The great disconnect

September 2, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

IMG 1492

– So, what did you do while on holiday?

– Mostly nothing.

– Seriously? So what, you just killed time?

– Yes and no. It was great. I’ll elaborate.

 

I reached the end of July in a sorry state. Sleep-deprived, overworked, anguished by deadlines; both the ‘hard’ deadlines related to work assignments I had to deliver, and the ‘soft’ deadlines I routinely self-impose for my writing projects. I had to publish a new issue of Vantage Point magazine before going on holiday, even if it was just a ‘Single Special’. I had to write Episode 4 of my series Off The Grid (no, I still haven’t published it, but it’s coming soon.) I had to publish a Kindle version of both Volume 1 and 2 of Minigrooves, my ongoing collection of short stories (and I did, check this post)…

I had to do this, I had to do that. I managed to do most of this and that in time, and barely retain my sanity, but I felt I went very close to experiencing the dreaded burnout.

“This summer, holidays will be different,” I told myself and my wife, “I really, really need to stop, recharge, retool.”

I decided to leave the MacBook Pro, my main work machine, at home. My luggage would consist of clothes, a couple of film cameras, three iPhones, my iPad, a couple of notebooks to keep taking notes for my Low Fidelity novel, nothing else. (I can see your eyes widen as you read three iPhones, but I had to take with me my main iPhone 5 with the Spanish SIM, my old iPhone 3G with the Italian SIM to use while in Italy, and a SIM-less iPhone 4 so that I could insert a second Italian SIM with a generous data plan that I use every time I visit my parents. They don’t have a landline, so I use the iPhone 4 as a personal hotspot to bring Internet to the other devices my wife and I use while on holiday.)

As I planned what to take with me, it was clear that, despite my wishes to disconnect and enjoy some offline time, I wanted to be able to access the Internet to keep following tech news, blogs and the usual stuff, though certainly at a more leisurely pace. This is the typical halo effect of today’s ‘always-on’ mentality and lifestyle. The need to stay in the loop at all costs.

The generous data plan I mentioned before gives you 10 GB of traffic at high cellular speed for a month. If you use all that up before the month is over, you don’t get charged for any additional traffic, you can still navigate at the glacial speed of 32kbps. 

My wife and I made a terrible mistake, a mistake I’m almost embarrassed to share, given that I consider myself a seasoned, tech-savvy person. We both left Automatic App Updates activated on all our devices (three iPhones and two iPads). The result: we burnt through 10 GB of data in a little more than a week. The 10 GB offer would renew a couple of days before our return home. My wife begrudgingly managed without the high connection speed and with having Internet to the very bare minimum. I soon realised I didn’t care at all.

I thought the so-called ‘fear of missing out’ would kick in soon, but nothing. The only thing I did was to check my email every two-three days because I couldn’t afford not to, but for the rest, I really didn’t care I was basically cut off from any online activity. I read books, played Mahjong, took some photos, wrote a bit, enjoyed the company of my wife and my parents, enjoyed the occasional excursion, but mostly I rested. My mind needed rest. 

Was I worried that my presence on social media was getting scarce, possibly leading to drop of attention and followers? No. There are more important things in life. There are your parents, both with health problems, both needing help in a way or another. There is the realisation that you get to visit them mostly once a year, for three weeks, and that this is not going to last for long. The realisation that when you say goodbye the day you’re leaving, who knows, it may be the last time you see one of them, or both. So you give priority to spending some quality time with them.

Was I worried that the unread count in my RSS feed reader would soon increase and get out of control? Not really. Lots of articles are idle speculation on future devices; or a‑few-lines commentary after some news bits that cease to be worth exploring faster than the time it would take me to catch up on them; or podcast episode announcements; or lists of iOS/Mac apps of the week, deals and accessories; and so on and so forth. In the end, I can read all the stuff that really matters in my feeds in about two afternoons.

Was I worried that, by neglecting my own projects for a while, they would lose relevance and whatever interest I’d managed to raise about them would quickly fade away? Not really, for two reasons: the first is that my own writing and projects will never lose relevance for me, no matter how long a hiatus I take from them. The second is that — sadly, quite sadly — the interest I have indeed managed to raise about them has been so little, that there isn’t even the perception I have been ‘losing ground’, if you get my drift. I have noticed that, no matter how my writing in general is appreciated, when I start promoting my fiction it’s like talking about astrophysics at a party among drunk law students — either people turn a deaf ear, or they look at you funny. Or they don’t even register what you’re saying.

