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 I think today's episode is going to be the end of the like feelings trilogy.
we've been having in the last few episodes of Under the Radar, where we've been working through the challenging and complicated feelings that we've been having as they relate to our work. So less about the actual technical in and out. of which APIs we're thinking about or the app store marketplace rules that we've been dealing with or challenges or marketing or all those things. We've been talking about our feelings. We've been talking about
this period we find ourselves in where things just feel different and complicated. And, you know, Marco and I, we've been doing this a long time and we've seen... the tide of these things ebb and flow. And sometimes it feels great to be an Apple developer, and sometimes it doesn't feel so great. And we're in a bit more of a not-so-great place right now, at least. And see our last two episodes to understand sort of that in a lot more detail.
But to wrap up that trilogy, something that I kind of have been recently really struck by was the importance of cultivating optimism as part of the way that we approach our work. Because fundamentally, I think for both of us, like we've chosen to be experts. in something. We've spent the last 17 years developing specific expertise in Apple and Apple platforms. and understanding them and being really good at this. And I expect, honestly,
for the rest of my programmer career to continue to be on Apple platforms. It's not this thing where I'm grumpy and about to leave and do something else. I don't have something else I want to do.
And there isn't something else that I feel like I'm qualified to do. And it's just like, I enjoy this still. This is part of what we were talking about. It's like the fundamental work I still enjoy. It's the surroundings that have been really difficult and challenging recently and something that I've sort of... had to work a lot harder to navigate on. And I think specifically, and there's an article I wrote and published yesterday titled Choosing Optimism about iOS 19.
which is like a case study in this feeling and in the approach that I've decided is important for me. to sort of nurture and navigate in myself. And specifically, it comes out of an experience I had where this last week, Mark Gurman had one of his big rumor posts where he talked about how there's a large expectation. At WBDC this year, there's going to be a large UI redesign announced.
as part of WGDC, that's going to reach out and touch a lot of different aspects of iOS. It's going to be largely or potentially vaguely based on SwiftUI and Vision OS and some of the sort of more modern takes on those things. And it's like I would say that announcement or that rumor, the announcement of the rumor, I don't know what you say, is been something that.
has largely had a lot of negative coverage of it. And I think it's for understandable reasons. It brings up memories of iOS 7 and the challenges that that brought to us. and has lots of challenges. And specifically, this last week, I was also up in the English Lake District doing a hiking trip where I was spending a lot of time just walking and going up and down mountains.
And I remember specifically going up on my, on Thursday morning, listening to ATP. So you and, you know, you, John and Casey had been discussing this, this, this, this rumor. I was walking up this mountain and I was sort of finding myself, and I will say broadly, the ATP's initial reaction to this rumor was not a positive one. I believe.
Like the title of the episode is like time to spiral or something along those lines. Yeah, it was I'd say it was a combination of skepticism and just abject fear. Yeah. And which is fair enough. And like as I'm walking up this mountain, the first one.
of the day i was like nodding my head and being like yeah like how many people can say as i'm walking up the first mountain i'm walking today there were a great many mountains that day but as i'm going up the first one i find myself thinking like i'm like nodding along And I get to the top and I started coming down the other side and you moved on to the next topic. And I found myself and just realized like, Dave, you feel really like, there's like an ick feeling that I have right now.
And it's like, it's partly because I've been thinking about this thing and it's like, I'm thinking about it from the negative side. And I'm not saying that the ATP coverage of it was inappropriate or problematic, but it was just like, Dave, if you spend the next... six to 12 months in that place, like it's not going to be good for you. Like this is going to be a really tough time. If you're starting from a place where you have conflicted feelings and whenever news comes out.
You allow yourself to just get sucked into the negative side of it. Like it's going to be tricky. And then I had the benefit of the entire rest of that day to then unpack that thought. and think about, well, it's like, well, what am I going to do? Like, what should I be doing instead? What should I be doing to try and ensure that I can still have some mental health and positivity and motivation and encouragement? And by the fifth or sixth mountain, you were feeling better.
Exactly. I was like, honestly, and like, this is the way that like, and what ends up happening, I think is like, I love hiking for this because it allows me the space to think of things. And what you tend to have is you kind of have a thought. And then it's like a like it's like it's in a washing machine. It just goes round and round a little bit. And every time it kind of comes to the front.
you start to think about it in a slightly different way. And I tend to latch on to different phrases that then are really helpful. And they've, after the fourth time through the wash cycle, you kind of, they're developed into something that's useful. And like one of them. For me, it was optimism isn't enthusiasm. That like, this was a thought that really was helpful for me. And it was separating how...
