You are your quality control team

It's hard having pride in your work. It's hard taking the extra time needed to make something you are proud of instead of just something close enough. In a perfect world, we would always have time to make a product completely perfect before sending it out the door. But as we all know, we live quite a ways down the road from a perfect world.Over the weekend, I had an experience via the app store that surprised me but probably shouldn't have - I downloaded a truly bad app.

The realities of the App Store and the current economy mean that we as developers constantly try to live in an uneasy lagrangian point between speed, quality and cost. Being first with an idea can mean the difference between success and failure but being first with a bad implementation can be worse than losing the race.

Here at Handelabra, we do our best to make sure our products are worth using. When we make mistakes, and we do, we work our butts off to fix them. But not everyone does. In the new world of indie development and self-publishing via the App Store, there's something interesting happening - the breakdown of quality control.

Yes, Apple must approve any app before it is released and yes, they have a list of rules that ostensibly guard against the bad eggs but my experience this weekend reminded me that the role of publisher is not completely vestigial.

Software development is an interesting thing. It's an incredibly technically precise endeavor that requires a wonderfully artful touch to be done well. And as with any complex undertaking, its hard to find people that have all the right skills in a single body, or even to assemble a team with all those skills in only a few bodies. But the absence of certain aspects doesn't make them any less necessary. And unfortunately, some small developers, when pulled too far by the gravity of costs, lean on Apple to fill the roles they don't have the time or the money to do themselves. But the problem is that Apple, via the app store, is not in a great position to fill that role for us.

We all love Apple, that's why we develop for Apple platforms. But Apple's goals with the App Store approval process are very different than ours with our products. Their goals are to maintain a consistent experience, to protect iPhone and iPad customers from "objectionable content and provide customers with incentives to stay with the platform (and to make sure we're not using any of those sweet, sweet private APIs). Our goal (and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn) is to create compelling, useful and bug-free experiences for our customers. Letting Apple be your quality control department is a mistake. Sure, they may catch some truly egregious bugs (or not) but the factors they are controlling for are probably different from those that will most effect the customer experience of our software.

The App I used this weekend clearly passed Apple's gatekeeper (although it's questionable whether it should have). But before even getting there, it should have faced a much more meticulous gatekeeper who was concerned with the app and it's experience and not simply whether Apple would approve it.

And cards on the table - I'll admit that I'm as guilty of this as anyone. When we've been polishing an app or an update for a month, I want it on the store so bad I can taste it. I'm constantly being reminded by my team that it's more important to get it right, and make it solid before letting it out, short term revenue be damned.

But then, I'm lucky enough to have a team that takes pride in their work. My job in this case is to get out of the way and let those inner quality assurance beasts come out to play.

It's your job to change the world. Steve taught me that.

For a long time, I was under a mistaken impression. I thought that the people who change the world were different, special in some way. For years I was waiting for permission to do something great as I presumed these people had. That somehow, somewhere, someone had given them permission to be great and to do great things.I was just waiting.

When the iPhone came around something interesting happened. Steve Jobs announced it, and announced it's name without regard for the fact that someone else was already using it. It was then that I realized that the people who change the world are different but not in the way I expected. You don't change the world by asking for permission - you just do it. The name iPhone was already taken but Steve knew two important things:

  1. This new device was the iPhone in a way the Infogear product simply wasn't
  2. He could work out the details later

Steve was a man who didn't ask for permission. While his management style is legendary (and infamous), and his products weren't always smash hits (G4 Cube), what he did more than anything else was get things done. Lots of people out there have the next big idea but they wait until "the right time" which never comes. They try to get every small detail in place before taking the first step. But if you take that first step, and then another, and then another, your momentum will keep you moving forward.

You only need permission from one person to go out and do something insanely great. It is your job to change the world.

Steve taught me that.

-Jeremy

The Handelabra "Who will ship first?" contest

Sometimes in life, you have to make your own fun. And sometimes, that fun falls right in your lap. This week, while working out timelines and scope for Handelabra's next two projects under development, we discovered something fun - Couplett and Uncle Slam are scheduled to finish up right around the same time.Now in some circles, that would just be a happy accident and everyone would just move on. Not here. No sooner had this fact been unearthed than John started in with "Uncle Slam will totally beat Couplett's firm buttocks" (I'm paraphrasing). This lead to Aaron making comments about Uncle Slam being more of an auntie. And so, a wager was struck.

The Contenders:

Uncle Slam IconUncle Slam

In brief: Handelabra's Presidential Boxing game shown off at PAX Prime. You play as the Presidents of the United States and battle it out to take up the mantle of "Uncle Slam." Project lead: John Arnold Teammate: Jason Hoyt (development) Teammate: Brittney McIsaac (design) Teammate: Jim Paluf (research)

Couplett IconCouplett

In brief: Your device has two cameras but just one at a time? Isn't it time to correct this crime? Take picture from both and comp them together, pictures of friends or your cat or the weather. Project lead: Aaron London Teammate: Roben Kleene Teammate: designer to be named later

the wager

The Wager:

As I watched this friendly contest develop, I couldn't help but think that a new era was dawning at Handelabra. The era of late nights and empty bottles . But still, who was I to stand in the way? John and Aaron certainly seemed ready to go toe-to-toe, code-to-code, bundle-to-bundle.