I’m not saying it’s not worth taking care of my projects and products. I’m just realising that something must be wrong with the way I advertise them or the way I approach their promotion. Maybe I’m not annoying enough. Maybe I should work on first creating connections with a few prominent people (as far as online presence and influence go), then expand my reach with their help. Maybe I keep trying to convince the wrong audience, people who are simply only interested in my tech-related writing and could not care less about my fiction. (But Matt Gemmell proves that a tech-oriented audience can indeed be interested in reading a novel written by a developer-recently-turned-writer — as for me, I’ve been writing fiction for 26 years!)

I’m digressing. My point is, I wasn’t worried about my projects and products losing traction while I was offline, because I’m planning some changes for the upcoming months anyway, so there wasn’t and isn’t anything to worry about. People will not magically start caring anyway, so making changes and redefining approaches is up to me.

During my time away from the Internet, what I did was mostly nothing, but it was the best nothing I experienced in a long time. It was a space that soon gave way to deep introspection. I thought about my routine, both the general daily routine — when I go to sleep, when I get up, how much time I spend at the computer or before a screen during the day, etc. — and the routine inside that time I spend at the computer. And there isn’t a better time than when you’re completely removed from such routine, that you can zoom out and take a better look at it. And you start noticing little silly things, like the amount of effort and energies you must invest to keep up-to-date with what goes on in technology (and many other disciplines) today, to then be able to add your voice to that cauldron of a debate, which keeps getting bigger every day and you end up drowning in irrelevancy most of the time anyway. 

Writing online today, no matter how often you ‘show up’, often feels like a permanent state of paying one’s dues. Authority is achieved randomly: the public doesn’t seem to care if you’ve written about technology for the past 12 years or for just a few weeks. If the right people link to your piece and appreciate it, it’s a brilliant contribution and you’re worthy of attention, at least for a few days. You soon find out that you’re organising your approach to follow that model, so you read a lot, write a lot (quantity and ‘showing up’ frequency over quality), and every day you sit at your computer or mobile device and you’ve basically become a hamster spinning in your wheel. When you’re in your twenties and full of energy and passion and enthusiasm, this is fine. You may even have successfully found a way to monetise it — good for you. When you’re in your forties, have been doing it since your late twenties, and your efforts never seem to be enough, no matter how much quality you put in what you produce, your enthusiasm… gets reconfigured.

In this scenario, a disconnect is useful to understand that you have to stop being manipulated by the Internet and social media’s mechanisms. The worry related to how irrelevant the Internet makes you feel has to go away. The ‘fear of missing out’ is bullshit. The first time I accessed my Twitter timeline on the iPhone when I returned home, it felt as if nothing had changed. And nothing did. The same kinds of tweets: political satire, stupid nitpicking about first world problems, the same old banter, the same kind of meaningless memes, snarky remarks and subtweets, etc. etc. The first promoted tweet I saw was for some kind of product or service and began as follows: “Work from anywhere with this…” — another trap of this ‘always-on’ lifestyle. Working from anywhere might be convenient for certain people, but if you stop and think hard about it for a moment, it’s insane. These lines dividing work and leisure/time off, getting progressively more blurred to the point of disappearing, are creating a ridiculous, energy-sucking lifestyle. I don’t want to work from anywhere. I don’t want to bring technological gadgets everywhere so that I may do something work-related no matter what time it is or even if I’m technically on holiday. This blending of work/leisure feels more and more unhealthy to me. It’s like wearing a VR headset most of the time. It may be a fun experience when it’s on and you’re sucked in. But who are you, what are you when you remove it and realise just how exhausted you are? And was it really worthwhile?

My recent disconnect was bigger than anticipated, bigger than what I wanted, but turned out to be exactly what I needed at this juncture. I have realised that sometimes you have to get to a particular stage to fully understand how you need to ‘reboot’. In my case, the key was the realisation that I needed to truly stop caring about a series of aspects, mechanisms, and false problems related to the online sphere. To reach a sort of detachment that should be extremely useful in redefining my approach from now on.

The Minigrooves Project and Volume 2

July 20, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Et Cetera

Minigrooves V1+V2

 

Volume 2 now available

After three years since the publication of Volume 1, Minigrooves Volume 2 is finally available on the iBooks Store, and will be available for the Kindle platform as well before the end of July. (Update, 26 July — Both Volume 1 and 2 are available on the Kindle Store, check the Relevant Links at the end of the post.)