It is possible for me to be optimistic in the sense of focusing on and looking for positive outcomes and positive aspects to a situation. without that meaning that I'm like endorsing it, I'm enthusiastic about it, that I'm encouraging it, that I'm like all of those feelings that go along with it, like enthusiasm. is a feeling, whereas the optimistic part of it is a choice. And like, that is a choice that I have available to me.
But I can choose to remind myself that in almost any circumstance, if you look for the positive things, you will find them and they will be encouraging to you. And even just the exercise of thinking about them.
helps balance you out. That if all you have is the negative thoughts that are in your mind, everything feels negative and it feels like it gets worse and worse in a way that if you, without changing the circumstances, if you are aware, like you are consciously trying to make yourself aware of the positive things.
it raises the way you feel. And that's just a reality of something else that I've found in life. And I think another way to say that... I always love these phrases where I'm like, as I've aged, as I have some amount of wisdom compared to myself of 20 years ago, is the understanding that being pessimistic...
like focusing on the negative side of something, like feels better in the moment, but will like slowly eat at you over time. Whereas being optimistic or looking for positive outcomes or positive aspects. feels foolish and naive in the moment, perhaps. but is the thing that will ultimately allow you to sustain and keep going over time. And so like those two ideas that like the... Like pessimism feels good now, but will eat at you over time. Whereas being optimistic.
It feels foolish now and will sustain you over time. And that being optimistic is not the same as being enthusiastic. Like I can be unenthusiastic or not have good feelings about something and still have the opportunity to look for the good things. It's like taking that approach. is the thing that I think is going to allow me to navigate the next, who knows, like 6, 12, 18 months.
Hopefully it's not that long that we're in this ebb of the Apple developer sentiment tide. But while we're down here, if I can keep looking and reminding myself of positive things. I'm going to be in a much better place. And so that was just something that, you know, at the end of this, you know, this 10, 11 hour walk, I ended up feeling a lot better and I had a lot more balanced perspective.
And so I wanted to share that. I think the show is a good way to talk about it. And I think it fits well as like a bookend to the, you know, our feelings trilogy. About like, yeah, from here doesn't mean that things have changed or have gotten better, but we can take care of ourselves. And that is a choice that we have to cultivate, not something that will necessarily come naturally or happen on itself.
I like the direction you're going with this. I mean... I think you've reached a more optimistic point than I have, but... Overall, I'm still on the optimism side. I think the... This particular story about iOS 19 and the associated versions of macOS and everything else being rumored to have a big redesign that makes them all look the same, that I think is a combination. uh like the feelings it generates i think is a combination of
Not just pessimism, but also just fear, especially in the context of the Mac, which is what we were talking about a lot on ATP. We are afraid that today's Apple is going to ruin what we love about the Mac. because their recent track record is not amazing there. There's definitely a fear angle, and that's different from... I'm just feeling pessimistic. I think this is going to be bad.
It's related, but it's a subtle difference from like we are afraid that this thing we love might have something bad happen to it.
And pessimism would be – I think it would be easier to wander into that direction from a place of I don't love this anymore. And I think when you – I think a distinction that I think matters a lot here is … When you have reached the point in a job or a fandom or many kinds of relationships, when you've reached the point where you... just are like you feel like you're grinding every day and you you your heart's not in it anymore you don't love it anymore
I think that the best course of action, if you can, is to get out at that point. Like that's when you know you're done. Like if you don't enjoy software development anymore. or if you don't enjoy developing iOS apps or whatever it is that you're listening to the show and developing, if you just don't love it anymore, if every time you have to open up Xcode and work on your app, if you feel like, ugh. that's a pretty clear sign
you're done. You're done with either that app or maybe that platform or that career. When you have no more joy left in it, you're probably done and you should probably get out if you can. That's, I think, different from I still love this, but I'm afraid about where it might go or I'm afraid that it might be screwed up in the future. And so it's useful to try to.
distinguish those two feelings like if basically how will you if you think about like how will you feel if ios 19 and mac os whatever if they come out and they're actually good Will you feel excited about that? Or will you feel like, oh, no, now I have all this work to do? Or some combination of both.
