When iterative development goes wrong - the new Digg.com

Iteration.It is, in many ways, the lifeblood of software development.  It tends to be understood these days that, once you release a product, your next step is to start working on version 2 immediately.  The goal is usually to take what you've done, see what's working and what's not, learn from it, and iterate.  Take out the stuff people don't like, add in new stuff that they will.  This doesn't happen only in software either.  The iPhone is a great example of iterative development.  Each new iPhone has added things to the equation driving people to a new version.  Even if they were happy with the one they have, the new iteration often has enough value to convince people to upgrade.

It is rare but possible that the "next iteration" could abandon a current product for something better, but completely different.  Apple has done this many times with varying degrees of success.  The example of success came when, at the height of it's popularity, they end-of-lifed the iPod mini only to replace it with the iPod nano.  The new version was, at it's heart, still a small iPod but the form factor changed (it got thinner and lighter) and the internal tech also changed (it went from a mini hard disc drive to flash memory).  It was a resounding success, but a step many in the tech world would have been afraid to try.

The less-than-successful example was iMovie '08.  After bringing dead simple home movie editing to the masses with the timeline based iMovie, and iterating it for several popular versions, Apple chose to move consumer video editing to a completely different paradigm.  I'm not going to discuss the merits of the new approach (I hated it with a passion at first) but the fallout was a perfect example of what happens when you rock the boat just a bit too much.  The people revolted and apple was forced to keep iMovie 6 available as a download to appease those who just didn't dig the new paradigm.

So into which of these examples does the new Digg.com fall?  If you ask me (and a lot of other people) it falls squarely into the latter.  Digg is trying to remake itself into a "social news" site, and while that may be a nobel goal for Digg as a company, the problem is that they are doing it at the expense of what Digg truly is - a crowdsourced news aggregation service.  While there are, I'm sure, a lot of users who will gravitate to the new features like following the Diggs of friends (I have none on Digg) or following certain news sources (I don't), it shocks me that Digg has so completely misread it's core functionality.  But more important than misreading it, they've apparently abandoned it.

Here's how I used Digg-

• first thing in the morning, load Digg.com
• scan down the page, looking for articles that interest me
• middle click to open links in background tabs
• arrive at headlines I've already seen several pages in
• start reading the articles in the tabs
• once done, head back to the front page to see if anything new has come along
• repeat throughout the day.

This use case is, unfortunately, no longer a viable way to use the service.  For one, the new web 2.0, "load the next page below the current page" makes the entire site essentially one big page.  How do I get to page 4 quickly without loading pages 1-3 first?  you can't.  For two, there seem to be far fewer, and far less interesting stories making to the front page now, which is, BTW, no longer the front page. If you are logged in, the front page is actually your new social news page. Confused yet?  I am.  What was a useful tool for quickly finding the latest "popular" news is now apparently a tool about popularity that might contain news.  Maybe.

So what does a company do when the iterative process goes so wrong?  From the Apple example, maybe digg will come around in the next week or so and offer a way to switch the view you get when logged in, allowing users to "just read the news" which is all I really want.  However, since the news that appears on Digg is user driven, the ultimate danger is that this disruptive moment has driven enough users away that the new Digg can never become what the old Digg was.

I won't begin to speculate as to what research was done before making such a big transition.  I also don't fault Digg for trying something new.  Innovation is a great thing.  But if ebay closed up shop tomorrow and reopened as myspace, users would be generally confused.  The problem comes from abandoning the core function to attempt to create a new core.  If the risk pays off, you can be selling iPod nanos.  If it doesn't, you're stuck with iMovie '08.

So how's reddit doing?

StyleAssist now $2.99 - for better or worse

As StyleAssist approached release, we were tasked with the unenviable job of trying to find the right price point.  We live in a strange economy on the app store.  The vast majority of apps are sold for under five dollars, but there are success stories at $20, $50 and $100 price points.  So how does one determine what to charge for software in the app world?The democratization of software development has brought with it an era of 250,000+ apps available and SEVERE price competition.  Looking for an app to manage your to-dos?  What do you want to pay?  There are innumerable free options on the low end, probably more than 50 in the ¢99 - $4.99 range in the middle and then options like Things at $9.99 (or $19.99 for iPad).

But the most important question anyone should ask when clicking the "Buy App" button is not "is this the cheapest" or even "is this the best app for what I want to do".  The question to ask is - do I want this company to be around next year?  While there may currently be almost 300,000 apps available, how many of those are still supported?  How many are still in active development?  How many of the companies that made them are even still in the business?  While the era of the app has brought with it the era of "functionality nuggets", it will hopefully not also herald the end of software development as a viable business strategy.  "Vote with your wallet" isn't just a platitude.

We released StyleAssist at $4.99 and the thud heard in the app store would be legendary, if it weren't so typical.  In the grand scheme of things, how much is $5 really?  Especially when one considers that upgrades are free for life!  I had a meeting this week to discuss the future of StyleAssist and the two cups of coffee sitting on the table cost more than a single copy of the app.  I pointed this out when my colleague mentioned the difficulty of convincing someone that $4.99 wasn't too high a price.

