The Indie Ocean
My finger-to-the-wind says that apps and services aiming for mainstream consumer appeal, which were already impossibly hard, are only going to get harder in the coming years. There’s too much noise, and attention is fleeting. Any company that hasn’t started by now has already lost.
But on the other hand, iOS is a rapidly-maturing operating system. It’s officially seven years old today. The latest round of iPads and iPhones have practically removed all hardware barriers limiting what software can do.
In other words, while the tides of attention-based, multi-million-dollar startups churn red with the blood of all the contenders, I think there’s a vast blue ocean waiting for independent developers to make prosumer and pro software. I look at an app like Editorial by Ole Zorn and think, “My god, that’s where the rest of us should be going.”
Mass market, VC-funded companies can’t ship those kinds of apps. Apple’s apps will never be all things to all customers, either. But many people are still going to need advanced tools to get through their day-to-day lives. Not just writers, but first grade teachers, speech-language pathologists, youth pastors, session guitarists, ICU nurses — everyone.
I think that success will come to folks who can figure out how to ship “maximum viable products” on day one, without venture funding and without going bankrupt in the process, apps that are carefully designed and built to solve real problems for real people.
Unread App Status Report
The Polar Vortex of 2014 has been a boon for Unread. Icy midwestern weather trapped me indoors and blurred the week into one, uninterrupted, very productive Work Day. I cleared the last must-have feature from the Version 1.0 todo list a few days ago. Only a few stepping stones remain between here and App Store submission. If you have any questions not answered below, feel free to ask me.
Fixes and Polishing
The private beta has been a relief. The testers have sent fantastic notes and bug reports. Most of their concerns are fixed and ready to ship. Fresh eyes are indispensable after you’ve spent six straight months staring at the same screens. The app is on feature lockdown from now on: no new features until after App Store submission. I’m obsessively polishing the smaller details. The best news I can give you is that the testers are really enjoying the app. I hope you will, too.
Feedly Integration
Technically, I’ve integrated Feedly into Unread already, but I only have access to the development sandbox. I’ve requested access to the production environment so that any Feedly user can sign in with Unread. If for some reason Unread is not approved for production access, then I will submit Version 1.0 without Feedly, trying again later. I requested access very recently, however, so I’m confident that Feedly integration will be in the 1.0. This process may end up pushing back the 1.0 several weeks. Unread also works with FeedWrangler (which I use personally) and Feedbin.
App Submission Collateral
I need to assemble the items required by the App Store, the usual bric-a-brac: screenshots, an app description, et cetera. Easy stuff.
Pricing Announcement
I’ve finally chosen a price: Unread will be available at an introductory price of $2.99, for a limited time. I know the tides have turned in favor of freemium pricing models, but those models work best for:
- Apps that connect to their own proprietary services. Unread connects to other companies’ services. There are no server-side features of my own that I could charge for.
- Games with consumable purchases. I could charge you $0.99 cents for every article you read or share, but I don’t think I could stomach the one-star reviews.
I considered using the free-with-pro-upgrade model we use in Riposte, but it doesn’t make sense for an RSS reader. Riposte’s biggest challenge is drawing customers to App.net, which has a much smaller network of users.1 RSS, while not as popular as it once was, is an established medium with plenty of existing users. Hopefully there’s a good number of them who aren’t afraid to spend a few bucks on a new app — especially one that tries very hard to be a fresh take on an old idea.
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App.net also has the Developer Incentive Program, which is a nice bonus. ↩
Lengthen Your Line — Why I Oppose Software Patents
Tonight iA announced that they will drop their controversial patent application for the “Syntax Control” feature of Writer Pro. Upon learning of the surprising good news, I was reminded of an anecdote from Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.
Hyams, a journalist and a devoted martial arts student, compiled the book from unexpected life lessons he learned while on the mat. Despite its short length, it is rich with practical wisdom. It’s not a book about feats of the body, but a work of deep gratitude for the teachers who helped him become a happier person (I cannot recommend this book enough; it’s wonderful).
This is one of my favorite stories:
I will remember one of my initial sessions at [Ken Parker’s] dojo in Los Angeles where I was practising kumite (sparring) with a more skillful opponent. To make up for my lack of knowledge and experience, I tried deceptive, tricky moves that were readily countered. I was outclassed, and Parker watched me get roundly trounced.