It's okay to, you know, to feel excited about like, I look, I would love if iOS like gets really awesome looking like, and then my app gets to take advantage of that really easily because I'm all Swift UI and everything. That'd be great. I would love that. it would also be a ton of work. You know, as I was talking about in ATP, like... The reason why they don't do this very often is that, and the reason why they shouldn't do this very often. is that system-wide redesigns
are a huge burden on the entire software ecosystem, including Apple's own internal software resources to make their software. The entire ecosystem is massively burdened by that because... What happens in the case of a system redesign like iOS 7 style? No one can do anything else that year except adopt a new design. Like, it takes such... massive amounts of resources. It often triggers app-wide redesigns. Sometimes it triggers app-wide rewrites.
because it might be easier to adopt the new style if you do rewrite big chunks of the UI or the entire app. It's a huge deal. In some ways, it reminds me of... An old Joel on Software article called Fire in Motion. And in that context, Joel was talking more about the... The technical API side of Microsoft – I mean keep in mind this article was written in 2002. So the context of that was like Microsoft was launching all these different APIs and different –
different ways to write data layers or windowing layers or whatever. And the idea was you have pressure to keep adopting the new thing. And on our side... In Apple land in 2025, certainly I think we have a little bit of that in terms of like Swift UI, Swift itself, Swift data, stuff like that. In the context, I think a redesign actually does a similar thing. The difference is... With a system redesign, your users can tell whether you've adopted it, and it matters a lot to them.
Whereas at the API level, your users probably can't tell whether you're using SwiftUI or UIKit or whatever. And they probably don't care even if you do tell them. And it doesn't really affect them very much. So with a redesign, it's like the fire in motion approach coming from Apple. Except we all have to actually do it. We all have to actually adopt it. Otherwise, our apps will be penalized. We will fall behind. We will get one-star reviews, and our customers will start to look elsewhere.
We do actually need, if they do this kind of thing, we do need to adopt it. And what that does to us is blow a huge hole in our year. Like whatever plans you had for whatever features you were going to do this fall. If they do a system redesign, you're not doing those features. I got news for you like this. Whatever you thought you were going to get done this summer or this fall, if there's a system redesign, you are not doing those things. You are instead doing the redesign.
In a way, it kind of might feel like a form of fire in motion from Apple because in the current context, what's going on in the industry? Apple's getting beaten up, basically. Apple is... not doing well in the modern discourse in terms of what's going on in tech and where are they in it.
they're not doing great because everyone's AI everything now and Apple's AI efforts have basically a huge black eye on them so far. They're not going well. So you could look at that from a pessimistic angle and say, Well, Apple is falling behind in the areas people are talking about, so they're going to try to change the discussion and change the environment and drop a huge bomb and say, you know what? Now everyone's going to have to deal with this.
Instead of getting ahead of us with AI stuff. You could look at it that way. Maybe they do look at it that way. I doubt it, but they could. Even if you think that's a pessimistic view. The effect will be the same. The effect will be, we do all need to stop whatever else we were doing and adopt the redesign. That is what will happen. So the question is, how will we feel about that?
Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? It's probably not 100% good or bad. But where do you land on it? And I think where I land as a user of the Mac, I'm afraid. But as a user of the iPhone, I'm excited. Apple typically does a pretty good job of UI redesigns and UI tweaks on iOS. Again, the Mac, I'm sorry. The track record is pretty rough in recent years. But iOS is exciting, and iOS is where my business is. And I did I mean, the timing of this for me is both great and terrible.
I did literally just do a rewrite of my app and just redesigned the entire UI a year ago. So it's not the most amazing time, although it will be easier for me to adopt the new theme now with my new code than it was with the old code by a mile. So that dividend will pay off. But if this does happen... It will take all of the discussion... amongst iOS developers off of
AI stuff for a little while. And maybe that's a good thing in certain ways. It's not a good thing in all ways, but a good thing in certain ways. And maybe it buys us a little bit of time as Apple tries to better find their footing in that area, which they have not found. But if it buys them a year to do that, great.
