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A Podcasting Divergence

Sun, 08 May 2016 20:15:39 EDT

Great piece on this weekend’s podcast discussion by Federico Viticci.

Apple’s actual role in podcasting: be careful what you wish for

Sat, 07 May 2016 23:50:56 EDT

This New York Times article gets a lot wrong, and both podcast listeners and podcast producers should be clear on Apple’s actual role in podcasting today and what, exactly, big producers are asking for.

Podcasts work nothing like the App Store, and we’re all better off making sure they never head down that road.

Podcasts still work like old-school blogs:

Each podcast can be hosted anywhere and completely owned and controlled by its producer.
Podcast-player apps periodically check each subscribed podcast’s RSS feed, and when a new episode is published, they fetch the audio file directly from the producer’s site or host.
Monetization and analytics are completely up to the podcasters.
Some podcasts have their own custom listening apps that provide their creators with more data and monetization opportunities.

It’s completely decentralized, free, fair, open, and uncontrollable by any single entity, as long as the ecosystem of podcast-player apps remains diverse enough that no app can dictate arbitrary terms to publishers (the way Facebook now effectively controls the web publishing industry).¹

Apple holds two large roles in podcasting today that should threaten its health, but haven’t yet:

The biggest player app: Apple’s built-in iOS Podcasts app is the biggest podcast player in the world by a wide margin, holding roughly 60–70% marketshare.
The biggest podcast directory: The iTunes Store’s Podcasts directory is the only one that matters, and being listed there is essential for podcasts to be easily found when searching in most apps.

Critically, despite having these large roles, Apple never locked out other players, dictated almost any terms to podcasters,² or inserted themselves as an intermediary beyond the directory stage.

Like most of the iTunes Store, the podcast functionality has been almost completely unchanged since its introduction over a decade ago. And unlike the rest of the Store, we’re all better off if it stays this way.

Distribution

Apple’s directory gives podcast players the direct RSS feed of podcasts found there, and then the players just fetch directly from the publisher’s feeds from that point forward. Apple is no longer a party to any activity after the search unless you’re using Apple’s player app.

There’s nothing stopping anyone else from making their own directory (a few have), and any good podcast player will let users bypass directories and subscribe to any podcast in the world by pasting in its URL.

Promotion

Apple’s editorial features are unparalleled in the industry. I don’t know of anyone who applies more human curation to podcasts than Apple.

The algorithmic “top” charts, as far as podcasters have been able to piece together, are based primarily (or solely) on the rate of new subscriptions to a podcast in Apple Podcasts for iOS and iTunes for Mac.

Subscriptions happening in other apps have no effect on Apple’s promotional charts because, as long as this remains decentralized and open, Apple has no way of knowing about them.

Playback

Apple’s Podcasts app for iOS is fine, but not great, leaving the door wide open for better apps like mine. (Seriously, it’s much better, and it’s free. Trying to succeed in the App Store in 2016 is neither the time nor the place for modesty.)

Apple’s app has only a few integrations and privileges that third-party apps can’t match, and they’re of ever-decreasing relevance. They haven’t locked down the player market at all.

So let’s get back to that misguided New York Times article.

What (big) podcasters are asking for

Ignoring for the moment that “podcasters” in news articles usually means “a handful of the largest producers, a friend or two of the reporter, and a press release from The Midroll, who collectively believe they represent all podcasters, despite only being the mass-market tip of the iceberg, as if CBS represented all of television or Business Insider represented all of blogging,” and this article is no exception, what these podcasters are asking for is the same tool web publishers have used and abused to death over the last decade to systematically ruin web content nearly everywhere:

“More data.”

On the web, getting more data was easy: web pages are software, letting their publishers use JavaScript to run their own code right in your “player app” (web browser) to creepily record and analyze every move you made, selling you more effectively to advertisers and letting them algorithmically tailor their content to maximize those pennies at any cost to quality and ethics.