Here’s a direct iTunes link: Minigrooves — Volume 2

Volume 2 of Minigrooves includes the 23 short stories of the Project’s second cycle that first ‘aired’ online from June 2013 to March 2015, plus a story I added later during the editing process. As for the Extras, you’ll find:

  • Annotations: trivia and minutiæ about many of the stories.
  • Alternate takes: different endings of some of the featured stories.
  • An interview about Minigrooves: In March 2015, Alex Roddie interviewed me about the Minigrooves Project and the stories included in Volume 1.

You can download a free sample with 2 full short stories.

Requirements: To view this book, you must have an iOS device with iBooks 1.5 or later and iOS 4.3.3 or later, or a Mac with iBooks 1.0 or later and OS X 10.9 or later. 

A new layout

Minigrooves layout differences

 

Volume 2 has been published with considerable delay. The second cycle of the short stories ended in March 2015, and I originally planned to publish the book around May 2015. Of course, for consistency’s sake, Volume 2 had to inherit the layout of Volume 1, but to be honest I wasn’t exactly satisfied with that. After two years, that original layout started to feel dated, and the book’s interface and user interaction were in need of an improvement. 

Due to my inexperience — and in part to iBooks Author’s quirks — when I assembled the first edition of Volume 1, I created an ebook whose format, in Apple’s parlance, is a ‘Multi-touch iBook’. This format is more appropriate when you want to produce ebooks with interactive features, not a traditional book with just formatted text. As a consequence, the original Volume 1 of Minigrooves offered a decent reading experience on the iPad and the Mac, but not on the iPhone or iPod touch; and even on an iPad or a Mac the navigation was admittedly a bit awkward. On top of that, when I tried converting the book for the Kindle platform, the task turned out to be unnecessarily daunting and frustrating. After a few months I just gave up.

So, when I started working on Volume 2 in iBooks Author, I decided to create a more compatible ePub publication, with a cleaner, simpler layout that could be more easily ported to the Kindle. But again, for consistency’s sake, that meant publishing a new edition of Volume 1 as well, with the same layout, and new covers that would better display how these books belong to the same series. 

That’s the reason for Volume 2’s delay — I was essentially putting together two books.

Lessons learnt

The first volume of short stories was an ambitious first step. I poured a lot of work into it, and offered a fair amount of extras. The feedback has been disappointing overall — meaning there has been very little feedback to begin with. It’s hard to interpret silence. However, what little feedback I did receive was quite important in making me understand a few things, and the changes and course corrections I’ve set for Volume 2 and the Minigrooves Project in general all take into account the constructive criticism I have received over time.

Essentially, from what people implied in comments or told me explicitly, the main issues to be addressed were these:

  • The ebook’s interface was nice, but could have been better.
  • At $9.99/€8.99, Volume 1 was perceived to be too expensive for an ebook.
  • Some perceived 42 stories to be too many, and the book a bit overwhelming overall.[1]
  • The lack of a Kindle version was seen by many prospective readers as a deal-breaker.

The new Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Minigrooves:

  • Have an improved, more reader-friendly layout.
  • Feature a much reduced price — they cost $1.99/€1.99 each.
  • Will be available for the Kindle very soon.
  • Volume 2 includes ‘only’ 24 short stories (but they’re on average a bit longer than the stories included in Volume 1) and feels less overwhelming a book.

An important detail about the updated Volume 1

I originally planned to push the update of Minigrooves Volume 1 through the iBooks Store, so that people who purchased the first edition could automatically receive the update on their devices, just like it happens with regular iOS apps. Unfortunately, iTunes Producer returned a series of errors, basically telling me that the update was too extensive to be processed as a simple, minor update. Also, apparently it’s not possible to update an ebook originally published in the ‘Multi-touch iBook’ format with a new ePub file.

What I had to do at that point — and believe me, I’m not happy with it — was to remove the old version of Volume 1 from sale, and upload the updated files and metadata as a new ebook. This means that if you purchased the first edition of Volume 1 and want to take advantage of the new, more readable layout of the updated edition, you’ll have to purchase the ebook again. In other words, if this were an iOS app, it would be a paid update. On the one hand, the new version only costs $1.99; on the other hand, if you really truly feel I’m ripping you off, get in touch with me and I should be able to offer you a promo code. But only if you purchased the first edition of the ebook and don’t want to purchase the updated edition. 

