0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:05news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:09an independent iOS developer based in Herne, Virginia. This is show number 66, and today
0:00:14is Wednesday, July 18th. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's
0:00:19get started.
0:00:20So first, I have a couple of, I guess, sort of housekeeping or more logistical matters,
0:00:26just to kind of mention.
0:00:27First is I'm going to do a survey that's a little bit even
0:00:33perhaps overwrought to call it a survey.
0:00:35I have two questions that I'd love to hear back
0:00:38from my listeners as I'm kind of doing a few things, kind of thinking
0:00:41about the future of developing perspective, where it's going to go,
0:00:44and kind of how people get it.
0:00:45And specifically, it's really just two things.
0:00:48One, how often would you like episodes to come out?
0:00:52So it's like, is it once a week, twice a week, three times a week,
0:00:56four times a week, or you don't care?
0:00:58And really what I'm asking for that is right now I just kind of do it
0:01:03a couple of times a week.
0:01:04Sometimes it's once, sometimes it's three or four times, I think.
0:01:08And part of my goal is that it's something
0:01:11that's a constant part of the discussion between you, the audience, and me.
0:01:17So it's something that I'm doing on a very regular basis.
0:01:20But obviously what I don't want it to do is for it to become, I don't know, sort of overburdening
0:01:26in terms of like, for it to feel like, "Oh my goodness, there's, you know, dozens and
0:01:29dozens of developing perspective episodes.
0:01:31I'm never going to catch up."
0:01:32And then you stop listening and that's not cool.
0:01:35So it's kind of just, what would be that threshold for you?
0:01:39What would you like to hear?
0:01:40Is it, you know, once a week, twice a week, three times a week, four times a week?
0:01:44I don't think I can do more than four times a week, so that's where I'm capping it.
0:01:48or if you just don't care, just put that too.
0:01:51And then related to that, I've been thinking about whether it would be good or not for
0:01:57the show to be published, not necessarily recorded, but published on a regular schedule,
0:02:03and if that's something that people would care about or not.
0:02:05And by that I mean, say for example, I get a lot of feedback and it ends up looking like
0:02:10it would be best if I did say two episodes a week.
0:02:13And I'm like, "Okay, well I'm going to do those episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
0:02:17and that's just sort of when they get released
0:02:20and and they have made a recording of site for times but that's kind of a
0:02:24schedule that you can rely on a friend in three episodes week like they're
0:02:28released on
0:02:29monday's wednesday and friday
0:02:31for example
0:02:32uh... there are there if that just doesn't matter if like the red way
0:02:34they're doing it right now where they just kind of
0:02:37you know they disappear
0:02:38uh... yes as you want
0:02:40if that if that works then great if not then
0:02:43you know just let me know and some basically if it could be very helpful for
0:02:46me
0:02:47if you hear this to just uh...
0:02:49quickly take the survey like that's two questions should take no more than about
0:02:52ten seconds to do
0:02:54uh... and pieces we get it
0:02:55is to just go to developing perspective dot com slash survey
0:02:59or the loss of the link in the show notes for this uh... this episode that
0:03:02has it
0:03:03they had just developing perspective dot com slash survey should take ten seconds
0:03:06and it is the helpful for me to get a sense of it for cells a call is ask
0:03:09people to
0:03:10you know, reply to me on Twitter or something, but that's going to be hard to manage.
0:03:13So that's why I just have this, you know, ridiculously simple survey.
0:03:16It really would be a big help to me if you just kind of said, answer those two questions
0:03:20to help me kind of, you know, form and mold the show to be best for you guys.
0:03:25All right, second thing I have is a correction.
0:03:28So in yesterday, in the last show, I talked about the Edge Cases podcast.
0:03:34And in it, I accidentally and brutally mispronounced Wolf's name.
0:03:39It is Wolf Wrench, not Wolf Resnick, and I'm not really sure where that came from, but
0:03:44apologies to Wolf.
0:03:46And it is Wolf Wrench.
0:03:48And again, I can just mention the show.
0:03:49It's the Edge Cases podcast.
0:03:51You can find it all over the place.
0:03:53It's a great show.
0:03:54And my apologies for the brutal mispronunciation, and thanks to Neylan for pointing that out.
0:04:00All right.
0:04:02The next thing I was going to mention is I've been thinking about doing a new icon for developing
0:04:08perspective, commissioning a designer to come up with a new logo treatment for it.
0:04:14Just the one I have in there now is about a year old.
0:04:16I did it myself in 10 minutes in Photoshop.
0:04:19It's just a picture of a cup of coffee with developing perspective written on it.
0:04:23And that's OK.
0:04:25But I feel like at this point, this show is something that I think has longevity and staying
0:04:31power and I'm going to expect to just keep doing it.
0:04:34And so I wanted to make sure it has a nice face to put forward.