My concern is that this is a company that has historically been bad at allocating engineering resources, that when there's some big new thing that they want to do or that they have to deal with. It seems like they allocate a lot of resources to that at the expense of other projects. So I suspect if this is happening... then lots of Apple engineering resources will have been spent adopting and implementing this new design.
for this year, and maybe we won't get a lot else in the SDKs. So there are ways in which I am pessimistic, and there are ways in which I'm maybe a little fearful of what they're about to do or what they're doing. Overall, when I look at where will we get at the end of this? And am I excited about that? Am I excited about a new visual design that the system can adopt, that my app can adopt, that if I adopt it, my app will look cool and fresh and modern?
Overall, yes, I am. And that's how I know that even though I am not feeling great about Apple's relationship with developers recently, I'm scared about what they're going to do on the Mac. I'm scared about... you know, them blowing it in a few areas that I think matter a lot to both me and them. Overall, I am still excited about the possibility of my app looking fresh and cool and me as a user being able to use fresh and cool looking apps on my phone.
So that's what tells me I have not crossed the threshold where I should retire from development or switch platforms or switch apps. Glad to hear it. That's what tells me I am still in this. I still love this. It is a roller coaster, but it is a roller coaster that I'm still on. And that's, you know, when I look at, you know, when if you look at the industry. There's a lot of other ways you can apply software development that are safe and reasonably boring and reasonably predictable.
Apple is not that. Apple is like working with a really talented chef. It's like they're like a little bit of a roller coaster and you're kind of along for the ride. But that's I have found that like. I still want to be on this roller coaster because I still like the ups and that makes me tolerate the downs, but I still want to be on it. We are brought to you this episode by Sentry. Sentry are the people who help you avoid your app being the one that gets deleted next.
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Yeah, and I think in what you're saying, what I hear too is it is these funny things in life where there is an element of, there is certainly a part of understanding when is it time to get off the roller coaster and when is it not? And that is in life is so often a very...
challenging and difficult thing. And I think that the things you're describing are definitely good characteristics that like if you find yourself in a place that it gives you no joy anymore and you have no enthusiasm and no excitement. And it is all negative. And you find you've, you know, sort of it's been long enough in that way that it's not just a phase, that it isn't just a bad day. It's not just a bad week. You know, it's like it's a bad epoch. Like things are not getting better.
then yes, that's not great. And it's time to get off and it's time to do something that... does give you those positive feelings. And I think it sounds like for both of us, it's like we're not in that place at all with this. In some ways, the reason we have negative feelings... is because we continue to care about this ecosystem and about this experience and about the things that are important.
to many of the people who are in this ecosystem. And so that's in some ways the counter example, the counter proof that we're still in it is because we care so much and because... It gives us feelings that we aren't just neutral. It's a classic thing that they say, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. And it's like, we are not indifferent to this in a way. We still continue to care and talk about it. It's something that's important to us.
you know, a fundamental sort of truth in this that I think is useful. And I think what you said that was important to have in the back of your mind that I don't think either of us would say that it's, you know, just keep doing something because you've been doing it. It's like, no, be aware, take care of yourself. And understand that things will not always continue on forever. That's just the reality of life. And I think the other aspect of it is the sense that
If you decide to stay on the roller coaster, it's the sense of you and I can't control our circumstances. Things are happening very much outside of us. But what we can choose to do is choose how we... these things that are happening to us, these things that are announced. And sometimes they're going to be good and sometimes they're going to be bad. And sometimes they're going to...
go in ways that we would prefer them not to. And they're like, we should talk about being scared about what's going to happen to Mac OS. It's like, I feel that like it's the place, you know, it is the tool that I use to do my job. and the thought of it potentially being radically changed.
is like just, I do have a lot of fear about that. Like in a way that it's like, if I've been using If I was a carpenter who's been using this hammer for years and years and years and someone comes along and says, the hammers are now upside down or whatever. Like I'd be like, uh, Oh,
I don't know how to use it that way. That's going to get in the way. I'm not going to be able, if I'm used to using, whatever, a 12-ounce hammer, and now I have to use 18-ounce hammers, it's like, this isn't going to work well. I'm like, I have actual, you know, it's like, that makes me really nervous and scared. in this particular case. But it's also like...
It makes me think of the classic thing of it's like being careful of borrowing tomorrow's troubles. We're like, at this point, all we have is like a single report from someone who fair enough has a good track record of like something may be coming in a couple of months. And it's like being careful to not over-index on things that haven't actually happened, to index on the news as it actually happens.
and react to the truth of the thing, not our imagined version of those things. Because that is another element of this. In one way, what I was getting at the earlier part is making sure that we're aware that in anything we can have a positive and a negative thing to look for. And if we look for both of them, we'll probably be in a healthier place. And then potentially being careful about...