A few relevant links

Thank you!

Thank you to all those who have encouraged me ever since the Minigrooves Project started, gave feedback and linked to it via Twitter.

Thank you to all those who showed interest towards my stories, and who have helped spread the word over time.

Thank you to those who have purchased the books or genuinely plan to. If you want to support my writing, this is a great way to do so.

If you purchased Minigrooves and liked the stories, please tell other people about the project, recommend the books, write a brief review, give feedback. This is highly appreciated.

And as always, thanks for reading!

 

  • 1. Despite my repeatedly saying that one can read Minigrooves in a non-sequential manner, that you can just open the book and read one story when you want and when you have time, I have the feeling that the overall impression has been, Whoa, that’s a lot. I’ll never finish this. ↩︎

 

Primary OS and unfair comparisons

June 25, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

In The Primary OS Ben Brooks once again extols the virtues of going iOS-only. And I, once again, reiterate my stance on the matter: if it works for you, if adapting your workflows to it is manageable and not burdensome, go for it and more power to you. But I really believe it’s not necessary to put the other OS, the Mac, in a bad light just to reinforce how great a decision you made in leaving it behind.

With regard to Brooks’ specific article I’m liking to, I notice an unfair comparison between a neglected Mac with the first beta of Mac OS Sierra installed on it, and an iOS system that is up-to-date and used all the time every day.

I can manage everything from my iPad, but sometimes it’s just faster with my MacBook, so I grabbed that after a few minutes troubleshooting on my iPad Pro. But I failed to type my password twice, Terminal then crashed out on me. Then Safari froze. Then I had to just give up on the Mac and restart it. It could be macOS Sierra which is on the Mac, or it could be that I never use my Mac and so the system was in a state of “oh shit, anyone remember how do this stuff?”

Or it can be both things, and more. Failing to type your password is hardly the Mac’s fault. The Terminal crashing and Safari freezing really sounds like a typical issue with beta software (Terminal never crashed on me in 15 years of using Mac OS X, and the last time Safari froze on my Mac was under Mavericks — and it was one website’s fault). So yes, you can’t expect a neglected machine running a beta version of Mac OS to be instantly ready when an emergency occurs.

I lost 30 minutes to just managing my Mac that morning.

It’s okay. Once I lost about 45 minutes in iOS just trying to figure out a way to edit a bunch of RTF files I had put in the cloud. It also cost me some money, as I purchased apps that seemed to do the job but weren’t satisfactorily up to the task.

Yet my iPad was just there, did it’s [sic] job and stayed the hell out of my way, and never once demanded I do housekeeping on it. The apps update in the background. The devices backs up each night automatically. It’s just always ready to go. That’s simply not the case with my Mac.

Technically, certain ‘housekeeping’ can be disregarded on the Mac if you’re in a hurry or there’s an emergency. There’s no need to follow an app’s prompt to update to the latest version. The one currently installed is likely to do its job all the same. Update requests can be dismissed. Clearing up Notification Centre can be postponed, since it’s out of the way by default. And apps can update in the background on the Mac too — at least those purchased in the Mac App Store. Using Time Machine, the Mac can be backed up every hour. Using services like CrashPlan or BackBlaze you can schedule backups at night. Sure, in the catastrophic case you have to restore from a remote backup, since Macs have bigger storage, the process is going to be long and tedious. But restoring a 128 GB iOS device from an iCloud backup isn’t exactly lightning fast either.

My Mac is always ready to go. When I wake it from sleep I can resume work exactly where I left it in more than one application. Everything’s there, in the apps and documents I left open before grabbing the Mac to continue my work elsewhere.

My primary OS is Mac OS X, and for my work and the way I work, I don’t expect to leave the Mac anytime soon. But I certainly enjoy doing lighter, simpler tasks on iOS as well, and I’ve been using my iPad every day since I purchased it four years ago. I’ve been trying to use both Mac OS X and iOS in synergy and take advantage of the best of both worlds, because I think they’re quite complementary. However, by choosing the Mac as my primary system, I’m not implying iOS is a shitty environment, nor do I feel the need to draw certain comparisons which, to be honest, appear to be a little contrived and unfair.

