Developing Perspective

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

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

00:00:09 ◼   ► iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia. Today is Wednesday, May 9th, and this is show

00:00:15 ◼   ► number 43. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:20 ◼   ► All right, for today's show, I'm going to be talking about sort of maybe a sadder part

00:00:26 ◼   ► of the App Store and the app process. Certainly one that is not as fun or as joy-filled as

00:00:33 ◼   ► many of the other things that I talk about. Specifically today I'm going to talk about

00:00:39 ◼   ► being disappointed by the process and how you work through that and how to embrace that

00:00:46 ◼   ► in some ways. So specifically this is related to yesterday. I was expecting audiobooks to

00:00:53 ◼   ► reviewed this big update that I've been working on for probably about three or four months

00:00:57 ◼   ► and it was. You know, it seems Apple's getting pretty consistent about

00:01:01 ◼   ► its right around seven days kind of review cycle and so I was kind of expecting

00:01:05 ◼   ► sometime either yesterday or maybe today at the latest it would have been reviewed

00:01:09 ◼   ► hopefully approved and into the store, big launch, etc.

00:01:13 ◼   ► And yesterday it was reviewed

00:01:17 ◼   ► and kind of a funny thing happened. So audiobooks has a free version and it has a

00:01:21 ◼   ► paid version. The free version is ad supported, the paid version is 99 cents. And one of them

00:01:28 ◼   ► was approved and the other one wasn't. And the other one, it's not that it was rejected,

00:01:32 ◼   ► it was just, "It'll take more time." Which is kind of a weird message you get from the

00:01:36 ◼   ► app review process and you're just kind of like, "Okay, well I don't really know what

00:01:40 ◼   ► to do with that. It wasn't rejected, so there's nothing for me to fix." It's not like, "Oh,

00:01:46 ◼   ► the app is rejected because you did XYZ." It's just, "Well, it's going to take some

00:01:49 ◼   ► more time. And as a developer that's kind of frustrating.

00:01:53 ◼   ► You know, this is something I've been working on for months and months and months.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I was all excited, I had my promotional stuff ready, I'm kind of all ready to go

00:02:01 ◼   ► and I was like, "Oh, actually never mind. You know, just sort of

00:02:05 ◼   ► you're just going to have to wait. I have no idea how long this will take or whatever

00:02:09 ◼   ► but you know, that's just kind of what happened." And this isn't the

00:02:13 ◼   ► first time this kind of thing has ever happened to me. It's, you know, I've been doing this for about

00:02:17 ◼   ► half years and I've had probably about every sort of hiccup, delay or challenge happen

00:02:22 ◼   ► that could happen.

00:02:23 ◼   ► I've had apps pulled from the store, I've had apps rejected outright, I've had major

00:02:27 ◼   ► updates that say "oh you can't do that", you know all kinds of things.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And I think maybe it's a maturity thing, maybe it's just an experience thing, at this point

00:02:38 ◼   ► I'm just kind of used to that and I'm okay with it.

00:02:43 ◼   ► It certainly is... it would be great if every update I ever submitted was just approved

00:02:48 ◼   ► and was approved on a repeatable known schedule.

00:02:53 ◼   ► I submit it on a Friday, it'll be approved by next Wednesday or something like that,

00:02:58 ◼   ► but that's just not realistic.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And I've talked about this a little bit this morning, so if you've read that, this is kind

00:03:04 ◼   ► of hopefully more just to add some color to that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► But the thing about being an app developer is you can prepare, and your job in many ways

00:03:14 ◼   ► is to prepare and to prepare and to make all the, sort of get everything in line and make

00:03:18 ◼   ► all your plans and preparations, but you can never actually really plan on something.

00:03:23 ◼   ► You can't say, "Well, okay, I'm gonna do, you know, it's like I'm gonna launch on this

00:03:28 ◼   ► particular day."

00:03:30 ◼   ► You can kind of guess.

00:03:31 ◼   ► You can kind of, you know, it's like when I've worked with clients in the past, they're

00:03:34 ◼   ► like, "Oh, we want to be in by..."

00:03:36 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I want to be in the App Store by June 1st. So I'll say, "Okay, well we're going to need to submit by May 1st."

00:03:43 ◼   ► In the hopes that over a month we'll be able to get any hiccups or delays worked out.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And you kind of just get used to this. That you don't have control over that process.

