Steven Sinofsky on Why Remote Engineering is So Difficult

I have spent a lot of time trying to manage work so it is successful outside of a single location. I’ve had mixed results and have found only three patterns which are described below.

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The first pattern is good to know, just not scalable or readily reproducible. That is when you have a co-located and functioning team and members need to move away for some reason then remote work can continue pretty much as it has before. This assumes that the nature of the work, the code, the project all continue on a pretty similar path.

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The second pattern that works is when a project is based on externally defined architectural boundaries. In this case little knowledge is required that span the seam between components. What I mean by externally defined is that the API between the major pieces, separated by geography, is immutable and not defined by the team.

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The third pattern that works is that those working remotely have projects that have essentially no short term or long term connection to each other. This is pretty counter-intuitive. It is also why startups are often the first places to see remote work as challenging, simply because most startups only work on things that are connected.

The entire article is worth your time if you’re thinking about building distributed teams.

|  31 Dec 2015




Saving the iPad

What follows is a very brief summary of what I believe are the biggest obstacles holding back the iPad and the App Store, and what I believe Apple can do to improve things.

Three Big Problems

The App Store Strangles Pro Apps at Birth

The App Store is designed, from what it features to what it permits, to promote cheap, shallow, candy apps. It discourages developers from ever starting ambitious apps, both passively and actively. Instead apps are trending towards ever cheaper prices. Serious damage is being done to customer expectations about the value of a piece of software.

The iPad is a Mystery

The iPad was marketed as a third category of device, neither a phone nor a PC, but Apple has never managed to articulate what that third category really is. Instead the iPad has drifted along in the sucking wind the iPhone leaves in its wake. Meanwhile the Mac, which was designed with rigorous intention since its earliest days in the 1980s, is selling at record levels. Let that sink in.

iOS Was Not Designed for Multi-Tasking

iOS user interface paradigms are not suited to using more than one app at a time. iOS was designed almost a decade ago for a phone whose screen is smaller than the gap between the iPad Pro’s app icons. Recent additions like iOS 8’s app extensions or iOS 9’s split-screen multi-tasking are essentially bolted-on, aftermarket parts.

How Apple’s Problems Affect Developers

Because of the three big problems above, developers are confused and disheartened:

Solutions

My proposed solutions are really hand-wavy, because a) this is a blog post, b) my kid has finally fallen asleep and I want to watch something stupid on TV before I fall asleep, and c) these are really hard problems that deserve top-notch thinking. For what they’re worth, here’s what I think Apple should do to improve the iPad’s chances:

Gatekeeper for iOS

Apple should expand the Gatekeeper program to iOS.1 Developers should be allowed to sell Gatekeeper-signed apps directly to customers outside of the App Store.

These apps would be just as secure as apps published on the App Store. I recommend that Gatekeeper iOS apps be subject to the same API restrictions, privacy permissions, and sandboxing as apps distributed on the iOS App Store. Apple would retain the ability to nuke an app at will in the case of a catastrophic breach (which to my knowledge has never happened on the Mac’s Gatekeeper program).

The only difference would be that Apple no longer mediates the developer/customer relationship. Developers would be able to use all of the business techniques that have been practiced by software businesses on the Mac: trial versions, paid upgrades, special licensing, etc.

The point of this is not to use Gatekeeper per se, but to remove Apple as an obstacle to common business practices. No one believes that after all these years Apple will suddenly do everything developers want. It’s more realistic to suggest that Apple simply expand an existing program to another platform, and call it a day.

if developers can’t make money selling iOS productivity apps via Gatekeeper, then their failures can no longer be blamed on Apple.

Position the iPad as a Mac-Killer

Apple is confusing themselves and everyone else by positioning the iPad as a third category of device. No one can figure out what that means, least of all Apple. Instead the iPad should be positioned as an unapologetic replacement for a Mac. The iPad should be to the Mac what the Mac was to the PCs it destroyed. If Apple wants people to strap a hardware keyboard onto their iPad Pro, put it on a desk, and use more than one app at a time, then goddammit that is a replacement for a Mac. Imagine if back in 2009 at the unveiling of the first iPad, Steve Jobs had said something along the lines of, “Why iPad? Well, because we think in a few years you’re not gonna want a Mac anymore.”