 

 

Related: The Mac is just as compelling

After the WWDC 2016 keynote — A few thoughts

June 21, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

WWDC 2016 header s

 

After major Apple events such as the 2‑hour keynote that took place on 13 June, it’s always hard for me to write an article with my observations; first because — especially in the case of this WWDC 2016 keynote — the event is packed with announcements and news to digest, and secondly because many other good writers are quicker at sharing their thoughts; so when I finally sit down and start writing my contribution, I feel there’s nothing much to add.

Of all the many articles I read this past week, It’s Tim Cook’s Apple Now: What WWDC 2016 Teaches Us About His Vision for the Company by Rick Tetzeli is probably the closest to the kind of piece I was planning to write myself. The following passage in particular:

Perhaps more notably, the keynote made clear that Cook is determined to fix whatever Apple products seem less than stellar, including the Watch, Apple Music, the App Store, and many services dependent on wireless connectivity. That’s a continuation of the company’s longtime focus on spending time and money to continually improve existing products. But the keynote was even more notable because it made clear that Apple’s business concerns and goals are different — and more ambitious and complicated — than the ones Cook inherited from Jobs. Once upon a time, Jobs defined the “Apple experience” as the merging of hardware and software in a single device in a way that no other company could match. Over time, that definition grew to encompass an iPad, a Mac, and an iPhone, and all that a user could accomplish because these were wirelessly connected. Cook is expanding that universe significantly.

While some commentators believe that the company is still focused on individual devices, the keynote was full of improvements devoted to two concepts: continuity and artificial intelligence. The continuity part made clear that Apple wants you to be able to do whatever you need on whichever of its devices you are using. Start a document on a Mac, you can wrap it up on your iPhone. Start editing a slide show on your iPad, finish it up on a Mac or an iPhone. Track your physical activity on a Watch, check it out later on your iPad.

The word that sums up all of this is ecosystem. Apple’s focus is its ecosystem as a whole, a seamless ‘environment’ surrounding the users and offering them a coherent, cohesive experience. This isn’t exactly a new goal, but never before has it been so apparent how Apple wants to have a whole functioning organism rather than just improve each different platform to offer better hardware products. The ‘Apple software quality is declining’ debate of the past months made a lot of people hope that Apple would concentrate on fixing what doesn’t work rather than introduce fancy new features for novelty’s sake. During the WWDC keynote, as Apple executives were outlining some of the key new features of the upcoming versions of watchOS, tvOS, Mac OS and iOS, I easily noticed a common denominator — Apple is introducing new features whose main purpose is to fix some user interface or user interaction annoyances for each of those platforms. And such improvements will not only affect a single platform, but — as Tetzeli points out — they’ll improve and solidify the interconnection between all four of them. For the first time, while watching the keynote, I found myself thinking It’d really be nice to also have an Apple TV and an Apple Watch now, the two Apple devices I usually had a very limited interest in.

The glue of Apple’s ecosystem are cloud services that work behind the scenes to hopefully guarantee that seamless continuity and experience mentioned before. And the impression I had during the keynote is that Apple is showing an increasing confidence in iCloud. 

  • Siri on the Mac means additional work for the underlying services. Some have wondered why Siri didn’t come before on the Mac — I think that perhaps it’s because Apple didn’t feel the underlying infrastructure ready or robust enough.
  • The new Universal Clipboard feature relies on iCloud. (Interestingly this is billed as an iCloud feature rather than a Continuity feature, in which case this would mean that copying data won’t necessary be limited to devices in close proximity, writes Ryan Smith at AnandTech.)
  • Ryan Smith, again, notes that Apple has also expanded iCloud Drive’s functionality a bit, pushing it to a more generic cloud storage solution. For macOS Sierra, iCloud Drive will now be able to sync up the Desktop and Documents folders, moving away from the more application-centric approach it’s best known for. Apple is pitching this as a convenience feature; Mac users who are accustomed to saving files in those locations can now just access them remotely via iCloud as opposed to having to change their workflow to better mesh with how iCloud has traditionally worked.
  • The new Optimised Storage feature in Mac OS Sierra also relies on iCloud for the most part.

All improvements announced at the keynote are welcome. I’m not an Apple Watch user, but the increased speed, UI tweaks, and new apps coming with watchOS 3 are certainly making the watch a more compelling device. Same goes with the AppleTV. I was mainly interested in seeing what’s coming for Mac OS and iOS, and Apple didn’t disappoint in the least. 