00:03:54 ◼   ► That Apple is a gatekeeper and as well they should be.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And by doing what they're doing, they're ultimately sort of making my life better.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And this is kind of one of those things that I think you can kind of take two ways about

00:04:06 ◼   ► it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And one of them is sort of constructive and positive and will make you sane.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And the other way will kind of just make you sad.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And so sort of the sad way is when you think, "Oh man, Apple is doing this, that, or the

00:04:18 ◼   ► other.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Oh man, what are they doing?

00:04:20 ◼   ► My app's fine.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Why isn't it just approved?"

00:04:22 ◼   ► And you can kind of get, you know, just sort of depressed about it.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And I've seen a lot of developers kind of head down that road.

00:04:29 ◼   ► they just kind of get mad when the app review process doesn't go how they like or they start

00:04:34 ◼   ► complaining about it and it's like, "Oh, Apple's stifling innovation. Apple's doing this and

00:04:39 ◼   ► the other."

00:04:40 ◼   ► And it's like, I've so rarely seen anything that I'd say where that's the case. I mean,

00:04:45 ◼   ► there are policy questions that you could sort of talk about, you could debate about

00:04:49 ◼   ► and say, "Well, is that best for customers? Is that best for developers?" But by and large,

00:04:54 ◼   ► I've never seen anything that I think didn't make sense if you look at it through the lens

00:04:59 ◼   ► of Apple's goal is to protect the end users and the customers from bad, nefarious, and

00:05:10 ◼   ► just sort of negative experiences in the App Store.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I think their goal, you could say, is simply to make the App Store the safest and best

00:05:18 ◼   ► place to get software for a smartphone, period.

00:05:23 ◼   ► If you look at it from that perspective, I think they do a great job of that.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I think they don't do a perfect job, they don't do it every single time in a perfect

00:05:31 ◼   ► way, but they do it very consistently.

00:05:34 ◼   ► And I have experience working on other platforms that don't have a review process, for example

00:05:39 ◼   ► on Android Market.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And when I first started out there, it's like, "Oh, this is great."

00:05:44 ◼   ► Whenever it's ready, I hit submit and it's in the store.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I remember that was crazy.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I think I was on an instant message conversation with one of my developers at the time, getting

00:05:54 ◼   ► getting ready to launch our app. He was doing the actual submission in Android Marketplace

00:06:00 ◼   ► and it's like, you know, he's like, "Oh, submitted. I open up, you know, Android Market on my

00:06:06 ◼   ► testing device and there it is." It was instantaneous and that was like, "Oh, this is awesome. This

00:06:11 ◼   ► is great. You know, I can plan around this. I can make, you know, I know exactly what's

00:06:17 ◼   ► going to happen." But my experience beyond that in Android Market is just that creates

00:06:23 ◼   ► just a horrible experience for the users because anything can get in and things get pulled

00:06:30 ◼   ► but and things only get pulled after a certain number of users have had a horrible experience

00:06:36 ◼   ► and so those users are probably going to be much more sort of disinclined to download

00:06:43 ◼   ► apps to you know get new things to play the sort of to play around in the app store because

00:06:48 ◼   ► they got burned. And fair enough, you got millions and millions of users, but if that

00:06:54 ◼   ► experience continues and continues and continues, there's a point at which there's just not

00:06:59 ◼   ► as much of a viable market, and you end up in a place like with Android Market where

00:07:03 ◼   ► all these users just aren't going to be downloading apps, especially not ones that they pay for.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And so you're going to say, "Okay, well, they'll only ever get free stuff, because, well, what

00:07:12 ◼   ► have they lost then? Just a little bit of time." And so these are just kind of, you

00:07:16 ◼   ► know, that's the cost of having this great place where we can make this living. And as

00:07:22 ◼   ► a developer, you just have to be patient. You just have to kind of expect this, not

00:07:27 ◼   ► in a way that you want to kind of be fatalistic about it, but you want to be, you sort of

00:07:32 ◼   ► expect that things will not go as you would potentially like them to go, as your hopes

00:07:39 ◼   ► and dreams or just expectations would be, that you can just be realistic and say, you

00:07:45 ◼   ► know, is what I'm doing something that is pushing a boundary? Is what I'm doing is something

00:07:51 ◼   ► that is complicated? Is what I'm doing something that, you know, is trying, is playing in a

