Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. So in our last episode, I was talking about how I felt like there was a circle of things that matters to me about my job.
And in that particular episode, we were talking about how it kind of felt recently that Apple's sort of circle used to overlap a lot with that, which was important to them. And then maybe it shifted a bit out. But I don't really want to talk about the Apple part of that now, but it got me thinking over the last couple of weeks about like what... is in my circle. And by that I mean, like, what are the things that really...
matter to me or important to me are things that I enjoy about my job and the way in which I want to go about doing that job. Because I think it's useful to think about... And, you know, your answer to that and every one of ours answers is going to be different to these questions because...
You know, what's important to us is variable, is changeable. Some of us are in this business for different reasons, and that's fine, and that's great. And I think it's important every now and then, though, to check in and make sure you understand. What is important to you? And to be honest with yourself and to not just say the things that you, you know, sort of you think you should say that are, you know, the, whatever the particularly.
topical or fashionable or that sort of thing. But it's like, I really understand, like, what are the things that if you don't do... on a regular basis, will make you feel dissatisfied with your job, which will make you feel frustrated and demotivated. Because if you are doing those things too often... you're going to feel demotivated. You're going to feel depressed. You're going to feel unsatisfied. And so understanding like what are the things that...
you know, do the opposite. They make you feel motivated and encouraged and, you know, feel like you're doing interesting things. And so that's the things that are in my little, you know, my circle of interest that I think about. And, you know, for me, I ended up with about six things that...
I really like in my job and I, you know, Marco, I'm sure you have a slightly different set, but probably I think over the last almost 10 years we've been doing the show, I have learned, I think our circles overlapped to a, to a large degree, but just perhaps not to a complete degree. But like for me, it's like, I want to be.
I like making apps. It's like the first thing. It's like, I enjoy that. I've done a lot of different kinds of development. I really enjoy app development. It's fun. It's the kind of work. programming-wise, that I want to do. And then what kind of apps do I want to make, or how do I want to make them? It's like, I want to make things that are thoughtfully designed, that solve interesting problems, that feel native, feel performant, that are respectful of my users, and are inclusive.
Like if I can hit those six things in the way that I build apps, I'm a happy bear. Yeah, I think I my list is going to be going to have a lot of overlap with yours because. Again, one of the – this is something we've talked about before. One of the benefits of being an indie is that we don't have a bigger company to apply certain pressures to us. When you get into the bigger world –
You get people whose decisions are numbers driven or data driven above other priorities. So it becomes easier in a big company, for instance, if some number will go up 10 or 20 percent if you do something that is user hostile. It's harder for bigger companies to not do that. All of their incentives are set up to basically conclude that they should do whatever moves numbers to that large of a degree. Whereas when you are an indie, you can actually be illogical.
Or you can not optimize only for numbers and money and that kind of metric. You can optimize for what makes you happiest or what you are proudest to deliver or what you believe is right or best.
We can make different decisions that I think can lead us to pretty different circles in this terminology compared to what the bigger tech companies or even medium-sized companies make. And so for me, my general goal… if you'll forgive a minor swear word that I'll bleep the middle of, there's a trend that people are calling in shittification. in lots of things, and especially in tech, I believe. Is it Cory Doctorow who coined the term? But anyway, and the idea of ins***ification is...
Things just kind of over time, gradually just getting worse for users. Apps getting worse and... Leaning more on tracking and software and tech products generally like squeezing people for more, relying more on like ads and services revenue kind of creeping in where they weren't before.
Getting less for your money, maybe like that. That's kind of the general trend. And this is kind of just what happens, as mentioned, like when you have metrics driven development and metrics driven decision making. This just kind of naturally happens over time unless there's really strong forces going the other direction. So my overall goal is basically anti-inshitification. trying to make software the way that we all remember that it used to be.
Maybe with rose-colored glasses. Maybe it was never quite this good, but I think in many ways it was a lot better in the past before things got so optimized for the metrics. And the general goal for me is... The software should do what the user asks it to do, and in most cases, not more than that. So if you think about the command line tools that many of us use...