Release a “padOS”

The iPad is walking backwards into all the use-cases for which the Mac was designed with deliberate intention from the Mac’s earliest days. But because of Apples bolted-on approach, tacking features onto a decade-old smartphone OS, the result is far removed from Apple’s best work. The design principles of an iPhone simply don’t scale up to an iPad, in the same way that the design principles of an iMac don’t scale up to an Apple TV. The iPad should be rebooted with a set of fresh design principles that are aimed at answering the question: How can a multi-tasking touchscreen device fully replace a Mac? These principles would guide both Apple and third-party developers, and in turn would spur a desire in customers to leave behind a PC for an iPad without looking back.

  1. Credit where credit is due: I first encountered the idea of expanding Gatekeeper to iOS from Pieter Omvlee, founder of Bohemian Coding. ↩

|  14 Nov 2015




Time Zones Version 1.2 Available Today

Version 1.2 of my Time Zones app for iPhone is available today. Here’s what’s new:

Download Time Zones on the App Store.

|  3 Nov 2015




Are You a Workaholic?

A couple of months ago I discovered that I am a work addict. Work-addiction is a real condition that affects many people. Discovering that I am addicted to work helped me to understand some causes of all sorts of problems with my life and marriage. Because work is a necessary part of normal life, and a source of pride for many, work addiction can easily go undiagnosed. If you answer “yes” to a lot of the following questions, you might be a work addict, too. I answered “yes” to nineteen of them.

Twenty Questions: How Do I Know If I’m A Workaholic?

  1. Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else?
  2. Are there times when you can charge through your work and other times when you can’t?
  3. Do you take work with you to bed? On weekends? On vacation?
  4. Is work the activity you like to do best and talk about most?
  5. Do you work more than 40 hours a week?
  6. Do you turn your hobbies into money-making ventures?
  7. Do you take complete responsibility for the outcome of your work efforts?
  8. Have your family or friends given up expecting you on time?
  9. Do you take on extra work because you are concerned that it won’t otherwise get done?
  10. Do you underestimate how long a project will take and then rush to complete it?
  11. Do you believe that it is okay to work long hours if you love what you are doing?
  12. Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?
  13. Are you afraid that if you don’t work hard you will lose your job or be a failure?
  14. Is the future a constant worry for you even when things are going very well?
  15. Do you do things energetically and competitively including play?
  16. Do you get irritated when people ask you to stop doing your work in order to do something else?
  17. Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships?
  18. Do you think about your work while driving, falling asleep or when others are talking?
  19. Do you work or read during meals?
  20. Do you believe that more money will solve the other problems in your life?

Those questions come from this website, which has religious references that creep me out so I don’t offer any guarantees about whether or not you will find help there. I found some of their practical recommendations quite helpful. Pick and choose what seems right for you.

Things That Have Helped Me

|  25 Oct 2015




Back to the Past

Apropos of nothing, here’s a six-years-old post from a defunct version of my blog — apropos of nothing except that today happens to be a special day for Back to the Future fans and this post improbably references Back to the Future.

Note: I’m pretty sure I was taking a required Catholic theology course at the religious school where I studied nursing at the time that I originally wrote this.

So yesterday I posted about depression and it got me thinking about all these Catholic rationalist types, these Summa Everythingus Thomas Aquinas types, folks that erect these enormous systematic edifices and elaborate schemata which (rather like that ridiculous clanking barn-sized contraption from Back to the Future Part Three that Doc Brown builds, the one that whirs and hums all day just to produce PLINK one tiny ice cube) whir and clank and manage only to produce POP obvious no-brainers like “Don’t kill” or “It’s okay to oppose unjust laws.” Who the hell didn’t already know that?! Why waste your time and mine by adding unnecessary supplemental certainty? Instead, why don’t we see more people put their analytic powers to work solving life’s real conundrums, like, say, is foolish consistency curable? Or how is it that picky eaters ever manage to try new foods and can it happen more often? Basically, how is it that people change and is it possible for me in particular to change for the better? Analytic skills are only appropriate for practical issues. When analysis goes hounding after the infinite and the hidden and the elusive mysteries of life, it only ends up finding itself. But don’t try telling that to such a person. He won’t hear you. Such are his clunky powers of analysis.

|  20 Oct 2015