Month: December 2016

Categories
Podcast

Some Favorite Podcasts

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.I thought I’d share some podcasts I’ve been listening to over 2016. Enjoy.

Release Notes: “Release Notes is a weekly podcast about the business of Mac and iOS indie software development. We discuss inspiration, design, trends, and tools — everything but the code. The show is hosted by Charles Perry, owner of Metakite Software, and Joe Cieplinski, Creative Director of Bombing Brain Interactive.”

Charles and Joe are very down to earth. I just finished episode #189: The Tyranny of the Timeclock and I found it very refreshing to hear someone present good reason for their Mac purchasing decisions. Charles laid out a great reason for deciding to go with an older model 15in. MacBook Pro. So well reasoned. Like I said, down to earth. It’s a great listen.

Supertop Podcast: “In episode 11 of the Supertop Podcast we follow up on the Castro 2.2 launch and explore options for increasing Supertop’s revenue.”

Oisín and Pádraig tell it like it is. They don’t sugar coat what’s going on with Super Top, their products, and revenue. While they don’t give exact numbers they do give you enough information to understand how difficult it is to be an Indie developer. On occasion they’ve depressed me so much I’ve had to skip the remainder of the podcast but I managed to hang in there for this episode and I’m glad I did.

Super Top creates high quality, usable, functional, and highly polished software. The very definition of software craftsmanship.

Trumpcast – This started in the run up to the election. If, like me, you don’t care for Trump this podcast is for you. Jacob Weisberg is your host and does a great job covering this wreck of a man. Oh, and the guy that reads Trump tweets as Trump is amazing. It’s worth listening just for that.

Up and Vanished: “‘Up and Vanished’ is an investigative podcast that explores the unsolved disappearance of Georgia beauty queen and high school teacher, Tara Grinstead, an 11-year-old cold case that is the largest case in georgia’s history.”

It’s a definite mystery. I hope they figure it out.

Some Oldies but Goodies

  • The Talkshow – John Gruber’s Podcast. Really long episodes but always worth a listen.
  • Core Intuition – Manton Reese and Daniel Jalkut talk about Indie Development.
  • Accidental Tech Podcast – John Siracusa, Marco Arment, and Casey Liss. Another Mac and iOS discussion show.
  • The Big Web Show – Jeffrey Zeldman, web design legend, is your host and web design is the topic.
Categories
App Store Apple Indie iOS

App Stores

A snowflakeEvery once in a while developers drop interesting nuggets of information on Twitter or their weblogs on the state of Apple App Stores and how they relate to their businesses.

In late November longtime Mac and iOS developer, Panic, announced they would discontinue Status Board.

“First, we had hoped to find a sweet spot between consumer and pro users, but the market for Status Board turned out to be almost entirely pro, which limits potential sales on iOS — as we’ve learned the hard way over the past couple of years, there’s not a lot of overlap right now between “pro” and “iOS”.”

Panic is a shop I look to for direction and inspiration. They build solid, beautiful, easy to use applications. Their ratio of Mac to iOS Apps is pretty interesting. Their main Mac applications; Coda and Transmit, are aimed squarely at professionals. If you look at their remaining iOS applications two are complimentary to their Mac counterparts; Coda and Transmit, and the third, Prompt, is most likely built using code and knowledge gained from their other apps. That is not meant as a criticism. It makes total sense. Coda and Transmit are their big dogs, why not make iOS versions of them? I’m looking forward to Panic’s year end report. The last two have been amazing reads.

This morning as I was scrolling through my Twitter timeline, trying to avoid political talk, I noticed an exchange between Michael Love and David Barnard. As suspected, iPhone is the money maker and iPad is not pulling its weight.

Not long after that exchange I saw a nice tweet from James Thomson, of PCalc fame. It looks like the iOS App Store is his primary source of income.

Depending on the podcast I’m listening to, Core Intuition vs. Accidental Tech Podcast, I’m either excited about the state of the Mac or completely bummed about it. Regardless, it feels like Apple is pushing the iPad toward the Prosumer market and keeping the Mac alive for Professionals, mainly those creating iOS Apps (Hey, we need a platform for creating apps, right?)

Having said all that, I’d still like to take a shot at the Mac software market. I don’t need to make millions, but it would be nice to make hundreds. 😀