These are very simple tools. You want to copy a file? You write the copy command from and to, and it copies the file. At no point in the use of the CP command does it... interrupt you to ask you for a rating. It doesn't ask you for your email so you can subscribe to its newsletter. It doesn't stop you from copying the file and say, hey, before you do this, we need to run some software updates. It just copies the file.
It does what you want it to do. And in that way, the software is serving the user in a very kind of, you know... regular, behind the scenes way. It is not trying to take the spotlight for itself. It is not asking the user constantly for more that will benefit it and not the user. It is just doing its job. That's what I want my software to be. Now, obviously, there are ways that the realities of business these days are interfering with that.
I did start prompting for ratings in Overcast, which I thought I would never need to do. But over time, I did eventually need to do it. So this is not like a hard and fast extremist or purist view. Because again, this is a... This is a different environment that we're working in than a lot of old software did. But I think as a general guiding principle, it's pretty easy to stay mostly in this circle and to not veer into what...
a lot of these other bigger companies are doing. And in part, it's easy because what they're doing keeps getting so much worse over time. So it's actually fairly easy to stay very distinctly away from it. But that's kind of my general goal. And I'll get into some specifics in a bit. But my general goal is... software the way it used to be in terms of respecting the user, doing what the user asks it to do, doing a good job of that, hopefully.
and not constantly begging the user for more, more, more the way that modern software pretty much universally has been doing. Yeah, and I think in both of what we were saying, there is a certain intrinsic, like almost optimism to what we're saying, too, that I think is really interesting, is that I think in both cases, we're taking this approach that says...
Look, we don't want to spend our days making things we aren't proud of and being successful at making things we aren't proud of. What we would rather be... is make something in a way that we are proud of it and hope that enough people like the difference that that can feel to then make that successful.
And that is the optimism part of it. But I think the fundamental to it, and I think this is the part that I sometimes struggle with when I talk to people who are kind of trying to walk this road, maybe. Because it's a difficult road.
is metrics and you can make the metrics go up and you're then you're doing you're fulfilling your goal right but like if you are just if your focus is on user-centric design that is respectful and inclusive and performant and all these things that are much harder to quantify and whose impact is not directly connected to the
like the success of the business, there's an inherent sort of question in there that you may not be successful. Like the world is not a meritocracy in the sense of whoever makes the best software wins. You know, there was a... Maybe 10 years ago, I thought that was true. I'm confident it is not true now. That is just not the way the world works, right? There are so many other factors that go into who is successful and viable and able to make a run of this in the long term.
so many factors and things that go into that, that it is not just who wrote the best app, who is the most, you know, it's like you look at some of the you know, some of the best designed, the best, most thoughtful, awesome apps in the world that are end up, you know, be sort of being commercial failures. Like this is a thing that happens or that struggle or that, you know, that struggle in a way.
But ultimately, I think there's a certain mindset that I think I have, and I think to some degree you do, is this, like, I would rather make the thing in the way I want to make it and have it fail than make it in a way that I didn't like and have it succeed.
Like that is just a difference in the way that I work. And obviously there's a certain, you know, it's like you have to be in a certain mindset and sort of comfortable enough and have enough resources to be able to make that kind of thing work. But at the same time, it's also just the reality. And I think you and I have both found that there is a certain degree to which if you... build user-centric, user-focused things, you tend to get a slow build over time that is sustained not by sort of...
this unnatural forces. It's like, you're not, it's not necessarily just based on who can spend the most on advertising that you, you know, if you're building a business that is purely based on word of mouth, for example, like that's what your hope is to do is that you're making something so great that some.
Someone's going to want to tell someone else about it. It'll be a slow road and it may not work because you may not get over that critical sort of the critical threshold. But in the end, you know, you want to, I want to make something, I'd rather make something the way I want to make it and have it fail.
then build it the wrong way and have it succeed. And so for me, for you both of us, it's worked out. We were there at the right time. We had the right skills. We've had enough of a time of building our audiences and having the right opportunities to make it work. But ultimately, it's like that's the awkward sort of optimism you have to have if you take this kind of approach. Because some of the things we do...
aren't the best for our business, aren't the best for running a sustainable app business. Like there are things that, you know, it's like waiting to, you know, almost more than 10 years to ask for, you know, a review prompt in Overcast, like wasn't probably, Thank you. that as the starting point rather than the smallest point at the end of the very long list of other factors.
