Author: Rob Fahrni

Husband / Father / Developer

Categories
Apple

Used Apples

That Watch looks great on your wrist.9to5Mac: “Lee is a server at a restaurant. He considers himself a trendy guy and is looking for something that will look great while he’s working and when he’s out with friends. He’s interested in the Apple Watch collection and has narrowed his choices to these favorites:”

I love Apple. I feel I have to get that out of the way because I’m not happy seeing these personas, if they’re real (they may not be.) It’s obvious whoever created the Lee persona doesn’t have a clue how much a server at a restaurant makes. Lee may have great tastes, but his tastes outweigh his salary. Maybe Apple will have its own financing?

Here’s a guy that most likely makes less than $1000.00 a month and an Apple employee is going to encourage him to purchase the most expensive version of Apple Watch? This feels irresponsible.

I’m not sure how Apple Retail employees are trained. Maybe they’re taught to upsell every product in the store? “Hey, Bob, I think that 6 Plus looks swell in your gigantic man hands.” It could happen, right?

I’d love to hear from someone in Apple Retail. Does Apple train you to upsell the entire product line, or is this unique to the Watch?

Categories
Business Visio

Ted Johnson’s Visio Recollections

The original Visio, four shapes, logo and application icon.Ted Johnson’s Visio Corporation Info: “In just over two years, we had started a company, built a team, raised two rounds of venture funding, designed, built, tested, documented, and taken-to-market the last highly-successful commercial desktop application.”

Great backstory on the inspiration for, and the creation of, Visio 1.0. Two years is all it took to create the first release.

Definitely software’s golden age.

Categories
Development

Team vs. Tools

objc.io [Brent Simmons]: “It almost doesn’t matter what the details are — how we’re organized, what we use for source control management, and so on — because a great culture makes for a happy team that will figure out how to work together. And Omni has done a great job with that.”

Omni is one of the class acts in all of software. They’ve created a culture of greatness. If you didn’t know Omni has been doing Cocoa since before it was Cocoa. They started off writing code for NeXT boxes long ago. Their suite of productivity tools for Mac and iOS are unmatched. 

If you have the opportunity go listen to The Record #6 – Tim Woods (hosted by Chris Parrish and Brent Simmons, listen to the entire series, it’s really great.) This episode will give you a bit of Omni history. 

It’s all about the team in the end, not the tools.

Categories
Business

Rich Athletes

The Baltimore Sun: “Despite Smith’s stated desire to remain with the Ravens, the team is just $4.639 million under the salary cap and couldn’t match what he’ll make as a free agent. In addition to the 49ers, Smith has been linked to several teams, including the Oakland Raiders, Houston Texans, Carolina Panthers and Kansas City Chiefs.”

I don’t understand rich people. This probably explains why I’m not filthy rich. Here we have a mega wealthy athlete, making millions of dollars annually to play a game, and he’s balking at the idea of $4 million a year. Wow, that’s a crap ton of money. If he really wanted to stay in Baltimore he would renegotiate his contract and accept less money, right?

“I’d like to stay in Baltimore” is code for this team better find a way to pay me what I want, or I’m bouncing, he doesn’t really want to stay, or he would.

Categories
Business

Crossy Road

Polygon: “Once you realize you don’t have to hunt whales, and you can make money in this way, then hopefully people will give it a shot, and we’ll get lots of cool stuff on the app store,” he says.”

These guys made $10 million in 90 days, and they did it without using the scummy formula used by a lot of popular games today. They made a fun to play game that included In-App Purchase, but you didn’t have to buy stuff to get ahead, you could buy characters because you wanted them. That’s it.

I hope we see more and more apps move toward this model.

Categories
Uncategorized

Apple Watch Price Predictions

Daring Fireball: “Apple Watch Edition, Gold Link Bracelet: $17,999/$19,999“

The entire piece is worth reading. 

Now I don’t feel so bad thinking the Edition would run 20k.

Categories
Uncategorized

Disrupting Movie Theatres

NPR: “So the streaming service plans to release the film in theaters and online at the same time, an emerging strategy in the industry. But some major theater chains are not playing along: AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike have refused to screen it.”

It looks like Netflix is making a full out assault on a couple fronts; Cable and Movie Theatres. 

The theatres better get their act together or they’ll be declaring bankruptcy. Forward thinking movie theatres, like Alamo Drafthouse, won’t be afraid to welcome ideas like this.

Categories
Apple Life

A $349 Watch? You’re Rich.

Tech Crunch: “And that is the target market of the Apple Watch. Not “rich people” (though there’s a model specially for them), not “tech geeks” and not “Apple fanatics.” It’s people who want more time, and that is a very large target.”

Face it. If you can spend $349.00 on a watch, you are rich.

Categories
Life

Spring in the San Joaquin Valley



All of Kim’s roses are really happy.

This is a Cherry Plum tree in our backyard. I’ve been sitting next to it most of the afternoon. Yes, I’m coding.



The freesias are blooming. So fragrant.

Categories
Business Indie

Vesper Pricing

A wonderful bouquet of flowers.Q Branch: “Now that Vesper supports all iOS device layouts, we’re raising the regular price for the app to $9.99. With fast, reliable, unlimited sync, we think that’s a great value.“

I think the idea of a sustainable business is the right way to look at this, but pricing an app at $9.99 isn’t the proper solution. The proper solution is to charge for their “fast, reliable, unlimited sync.” That’s the value, the app is just a way to get to your data.

The idea of apps is wrong footed, it’s about services. Mobile and Web are the two important clients in that equation. Sure, having a native Mac app would be fantastic, but Web is a better choice to spend your time on, especially for a note taking application.

Here’s an example; Evernote. The value of Evernote is the ability to not only take notes, but get to them from Mobile and Web. We pay for the backend service to keep our data secure and easily accessible. At $45 per year it’s a real deal.

A better play for apps like Vesper is an annual subscription service.