Marco.org: “But searching for ‘teleprompter’ in the App Store today brings up about 40 other iPad teleprompter apps. About a third of them are free, and almost none are anywhere near Teleprompt+’s $14.99 price, with most paid alternatives around $3–5. And that’s just for iPad — the iPhone app market is much larger and even more competitive in most app categories.”

(via. marco.org)

Marco had some interesting comments regarding my post from earlier today. I think this quote above is where we’re not seeing eye to eye. He’s assuming that I’m competing with $3-$5 Teleprompter apps. I’m not. The people who want a low-priced, casual teleprompter app for iPad are far fewer than the professionals who need them as part of their studio setup. We’re not only outselling all of those competitors every day in revenue, but also in number of downloads, by a pretty wide margin. What most of those low-cost competitors have learned is that they can’t keep up with us on so little money per sale. We can barely do it at $15, trying to feed three people.

If you look at our page on iTunes, and check out the “Customers Also Bought” section, you’ll see that there are few other teleprompters listed. Most people aren’t even bothering to check out the cheap alternatives before buying our app.

If you look closely at the bulk of those 40ish other competitors, you’ll note that the majority of them haven’t been updated in several months or years. Trying to compete on low price, in this one niche market, is proving to be a poor strategy.

Yes, I understand we’re in a niche. But it’s a profitable niche. And it’s a niche where free with IAP makes little sense at the moment. And there are dozens of other niches just like it.

None of the $3-$5 apps offer the features our users need, because those features take serious time and investment to create. You can’t create that functionality when you’re making $3 per sale.

Of course, there’s no reason someone couldn’t come along and create a free-to-download, $15 IAP teleprompter. But my point is that as long as that app is listed as “free” the pros who tend to buy our app will likely ignore it, or at least be severely turned off by it. And any casual users it does attract will immediately balk at the high $15 IAP, and write us a one-star review while they’re at it. So in our case, I don’t see free with IAP working out, at least not until the stigma of IAP being a scam is eradicated in the minds of small business owners.

Now, at the end of his post, where he says this:

“There are a lot of developers making a lot of iOS apps, and competition is fierce. It’s unwise to assume that any profitable niche is safe from being undercut by free alternatives.”

I completely agree. I certainly don’t expect this one app to continue to grow indefinitely forever. We’re looking into many different strategies for future products. All I’m suggesting is that there are still a lot of ways to make money on the Store. Offering one of them as the “only” way, or saying one pricing strategy is completely “dead” is overstating it a bit.

“Paid-up-front iOS apps had a great run, but it’s over. Time to make other plans.”

(via Marco.org)

This article from Marco Arment on his pricing strategy for the upcoming Overcast app has created quite a stir. I encourage you as an app developer to read it. There are a lot of valid points in it.

I don’t disagree with most of what he wrote. But when I get to a line like the one I just quoted above, I’m reminded of exactly what bothers me about most blog articles from app developers: “This is true for me, so it must be true for everyone and every other app in the universe.” The one-size-fits-all mentality that caused the race to the bottom in the first place continues.

If I were Marco, making a podcast app for iOS, I’d be considering seriously something other than a pay-once-up-front business model. Of course, I’m not going to be making a podcast app anytime soon, because I have no intention of getting into what’s already a crowded and I think pretty well-served market. Nor would I want to compete with his new app by any means. I’m sure it’ll be good, and deservingly successful.

There are many other kinds of apps where moving to this sort of model might make a lot of sense, too. It’s certainly worth careful consideration. But the problem arrives when you assume that all iOS users think and behave alike, and therefore all apps must be monetized similarly.

If we were to convert Teleprompt+ to the free with in-app purchase model, for instance, the three of us at Bombing Brain would be out of business in a couple of weeks.

Our customers are primarily prosumers and pros—people who wouldn’t trust their business to a “free” app. Our high price is a large part of what has made us successful in this market. (Along with years of cultivating a reputation for being better than our competition.) Converting this particular app to free with in-app purchase now would likely be an unmitigated disaster. We know, because there have been free alternatives that have crashed and burned. Hard.

Our target customers, the few who don’t blink at $15-$20 for an iPad app, are completely oblivious to the entire “free” app market. Free = invisible to them when it comes to finding solutions for their businesses.

To be fair, I don’t think Marco is actually suggesting that companies like ours change business models. But I do fear that too many developers read posts like this and walk away with that impression.

The fact is, there is a whole world of untapped potential on the App Store for developers who can solve real problems for people who are happy to pay. I’ve said it a million times, but it bears repeating: it’s not about price; it’s about trust. People are willing to spend money if they are sure what they are getting will solve their problem.