Podcasts are just MP3s. Podcast players are just MP3 players, not platforms to execute arbitrary code from publishers. Publishers can see which IP addresses are downloading the MP3s, which can give them a rough idea of audience size, their approximate locations, and which apps they use. That’s about it.

They can’t know exactly who you are, whether you searched for a new refrigerator yesterday, whether you listened to the ads in their podcasts, or even whether you listened to it at all after downloading it.³

Big publishers think this is barbaric. I think it’s beautiful.

Big publishers think this is holding back the medium. I think it protects the medium.

And if that ill-informed New York Times article is correct in broad strokes, which is a big “if” given how much it got wrong about Apple’s role in podcasting, big podcasters want Apple to add more behavioral data and creepy tracking to the Apple Podcasts app, then share the data with them. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

By the way, while I often get pitched on garbage podcast-listening-behavioral-data integrations, I’m never adding such tracking to Overcast. Never. The biggest reason I made a free, mass-market podcast app was so I could take stands like this.

Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple’s app. We’ve seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don’t want that.

It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple’s dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web’s last open media ecosystems.

Podcasting has been growing steadily for over a decade and extends far beyond the top handful of public-radio shows. Their needs are not everyone’s needs, they don’t represent everyone, and many podcasters would not consider their goals an “advancement” of the medium.

Apple has only ever used its dominant position benevolently and benignly so far, and as the medium has diversified, Apple’s role has shrunk. The last thing podcasters need is for Apple to increase its role and dominance.

And the last thing we all need is for the “data” economy to destroy another medium.

Companies running completely proprietary podcast platforms so far, trying to lock it down for themselves: Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, Google. (I haven’t checked in a while: has everyone finally stopped believing Google gives a damn about being “open”?) ↩
Beyond prohibiting pornographic podcasts in their directory and loosely encouraging publishers to properly use the “Explicit” tag. ↩
Unless you listen with the podcast publisher’s own app, in which case they can be just as creepy as on the web, if not more so. But as long as the open, RSS-based ecosystem of podcast players remains dominant, including Apple Podcasts, virtually nobody can afford to lock down their podcasts to only be playable from their own app. ↩

Under the Radar: Wading Slowly Into AppKit

Fri, 06 May 2016 11:29:41 EDT

Under the Radar: Wading Slowly Into AppKit →

Experimenting with Mac development and considering its future potential.

Accidental Tech Podcast: Coffee Stops Working

Fri, 06 May 2016 11:01:06 EDT

Accidental Tech Podcast: Coffee Stops Working →

Server days from hell, Apple as a services company, my new Mac app, and multiplying Casey Lisses.

All 13 Colors of iMac

Thu, 05 May 2016 13:56:39 EDT

All 13 Colors of iMac →

Stephen Hackett:

About a month ago, I set out to find every color of iMac G3. At the time, I only owned one model — a Sage. Today, the family is complete.

Even by today’s standards, some of these don’t look half-bad. (Graphite is my favorite.)

Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.

Thu, 05 May 2016 13:40:44 EDT

Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously. →

This Apple Music horror story is making the rounds today. It sounds like either a severe user error or a severe bug, and there’s no way to know which it is, but regardless, this aside is good advice:

For about ten years, I’ve been warning people, “Hang onto your media. One day, you won’t buy a movie. You’ll buy the right to watch a movie, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don’t want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access.”

Own your data.

State of Apple TV apps, 6 months in

Wed, 04 May 2016 11:31:53 EDT

State of Apple TV apps, 6 months in →

Great article by Josh Centers that starts with the simple question, “Where are the Apple TV apps?”, and thoroughly explores Apple’s product and developer issues in order to answer it.¹

The new Apple TV is decent, but not great — exactly what I’d say about the Apple Watch, the other new Apple platform launched last year. Both are far better than last year’s high-profile service launch, Apple Music, and not nearly as good as the revisions to core hardware lines, like the iPad Pro and iPhone 6S.

