ◼   ► uh... for today show

00:05:49 ◼   ► uh... it kak sheik comes from a question from nailing beyond where

00:05:53 ◼   ► and this is related to what i was talking about a couple of episodes ago

00:05:56 ◼   ► where i was talking about

00:05:57 ◼   ► core data sinking and this is specifically episode sixty four footnotes

00:06:01 ◼   ► on side projects and i cloud data sink alab link in the show notes if you want

00:06:05 ◼   ► to

00:06:06 ◼   ► uh... listen to that

00:06:07 ◼   ► but basically it was a question of

00:06:10 ◼   ► yes if i'm thinking about

00:06:12 ◼   ► uh... data sink in applications and how i should do it and what that would look

00:06:15 ◼   ► like

00:06:16 ◼   ► and

00:06:17 ◼   ► uh... he has the question

00:06:18 ◼   ► if i was to use some of these hosted services like some period math parses

00:06:22 ◼   ► another one

00:06:23 ◼   ► uh... what i do in that purchase to cover the fee

00:06:26 ◼   ► uh... and would that be service subscription with that the one-time

00:06:30 ◼   ► purchase

00:06:31 ◼   ► and

00:06:32 ◼   ► it's interesting and i think it's a really good question and that's i think

00:06:35 ◼   ► well so that will be unpacking for the rest of the show

00:06:38 ◼   ► uh... and so

00:06:39 ◼   ► the it more interesting part of that to me

00:06:42 ◼   ► is

00:06:43 ◼   ► how you price the app itself

00:06:46 ◼   ► uh... so right now that i'm talking about doing this to is my recipe book

00:06:49 ◼   ► which is a recipe book manager you know you enter your recipes and organizes

00:06:53 ◼   ► imagines of them for you

00:06:55 ◼   ► and my recipe book right now is an iPad only application

00:06:58 ◼   ► and I have an iPhone version that's like ninety nine percent done, I'm mostly just

00:07:02 ◼   ► waiting on sync for it to be done

00:07:04 ◼   ► and so I guess it's not ninety nine percent done

00:07:07 ◼   ► the functionality of that application is mostly there except for sync

00:07:12 ◼   ► and I'm also going to be working on a Mac client for it

00:07:15 ◼   ► and the interesting question I've been stuck with for a little bit was

00:07:18 ◼   ► as I've been working on this iPhone version of it is the classic

00:07:22 ◼   ► question of should I make it

00:07:24 ◼   ► a universal app which is essentially giving the iPhone version to all of my existing customers

00:07:31 ◼   ► for free, or should I make it a separate purchase and then, for example, charge for sync as

00:07:41 ◼   ► just an in-app purchase? So you would give it away for free to everybody if it was universal,

00:07:48 ◼   ► then you'd pay me a couple of bucks or whatever to then support the sync and infrastructure

00:07:54 ◼   ► back and forth.

00:07:57 ◼   ► It's a tricky question because on the one hand, making it a universal app is great for

00:08:04 ◼   ► customers in the sense that it's nice and simple, it's nice and straightforward in terms

00:08:10 ◼   ► of what it does and how it works.

00:08:13 ◼   ► They just buy one thing and if they've bought it before then they have it and it just works.

00:08:18 ◼   ► works, and that's great. If I do separate apps, I have the advantage then of probably

00:08:26 ◼   ► making a little bit more money, or at least initially making some more money, by being

00:08:32 ◼   ► able to capitalize my existing user base, many of whom may have iPhones or iPod Touches,

00:08:37 ◼   ► and I can then get whatever, a buck or two from them additionally, which would be great.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And it's a funny thing, though, because ultimately, the app has been reasonably successful, but

00:08:53 ◼   ► it has only been bought by a minute fraction of iOS people, of customers who have iPhones

00:09:01 ◼   ► or iPads.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And so the biggest source of revenue that I can get, more likely than not, is to continue

00:09:10 ◼   ► to grow my user base.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And so my gut says, what I need to do

00:09:15 ◼   ► is do things that will make people happy, rather than doing

00:09:20 ◼   ► things that may necessarily have short-term financial benefit.

00:09:26 ◼   ► That if I can continue to have--

00:09:28 ◼   ► I think MyRCTBook is actually-- I mean, it's one of the things

00:09:31 ◼   ► that I'm most proud of, is that it consistently

00:09:33 ◼   ► has a five-star rating in the App Store, which is not

00:09:37 ◼   ► necessarily an easy thing.

00:09:38 ◼   ► But people love the app, and they love to use it.

00:09:41 ◼   ► And what I don't want to do is for people to all of a sudden feel like,

00:09:45 ◼   ► I don't know, that's--

00:09:46 ◼   ► you know, it's like, oh, you mean I have to pay again

00:09:49 ◼   ► if I want to use it on my iPhone?

00:09:50 ◼   ► That's lame.

00:09:52 ◼   ► Like, versus one day just showing up and saying, hey,

00:09:56 ◼   ► the app is now universal.

00:09:57 ◼   ► You can use it on your iPhone if you have one.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Enjoy.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And so, you know, that's great.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But then it gets to the question of, to would I charge for sync?

00:10:07 ◼   ► And I'm not sure.