That said, there are a few things that, for now, I’m filing under the I’m not sure I like category.

In iOS:

  • I’m ambivalent about the new design of Control Centre. On the one hand, it has improved visually; on the other hand, I don’t like the additional swipe to reach the audio controls. For panels and UI elements that work as overlays, I like things to be quick and simple. Yet iOS 10 seems to be going in the opposite direction.
  • On a similar note, Apple has doubled down on Notification Centre as a centre of activity that’s getting a little too busy for my tastes. I know there are people who are thrilled by being able to do more stuff directly from Notification Centre, but I don’t see the appeal of, for instance, engaging in an iMessage conversation right from the lock screen (while I admit it’s convenient for quick yes/no replies). Sure, the 3D Touch enhancements let you interact with notifications in a powerful way, but things aren’t going to be equally handy for those with an iPhone lacking 3D Touch. It’s a personal preference, of course. I just like notifications to be ‘passive’ and just a shortcut to launch the relevant app and do stuff inside the app. Today’s iPhones are incredibly fast devices — I don’t see how doing everything in Notification Centre is this huge time-saver. It’s a matter of habits, I guess.
  • I understand the disappearance of the historical Slide to Unlock gesture. Rise to Wake and pressing the Home button to unlock the device are both gestures that make a lot of sense and, in a way, unify the unlocking behaviour for everyone — whether one’s iPhone has Touch ID or not. Still I’m in full agreement with Michael Rockwell when he writes: Two changes that I just know will annoy me for a few months after iOS 10’s release is that they’ve moved Today View and the quick access camera gesture on the lock screen. Today View has been moved, spatially, to the left of the lock screen while the camera is to the right of it — swiping from either direction slides the corresponding feature into view. I can already see myself unintentionally accessing Notification Center or Control Center instead of Today View or the camera. Those gestures have become a huge part of the way I interact with my device and it’ll take some time to retrain that muscle memory.
  • For all the talk about the iPad being the future of personal computing, I would have really loved for Apple to showcase at least one iOS feature specially tailored for the iPad, instead of hearing a lot of sentences ending with …And it’s great on the iPad as well.

    •  

    In Mac OS:

  • I know it’s a bit silly, but as a long-time Mac user, I just can’t stomach the macOS spelling. First Apple drops the ‘Mac’ in ‘Mac OS X’ in 2012 because— actually I don’t remember the reason; it probably suited some narrative. Now Apple puts the ‘Mac’ back and drops the ‘X’ because it suits another narrative. I’ll just write Mac OS and to hell with it all.
  • Optimised Storage sounds like an interesting feature on paper, but I really hope it’s not entirely automatic and active by default. That there’s going to be some clear ON/OFF switch like with Time Machine. I don’t know you but, whether it’s new or older files, I’d like to decide where they go and when to move them. Ryan Smith at AnandTech observes that Given the capacities of modern Macs, it goes without saying that to free up any significant amount of space you’d have to move multiple gigabytes’ worth of files to the cloud, so the cloud-hosting aspects of Optimized Storage seem to rely pretty heavily on buying up to a larger storage tier on iCloud. This makes me hopeful about the optional nature of the Optimised Storage feature, and that you can choose not to use it if you don’t want to.
  • The question of Mac OS Sierra’s system requirements is a bit puzzling. If I read the information correctly, Sierra requires processors with the SSE4.1 instruction set, so the minimum requirement becomes the Core 2 Duo ‘Penryn’ CPU. Now the official list of supported Macs states: All late-2009 (and newer) iMac and MacBook computers, and all 2010 (and newer) MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini and Mac Pro computers. But the list of Macs with a Core 2 Duo ‘Penryn’ processor is longer, and includes Mac models that go as far back as early 2008. In my case, for example, my 15-inch MacBook Pro is a 2.66 GHz mid-2009 machine which officially is not supported by Mac OS Sierra, but apart from the graphics card, it has identical specs as the 13-inch mid-2010 MacBook Pro, which is included in the list of supported Macs. My guess is that it’s just a matter of the 7‑year support period Apple guarantees for its machines. When Sierra is released this Autumn, all Macs introduced before late 2009 will be more than 7 years old, and their status will change to ‘Vintage’ for Apple Support. I have to update my MacBook Pro anyway, so I’m not really bummed, but I suspect there will be a few machines which technically can run Sierra even if they’re not officially supported. It’ll be interesting to see whether the Mac OS Sierra Installer will let users proceed anyway or just display a warning like Mac OS Sierra cannot be installed on this Mac. (There will be hacks, I’m sure.)