0:04:38And so I'm thinking of doing an icon.
0:04:40And the reason I mention that here is not as a call for spec work or something,
0:04:46but if you're a designer who enjoys the show and likes the show
0:04:51and does freelance graphic design and logo design
0:04:57and has a good portfolio that I can look at and so on,
0:05:01please reach out to me either on twitter
0:05:04uh... i'm underscored it's not fair
0:05:06or if you go to david's david dash smith dot com slash about you can get my email
0:05:11address there
0:05:12uh... man i'd just you know there's part of the district would love for it to be
0:05:17uh... for for the logo treatment to come from a listener
0:05:20i would just be awesome and so that i mentioned here
0:05:23uh...
0:05:23they said it's not like a alone with the president of some of the committee free
0:05:26be a look into do not pay you normal rate and so on
0:05:29uh... and you have looked for yourself with your portfolio but it's just the
0:05:32best way for me i think to get a lead would be to look at
0:05:36yes it's true of my audience see if there's anybody out there
0:05:39you know from who would like to do who would like to do a logo treatment for
0:05:42the podcast
0:05:43and answer start from there
0:05:46all right so the topic
0:05:47uh... for today show
0:05:49uh... it kak sheik comes from a question from nailing beyond where
0:05:53and this is related to what i was talking about a couple of episodes ago
0:05:56where i was talking about
0:05:57core data sinking and this is specifically episode sixty four footnotes
0:06:01on side projects and i cloud data sink alab link in the show notes if you want
0:06:05to
0:06:06uh... listen to that
0:06:07but basically it was a question of
0:06:10yes if i'm thinking about
0:06:12uh... data sink in applications and how i should do it and what that would look
0:06:15like
0:06:16and
0:06:17uh... he has the question
0:06:18if i was to use some of these hosted services like some period math parses
0:06:22another one
0:06:23uh... what i do in that purchase to cover the fee
0:06:26uh... and would that be service subscription with that the one-time
0:06:30purchase
0:06:31and
0:06:32it's interesting and i think it's a really good question and that's i think
0:06:35well so that will be unpacking for the rest of the show
0:06:38uh... and so
0:06:39the it more interesting part of that to me
0:06:42is
0:06:43how you price the app itself
0:06:46uh... so right now that i'm talking about doing this to is my recipe book
0:06:49which is a recipe book manager you know you enter your recipes and organizes
0:06:53imagines of them for you
0:06:55and my recipe book right now is an iPad only application
0:06:58and I have an iPhone version that's like ninety nine percent done, I'm mostly just
0:07:02waiting on sync for it to be done
0:07:04and so I guess it's not ninety nine percent done
0:07:07the functionality of that application is mostly there except for sync
0:07:12and I'm also going to be working on a Mac client for it
0:07:15and the interesting question I've been stuck with for a little bit was
0:07:18as I've been working on this iPhone version of it is the classic
0:07:22question of should I make it
0:07:24a universal app which is essentially giving the iPhone version to all of my existing customers
0:07:31for free, or should I make it a separate purchase and then, for example, charge for sync as
0:07:41just an in-app purchase? So you would give it away for free to everybody if it was universal,
0:07:48then you'd pay me a couple of bucks or whatever to then support the sync and infrastructure
0:07:54back and forth.
0:07:57It's a tricky question because on the one hand, making it a universal app is great for
0:08:04customers in the sense that it's nice and simple, it's nice and straightforward in terms
0:08:10of what it does and how it works.
0:08:13They just buy one thing and if they've bought it before then they have it and it just works.
0:08:18works, and that's great. If I do separate apps, I have the advantage then of probably
0:08:26making a little bit more money, or at least initially making some more money, by being
0:08:32able to capitalize my existing user base, many of whom may have iPhones or iPod Touches,
0:08:37and I can then get whatever, a buck or two from them additionally, which would be great.
0:08:45And it's a funny thing, though, because ultimately, the app has been reasonably successful, but
0:08:53it has only been bought by a minute fraction of iOS people, of customers who have iPhones
0:09:01or iPads.
0:09:02And so the biggest source of revenue that I can get, more likely than not, is to continue
0:09:10to grow my user base.
0:09:12And so my gut says, what I need to do
0:09:15is do things that will make people happy, rather than doing
0:09:20things that may necessarily have short-term financial benefit.
0:09:26That if I can continue to have--
0:09:28I think MyRCTBook is actually-- I mean, it's one of the things
0:09:31that I'm most proud of, is that it consistently
0:09:33has a five-star rating in the App Store, which is not
0:09:37necessarily an easy thing.
0:09:38But people love the app, and they love to use it.
0:09:41And what I don't want to do is for people to all of a sudden feel like,
0:09:45I don't know, that's--
0:09:46you know, it's like, oh, you mean I have to pay again
0:09:49if I want to use it on my iPhone?
0:09:50That's lame.
