Developing Perspective

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

00:00:06 ◼   ► news of note in iOS, Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm an independent

00:00:10 ◼   ► iOS developer based in Washington, DC. Today is February 15th. It's Wednesday, and this

00:00:17 ◼   ► is show number 34.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right. Today, I'm going to be discussing Clear, which is a new app that just launched

00:00:26 ◼   ► this morning in the App Store and talking through really the two big implications that

00:00:30 ◼   ► I see of this app and kind of what they mean for independent developers in the App Store

00:00:36 ◼   ► at large.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And I think there is something to learn sort of for all of us in this, so it's kind of

00:00:39 ◼   ► cool.

00:00:41 ◼   ► So first off, I'm going to talk a little bit about what Clear is and how it does some things

00:00:46 ◼   ► and how it may change kind of how people think about apps.

00:00:49 ◼   ► And then also just talk a little bit about what its success means for other developers.

00:00:54 ◼   ► So at its core, Clear is a very simple application.

00:00:58 ◼   ► It is a to-do list manager.

00:01:00 ◼   ► There are probably thousands of those in the App Store, wouldn't surprise me.

00:01:06 ◼   ► And that's basically all it does.

00:01:08 ◼   ► It lets you have a collection of lists, those lists, you can add items to the list, you

00:01:14 ◼   ► can cross items off the list, you know, that's really all it is.

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's a very traditional classic to-do list manager.

00:01:23 ◼   ► But it does its user interaction in a very kind of novel way.

00:01:28 ◼   ► It is entirely gesture-based.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Really, the only thing that isn't a gesture, that isn't a gesture in the broad sense, is

00:01:37 ◼   ► that you can tap on a certain number of items to go into things, you know, so those act

00:01:41 ◼   ► like buttons.

00:01:42 ◼   ► But all the rest of your operations are gesture-oriented.

00:01:45 ◼   ► To cross something off, you slide it to the left.

00:01:47 ◼   ► If you want to delete something, you slide it to the right.

00:01:50 ◼   ► If you want to add an item in the bottom, you sort of pinch.

00:01:52 ◼   ► If you want to add something to the top, you slide down.

00:01:55 ◼   ► If you want to flip lists, if you want to clear it, you slide up.

00:01:58 ◼   ► There's all kinds of these cool things.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I'll have a link to the website for it in the show notes for you to look through.

00:02:04 ◼   ► But it's a pretty clever, interesting thing.

00:02:07 ◼   ► For me, what I really like about this application is that it's very clean, it's very simple.

00:02:12 ◼   ► You can tell it was designed thoughtfully and meaningfully, but it isn't doing some

00:02:19 ◼   ► crazy overly skeuomorphic design pattern where it's like "oh this should look like an actual

00:02:26 ◼   ► piece of note paper with a pen that you're writing across it in" and it's entirely...

00:02:32 ◼   ► it reminds me actually a lot of the Metro UI which is what's in Windows Phone 7 in the

00:02:38 ◼   ► sense that it's a very simple, clean, stark, maybe isn't a better word for it, where you

00:02:43 ◼   ► You have just big, large blocks of light colors with a few little garnishes, I guess you could

00:02:51 ◼   ► say, between items and little icons here and there.

00:02:54 ◼   ► But overall, it's very simple.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I think that's good.

00:02:59 ◼   ► I think it's a good response to the overly skeuomorphic view that a lot of people have

00:03:03 ◼   ► had, especially following Apple's lead.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And I think it shows that you don't need to have that kind of a look and feel for an app

00:03:13 ◼   ► to look good and feel good.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Now, I'm not saying it's easy for what they did.

00:03:18 ◼   ► I imagine it took some very talented people a lot of time to make it look like that.

00:03:24 ◼   ► But it's nice to see what you can do with less rather than with more.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So those are the two things that I think are helpful in terms of thinking how that would

00:03:37 ◼   ► may change how you think of applications that you can look at and say, you know,

00:03:40 ◼   ► it's a reminders app, it's a to-do list manager, but they made it really simple-looking,

00:03:47 ◼   ► and that actually worked really well. Okay, and then so the second thing I wanted to talk about,

00:03:53 ◼   ► and this is probably what I'll talk about a little bit longer on today's show, but it'll

00:03:56 ◼   ► probably be a pretty short show, is that it was very encouraging to me this morning that right

00:04:03 ◼   ► now, as of about 9 a.m., clear as the number one app in the App Store.

00:04:07 ◼   ► But that means it's the top paid, you know, it's the number one top paid app.

00:04:13 ◼   ► It is not, let's see, and it comes out in terms of grossing at number nine, as of right

00:04:18 ◼   ► now.