But since the inception of the app store, there has been a consistent drive to the bottom.  As a result, the app buyers of the world have been conditioned to expect free or ¢99 apps that can do anything they want.  When we arrived at $4.99, we were trying to balance the desire for sales against wanting to fund the next round of development for StyleAssist.  It looks like we missed the mark a bit.  So we've done what lots of app developers do in this situation, we've dropped the price.

This is not a sale or a promotion.  We've decided that we overshot our value proposition and have adjusted our expectations accordingly.  The most exciting thing about being in the mobile software space is being a part of a new and developing industry.  And it's a constant learning experience.  The hope now is that we don't learn ourselves out of business.

Legal and in the wild, on the current iDevice Jailbreak

So the web is all abuzz today as a a new jailbreak has been officially released that allows ALL (according to what I've read) iDevices to be jailbroken with a simple trip to a website.  And following the DMCA rule changes handed down last week, the legality of iPhone jail breaking is no longer grey but pretty black and white.When I first jumped on the iDevice bandwagon a few years back with a first gen iPod touch, I did the jailbreak just to see what was out there.  At the time, there wasn't much that interested me and I soon after took it back to "blessed".  When I got my first iPhone (a 3G), there was one, and only one feature that tempted me to jailbreak - custom SMS ringtones.  I once again waded into the jailbreak waters and found that, while I did manage to get the custom ringtone I wanted, the battery life of the device suffered overall so I once again went back to "blessed".  This was more than a year and a half ago.

Now that jailbreaking is declared legal, and now easier than even for end users, I find that the one feature I still want has yet to make it into the official version of iOS - custom SMS ringtones.  So do I jailbreak or not?  While the reasons behind the decision to keep this oft-requested feature out are undoubtedly typical apple "we just don't want to" fare, I find that I have no real desire to follow the masses down the rabbit hole anymore.  Part of it comes from a desire to keep things on the up and up on the developer side of things but honestly, the multi-tasking brought by iOS4 answers the only other real complaint I have so for the time being, I'll sit tight.

What about you?  How many people are going to jump on this most recent and simplest jailbreak?  If so, what features are drawing you to it?

Weighing in on "Antennagate"

I've been avoiding weighing in on the iPhone antenna problems for one simple reason - I have no antenna problems. I said it the day I got my iPhone 4, and I'll say it again today - the iPhone 4 is the best iPhone Apple's ever shipped. I can now make calls in my basement which is something I could never reliably do with the 3G or 3Gs.In my humble opinion, the Antennagate phenomenon is simply the media taking the first legitimate problem with the iPhone and running with it. Headlines like "New iPhone still great!", and "iPhone has ANOTHER record breaking launch!" only draw so many clicks after you've run them 3 or 4 times. I chalk it up to the "teach the controversy" philosophy. Everyone knows that there are Apple haters and Apple lovers and if you can just find a way to stir the pot a bit, the twitterverse, blogosphere and facebookalaxy (to coin a neologism) will grab ahold of it and run.

Most of the (completely and totally non-scientific) polls I have seen indicate that a very slim minority of users are experiencing serious problems using the new iPhone. What is driving the controversy is the fact that it is easily reproducible by gripping the phone in a way most people never will.

Some people will inevitably jump ship to android or others and that's fine. The truth is, what will keep Apple on their toes is good healthy competition. And given the current production constraints, the traditional idea of "one more person buying the competition is one less person buying the iPhone" is frankly just not accurate. Apple will continue to sell every iPhone that comes off the line and the iphone market will continue to grow by millions a month.

If you are having legitimate antenna problems and decide that now's the time to jump ship to android, I wish you well. There's lots of cool things happening in mobile and the iPhone is just one of them. But the media circus is just that, a circus. And at the end of the day, a circus is just an entertaining event that passes through town, takes your money, and moves on to the next town.

The most effective tool I've ever bought

What's the most effective tool you've ever bought? These days, I'm starting to think it's my iPad. At $499, it seemed at first like an expensive toy. I knew there was potential there and I mostly got it so I could start to get a feel for the device and how it could be used.  But I'm finding that I'm using it more and more.When it first came out, there was a lot of talk that it wasn't as useful as a laptop and too big to effectively replace the iPhone.  This discussion belied the exact type of flawed thinking that always greets truly new paradigms.  Is typing on the ipad as flawless as it is on a laptop?  Of course not.  But it is better than typing on an iPhone.  If the pre-iPad me had to return an email, I would take mental stock of how long I expected it to be; quick line or two, iPhone is fine, any longer and I'm breaking out the laptop.  But now, I don't even hesitate, it's the iPad every time.

And more and more tasks are falling into the "iPad every time" category.  Wikipedia search?  IMDB search?  Google search?  While the iPhone ushered in the era of "there's an app for that", the iPad is what's making it truly worthwhile IMHO.  What the iPhone did was pull us away from our computers and allowed us to do things we traditionally needed a PC for, anywhere we happened to be.  What the iPad does is pull some of these things back to the middle.  LIke it or not, there are some things that we forced onto the iPhone that maybe didn't need to be there, or at the very least, could benefit from having more screen space.