0:09:52Like, versus one day just showing up and saying, hey,
0:09:56the app is now universal.
0:09:57You can use it on your iPhone if you have one.
0:09:59Enjoy.
0:10:01And so, you know, that's great.
0:10:03But then it gets to the question of, to would I charge for sync?
0:10:07And I'm not sure.
0:10:10the tricky part is you can't ever-- it never really works to sync or to give something
0:10:17away for free and then to change your mind and charge for it. And so the challenge, of
0:10:23course, with sync is there's a certain per user cost if I'm going with an external service,
0:10:28which I'm pretty sure I'm going to for at least a lot of the sync stuff. And so I can
0:10:34sort of just absorb that into the price of the application, which is great, one way to
0:10:39do it, or I can charge for it, say as an in-app purchase or something like that, and that
0:10:46sort of gets around it. But I'm still kind of stuck because there's such this part of
0:10:53me that, and I wish it wasn't the case in some ways, but there's this power in the App
0:11:00Store that I've experienced many, many times that if you create a value that's not going
0:11:08a high sort of incredible value proposition for customers,
0:11:12you are very well rewarded for that.
0:11:15And by that I mean if you make an excellent app
0:11:17and charge a relatively low price for it,
0:11:20do you-- I mean, it's like the way of finding
0:11:22if you make it up in volume.
0:11:23It's like, you do.
0:11:25And moreover than that, it's just that you're pricing
0:11:29and you're expanding the proportion of the market that
0:11:33is willing to pay for your application.
0:11:35And that is, I think, a very powerful tool.
0:11:39It's not necessarily that by charging less for your application
0:11:44that you're getting less money from the same people is one way to think about it.
0:11:52But if you could declare classic microeconomics, by lowering your price,
0:11:55you're expanding your market.
0:11:57And the app store's market is so large, and the environment for software
0:12:03development is so competitive that ultimately that's usually
0:12:08where you want to be. And you know, there's a lot of debate on
0:12:10that. And you're just like, but ultimately, that's, you know,
0:12:12it's like, Oh, it's the race to the bottom, and it's killing
0:12:14developers. And it's like, the ultimate challenge is, I think a
0:12:18lot of developers have an overblown perception of the
0:12:24value of their software. And by that, I mean that as the as I
0:12:31And this is, again, sort of a classic microeconomics.
0:12:34But the price of something will likely ultimately
0:12:39reach the marginal cost to produce that item.
0:12:43And in software, the marginal costs are incredibly low.
0:12:46And a marginal cost, if you're not familiar with it,
0:12:48is essentially, what is the cost to produce
0:12:50one more of that thing?
0:12:53And so in software, conceptually,
0:12:55your marginal cost of adding one more
0:13:00user to your application is sort of some aggregate of the support
0:13:05costs for them, any bandwidth or server infrastructure costs,
0:13:08those types of things, which are typically fairly low.
0:13:11And so that'll naturally drive the price down.
0:13:15And especially in a market like the App Store,
0:13:17where there is nothing to prevent competitors copying,
0:13:23coming in, building almost exactly or exactly the same application
0:13:27that you did, there are things that perhaps they can't do.
0:13:29from a copyright perspective, that if you created an application with exactly the same
0:13:34logo and UI, you'd have a copyright claim against them.
0:13:37But ultimately, you're in a very, very free and competitive market.
0:13:43And this is just sort of classic capitalism, that that will naturally drive down prices.
0:13:47And rather than fighting that, I tend to just embrace that and have relatively low prices
0:13:52that have thus far had relatively high volumes.
0:13:57And so that's kind of where I've been playing.
0:13:58And I think that's likely where I'm going.
0:14:00And my hope, I think, is likely that I'll
0:14:04be able to offer sync, make the app universal,
0:14:07and see if that makes people happy.
0:14:12And I hope it does.
0:14:13It may not be able to, but I have
0:14:15to finish crunching the numbers to make sure
0:14:16that I'm not totally shooting myself in the foot.
0:14:19But that's kind of where I'm leading.
0:14:21Or at least that's where I'm starting.
0:14:23And then as I head forward into that,
0:14:26I'm going to see if that makes sense.
0:14:28And if not, where can I pull back from that?
0:14:33Anyway, that will at least annoy my users and best just
0:14:36make passionate customers who love and recommend
0:14:39my app to everybody.
0:14:41So anyway, that's it for today's show.
0:14:43If you have any thoughts on that, please let me know.
0:14:45I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.
0:14:48The Twitter feed for this show is devperspective.
0:14:51And that's where you can get updates
0:14:53whenever new shows are linked.
0:14:54As a quick reminder, I'd love it if you could take that survey,
0:14:58developingperspective.com/survey.
0:15:00It should take about five seconds.
0:15:02But otherwise, I hope you have a good week, and happy coding.
0:15:05Bye.