MacBlogz - Latest Comments in Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

iPhone Application Developer — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:50:56 -0000

Well I'm not a "TOP" Mac developer, but at least I know how to get the job done, and I always do :)

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Ged Maheux — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:07:45 -0000

Spencer, yes by all means let's compare the advertising and marketing budgets of major record labels to that of a small, 10 person company who makes icons and a few pieces of software for a living. The sheer notion of this is ridiculous.

I am one of the founding members of the Iconfactory and over our 14+ years in business we've marketed MANY applications. Marketing in traditional media outlets is prohibitively expensive and relatively ineffective. When you are forced to shift the price of your product to .99 and have no profit margin what-so-ever, saying "Make it up in volume" by marketing is a huge gamble.

Some apps that are crap get lucky like iBeer which I consider to be the most "ring tone-y" app in the entire store. It's practically useless and yet there it sits in the top 10 selling thousands of copies a day. So you tell me, should we spend our time, effort and money making the next highly useful utility like Twitterrific for Twitter or spend a few days/weeks making iBeer 2?

Something needs to give.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

me — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:10:01 -0000

If it were truely side by side then his comments about how the list starts with $0.99 and the further down you go the higher the price, thus he isnt even at the same level. And walmart does position products for selling them, they and most other retail stores do this. Take a walk down the cereal isle at your local grocery, notice that at eye level are the name brand products and the generics are way lower? Walmart and others do the same type of things, by placing hot selling items at end caps of the shelves, by placing them at eye level instead of lower, by putting that big yellow smiley around some products, etc.

Dont believe for a moment that they just randomly place the stuff and give the comsumer a fair side by side comparison, walmart especially tracks purchases, who buys what, and when they do what else they buy, why they place pretzels near the lined paper, because they know that more people who buy notebook paper also buy pretzels (real example from the real database walmart has, over a decade ago their database for just what products sold together and where they were located in teh store was over 13TB, which back then was an insane size).

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

iPhone Dev Monkey — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:07:38 -0000

I agree with Craig to a degree. But, I also don't equate iPhone applications at the same level as an application designed for laptops, or even other mobile platforms. The restrictions on developers with regards to the sandbox the apps run in really just make it so that we can build the same applications you would build in Flash. Not being able to access background processes, or extend the functionality of the actual phone like what can be done with other mobile platforms such as Blackberry, Symbian and Android for example. I am not discounting the capabilities of the iPhone developers, but making a point about the complexity of the applications, it is just different than building apps on these other platforms. We are so restricted it is difficult to build anything of use, so you end up with a bunch of duplicate applications with the same functionality.

We build applications for all mobile platforms and compared to what is available from RIM for example, building iPhone apps has been like playing with Legos while the other kids are building robots. You can only build so many different variations of Tetris before you begin to question the business model of focusing only on iPhone apps. I am optimistic though, I think Apple will come around and give us the tools we need to really make the platform shine, but waiting for them to open things up a bit more is going to be painful.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

me — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:05:03 -0000

You missed a few costs. Not only does the cost of an employee include that employees salary, it also includes the rent for the office, lights, heating, internet, telephone, employeer paid taxes, any benefits that the employee gets that cost the employeer money, etc. Once you start adding all of that up it can reach $150-200/hr per person even if the person is being paid much less.

And for the others out there, the guys point is not that his apps are not selling, at least as I read it, his point was that there is a war of the $0.99 apps more than quality apps. Quality apps are what will make the store do well from apples perspective. From a developers perspective, its silly to pour a lot of time and front a lot of money to develop a quality app that will end up low on the list because its price is above the $0.99 prices that appear at the top of most lists. I dont use the itunes stuff, apple app store or anything else that way so I dont know about the ordering, but it seems that he made a clear point about that in the excerpt given that started this thread.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

John Bender — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:33:00 -0000

I've worked with offshore consultants, and I haven't been very impressed.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

John Bender — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:30:57 -0000

I'm a .NET consultant in new york and we bill out at $165 and hour. Software developer's can get paid pretty well.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Tom — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:28:48 -0000

Nobody underestimate his professionalism. But crying online is lame. Why humble?