I’d say Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Apple Music all suffer from the same issues facing many Apple products today:

Visual design taking too much priority over working well.
Ship dates seeming more important than shipped product quality.
Insufficient resources as Apple spreads itself very thinly, leading to important feature omissions, quality problems, and neglect.
Increased difficulty for developers to succeed, resulting in stagnation of existing platforms and low adoption of new ones.

To summarize it in one word: hubris.

Including a quote from me about whether I’m planning Overcast for Apple TV. In short: I’m not currently working on it due to insufficient demand, but may do it in the future. ↩

Overcast 2.5.2 with quicksync released

Mon, 02 May 2016 17:33:05 EDT

Overcast 2.5.2 with quicksync released →

In the last few Overcast releases, I’ve been optimizing the sync protocol and decreasing the burden of each sync to both sides (my servers and your iPhones). In 2.5.2, we’ll reap some of the benefits with the first version of what I’ve been informally calling “quicksync”.

In short, syncing Overcast between multiple devices — say, an iPhone and an iPad — is now much faster and more accurate, making multi-device usage much more practical and compelling.

Lots of Overcast customers (including me) often play through their iPhone’s built-in speaker (hence the iPhone-speaker optimization in 2.5). With quicksync, I’m now using an old iPad as a semi-stationary Overcast speaker in the kitchen without any issues,¹ saving a lot of my phone’s battery and producing much higher maximum volumes.

I’m controlling some of the timing server-side, and can increase or decrease the sync frequencies and coalescing delays dynamically without issuing an app update. I’ve started out the parameters somewhat conservatively, and if everyone’s devices and the servers hold up well to it (which I expect), I’ll slowly ramp up the speeds over the next few weeks.

If I did everything right, you shouldn’t even notice quicksync — multi-device use will just work better.

Except one sync bug that I discovered a few days ago, after 2.5.2 went into App Store review: podcasts started on device A but finished and deleted on device B occasionally show up again with device A’s last-played state. Sorry about that — working on it. ↩

Quitter, my first Mac app

Mon, 02 May 2016 14:36:40 EDT

Quitter, my first Mac app →

Inspired by the effectiveness of my Automatic Social Discipline script, I’ve made my first Mac app:

Quitter automatically hides or quits distracting apps after periods of inactivity. I’ve found it tremendously helpful to my work efficiency to hide Slack and quit Tweetbot after 10 minutes.

(Tip: Keep them out of your Dock, too, so when they’re not running, their icons aren’t even visible.)

Quitter is available right here, for free and will likely never be in the Mac App Store due to, among other reasons, its inability to be sandboxed. (Believe me, I tried.) So in addition to the utility it provides, it’s also a learning experience for me to dip my toe into both Mac development and distributing software directly.

Plantronics BackBeat PRO added to mega-review

Mon, 02 May 2016 14:21:50 EDT

Plantronics BackBeat PRO added to mega-review →

Plantronics sent me this headphone to review, and it’s a stunning value.

It’s not perfect, especially if you’re sensitive to strong treble, and it’s pretty bulky for the category. But it’s the first Bluetooth headphone I’ve found that offers a great overall package — great sound, great comfort, and pretty good physical controls — for less than $400.

(Way less — it’s currently $140, or $250 with an audio-focused Bluetooth USB dongle for computer use.)

Under the Radar: The Calm Before the Storm

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:15:42 EDT

Under the Radar: The Calm Before the Storm →

In less than 30 minutes, as always: what iOS developers should do (and not do) between now and WWDC.

Accidental Tech Podcast: They’ve Opened the Door to Streakers

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 18:45:42 EDT

Accidental Tech Podcast: They’ve Opened the Door to Streakers →

WWDC 2016 tickets and changes, the MacBook Two (?), and John’s vacation in California.

On paid App Store search results

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:45:10 EDT

According to this Bloomberg report that reads like an intentional leak from Apple:¹

Apple Inc. has constructed a secret team to explore changes to the App Store…

Among the ideas being pursued, Apple is considering paid search, a Google-like model in which companies would pay to have their app shown at the top of search results based on what a customer is seeking. For instance, a game developer could pay to have its program shown when somebody looks for “football game,” “word puzzle” or “blackjack.” …

About 100 employees are working on the project, including many engineers from Apple’s advertising group iAd that’s being scaled back, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The effort is being spearheaded by Apple Vice President Todd Teresi, who led iAd.