We don't have to have those reactions right away to everything, and especially being careful of doing it for things that haven't actually happened yet, that are speculative. that we're imagining things, because especially the nature of when you're not feeling great, when you're feeling complicated, conflicted feelings about something.
we tend to imagine the worst case scenario. We tend to imagine the negative things in the same way that on the other side, when things are going great, we unfortunately will then imagine all the positive things and ignore all the, you know, the...
things that are negative and the things that we probably should have been aware of and the warning signs of trouble to come. It's an important thing in all of these things to have this balanced perspective that is reacting reasonably to things that are actually existent in the world.
and trying to have not necessarily a balance insofar as we need to take both sides, but make sure we think about what are the negative things that could come out of this, but also what are the positive things that could come out of this. and then having an abundance then of perspectives that we can use to navigate wisely and reasonably and in a way that is taking care of us through that process as a result.
That's a really healthy perspective. I'm glad you're bringing this perspective to this discussion because it is easy for us to kind of spiral into fear and pessimism too early or when it's unwarranted. Again, I think it's a sign that – the fear part of it is a sign that we care. It's not that – it isn't that we hate all these platforms. It's that we care about them and we rely on them or we use them every day or we love them or all of those things.
it is it's hard to hear that something is changing in a way that might affect you like you know the hammer analogy is good but it was it's more like you know Babies use mallets so easily. they're confused the first time they have to use a hammer. Maybe they hurt themselves. So we're going to just turn all hammers into mallets now. And even if you are good at using hammers, too bad you can't use them anymore. Now everything's just a mallet. It's that kind of fear that like...
what if this thing that we rely on is no longer suited for its purpose? Like that beyond just like, I don't prefer it this way, but like, you know, we didn't just make the hammer translucent. We also made the hammer into a mallet and it's like, well, That's going to make it hard for me to do my job. But if it does come to pass and if it turns out, everything is fine.
And it turns out we actually like the new stuff. And it turns out that after a year, when we see the old UI that we currently love, we're going to be like, oh my god, it looks so old. That's the direction these things usually go. It usually works out fine. Even iOS 7 was a huge bomb that went off.
And it went a little too far, but then it course-corrected over the next couple of years, and then it became what everything looks like. And then you see what came before it, and you're like, oh, that looks ancient by comparison. The same thing will probably happen here. The thing that we currently love and think is at least fine, if not good, that is going to look very, very old in a few months if this happens.
And if all this is wrong and all this doesn't happen or it ends up being way smaller of a tweak and more of an evolution and less of a whole system redesign, Then fine. Then we still have what we currently like and think is normal and nothing changes. So, yeah, I think you're right. We generally don't have much reason to be pessimistic yet and possibly ever.
Yeah. And I think, yeah. And I think, but I think we'll say too, it's like, it is also the aspect of what I'm not saying is that you shouldn't. be circumspect and have, be aware of the negative things. And I think all of these you're saying are like, they're genuine fears that I share and things that are, or could go sideways or could be problematic or could be difficult. And it's like, in all of those, like the could be's is where I just find myself.
catching myself to be careful. That is like, if I'm imagining something that hasn't happened yet. I'm setting myself up to experience pain and discomfort that I don't need to. And I should be aware of that and careful with that. And as much as, you know, it's like there's something delightful of looking forward to something with enthusiasm and excitement. You know, it's like you're a kid on Christmas morning looking forward.
to opening your presence like if that's where you are that then the that feeling ahead of time is a positive one but the inverse of that feeling of the dread and fear That is something that is like sometimes is warranted. Sometimes is inevitable. Sometimes is the reality of what we're where we find ourselves. But if we have an opportunity to not.
be marinating in that feeling um it's probably wise and healthy to choose not to and that's i think the thing that i'm reminding myself that when i find myself that i feel like i'm marinating in that negativity use some strategies to pull myself out of that and at least get me back to like a neutral place because that's a much better thing to marinate in neutral than in you know in despair and i think that's how i'm going to get through this particular season and hope
to look forward to the next one thanks for listening everybody I'm going to talk to you in two weeks bye