Whither Liberal Arts? The Missing iPad Story: “There are no stories, and there are no humans. It’s clever yet abstract, remarking upon what has happened, without a vision for what is now possible. That’s the thing about stories: the best storytellers – like Jobs – are so compelling because they have vision. They see what we don’t see, and they can’t be more excited to tell us about just that.

Does Apple still have vision? Yesterday’s presentation did not, and I wonder just how costly last year’s departure might have been.”

(Via stratechery.com.)

Great article, as always, from Ben Thomson. But a couple of things that strike me:

• There were way more products to be announced during this Keynote than there used to be, because the product cycles of so many products have been shifted to October every year. (I still feel like this is a weird strategy, but it seems to be working, so I won’t question it too much.) But having more products to announce necessitates a more rushed pace, I think. Less time to talk story.

• Tim Cook seems to prefer shorter, rather than longer, Keynotes. No parade of third-party demos from unpolished third-party execs or long recaps of past announcements from months ago. Just short updates and recaps, followed by announcement after announcement, machine-gun style. That’s different from Jobs, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There were many occasions during Jobs Keynotes where I wished I could fast-forward through the “boring” parts.

• Cook is much more willing, and maybe anxious even, to hand over the mic to his underlings. I think that’s a great thing. We’re getting to see the Apple execs shine more than ever before. Phil Schiller, who used to be a court jester to Jobs, is now charming and funny in his own right. Federighi and Cue are competing over who can make the most self-deprecating jokes, and it’s all good fun. I think it helps present Apple as a team, rather than a one-man band, and that helps sell the products. It’s part of Apple’s story, if not the story of a particular product, and it does give Apple as a company a more human touch. [1]

• Scott Forstall may have been enthusiastic and emotional, but to me he always came off as completely insincere. Maybe that’s unfair, and I know a lot of Apple nerds will disagree with me. But I always found him to be a terrible presenter. Especially in contrast to Jobs, who was naturally emotional and gifted, it always felt like Forstall was trying too hard. I have massive respect for his work on the original iOS. But I also think Apple Keynotes are way better off without him.

• The Jony Ive situation is what it is. He clearly doesn’t like to be on stage, so Cook, always wanting to show as much of the team as possible, plays too many Ive videos to compensate. I agree, again, with Thompson, that iOS 7 is in many ways less usable than its predecessor. But it’s a work in progress. Those of us who design software for a living figured it would take some time for even a genius like Ive to master it. The hockey puck mouse may be a good analogy, but the hardware has come a long way since then, and Ive’s software design will, too.

• I agree that third-party apps are a huge part of the iPad story. As a developer, it also pained me to have Cook not even mention the names of any of the apps being used in that video. Then again, I can’t say I wanted to watch a parade of developers showing off their apps one after another, either. It almost never played well, the many times Jobs did it. I don’t think Apple cares a whole lot about the developer community at this point, so I think it’s better they don’t pretend they do.

• Cook isn’t as good at Jobs at conveying emotion on stage. His personality is such that when he tries to say something heartfelt and sincere, he just can’t sell it like Jobs could. When Jobs talked about the loftier ideas and how Apple was improving people’s lives, with tears welling in his eyes, we believed him. We sensed his emotion. With Cook, not so much. The few times he’s tried, it came off as prepared and nervous to me. I wasn’t able to connect with him the same way. So personally, I prefer it when he doesn’t try to get emotional. He has vision, but he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

• The most uncomfortable part of any Cook Keynote is the end. The part where we’re expecting him to be Jobs. But Cook will find his own way to wrap up the show, and we’ll learn to let go of that expectation eventually. The rest of the new format is already well on its way to being on target.

No, we’ll never see the presentation panache of a Steve Jobs at Apple as long as Tim Cook is at the helm. But I don’t think that means Apple has lost its vision. Just it’s charismatic co-founder.

1. I can’t wait to see Angela Ahrendts on that stage. While I don’t recall Apple bringing out its Retail SVP to talk during a Keynote in the past, I think Ahrendts would be more than happy to change that. There’s usually a retail update at the beginning of the presentation, anyway, and it sure wouldn’t hurt for Apple to have a woman on that stage, if even for a few minutes. (The number one complaint I get from the women in my life when watching these presentations is “Where are the women?”). And from what I gather, Ahrendts doesn’t have Ive’s stage fright problem, either. So I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see her up there next year.  ↩

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.