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

cover letter samples — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:26:09 -0000

Everyone using Mac, especially technical users has some sort of clue who Craig Hockenberry is and his record of professional developer.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Stephen Waits — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:51:40 -0000

I have used a Mac exclusively, at home, for years (a mini and a MBP). Yet I'm still not blinded enough by the Cult of Mac to prevent me from knowing a whiner when I see one.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Sanderson Smith — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:05:16 -0000

Craig sounds like a record label executive complaining about file dowloads killing CD sales. Adapt to the market! Its come full circle back to the shareware days of the early 90's. Offer a stripped free version to get the app out to try, then charge a fair price for it. And don't rely on the app store to get your app noticed. Post a video or two on youtube to show it off. A buck is OK for a disposable app if I don't like it, but I won't give up my latte for a garbage app.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

samab — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:52:40 -0000

This is the wii mini-games vs. epic scale ps3 games with a $20 million budget.

Guess what --- the wii mini games won. Even the most die-hard game studios are spending money on developing these mini games.

Nobody put a gun on these game studios to stop them from spending $20 million developing a epic scale game.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Mitch — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:26:04 -0000

Hey Bob. You're a fucking idiot.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Robert DeFranco — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:20:05 -0000

Yes, Craig has done some impressive work, very impressive. His open letter to Apple is probably less serious than it is being taken. Hence my open letter to him, which as far from serious as you can get.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Chris Pratt — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:02:05 -0000

I can definitely see the developers point. Personally, I can count the number of iPhone apps I've paid over $.99 for on one hand, and probably have a few fingers left over. More to the point I doubt I've paid for more than 10 apps in total, filling 5 home screens full with mostly free apps.

There's a definitely barrier to development here, and I agree with the developer's rationale that it's not being able to play with the app before laying down cold hard cash that's the root of the problem. On my Mac, I can try any software before I buy it, and that has been a saving grace more than once. There's a fair amount of crap out there that people wrap up with a tidy bow and sell as the second coming of Christ.

Why hasn't apple introduced a trial system to the app store? They have a similar model already in place with iTunes movie rentals. Can't we "check out" apps and have them disable themselves in iTunes after a defined period of time unless you fork up some dough. I'll spend money on a good app (actually just purchased Air Mouse which costs $6.99 and hasn't invoked buyers remorse), but I need it to be a good app.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Eli — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:16:13 -0000

I like the fanboy niche you've carved out here. Not Apple, not the iPhone, but a developer whining about getting into the shallow end of the programming pool.

Phone and mobile apps have always been $1-10. People generally just aren't willing to pay more than that. If your business model is built entirely on writing iPhone programs and getting paid the same as if you were writing a desktop program, you're not going to do so well. Most of The Iconfactory's programs have been overpriced for what they do. I'm not particularly sad to see that they're finally facing some competition.

A lot of iPhone programs are written by hobbyists and people who can afford to spend some time on a program without being paid $150 an hour. This gives them a distinct advantage that I think the deserve.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Ilgaz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:10:35 -0000

Everyone using Mac, especially technical users has some sort of clue who Craig Hockenberry is and his record of professional developer. The company itself is famous for designing the entire iconset of Windows XP and several high end, multi (b)million projects.
May I ask who the hell are you to write that letter to him? If you are looking for a job at Apple, it is not the way to go. They don't like your type too.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Ilgaz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:07:35 -0000

Yes, companies should outsource their development. We see some great results in another OS named Windows and Windows Mobile.
heh.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Ilgaz — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:06:16 -0000

You don't even use a Mac do you? Or a recent switcher?

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Robert DeFranco — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:49:41 -0000

What a cry baby!

Here is my Open Letter to Craig

http://www.211me.com/corp/b...

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Matt — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:07:25 -0000

Craig, I can see your concern. Apple definitely has ways to improve the situation, but sheesh, if you have an awesome idea for an app, just do it. Risk it. Word gets around; people will buy it if they think it seems worth it. You may not be able to game the system and make a ton of money real fast and immediately recoup the development cost, but you'll be better off in the long run. If the crap rises to the top in the Featured sections and Top 25 sections or whatever, people will start realizing that they have to look deeper to find the good stuff. Then everybody will start caring more. Finding a good app will be even more satisfying because it wasn't spoon-fed to you. I'm rambling, I know.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Jesse Farmer — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:48:47 -0000

Because it's revenue you care about, not volume.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Jesse Farmer — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:57:28 -0000

Exactly. The App Store solves a distribution problem, not a marketing problem.

Find places outside the app store to promote your app and drive people too the App Store. Don't be at the mercy of Apple's placement.

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Tom — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:28:18 -0000

Craig Hockenberry does not know how to run a business and he is searching for mercy. Call the government to bail you out sucker!

Re: Established iPhone Developer Writes Personal Letter to Steve Jobs

Trent — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:42:03 -0000

Ray, it's not necessarily, true that advertising will not help. Personally speaking, most of the apps I've paid for on the app store have been advertised and reviewed on a website such as Gizmodo.