Is it easy to convince people that your app is worth a fair price? Of course not. Does that mean that you should make your app free in hopes of enticing a small percentage of people to convert to “paying” users? Not necessarily. Not for every kind of app, at least.

Giving a limited app away for free and charging to make it feature-complete is, in theory, one way to build trust. But given the reputation in-app purchase has acquired over the past few years, it’s going to take serious convincing before professionals, prosumers, and small business owners view IAP as anything but a scam in the short term. This is unfortunate, but you will be judged by the unscrupulous developers who have abused IAP before you, whether you like it or not. So you’re going to have to work even harder to gain that trust than you might think when associating yourself with this pricing model.

While it is true that the vast majority of iOS users scour the App Store looking for free alternatives, there is a not-insignificant number of users who wouldn’t go near a “free” app with a ten-foot pole. In their minds, free-with-in-app-purchase apps are all essentially Candy Crush.

So the risk is gaining a large number of users who are unlikely to pay you and who will write tons of bad reviews, while completely turning off the most valuable demographic in the Store.

Users looking to pay a premium price may be few and far between, but each one is ten times more valuable than the “average” iOS user to a developer like me.

Then there’s also the bulk of the education market to consider, which can’t, as a matter of policy, use any app with in-app purchase.

The point is, there are lots of different kinds of users in the App Store. And you need to know which ones are the most likely customers for your app. Don’t go treating them all equally.

Marco’s argument is essentially one of market share. He views total number of users as the primary goal. He wants to target as large a percentage of the total iOS user base as possible. That’s a perfectly valid business model that has worked for many. And for a podcast app, I think it’s a smart way to go. But it’s not the only way to skin this cat.

There are millions of iOS users in the world. I only need a tiny fraction of the right users to be successful.

I guess what I’m saying is, take everything you read from other developers (including myself) with a grain of salt. There’s no one way to be successful at this thing. Different apps in different markets, with different audiences, command different business models. You need to think about how you want to monetize your app long before you start building it. Consider all the options carefully. But don’t dismiss any of them out of hand because of what one or two others have experienced.

I’m happy that more devs are experimenting with in-app purchase as a legitimate way to encourage people to “try before they buy.” Look no further than MoneyWell for iPad as a primary example of IAP being used with positive results. Of course, this is an established company with a paid companion Mac app that already has a reputation for quality. Your mileage may vary. And, as Kevin Hoctor himself admits, his preliminary numbers are likely to be skewed for at least a few more months. But maybe in the long run, in-app purchase will gain the trust of users that currently avoid free apps like the plague. I think it’s going to be a long, uphill battle.

I look forward to seeing how other such experiments from other developers go. In the meantime, be cautious with anyone who tells you there’s only one way to go about doing things on the App Store.

Cook, Ive, and Federighi on the New IPhone and Apple’s Once and Future Strategy – Businessweek: “To Cook, the mobile industry doesn’t race to the bottom, it splits. One part does indeed go cheap, with commoditized products that compete on little more than price. ‘There’s always a large junk part of the market,’ he says. ‘We’re not in the junk business.’ The upper end of the industry justifies its higher prices with greater value. ‘There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business.’”

(via. Business Insider)

This quote from Cook describes our philosophy at Bombing Brain to a T. This is why we don’t care about top paid charts, going freemium, or getting more “installs.” We charge a relatively high but fair price for a product that appeals to the second of Cook’s “segments”. People who want to solve a specific problem and are willing to pay to have that problem solved.

I completely understand and respect those in software who want to attack that first segment. There’s a lot more money and potential to strike it rich over there, I’m quite sure. But there’s also a much better chance as a small indie that you’ll get crushed by the billion-dollar venture-backed companies that are dominating that space as well. Mostly, though, it’s just not a business in which I’m interested. I’d rather sell to customers who are more like me, because I understand their motivations and I know how to make them happy.

The dumbest thing you can do in life is assume that there’s one way to succeed at anything. Living your life via stats, following whatever “most” people are doing is a surefire way to die a mediocrity.

When Charles and I started Release Notes, we had one central theme that drove us. This would be a show by independent developers, for independent developers. Not a technical show or a round table of nerd-famous talking heads discussing the latest Apple news. There are already many excellent shows doing that. What we felt we could offer was a glimpse of what it was like to try and make a living on the App Store. It would be a show about the business of app development, from the little guy’s perspective.