00:04:19 ◼   ► So that's nine hours after it launched, basically, because I think it launched about midnight

00:04:24 ◼   ► in the United States.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And so basically what that means, what that says to me though is, this is an application

00:04:31 ◼   ► that's not one of these, you know, it's not doing anything scammy. It's not using in-app

00:04:38 ◼   ► purchase. It's not freemium and then trying to extract money out of people. It's not built

00:04:45 ◼   ► by some big development house, or it's not EA or someone like that doing something. It's

00:04:54 ◼   ► sort of a big development house, and the guys behind it are pretty well known. But it's

00:04:59 ◼   ► It is a simple app, precisely executed, and therefore, and it has thus far been able to

00:05:06 ◼   ► succeed. And that's incredibly encouraging to me as an independent developer. Every now

00:05:12 ◼   ► and then, I've been kind of recently like, "Oh, man. Is the market, is the app store

00:05:19 ◼   ► kind of going downhill?" There's all these, there's the scam and sort of copycat apps

00:05:29 ◼   ► that have been making the rounds, you know, round and round. There's a couple of sort

00:05:34 ◼   ► of bad stories going around of, you know, user experiences and things of, you know,

00:05:39 ◼   ► the store being overrun, discoverability problems, all these kinds of things. And it's very

00:05:44 ◼   ► encouraging to see, you know, it's a simple app. It does one thing well, and they're doing

00:05:49 ◼   ► very well. You know, they're being number eight and grossing in the store is incredibly,

00:05:53 ◼   ► I don't know exactly how much money that is, but I imagine it is probably more than I make

00:05:58 ◼   ► in a week. So they're doing really well. And that's encouraging to me to think, like, maybe

00:06:04 ◼   ► I could write an app like that, something simple, something impressive, and pay attention

00:06:09 ◼   ► to the details and be rewarded for that. And more power to them. Phil, who's the head of

00:06:16 ◼   ► marketing, I guess, for it, has done a tremendous job on the marketing side of things. It is

00:06:22 ◼   ► It is amazing to see what he did and how he executed that in terms of building up the

00:06:29 ◼   ► hype, building up the anticipation.

00:06:31 ◼   ► You know you're doing it well when I think last week there was a copycat app that was

00:06:34 ◼   ► approved in the store, which is pretty wild.

00:06:38 ◼   ► To think that from when it was preannounced to when it was actually launched, someone

00:06:42 ◼   ► had created a copy of it and put it in the store.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It was ultimately pulled, thankfully, but that's kind of remarkable.

00:06:48 ◼   ► You know you're doing something well with your hype and press machine when a developer

00:06:54 ◼   ► has already ripped you off before you even launched.

00:06:57 ◼   ► So that was pretty interesting.

00:07:00 ◼   ► So that's kind of, I think, sort of my thoughts for this morning.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And just kind of go from there.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I mean, I think it makes me think a little bit about these sort of, I was thinking about

00:07:10 ◼   ► the successes that the TapTapTap guys have.

00:07:13 ◼   ► This isn't a TapTapTap app.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's this new thing called impending, I think, which is a combination of a couple of other

00:07:19 ◼   ► real Mac software.

00:07:20 ◼   ► I guess some of the guys from tap tap tap, I think there's some guys in the icon factory

00:07:25 ◼   ► kind of working together on it.

00:07:26 ◼   ► But I think what is interesting is it.

00:07:31 ◼   ► So many of their apps that have been very successful are very simple in what they do.

00:07:36 ◼   ► And they're sort of recreating built in functionality on the phone.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So things that come to mind is obviously so clear as a to do list, which is currently

00:07:44 ◼   ► available as reminders. And then there's things like CameraPlus, which is just a camera app.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I say just a camera app, not to be dismissive, but that's what it does. I think of something

00:07:55 ◼   ► like, I mean, Tweetbot is a small application that replaces essentially a native application,

00:08:02 ◼   ► the Twitter client. And they have a calculator that did very well and things like that. There's

00:08:09 ◼   ► There's a lot of opportunity, I think, for re-implementing main things, basic apps, you

00:08:14 ◼   ► know, in novel, clean, impressive ways.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And so I think that's encouraging.

00:08:19 ◼   ► So I guess on that sort of encouraging note, I'll wrap this show up.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Like I said, I'm going to have a lot more time to be able to focus on doing podcasts,

00:08:28 ◼   ► so if you have any thoughts, things you want me to elaborate on, to think about, talk about,

00:08:31 ◼   ► I'd love to do that.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Just hit me up on Twitter.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I'm @_davidsmith.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you have a good day.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Happy coding, and I'll talk to you later.