00:10:10 ◼   ► the tricky part is you can't ever-- it never really works to sync or to give something

00:10:17 ◼   ► away for free and then to change your mind and charge for it. And so the challenge, of

00:10:23 ◼   ► course, with sync is there's a certain per user cost if I'm going with an external service,

00:10:28 ◼   ► which I'm pretty sure I'm going to for at least a lot of the sync stuff. And so I can

00:10:34 ◼   ► sort of just absorb that into the price of the application, which is great, one way to

00:10:39 ◼   ► do it, or I can charge for it, say as an in-app purchase or something like that, and that

00:10:46 ◼   ► sort of gets around it. But I'm still kind of stuck because there's such this part of

00:10:53 ◼   ► me that, and I wish it wasn't the case in some ways, but there's this power in the App

00:11:00 ◼   ► Store that I've experienced many, many times that if you create a value that's not going

00:11:08 ◼   ► a high sort of incredible value proposition for customers,

00:11:12 ◼   ► you are very well rewarded for that.

00:11:15 ◼   ► And by that I mean if you make an excellent app

00:11:17 ◼   ► and charge a relatively low price for it,

00:11:20 ◼   ► do you-- I mean, it's like the way of finding

00:11:22 ◼   ► if you make it up in volume.

00:11:23 ◼   ► It's like, you do.

00:11:25 ◼   ► And moreover than that, it's just that you're pricing

00:11:29 ◼   ► and you're expanding the proportion of the market that

00:11:33 ◼   ► is willing to pay for your application.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And that is, I think, a very powerful tool.

00:11:39 ◼   ► It's not necessarily that by charging less for your application

00:11:44 ◼   ► that you're getting less money from the same people is one way to think about it.

00:11:52 ◼   ► But if you could declare classic microeconomics, by lowering your price,

00:11:55 ◼   ► you're expanding your market.

00:11:57 ◼   ► And the app store's market is so large, and the environment for software

00:12:03 ◼   ► development is so competitive that ultimately that's usually

00:12:08 ◼   ► where you want to be. And you know, there's a lot of debate on

00:12:10 ◼   ► that. And you're just like, but ultimately, that's, you know,

00:12:12 ◼   ► it's like, Oh, it's the race to the bottom, and it's killing

00:12:14 ◼   ► developers. And it's like, the ultimate challenge is, I think a

00:12:18 ◼   ► lot of developers have an overblown perception of the

00:12:24 ◼   ► value of their software. And by that, I mean that as the as I

00:12:31 ◼   ► And this is, again, sort of a classic microeconomics.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But the price of something will likely ultimately

00:12:39 ◼   ► reach the marginal cost to produce that item.

00:12:43 ◼   ► And in software, the marginal costs are incredibly low.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And a marginal cost, if you're not familiar with it,

00:12:48 ◼   ► is essentially, what is the cost to produce

00:12:50 ◼   ► one more of that thing?

00:12:53 ◼   ► And so in software, conceptually,

00:12:55 ◼   ► your marginal cost of adding one more

00:13:00 ◼   ► user to your application is sort of some aggregate of the support

00:13:05 ◼   ► costs for them, any bandwidth or server infrastructure costs,

00:13:08 ◼   ► those types of things, which are typically fairly low.

00:13:11 ◼   ► And so that'll naturally drive the price down.

00:13:15 ◼   ► And especially in a market like the App Store,

00:13:17 ◼   ► where there is nothing to prevent competitors copying,

00:13:23 ◼   ► coming in, building almost exactly or exactly the same application

00:13:27 ◼   ► that you did, there are things that perhaps they can't do.

00:13:29 ◼   ► from a copyright perspective, that if you created an application with exactly the same

00:13:34 ◼   ► logo and UI, you'd have a copyright claim against them.

00:13:37 ◼   ► But ultimately, you're in a very, very free and competitive market.

00:13:43 ◼   ► And this is just sort of classic capitalism, that that will naturally drive down prices.

00:13:47 ◼   ► And rather than fighting that, I tend to just embrace that and have relatively low prices

00:13:52 ◼   ► that have thus far had relatively high volumes.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And so that's kind of where I've been playing.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And I think that's likely where I'm going.

00:14:00 ◼   ► And my hope, I think, is likely that I'll

00:14:04 ◼   ► be able to offer sync, make the app universal,

00:14:07 ◼   ► and see if that makes people happy.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And I hope it does.

00:14:13 ◼   ► It may not be able to, but I have

00:14:15 ◼   ► to finish crunching the numbers to make sure

00:14:16 ◼   ► that I'm not totally shooting myself in the foot.

00:14:19 ◼   ► But that's kind of where I'm leading.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Or at least that's where I'm starting.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And then as I head forward into that,

00:14:26 ◼   ► I'm going to see if that makes sense.

00:14:28 ◼   ► And if not, where can I pull back from that?

00:14:33 ◼   ► Anyway, that will at least annoy my users and best just

00:14:36 ◼   ► make passionate customers who love and recommend

00:14:39 ◼   ► my app to everybody.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So anyway, that's it for today's show.

00:14:43 ◼   ► If you have any thoughts on that, please let me know.

00:14:45 ◼   ► I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:48 ◼   ► The Twitter feed for this show is devperspective.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And that's where you can get updates

00:14:53 ◼   ► whenever new shows are linked.

00:14:54 ◼   ► As a quick reminder, I'd love it if you could take that survey,

00:14:58 ◼   ► developingperspective.com/survey.

00:15:00 ◼   ► It should take about five seconds.

00:15:02 ◼   ► But otherwise, I hope you have a good week, and happy coding.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Bye.