TextExpander, a long-time utility for Mac and iOS, switched its pricing to a subscription service this week. Of course I have thoughts. I’m a long-time supporter of subscription pricing. Subscriptions are going to be the primary way we pay for productivity apps eventually. It’s going to happen. It has to happen. Upgrade pricing has been rejected by most consumers[1], and many businesses tend to prefer the predictable monthly costs of a subscription. As Adobe and Microsoft have shown, subscriptions may be a hard sell at first, but…

Airplane Mode’s first music video goes live today. I can’t even express how much fun this was to make. Nor can I express my gratitude for everyone involved in the process. I’ll have more to say on the Airplane Mode blog later. Dave has written a wonderful piece about putting the video together from his perspective. In the meantime, enjoy the video. And if you’re in NYC tonight, come to Subject LES for our release party at 7pm. And don’t miss our podcast episode about…

As I listened to 14 different people tell me about their Apple Watch, I observed a pattern. Those whose job it was to think about the Apple Watch or who were early adopters who thought deeply about tech and the tech products they buy, were all much more critical of the watch. You could tell they evaluated it and thought about it deeply from every angle by their responses. Then I talked with teachers, firefighters, insurance agents, and those not in the tech industry and not hard-core techies. These groups…

Given the attention it started to receive it also became the target of a slew of copycat applications (my thoughts on which I discussed then on Developing Perspective). I wanted to try and make sure that I stayed ahead of these so I began working on another major update to the application that was a bit more thoughtful than the rush-job I’d done for v1.1. via david-smith.org This article from Underscore David Smith makes me so happy for so many reasons. Pedometer++ is an awesome app, and…

I know I said a few months back that investing too much time in developing Apple Watch apps might not be the best thing for an indie with limited resources, given that we can’t charge for this extra functionality. However, once I saw what my Bombing Brain teammate Tim had done for our app Teleprompt+ on Apple Watch in just a few days, I figured I’d give it a try with Fin, just to get started. Maybe I’d have something that I could ship by summer, right?…