This is why I tweeted the day after I got it that the iPad is the first portile computing device. That is to say: more portable than a laptop (which can't be held in one hand effectively) but not quite as mobile as a phone (try putting it in your pocket without added stitching).  Some people thought it was nothing but dead space between laptops and phones but the iPad proves that thinking wrong.

So what makes it "the most effective tool I've ever bought"?  The simple fact that it becomes the tool I need, when I need it, and I always have it.  Email, wikipedia, books, music, movies, games, even apps for playing with and reading to my kids.  All in a package that is never more than an arm's reach away.  In less than two months, the iPad went from "an expensive toy" to something that I consider more indispensable than my iPhone.  And FSM knows I NEVER thought that would happen.

Redefining productivity

I used to work exclusively as a server in restaurants.  It's pretty easy to define productivity in such a setting, if you have a second to breathe, you're not being as productive as you can be.  As a server, your job is to be the conduit between the kitchen and the floor.  The kitchen can make food at certain rate and you need to make sure that the kitchen is fed orders at a rate they can keep up with and then deliver the food at a rate that allows people to enjoy their meal without feeling rushed.When I started a desk job, productivity began to be measured in output.  The amount of "stuff" that could be held in your hand, printed out, emailed to a client or posted to a webpage.  Without "something to show for it", you might as well have been watching youtube for 8 hours.  After doing that for years, I found I was having a hard time re-difining productivity from the point of view of an entrepreneur .

In my new role, productivity has a whole different meaning.  You see EVERYTHING I do now can be made to be productive, depending on how you look at it.  I spend at least an hour every morning just reading; Following links from twitter streams, seeing what's being dugg, reading press releases, etc.  Do I have any "output" after this time?  Maybe not.  But as the "head cheese" or "frontman", I have to measure productivity in more than just "product".  Maybe what I've produced is the knowledge that a competitor is going to beat us to market.  Maybe I've discovered a new market and I'm going to produce a brief for a new app that might serve that market.

One thing that does keep me grounded though is the fact that I still take some time each day to "produce" in the more traditional sense.  I make graphics, setup UIs, build models, etc.  Having some time each day dedicated to "something to show for it" style productivity helps me to keep from loosing my mind during the rest of my "non-traditional productivity" time.

Most exciting iOS 4/iPhone 4 features for Handelabra

After having the weekend to play with my shiny new iPhone 4, I feel as giddy as when I got my first iPhone, a 3G, almost 2 years ago.  So does this "change everything.  Again" as apple would have us believe?  Maybe not everything, but there are one or two great new features that we at Handelabra Studio can't wait to play with.

StyleAssist

On the StyleAssist front, the coolest thing that arrives with iPhone 4 is the front-facing camera.  I can't tell you how many times we've stressed over how frustrating it can be to have to take a self portrait with an iPhone.  The lack of any sort of tactile response to pushing a software button made it a serious case of hit or miss.  The safest option for getting good pictures on a 3G or 3GS remains the same: have someone else take the pictures.  Generally, this will be pretty easy as the best time to take a picture of a new hairstyle is while you're still sitting in the chair when your stylist is right there to assist you. (see what I did there?)  But the front-facing camera on iPhone 4 really makes taking self-portraits super easy.  The resolution is lower (standard VGA of 640x480, see sample), but generally good enough for our purposes.

Another bonus for StyleAssist comes in the form of the LED flash now included next to the 5-megapixel rear facing camera.  While you'll still need to have decent lighting conditions to get a passable front-facing photo, iPhone 4's included flash makes snapping pictures in the dark, well, a snap.  If you look at the sample, you'll still notice some blur, probably related to a combination of slower shutter speed in low light and the shakiness of my hand taking a self portrait in carpal-tunnel mode.  But we'll take what we can get!

The final bonus (from John's point of view at least) is that the camera switching and flash on/off/auto buttons and functionality are completely free from a coding perspective.  As long as we stay out of their way, the base camera includes them automatically.

GAME.minder

Lots of people have derided this "feature" of iOS 4 but we at handelabra are actually a bit excited about iAd, Apple's new mobile advertising network.  The ads themselves are pretty much what apple says they are, immersive and cool looking.  And Given what Apple's doing with the terms of service for mobile advertising these days, the fact is, it's a lot easier to hop on board with iAd than try to figure out what's going to happen down the line with AdMob.  And it gave us a really good excuse to move GAME.minder development up to iOS 4 and not look back.

All in all, the arrival of the 4's, while confusing for non-techies (No THIS is an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.  THIS is iOS 4 running on an iPhone 3Gs.  No really, it makes sense, let me start over...) is a pretty exciting time here at Handelabra.

Now if we can just get a solid date for iOS 4 on the iPad...

Waiting in line for an iPhone 4

Ever since attending WWDC, I've known that I would be waiting in line for an iPhone today. The feeling of being surrounded by a large group of apple fans is like no other. Why yes, I am drinking the cool-aid, thank you very much. What can I say, its 5:30 am. The only other time recently I've been up this early was when my kids were scared by a thunderstorm. Yet, here I sit, waiting patiently for my chance to be a part of the iPhone 4 phenomenon.T-minus 90 minutes!