When the match was over I was dejected. Parker invited me into his small office; a small sparsely furnished room with only a scarred desk and battered chairs.
"Why are you so upset?" he asked.
"Because I couldn’t score."
Parker got up from behind the desk and with a piece of chalk drew a line on the floor about five feet long.
"How can you make this line shorter?" he asked.
I studied the line and gave him several answers, including cutting the line in many pieces. He shook his head and drew a second line, longer than the first.
"Now how does the first line look?"
"Shorter," I said.
Parker nodded. “It is always better to improve and strengthen your own line or knowledge than to try and cut your opponent’s line.” He accompanied me to the door and added, “Think about what I have just said.”
Software developers: lengthen your line.
Pull-To-Do-Action
Loren Brichter, inventor of the now ubiquitous pull-to-refresh control, interviewed in an article by Fast Company called “Why the Pull-to-Refresh Gesture Must Die”:
Brichter, however, feels that it’s high time his gesture evolves. “The fact that people still call it ‘pull-to-refresh’ bothers me—using it just for refreshing is limiting and makes it obsolete,” he says. “I like the idea of ‘pull-to-do-action.’”
If you like the sound of that, you’re gonna love Unread.
Solving the App Store Discovery Problem with App Playlists and Good Taste
It’s common knowledge that there are too many apps on the App Store, with no reliable way of discovering the good ones. It’s like panning for gold: piled on every hidden gem is a heap of worthless lumps.
Most of the attempts to solve the problem lean on shoddy software algorithms. They’re blunt tools at best, and games for crooks at worst. From “What’s Hot” to the top free/paid/grossing sections, the algorithm-based lists of apps have spawned a cottage industry of companies like TapJoy and AppGratis, which promise to pump up downloads in exchange for thousands of dollars from desperate developers. There’s also the “Genius” recommendation engine, which isn’t vulnerable to app marketing tricks, but in my experience it has never produced a recommendation that matched the quality of a recommendation from a friend with good taste.
Taste is the missing ingredient in App Store discovery thus far. People with good taste, whether in apps or otherwise, nourish their taste by continually looking for things that stretch the boundaries of what they know and like. I don’t know if I have good taste, but I try to. When a friend first played Tom Waits for me, I was still listening to godawful Dave Matthews Band and Korn. I hated Tom Waits. Eventually I learned how to love him. Tom Waits’ work is music about music. When my mind finally snapped into that higher register, my taste expanded. I learned a new way of listening.
Your taste in apps can grow in the same way, but no algorithm can take you there. Only the good taste of a friend can help. This is why the App Store needs “app playlists,” a list of all the apps currently installed on the iOS devices of anyone with an iTunes account — one playlist per account.
Consider the failure that was Ping. Ping’s failure is a lesson to learn, not a fate to repeat. Ping tried to be too many things, worst of all a new social network. It missed the crucial element that could have made it powerful: taste. As my brother pointed out to me, Ping should have been nothing more than a way to snoop through my friends’ album collections, with a buy button next to each one, and a “Buy All“ button at the top. We improve our taste by absorbing the tastes of people whom we admire.
App playlists should be rigorously simple: just a list of apps. Not all the apps ever downloaded, but the apps that a given user currently has installed on their device. The assumption is that if somebody has an app on their device, they probably like it. App playlists should be given top-level priority via their own tab in the App Store. When selected, that tab should contain two main screens: one for recent activity, and one for a list of all the people you follow. When viewing a playlist, you should be able to buy each app individually, or buy them all with a single tap of a “Buy All” button at the top of the screen. The playlist view should look just like the current “Purchased” screen in the Updates tab.
App playlists would succeed where other attempts have failed because they would be effortless. Even the most esoteric high-quality app is downloaded by the developer’s friends and Twitter followers. It would take no extra work for these “promoting” users to share their new discoveries. Simply downloading an app and keeping it would suffice.
There are a number of ways Apple could build the social graph behind this. They could do it the same way they built Game Center, whose popularity is the strongest counterargument to any Ping-hating naysayers. Alternatively, Apple could require linking to a third-party account like App.net or Twitter — App.net is especially poised to back this kind of service, with its powerful, open-ended API. However Apple builds the social graph, it should only be used to keep track of following status. There should be no comments, likes, reposts, or anything of that nature. The problem of App Store discovery is not due to a lack of social media coverage or bad algorithms. The real problem is a failure to empower people to share their good taste.