But I also realized there was a need for some modicum of civility so the following rules were enacted governing the contest. To be crowned winner, the app must:

  • Be completed within the current scope
  • Be submitted to the App Store first
  • Not pulled back by us due to a bug discovered while awaiting review
  • Rejection by Apple will NOT disqualify the winning app as we have no control over the review process
  • This wager is between Aaron and John, if any other team members choose to make a side-bet, it is a separate wager.

The Stakes

Oban-14YO

Follow the contest

While it may not be shaping up as the "Bout heard round the world!", there is the potential for an upset here. Both projects are already under development, they are different in scope and have different sized teams. Both are scheduled to submit in early November. If you want to see the whole messy affair play out, you can:

May the best app fall on it's face allowing the fastest one to win!

They call it "Cannibalize" and not "Take it out behind the woodshed to be shot" for a reason

The image, culturally insensitive as it may be, drawn to mind when one thinks of "cannibals" is of some poor colonial explorer, tied to a spit and being slowly roasted alive. The key word here is - SLOWLY.The reason we refer to a company chipping away at it's own core market as "cannibalizing" is because of this issue of speed. When something is big and fast and sudden, there are other terms for it:

  • game-changer
  • revolution
  • (something)-killer
  • paradigm-shifting
  • etc

The key problem with the Netflix/Qwickster maelstrom is that someone got a bit confused. They were worried about the cannibals and chose to shoot the poor explorer. And along with the explorer, they also chose to shoot the horse he rode in on.

I've had a Netflix account since before September 11th. It was a brilliant concept at just the right time. The world wouldn't be ready for internet-delivered digital video for a decade (or 5 years if you are not in the USA) and the heavy, bulky, prone to failure VHS had been given it's marching orders. These small spinning discs could fit in an (oversized) envelope and come right to your door, AND you could get as many as you could watch. And one thing that made it more in line with the TiVo's of the world than the Blockbusters was the recommendation system. Tell it how much you liked a film, it could tell you how likely you were to like others. For more than a decade, Netflix happily recommended movies and I watched a ton of stuff I never would have seen because of it.

Add to this formula the instant gratification of watching it RIGHT NOW over the internet and geeks (myself included) were in 7th heaven. The same recommendations, a slightly lower audio and video quality (yes, I still preferred blu-ray), but you can put a lot of value on not having to wait. It was the complete package. For TV shows and "oh yeah, I did want to see that" movies, I could stream them. For the really good stuff, I could wait for the 1080p 7.1 DTS Master Audio spinning disc (minus special features of course - stupid). But they say, when you are on top, you only have one way to go.

Reed Hastings stated in his blog that "companies rarely die from moving too fast" and this may be true. But is death the only option? Netflix, the one stop shop and "complete package" has chosen to split that package up. Where once there stood the (mostly) undisputed champion of home video viewing, there now stand two... somethings? One is the Netflix of yore, but under a name only a pothead could love. The other is Netflix 2.0, all streaming all the time (but no, we don't have that). The truth is, neither is a service I would sign up for today by itself, but for the moment, I have both.

So which of these two "less valuable than the whole" services will get my viewing history? Which one gets my preferences moving forward? My viewing future? The unfortunately truth is that when you're busy "not dying by moving too fast", you sometimes miss things like this.

For an idea how to handle the "cannibalization" concept correctly, take a look at the iPod business. No seriously, take a look at it. It's still there. There's 3 completely different models still (not counting the iOS-based touch). They are still being sold by Apple and they are still called iPods (not podsters, and not being sold by a wholly owned subsidiary). Despite the fact that the good money is on iOS based phones, pods and pads moving forward, the iPod business is the quintessential "cannibalization" strategy. You replace something that was working great with something that still works, but better (even if it's in different ways). The cannibalization comes from the fact that it's still made by you and you can let the old product die on YOUR terms. Taking something that's working great, splitting it up into two things that work way less great and calling it innovation is something very different.

How this Netflix/Qwickster thing will ultimately shake out is yet to be seen. Maybe both services will stick around. But even if they do, both will just be a shadow of what they were when they were still together.

Meeting the Media at #PAX

We were lucky enough to meet up with lots of great media folks at PAX Prime from bloggers to TV personalities.We had fun with Daniel and Mike for dignews.com who recently posted a great review of Uncle Slam here.

We had a really great conversation with Travis from Broken CRT Productions:

@ZaxyTara from Zaxy.com stopped by and beat me down hard. Usually I had to let media folks win but not this time!

And check your local listings cause G4TV even stopped by to shoot some Uncle Slam action! The lovely Kristen Adams from Xplay went 3 rounds with me in the oval office. G4 is airing 3 days of PAX Prime coverage this coming week starting tuesday.

Get Slammed! Tournament Pics from #PAX

If you played Uncle Slam on Friday, you had the opportunity to enter the Get Slammed! Tournament with prizes ranging from Handelabra swag all the way up to a brand new iPod Touch or iPad. Check out the pics below to see all the action and click here to watch the final round between Nick K and Chris S.

Chris S took second place and won himself an iPod Touch and our grand prize winner was Nick K who took the unsung hero Millard Fillmore all the way. He went home from PAX with a brand spankin new 16 GB iPad! Congrats guys!

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