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You mentioned a minute ago that being able to design and develop apps like this... is in some ways a bit of a privilege in the sense that like you're only able to not squeeze every metric if your metrics are good already. And I do want to push a little bit on that and challenge people on that a little bit because.
There is oftentimes this mentality in American culture especially that like if there's more money to be made, why wouldn't you make it? Why wouldn't – like if you can get 2% more money by making this change that – irritate your users a little bit why wouldn't you do it and i think first of all you know there there is certainly some value judgment there of like well there is other value that you could be optimizing for and maybe that's not worth it to you
But I would say also in many cases that is not the right business decision. Oftentimes you are sacrificing more of the user experience and more user – satisfaction than what you will get in return. And that could translate into fewer sales or less money over time. Because when you leave people with a surplus of satisfaction with your app... They are more likely to use it more. They're more likely to recommend it to other people.
And whatever you do end up offering in the app as ways to monetize, I bet they're more likely to engage with that because they're happier with the app and they're using it more. The hardest thing to get for an app is not money. these days. The hardest thing to get is attention and time. It's very, very hard to get people to install your app.
It's very, very hard to get people to then use your app after it's been installed. And it's even harder to get them to keep using it over time. Active users are worth more than almost any other factor because that is the hardest thing to get. So oftentimes it is better for your business to optimize for user satisfaction with your app.
than it is to try to squeeze out 2% more money if it'll cost you in user satisfaction. You know, the way I think about it is like when people have... you know a bad experience like think about when you have to go to like the the rundown corporate drugstore in town to pick up something no one likes those stores you go there because you kind of have to not because you like it and you would never choose to go there for fun uh you know when you didn't need to uh
But you go there because there's no other choice. I mean, if your app is in that position where there's no other choice, then you can squeeze people and you can sacrifice the experience because people will come anyway and you can optimize for that. So that's why we see tech giants doing that with their products.
Where are you going to go? But if you are, say, a nice restaurant, a fancy restaurant, you can operate in a more delightful and luxurious way and give people a delightful and luxurious experience. You know, like at a fancy restaurant.
When the person comes by to refill your water, first of all, you didn't have to ask them to refill your water. They just noticed it was low and came by and refilled it. Second of all, after they refill it, they don't interrupt your conversation with your date to say, Would you please rate me five stars for filling this water glass for you? It would really help more people discover the restaurant. That would be a poor experience that is...
not helping you at all. It's just them asking you to help them more in addition to what you're already paying for the meal. I know I'm stretching this analogy pretty far, but the kind of experience that I want to create with my software. is more the fancy luxury experience of...
I'm just going to have my software make things better for you. I'm going to do the things you want me to do in a good way. I'm not going to constantly be squeezing you for more, more, more in ways that really just benefit me and not you. promos and email newsletters and updates and a lot of the advertising notifications, like a lot of that stuff. It's just the app squeezing the user for more that will benefit the app and not the user.
I want to do the opposite of that. I want my app to do what the user asks in an elegant way that works well and is respectful of their time, attention, and resources.
The app should be efficient. As you were saying, Dave, it should be efficient. It should be fast. It should be – the functions should be easy to find. They should function well. And the user at the end of it should either – not think about my app much at all because they're moving on with their day and they will trust that next time they have that need, they'll go back to my app.
which takes a certain amount of confidence on my end, I think. But I think you can trust your users. If you make your app work well for them and make it easy for them to do the stuff they want to do and not throw all these paper cuts in their face, I think they will come back. And then secondly... If they do look around the app or if they do start paying attention to details.
I want them to be delighted by those details. I want them to say, hey, you know what? It is pretty cool that the play button has the volume bars bouncing up and down and indicating playback. Or, yeah, this actually, the smart speed and voice boost things, these work pretty well. Like, I want them to...
See details like that and appreciate them if they go looking for them. But I don't want to have to call it out. That's why, again, the person refilling your water doesn't say, hey, by the way, I just refilled your water. Like, no, you might not even notice your water was filled. You might just notice, hey, I never had to ask for water. Or you might not even think about it. Your experience might just be nice.