00:07:58 ◼   ► gray area? And most often I know with, with sort of typically developers, you know, there

00:08:04 ◼   ► are certainly stories that are counter to this, but most often developers who get apps

00:08:07 ◼   ► rejected or who get things delayed or pushed around, have some expectation that what they're

00:08:15 ◼   ► doing is not dubious in a nefarious way, but is pushing a boundary or doing something in

00:08:22 ◼   ► a way that they're trying to test a limit. They're kind of seeing where that boundary

00:08:27 ◼   ► is because they see, well, sort of the biggest profits, the most money I can make is at that

00:08:32 ◼   ► boundary.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Because if mine's the app that does this thing to the max, then I'm able to make more and

00:08:38 ◼   ► more money from that.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Which you kind of know going into it.

00:08:41 ◼   ► I mean, I'm thinking, reminded of, I think, Launch Center, which is David Bernard's app

00:08:47 ◼   ► that he was launching, trying to launch before Christmas.

00:08:50 ◼   ► And he was doing something which was essentially making the notification center into a place

00:08:56 ◼   ► that you could launch tasks from.

00:08:59 ◼   ► which is kind of, you know, it's just clever and interesting and novel and an interesting use of some of the new APIs in iOS 5.

00:09:04 ◼   ► But it's definitely something where you're kind of pushing a limit and you're pushing a boundary.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And, you know, it's like one of his competitors' apps got approved, but his didn't, and, you know, kind of went round and round.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And he ended up, he pulled it out, and then, you know, so it was rejected, and then he changed some of the functionality

00:09:19 ◼   ► so it was more of a basic launcher. And, you know, it's like that's frustrating as a developer.

00:09:24 ◼   ► as a developer, that's kind of infuriating sometimes. But more often than not, if you

00:09:29 ◼   ► know, if you're trying to make your money from that, from testing a boundary, from pushing

00:09:35 ◼   ► something, you just kind of expect it. I mean, audiobooks, my guess is the challenge is something

00:09:40 ◼   ► around in-app purchase, because I do something with in-app purchase in audiobooks that I

00:09:44 ◼   ► don't think a lot of apps do. I think audiobooks right now has about 850 in-app purchases.

00:09:48 ◼   ► It has a lot of in-app purchases. It has a lot of content that you can upgrade and you

00:09:52 ◼   ► buying as professional audio books and all these things that

00:09:56 ◼   ► i don't think a lot of people do and so is kind of used to the fact that okay

00:09:59 ◼   ► that's going to be tricky that a lot of people

00:10:03 ◼   ► or that apples can when look at that more closely because

00:10:06 ◼   ► there's eight hundred and fifty opportunities for someone for me to ask

00:10:09 ◼   ► someone for money in a way that

00:10:11 ◼   ► uh... means you know skirt a policy or

00:10:13 ◼   ► you treat something in a way

00:10:15 ◼   ► and i've been as a result of that i'm also very careful about what i do

00:10:18 ◼   ► you know i

00:10:20 ◼   ► I've read through those in-app purchasing guidelines so many times to make sure there's

00:10:24 ◼   ► nothing I'm doing that is against that.

00:10:28 ◼   ► But that is what it is.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So "Out of Your Books" is in limbo for, who knows, a couple of days, a couple of weeks,

00:10:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And so that's going to lead me into the last little topic for the show, and that's kind

00:10:42 ◼   ► of what do you do about this?

00:10:43 ◼   ► How do you deal with this?

00:10:45 ◼   ► And the way that I've been, especially if this is your living, if this is how you make

00:10:49 ◼   ► your money, it's kind of an important thing that you can have some dependability, some

00:10:53 ◼   ► planning, even if you can't make proper plans and say, "Oh, I'm going to launch on day X."