Overall, I enjoyed the WWDC keynote, and I can’t wait to see the new Mac OS and iOS in action. All these new features in software are also making me anxious to see the new hardware Apple will introduce in the next months. I own aging devices by now (mid-2009 Mac, an iPad 3, an iPhone 5), and while I can’t complain about their continued dependability and usefulness, I really wish I could upgrade all of them in one fell swoop. But for how I work, the Mac always has precedence, and the hardware design and connections of the next MacBook Pros will largely influence my choices for the upgrade. If they end up being too similar to the 12-inch retina MacBook, I may even consider switching to a desktop machine or to the more affordable MacBook Air (provided Apple will maintain the Air’s current keyboard design, which I clearly prefer over the ultra-flat keyboard design of the retina MacBook).

To conclude, I believe we’re entering a phase where Apple is building a truly compelling ecosystem — not just from a hardware/software integration standpoint, but also considering Apple’s privacy-first approach. When I look at the alternatives, I think Apple’s a great platform to be locked in today.

A few initial thoughts on the new subscription model for apps

June 10, 2016
by Riccardo Mori
Software

(These are early observations and first impressions. I may update this post in the next days as the ongoing debate develops.)

 

I assume you’ve all heard the big news, otherwise The New App Store: Subscription Pricing, Faster Approvals, and Search Ads by John Gruber, and Pre-WWDC App Store Changes by Michael Tsai are two good starting points. In short, the various Apple’s App Stores (iOS, OS X, tvOS) will soon undergo a few significant changes. Gruber:

These changes fundamentally change the App Store, for users and especially for developers.

A quick summary:

  • App Store review times are now much shorter. These changes are already in place, and have been widely noted in recent weeks. Apple is today confirming they’re not a fluke — they’re the result of systemic changes to how App Store review works.
  • Subscription-based pricing was heretofore limited to specific app categories. Now, subscription-based pricing will be an option for any sort of app, including productivity apps and games. This is an entirely new business model for app developers — one that I think will make indie app development far more sustainable.
  • Changes to app discovery, including a smarter “Featured” tab, the return of the “Categories” tab, and, yes, as rumored, paid search ads.

In this post, I want to focus only on the new subscription model for apps. It’s the change that is going to have the biggest impact on me as a user/customer.

I know it’s probably too early to comment on a landscape that hasn’t changed yet, but I believe that in this case the debate might help shape how such landscape changes down the road.

As soon as I learnt about subscription-based pricing, my first thought was I just hope not each and every app developer will merrily jump on the subscription bandwagon, because it’s not going to be sustainable for the users. Michael Tsai writes: 

From the developer side, recurring revenue is key, but will customers be reluctant to sign up? Even as someone who likes to pay for apps, I think twice about subscriptions. In a competitive marketplace, will customers find a subscription product attractive next to a competing one that is a one-time purchase? How can a developer figure out a fair ongoing price up front, when it’s not known how the app’s launch will go or what path its future development will take?

Like Tsai, I’m not a cheapskate and I like to pay for software — but I like to pay a fair amount upfront and ‘own’ the software, as opposed to ‘rent’ it for an indeterminate time interval. I was never a fan of the freemium model, but in a few cases it has worked very well for me — the typical example is the free photo app with in-app purchases for filter packs and/or additional features. I’ve happily obliged in more than one occasion, because I felt it was a fair contribution to the app’s development and a thank-you to the developer for delivering a nice product. If the same app shifted to a subscription model, I don’t know if I would completely be okay with it. Another scenario where the freemium model has worked for me — the typical ‘free with ads’ app where you make an in-app purchase to remove the (usually annoying) ads. If the app is worth it, I usually oblige. If an app proposed me to start a subscription to remove the ads, it’s far more likely I would either keep using the app free with ads, or look elsewhere. 

Tsai again:

I think the best thing that can be said for subscriptions is that they’re honest and mostly align everyone’s incentives properly. Customers will essentially vote with their wallets, on an ongoing basis. Developers who maintain and improve their apps will get recurring revenue. Apple will get more revenue when it steers customers to good apps. Over time, more of the money will flow to the apps that people actually like and use. My guess is that the average customer will end up spending more money on fewer paid apps. Some apps will become more sustainable, but others will be culled.