And you won't even put your finger on why, but you will know I had a nice time at that restaurant. So maybe you'll go back. Maybe you'll recommend it to friends. That's what I want the app to be. I want the app to be... People have a nice experience in this app. It doesn't irritate them. It doesn't annoy them. It doesn't anger them. It just does what they ask the app to do in a good way.
And that maybe I will trust them then to come back and to tell their friends. And that's not the most optimized path, but it does work. And I can sleep at night doing that. Yeah, and I think... too, there's an element of this that is certainly something that is like, we also just enjoy solving those problems more, I think. I think about the work that I feel most satisfied with in terms of the days that I've come home from the office and felt...
really proud of what I did and felt that great. It's like that deep sense of satisfaction. And it almost always comes from when I solved an interesting problem, like a design problem, a technical problem, an architectural problem, whatever that is. I want to wrestle with it.
interesting challenging problems i want to you know give myself the opportunity like in some ways completely selfishly like this is the like the very selfish view on this would be i selfishly love the feeling of looking at something struggling with it, not being sure how to do it, working at it for days or hours or whatever, weeks, depending on the size of the problem. And then at the end of it, you'd be like, I did it.
Like I solved it. The thing that was hard, I did. And that satisfaction that you, you can only get that kind of satisfaction after doing the hard work that you enjoy. Like that is. just one of those things in life. Like to get that feeling, you have to have done the work along the way. And the problems I want to solve are the interesting design, you know, thoughtful, user-centric kinds of problems. I'm not, I like part of the challenge I've had in my life as a...
developer in terms of obviously like a lot of these things, these aren't absolute. It's not that you shouldn't do things that benefit your business, that you will ultimately trying to find maybe it's a balance with priority.
Like I wanted to have a balanced approach that there are some things that I do that, you know, if I did everything that was a hundred percent user focused, the business wouldn't work because I would never ask anyone for any money or take or show them advertising or any of those kinds of things. Like that's, if that was the only thing.
data. It's like, I want to balance, but I also want to have a priority on top of that balance where I'm prioritizing the user experience. But In that environment, the problems that I want to solve are the ones that are interesting to me, not the, you know, whenever I've tried to work on the optimizing A-B testing for different, more business-y aspects of it.
those kinds of parts of the problem. Like I know I'm not going to enjoy it and I'm not going to be interested in it and I'm not going to do my best work. And selfishly, I will not be as happy and satisfied with my work. And so instead,
I just tend to not do those as much, sometimes to my detriment. These are areas where... getting other people to help you will definitely can definitely be useful where there are other people maybe who do feel satisfied and fulfilled in solving down those kinds of problems but like for me that's not it like i want to find like recently i was redesigning one of the
workout screens in Pedometer++ for the Apple Watch. And I had one of the sweetest experiences I always loved when a developer, where I came up with a new design for a workout screen. And it was one of those things, you look at it and I'm like, all the previous ones I've built for the screen are just utter garbage. Like this design.
is the one, like, this is it. I finally got there. Like I've been, you know, wandering around in the wilderness for, you know, for years, trying different things, trying to solve a problem in a different way. And then like, you finally hit on the one and you're like, this is it. This is great. And that feeling.
is amazing. And you can only get to that feeling and have it be that satisfying if you've been wandering in the wilderness, trying it and thinking about it and wrestling with the problem for a long time. And so that's when I say like I want to make software that is like thoughtfully designed and solves interesting problems. There's 100% a selfish part of that. But it's like a different – rather than optimizing for one thing, I'm almost optimizing for myself in that way.