And so when the subject of having guests came up, we decided to stay true to that focus. Rather than just inviting the usual suspects of podcast guests (as much as we love listening to them ourselves), we decided that we should also bring on guests who were more like us; small indie developers trying to make a living on the App Store. After all, if people are willing to hear our opinions on these issues week after week, why not have others in the same boat offer their take? Many of us have stories to tell, and many of us have strong opinions. We think our audience will enjoy hearing from other indie devs every now and then.

Traveling around to various conferences over the past few years, both Charles and I have made quite a few friends in the indie dev community. Though we only run into these folks once or twice a year, we quickly become relaxed in conversation with them. We’ve learned a great deal about their struggles and successes. In other words, we have a large pool of guests from which to choose.

And so, this week, the first experiment with bringing on a guest goes live. Shane Crawford of Blue Lighting Labs is a great guy with a very interesting back story. His success in the educational space is testament to the value of perseverance and business savvy. We were lucky to get him to sit down and talk to us. I think you’ll like what he has to say.

This is not to say that we’ll never have any other kinds of guests on the show, or that we won’t continually experiment with other formats. We just feel after this first session with Shane that we’ve found something we really like that works. So we plan to create similar episodes in the future.

You’ll hear from more guests over the coming months. Not on every episode, but maybe once a month or every five weeks or so, we’ll bring on someone else from the indie community. Whenever we can make it work in the schedule and we have someone we want to bring in for opinions. As always, your feedback is appreciated. We make the show for you, so we’d love to know what you think.

I’ve read a few reviews of the new Jobs movie this week, and I have to say now that I’ve seen it, I agree with most of the points made. But I think there’s a bigger problem here that goes beyond the shortcomings of this particular film. I think the whole endeavor of making a two-hour popular movie about Jobs’ life is folly. At least for the time being.

Jobs, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and starring Ashton Kutcher in the title role, isn’t a terrible film. Parts are certainly entertaining, and it must be said that Kutcher does a remarkable “impression” of the man, if not a great portrayal, as wisely pointed out by Philip Michaels. (He even looks like Jobs, though the bearded scenes are more convincing than the clean-shaven.) But the film attempts to paint the life of Steve Jobs in three acts. The early life and founding of Apple, the Macintosh and getting ousted by the board, and finally the triumphant return. And the problem is that Jobs’ actual life story is more of a classical 5-act drama, like a Shakespeare play.

Act I: Early years, including Reed College, LSD, Phone Phreaking, the Palo Alto garage, and the Apple I. Ends with the runaway success of the Apple II and the IPO, which transforms Apple into a much larger company that is spinning out of control.

Act II: Apple becomes a “real” company, with all the management and structure issues that go along with it. Jobs is revealed to have brilliant vision but no political skills and poor personal judgment. Includes the Lisa, the Mac, the hiring of Sculley, and the ousting of Steve by the board. Steve’s arrogance and tendency to trust the wrong people leads to his betrayal and fall.

Act III: The NeXT / Pixar years. Includes an initial period of Jobs not knowing what he wants to do. Then the remarkable story of NeXT, which is essentially a repeat of his failure at Apple (brilliant at product and vision, terrible at keeping a company going). Steve initially continues to believe he had done everything right and the “bozos” had killed everything great about Apple. But this repeat failure at NeXT proves to Steve that it wasn’t just a matter of betrayal that led to the Apple failure. It forces Jobs to look at himself and actually learn something. Pixar is essential here as well, as it’s where Steve learns a great deal about how to work with artists and how to negotiate with media bosses, which is a key component of his later success. Pixar also struggles for several years before taking off with Toy Story. And that almost didn’t happen. Plus, during this time period, Jobs meets Laurene, starts a family, and reconciles with his first daughter. This is the climax of Jobs’ life, and probably the most interesting part of his story, as far as drama goes.

Act IV: The return to Apple, including the selling of NeXT, ousting Amelio, the simplification of the company, and the turnaround to profitability. Key products, iMac, iPod, and the iTunes Music Store. And the beginnings of the Retail strategy, which is another incredible key to understanding Jobs. This is where characters like Jony Ive and Tim Cook start to shine as examples of people Jobs puts into place who are not only A players, but also loyal to his vision. Perfect foils to Sculley and Markkula. With them, he begins to structure the company into something much more powerful than a typical corporation. Jobs uses this part of Steve’s life as an ending, but it’s really just the build up to the real triumph. This is where Steve starts to test his theory that a functional organization with passion for great products can succeed with the right people and structure. But he’s still a long way from proving his vision is correct in the long term. The Mac is still a niche product, and the iPod is a fraction of what happens later with the iPhone.