Lots of developers have thoughtfully weighed in with almost unanimous disdain and disbelief, and I mostly agree.

But Ben Thompson’s counterargument is especially worth reading:

As for the concerns of Apple bloggers that such a scheme will reinforce the tendency of the App Store to ensure the rich get richer, well, I’m sorry to say but there is no evidence that Apple cares. The company has done nothing to help developers with more traditional business models (i.e. not pay-to-play games) monetize; indeed, in a telling twist the team working on this search ad product is the former iAd team, which Steve Jobs himself said existed so that apps could be as cheap as possible.

“We” — by which I mean the community of well-read Apple writers and their small, well-known Mac and iOS developer friends — represent only a tiny fraction of the App Store by any measure: quantity, revenue, and quality.

The App Store isn’t ours, and Apple has little business justification to serve our interests. The idea that Apple should change the App Store to make it easier for us to succeed (and correspondingly harder for everyone else) is arrogant, exclusionary, and disconnected from reality.

Ask your non-geek friends or relatives which apps they use most. How many came from people like us, rather than a major tech company, social network, content publisher, retailer, bank, restaurant, big socially-manipulative game publisher, or bulk game cloner? We barely register for Apple or App Store customers.²

Apple does what’s best for Apple first, and the majority of their customers second. Sometimes that aligns with what our little group of developers wants, but usually not.

The only surprise is the idea that something major about the App Store may actually be changing, which has arguably never happened since its introduction in 2008. As Manton said, that’s a good thing: I’d rather Apple do tons of crazy experiments, some of which may hurt my business, than keep neglecting their major role in the entire consumer-software market by continuing to treat apps like music singles forever.

App Store search ads³ are absolutely plausible, especially if the staff and leadership of the alleged “improve the App Store” team came from iAd (whose staff originally drew heavily from web advertising companies). People apply the tools they know.

Such a system would exacerbate much of the App Store’s dysfunction, disincentivizing improvements to organic search and editorial features while raising the cost of acquiring new customers above what many indie developers and business models can sustain.

But it might not be all bad. Imagine if paid search was deployed tomorrow. (Because if it’s going to happen, that’s about as much say as you’re going to have in the matter.)

What would you do?
What would your competitors do?
What would scammers do?

When I consider what paid search would really be like, it simultaneously sounds like a decent idea but also shows just how far today’s App Store is from doing a reasonable job of it.

Assuming the system would be auction-based by keyword like Google AdWords, for less-contested keywords, marketing apps could become much easier. Buying a few good phrases could inexpensively put your app at the top of the list to help you get off the ground and start to seed organic growth.

More significantly, we could buy increased exposure to the most likely customers to buy our apps. More paid-up-front apps could become viable, and prices could rise.

The App Store also has a serious “oversupply problem” — put less gently, it’s full of garbage. If searches were topped by apps that were actively being marketed with enough of a budget for a few keywords, finding good apps as a customer should become easier as well.

But the App Store’s infrastructure is utterly unprepared to do paid search well today.

Developers currently have very little idea where sales come from. We can track sales that come from websites, but most don’t, and any sales coming from within the App Store are a mystery. We have no idea whether people get our app from an editorial feature, a Top list, searching for it by name, or searching for it with other keywords.

For paid search to be worthwhile, we need to know which keywords to buy. We need to know the words people are already using to find our apps, and we need to know how we rank organically for those words. If we decide to buy some keyword ads, we need to know how many sales they brought in.

For the search ads to have more value and command higher prices, we’d also need more precise targeting — for instance, only buying a keyword when searched by someone in a certain region, in a certain age range, possibly with certain other apps installed or other creepy filters. (Which isn’t very Apple-like, but it sure makes ads more effective.)