00:10:58 ◼   ► You want to be able to sort of manage this uncertainty and a little bit of anxiety you

00:11:04 ◼   ► have. And what I've done for that is to diversify, has been the way that I've been able to manage

00:11:10 ◼   ► that most effectively, where I have a large variety of apps in the App Store that I make

00:11:16 ◼   ► my living from. And only really two of them are making me, you know, two apps make the

00:11:22 ◼   ► vast majority of my income, my recipe book and audiobooks. But the rest of my apps, I

00:11:27 ◼   ► have a lot of little apps that make me a little bit of money. And in aggregate, having ten

00:11:31 ◼   ► apps that make you five dollars a day, you know, makes you fifty dollars a day, which

00:11:36 ◼   ► is enough to kind of, you know, smooth out some of these bumps that, you know, otherwise,

00:11:44 ◼   ► know

00:11:45 ◼   ► pretty very detrimental was often people who seem exasperated and

00:11:48 ◼   ► sort of challenges when you're kind of

00:11:50 ◼   ► if you put all your eggs in one basket

00:11:52 ◼   ► and then that has to get stuck in turn you know server view limbo

00:11:56 ◼   ► it's gonna be a little awkward that's going to be difficult and he's i think

00:11:58 ◼   ► of what happened with readability

00:12:00 ◼   ► uh... kind of immunity

00:12:02 ◼   ► aside from all but the crew the other things that happened with them

00:12:05 ◼   ► the

00:12:06 ◼   ► when they reserve visit you know when they work in this after working this

00:12:08 ◼   ► app

00:12:09 ◼   ► they approved a submitted it and it got rejected went back and forth back and

00:12:12 ◼   ► forth

00:12:13 ◼   ► and i mean i imagine a huge amount of money was burned on that process

00:12:17 ◼   ► that

00:12:19 ◼   ► you know they're never going to get back that

00:12:22 ◼   ► is difficult because of kind of it's like well that's their thing that's

00:12:26 ◼   ► their one half

00:12:27 ◼   ► and you know it's fair enough they're not an independent and so they're you

00:12:31 ◼   ► know

00:12:32 ◼   ► they make their money in a different way than i do but

00:12:34 ◼   ► i can't

00:12:37 ◼   ► afford to have my main bread and butter

00:12:39 ◼   ► apps or

00:12:41 ◼   ► sort of where I'm getting my money from just unavailable.

00:12:44 ◼   ► So I've just diversified.

00:12:46 ◼   ► I mean, you just kind of think of different things

00:12:48 ◼   ► that you can do to kind of diversify your process,

00:12:51 ◼   ► make somewhat you kind of end up in a place

00:12:53 ◼   ► where you make smaller investments.

00:12:55 ◼   ► So rather than making one app that took me a year to do,

00:12:59 ◼   ► I'm making smaller apps that maybe took a month,

00:13:05 ◼   ► maybe took two months to make, that helped

00:13:09 ◼   ► me learn new APIs and frameworks and things, which is just sort of good for my personal

00:13:13 ◼   ► development, and then I put them in the store and I make a little money from them. And that

00:13:17 ◼   ► smooths out these little bumps that are just inevitable. And as soon as you can kind of

00:13:21 ◼   ► just accept that that's inevitable and that this is part of the process, it's great when

00:13:25 ◼   ► you're pleasantly surprised and, you know, I submit something and it's approved a day

00:13:29 ◼   ► later and it's great. But, you know, these things where these problems are going to happen,

00:13:33 ◼   ► these hiccups, and you just kind of accept, move on, and, you know, don't get too wrapped

00:13:38 ◼   ► up and romped around the axle about it. Alright, that's today's show. I hope you enjoyed it,

00:13:43 ◼   ► I hope it's helpful and useful. I've made almost every mistake or had every problem

00:13:47 ◼   ► that could happen in the App Store. So if you have any other questions, thoughts, things

00:13:51 ◼   ► that you've run into or things that you're worried about in the App Store, certainly,

00:13:53 ◼   ► you know, by all means hit me up with a question and I'd be happy to kind of address it here.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I've probably made every mistake. The only area of the App Store I don't know much about

00:14:01 ◼   ► is games. So anything that's not game-related, I could probably speak with some authority.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And as always, if you want to hit me up with comments, questions, concerns, I'm on Twitter

00:14:10 ◼   ► @_davidsmith.

00:14:16 ◼   ► You can read my blog at david-smith.org.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And I just wanted to let you guys know that I've created a Twitter feed for the podcast.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So that's Dev Perspective, D-E-V Perspective.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is just too long for a Twitter username.

00:14:32 ◼   ► But essentially it's just the RSS feed for the podcast posted in Twitter, if that's how

00:14:37 ◼   ► you prefer to kind of be aware of when new episodes are available.

00:14:40 ◼   ► So I just wanted to let you know about that.

00:14:42 ◼   ► But otherwise, if you have a good week, I hope you write some good code.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Happy coding, and I will talk to you later.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Bye.

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