I hope developers won’t start abusing this new subscription model. This was another of my first concerns as soon as the news broke. I have 147 apps on my iPhone. I have 178 apps on my iPad. Even considering the overlap of universal apps I use on both devices, I probably have 25–30 apps that are unique to the iPad. If even a small subset of these apps — let’s say 35 — turned to a subscription-based pricing, I just wouldn’t be able to afford it. As James Thomson succinctly put it on Twitter, App subscriptions sound great until users realise they have 100s of apps. I don’t know how well it scales. Devs can’t all make more money.

I’m inclined to agree with what Tsai says above, but there’s something I want to add to that observation he and others have made, that “more of the money will flow to the apps that people actually like and use” and that “people won’t have hundreds of apps anymore, just the ones they actually love and care to support” (I’m paraphrasing in this second instance; it’s something I’ve read in passing on my Twitter timeline and I don’t remember the exact words).

Here’s the thing — Among the apps I’ve bought over the years, a lot of them are quality apps I love and enjoy using, but I don’t necessarily use them all the time. A classic example: photo apps and image editing apps. I have a lot of them, and I don’t really have a preference. I decide which to use mostly following the mood of the moment (in case of photo apps) or the specific function/effect I’m after (in case of editing apps and even photo apps as well). 

With these kinds of apps, I like to have lots of options available, and I haven’t minded paying upfront for each of these apps; I haven’t minded paying the occasional extra for a paid update or for the in-app purchase that unlocked more photo filters or editing features. But in the extreme case that all app developers behind these apps moved to a subscription-based pricing, without offering alternatives, I would be forced into a position I really don’t like: having to decide which app stays on my devices and which one has to go. Will the App Store’s infamous ‘race to the bottom’ become the ‘race to stay in your device’s (home) screen’?

Same goes for text editors and drawing apps on the iPad. I would hate to be forced to choose between supporting 1Writer or IA Writer, between supporting Procreate or 53’s Paper or Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro (in case all these embraced the subscription model, of course). 

Let’s put this another way: personally, I very much prefer a scenario where I purchase two different apps each priced at $3.99 rather than investing $7.98 for sustaining a single app with a $0.99/month subscription for approximately 8 months.

But back to the point I was making above: there are a lot of good apps I love to use, but some of these I use less frequently than others. If all of them switched to a subscription model, this would cause a ‘survival of the fittest’ scenario on my iOS devices (and on the Mac as well), something I consider a bit unfair for all parties involved. 

You see, I very much prefer having 25 different photo apps with maybe a couple of favourites and the other 23 available as alternatives — or as a complementary solutions — or as backup solutions when I don’t like the results I got from the two favourites — rather than a scenario where I end up whittling down my ‘Photography’ folder to three apps because that’s all the subscriptions I can afford. (Again, in the extreme case where most of the developers were to move to a subscription model.)

 

Then there’s the elephant in the room. 

Nick Heer writes:

I’m not sure there’s an easy or ideal way to pull the App Store out of its nosedive into unsustainably low pricing, but subscriptions seem like a good option. They’re clearly imperfect, but they might be a key factor in keeping prices generally low for users as they amortize the cost of development over months-to-years and incentivize regular updates.

One of the main factors causing the App Store’s nosedive into unsustainably low pricing is people who don’t want to pay more than a ridiculously low sum for apps, or who don’t want to pay for apps at all.

As Michael Anderson observed in a tweet, how can people who currently refuse to pay $2.99 for an app suddenly be convinced to pay $12 a year? In this perspective, a subscription model for apps doesn’t exactly solve the App Store’s ‘race to the bottom’ systemic issue. It’s just another option, an option that may facilitate the sustainability of certain apps; an option which will probably facilitate the sustainability of apps made by certain prominent indie developers over other, lesser-known developers. And my early guess is that — if abused — it’s going to be an option that has the potential of driving customers away. Not necessarily cheapskates or people who don’t understand the costs of app development, but also people who (like me) usually pay for apps but are on a budget and can’t afford supporting every app they like. And people who simply can’t justify a recurring subscription for apps they love to use, but don’t use frequently enough.

I hope the spectre of unsustainability in case of a mass-migration towards a subscription-based pricing will be enough of a deterrent for developers so that they choose carefully what to do with their apps and what to offer from now on.