Act V: The Jobs vision becomes fully triumphant. Having learned to combine his passion and vision with strong management, Jobs leads Apple into becoming one of the most powerful companies in the world. Not only does Apple crush all other computer companies, it also becomes a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. Key events, iPhone, iPad, App Store. We get to see Eric Schmidt betray Jobs with Android, which is a nice call back to the earlier issues he had with Sculley and with Bill Gates during his first tenure at Apple. And that leads to an ill-advised obsession with “killing” Google, which shows that Jobs never got over those early betrayals, and thus remains flawed, like any human. Also, unfortunately, this act would include Jobs’ battle with cancer and eventual death, which while tragic, makes for a perfect, bittersweet ending. Just at his moment of highest triumph, he is taken from us.

Taking a look at Jobs again, the movie spends a bit of time in Act I, the bulk of the time in Act II, inexplicably skips Act III, and ends by giving Act IV short shrift and skipping Act V entirely. It covers the same period of Jobs’ life as the decades-earlier Pirates of Silicon Valley, albeit with more production value, but without nearly as much fun.

Why is Jobs so heavy on the early years and so weak on the later life? One major reason for this is probably the lack of good source material for Acts III, IV, and V. The Isaacson biography makes exactly the same mistake, and that’s the only officially endorsed source we have on the man. Isaacson spends so much time on the early history that he runs out of steam before he gets to the best part of the story. And thus we miss what’s truly important about Steve in both the book and this film. Any filmmaker wanting to tackle this problem is going to be limited by the information currently available, and there is precious little to go on at the moment.

Also conspicuously missing from the Isaacson biography and even more so from this film is any focus on the personal life of Jobs. If you’re making a movie about a person, not just a series of events, you need to have much more insight into his personal life. And that’s going to be very difficult to come by in the case of Steve Jobs.

So then, focusing on the earlier years may be an unfortunate limitation for the time being. Is that such a bad thing? Well, maybe.

It sounds crazy, but the Mac is practically a footnote in the history of Steve Jobs. It was merely one in a long series of examples of great visions carried out by Steve. If it were the only thing Steve had ever accomplished, it would be ten times more than the average person does. But Apple itself is so much more than any one of its products. It would be like making a movie about Walt Disney and only talking about Snow White. Sure, that might make a great story, but it would barely scratch the surface of understanding what Disney actually accomplished in his lifetime.

Could a movie just about the period of the Macintosh be really great? Sure. But that story has already been told, very well, in Andy Hertzfeld’s book Revolution in the Valley. If you want to make a film of that book, do just that, and forget about focusing on Jobs himself. The Mac was a team effort, and its creation is a great story about a group of people with very distinct personalities. I’d love to see that movie.

Also, as mentioned already, this same period was covered by Pirates of the Silicon Valley, which, to be honest, isn’t a terrible film, even if it was made for TV and has a certain cheesy quality to it. Pirates at least can be forgiven for treating Jobs’ life in three acts, as it was made before acts IV and V actually happened. And at least it was smart enough to make Bill Gates the villain. You can’t make a movie about Jobs and the Mac and not make Bill Gates a key character. Jobs barely mentions him.

So, then, can we make the perfect Jobs film, or at least a better Jobs film? Well, if we really do want to cover his whole life, we have a problem. A movie giving proper attention to all five acts would be ten to fifteen hours long, and even Peter Jackson and Oliver Stone aren’t that crazy. The way I see it, you’re better off forgetting the biography and just focusing on one key aspect of Jobs’ life. Not even one full act. Just make a story around a single product launch, like the buildup to the iMac, or the original iPod. Either one of those would make for an awesome movie on its own. I can’t imagine how much drama went on during the design phase of the iPod. The courting of the music industry. Those meetings were likely epic. Or really challenge yourself and tackle Act III, the middle period of Jobs’ life when he was between Apples. There’s tons of great story there. It would be tough to get firsthand source material for all of this, of course, but not impossible. Most of the key players are still alive, and if they’re still refusing to talk out of respect for Steve right now, they may eventually acquiesce and give you some interviews as they get older.

I really think we’ll have better Jobs books and movies thirty or forty years from now.

Otherwise, if you insist on covering the whole life of Jobs, forget doing a movie and call HBO. Because for that, you need a full miniseries, along the lines of HBO’s excellent John Adams. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that ends up happening in a few decades, when we all have more perspective, and there’s been a lot more written about the later years of Jobs’ life.

Meanwhile, I suppose I’ll look forward to Aaron Sorkin’s Jobs movie and hope for the best. With any luck, Sorkin won’t make the same mistakes we’ve seen here.

Or how about a Steve Jobs Opera? Now there’s an art form that’s worthy of this epic tale.