I can say it's been super helpful for allowing me to do this job for so long. I think we've both been doing this kind of indie app thing for, what, 17, 18 years now? That's a long time. We can only do it if we are satisfied and fulfilled and interested in the work because otherwise we would have just given up and we would have done something easier. simpler because doing our work this way
is not easy or simple. It takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of conscious resilience to keep doing it time and time again because it doesn't always work. And sometimes you don't get the satisfaction of wandering in the wilderness and then finding the result. Sometimes you just wander in the wilderness.
and then have to give up and go home. Like, that happens too. And so, you know, it's just a tough problem to find. But when you get there, oh my goodness, it's amazing. Yeah, and I think that's part of why
A lot of indies, certainly myself included, we have trouble motivating ourselves to do the parts of the business that are metric-optimizing things. There's lots of... coding work i could do and i probably should do at some point to optimize my funnels and all this other stuff and and i really need to like from a business perspective like i need to think about that kind of stuff but
I'm as excited to work on that as I am to do my taxes. It's the thing that, okay, I guess I'll do it because I have to, but that does not excite me. That does not get me out of bed in the morning. If I do some kind of... re-engagement notification thing like that would have a good impact on my business and i should do it and i probably will end up doing that kind of stuff over the next year or two uh but i don't care about that i would much rather like
Make a new audio processing feature or make a fun new UI design somewhere in the app. That is much more interesting to me and gives me much more of that kind of builder's satisfaction. And ultimately, what I am optimizing for is not making every single possible dollar. I make enough dollars. I'm happy with what I make. What I'm optimizing for is retaining those dollars. So retaining people and their engagement. But also, I'm optimizing for my own satisfaction in what I am building.
What I want is for people to look at Overcast and to honestly think this is the best podcast app. Or, alternately, this is my favorite podcast app, which is subtly different. But that's what I want. I want people to think my app is the best. I want to think my app is the best podcast app or my favorite podcast app. That's what I want. And if I can also optimize for money and engagement.
Fine. That's great. Ideally, you can do both. But when a decision has to be made of if I do this, will my app still be the best podcast app? If that decision is or if the answer is no. or if that answer squeezes it a little bit and is like, I don't know, then no, I should not do that. Because then that's how, even if I get a temporary boost in numbers, or hey, a permanent boost in numbers.
Whatever boost I get in the numbers is not worth it if it's going to cost me the satisfaction of knowing that I'm making the best podcast app or my favorite podcast app. That will make it so that I will be less satisfied with it.
I will become more jaded with the business, which is getting increasingly harder to avoid every day. But if I keep making good stuff for me, that helps avoid it. And then once I get into that mindset of optimizing only for the numbers, then I think I lose a lot of people. And it might be subtle and it might be hard to see at first. But if Overcast is no longer considered my customer's favorite or best podcast app, I think over time I'm going to start losing them.
Because I'm not the big tech company. There are alternatives. People can go somewhere else. And I will do much better both in business and in my own satisfaction. to keep trying to delight people and try to respect them and respect their time and respect their attention and respect their devices' resources and try to just make software that does its job in a nice, delightful way.
Yeah, and I think maybe a good closing thought is to say that I think people – I imagine if you listen to a show like Under the Radar, there's a good chance you overlap a lot with a lot of the things that are valuable and important to Marco and I. I think that's just – the reality i think there aren't a lot of you know this isn't the show you listen to if those aren't the kind of things you likely value most likely but i think still is important before
to always be introspective about what is important to me and to you and be honest about that. Like, don't just think, oh, that sounds great. I want to do that too. It's like, really think about yourself. Look back on your life and say, when you've been doing those things, is that when you've felt most satisfied, most engaged, most motivated? If it isn't, like...
That's totally fine. We're not necessarily the way that everyone has to make software. Obviously, it's not. People make software in lots of different ways. But I think understanding what's important to you is what means that you are able to be successful. in whatever that's going to be. And ultimately, that's the thing I could wish most for any listeners. Be successful to your definition of success and understand that...
you're always going to have to make trade-offs. You're always going to be having to decide, and that's why it's important to understand what you value, to understand when you're making a trade-off, what's that looking like. Understand, I value this more than I value that. those two things are in tension, the balance is going to shift one way or the other.
The better you understand yourself, the better you're able to make those choices. So I'd encourage you to just think about it. It's like these kind of episodes feel a bit self-reflective. I hope they're useful just because...
it hopefully helps people to think through their own feelings. Because this is Marco and I thinking through our feelings. And the more we're able to do that and be concrete about them, the better we're able to make decisions. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'm going to talk to you in two weeks. Bye.