Google figured this all out 15 years ago. Before that, they figured out how to do highly relevant organic searches, which Apple still doesn’t offer. And they were searching the entire web.

Not only is Apple searching the comparably tiny App Store, but they review every app before publishing it. With a huge staff of humans reviewing all of the input, good search should be much easier because the apps and their metadata should be relatively well-structured and regulated, and very little abuse and fraud should get through.

And yet, the App Store is still full of spam, scams, clones, and flagrant violations of Apple’s own rules, while the app-review team still capriciously nitpicks trivial and arbitrary details with the few developers who are actually trying to make good apps and represent them honestly in the Store.

While a good search-ad system could benefit the App Store, customers, and many of us, nothing in Apple’s track record suggests that they’re willing or able to do this well.

But a bad search-ad system, on top of bad search, will only further damage the App Store, funnel more of our already slim margins back into Apple like a massive regressive tax, and erode customers’ confidence in installing new apps.

Either to warm us up to the idea so we’re not so mad in June, or by someone inside who doesn’t think it’s right and wants ammo to win the argument internally. ↩
This isn’t because of “discoverability” problems, a wonderful euphemism that really means, “I deserve more people buying my app, and it’s someone else’s responsibility to bring them to it for free.” ↩
It’s important to differentiate search ads from paid search ranking. Search ads, like Google’s, are clearly labeled as advertisements and are visually distinct from the rest of the results to avoid misleading people into thinking they organically ranked that highly. Paid search ranking is when the paid results are indistinguishable from the organic results, making it seem like they’re the most relevant or reputable by topping the “real” search results, which is fraudulent and probably illegal if you ask the FTC. Much of the anger toward this idea has seemingly assumed that it’s the latter, but I’m assuming it’s the former. ↩

Performance These Days

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:40:14 EDT

Performance These Days →

Great post by Brent Simmons on where programming-language performance still matters, and where it doesn’t.

I don’t know much Swift yet. But I’ve felt since its introduction that while it seems like a good language overall, it feels more like a language designed by C++ enthusiasts to replace C++, rather than being particularly optimized for 99% of what it’ll really be used for: making high-level mobile and PC apps.

Objective-C wasn’t much better for this, but I think we could’ve done better than Swift if the most important goal in Swift was maximizing real-world developer productivity when writing modern Mac and iOS apps. Swift does a little of that, but gives up a lot to also serve lower-level, more clever, language-geekier goals.

The idea of one language to serve all roles, high-level to low-level, is an interesting thought challenge, but I don’t think it could exist.

Accidental Tech Podcast: Fitness Turd

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 22:49:31 EDT

Accidental Tech Podcast: Fitness Turd →

Bleeps and boops, remembering the original iMac, and whether it’s trendy to hate the Apple Watch.

Apple conferences offer discount in response to WWDC costs

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 16:31:47 EDT

Apple conferences offer discount in response to WWDC costs →

These great conferences should be increasingly attractive as most WWDC hotels exceed $300 per night.

Under the Radar: Should You Register for a WWDC Ticket?

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 16:20:22 EDT

Under the Radar: Should You Register for a WWDC Ticket? →

The value of a WWDC ticket — or going to San Francisco without one — in just under 30 minutes.

My interview at Ray Wenderlich

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:32:55 EDT

My interview at Ray Wenderlich →

I’ve gotten such immense value from Ray Wenderlich development tutorials over the years that when they asked me for an interview, I couldn’t possibly say no.

Topics include feature inspiration, my (lack of) time management, and the most common mistakes I think are made by indie developers.

Under the Radar: Launching Activity++

Thu, 14 Apr 2016 12:01:14 EDT

Under the Radar: Launching Activity++ →

Handling the launch of David’s newest app, and lessons to be learned from it.

Never longer than 30 minutes!

Top Four: Bagel Flavors

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 17:47:35 EDT

Top Four: Bagel Flavors →

This week, we rank our favorite bagel flavors, followed by a surprising science experiment.