Vesper, Adieu

http://daringfireball.net/2016/08/vesper_adieu

by 8ig8 • 10 years ago

193 217 10 years ago

BooneJS2• 10 years ago

Nice app, but he nails the issue with not having a desktop app. I guess mobile first cannot mean mobile only (yet?). Lots of other Markdown-enabled note taking apps that work with Dropbox that allow you to use one app on mobile and another on desktop. I like nvALT on desktop and Drafts or 1Writer on iOS.

cageface• 10 years ago

In hindsight, I am now convinced this plan was fundamentally flawed. The market for paid productivity apps for iOS is simply too difficult.

When even a stalwart Apple partisan like Gruber will concede this you know things have gone horribly wrong in the iOS app market. The bulk of the blame here lies with Apple and their stewardship of the app store. They can push the iPad as real productivity device all they want but until they do something to make selling anything but games on the appstore worthwhile they're wasting their time.

perishabledave• 10 years ago

Is it really just the iOS App Store though? People expect everything to be free nowadays: news, email, productivity apps like Google Docs, games. Don't think you can pin this problem on Apple.

tesseract• 10 years ago

I think it would be entirely reasonable to suggest that the App Store dynamics contributed to that expectation. Along with the rise of browser based apps and services (also a cause here, granted) the App Store has been one of the biggest factors shaping the market for end-user software over the past decade.

Noseshine5• 10 years ago

    > People expect everything to be free nowadays

It's less that I expect things to be free, au contraire. It's more that it's exasperating to have all these many, many minor services that most of the time are not vital to me each ask for money individually.

Imagine you were sold a car not as one, but piece by piece. Need a steering wheel with that? A seat belt? Another seat belt? Oh you need a rear bench too? Another tire, maybe? A few more screws? Brake light too? Or the OS: Would you pay for calc.exe? For the file explorer? The desktop manager?

To me the main problem is that there are way too many minor pieces instead of a whole.

How about - and this is wishful thinking since it would require several big companies to work together, individually it would not help much - if there was ONE big service subscription, let's say $199 annually, and I can use everything (apart from enterprise stuff, that's more). Every piece of software - and also media! - out there. The system checks what I use and how much and distributes the money to the people who made the software and the media.

What those people who think "capitalism!" forget is that the whole process of purchasing is heavily loaded, psychologically. The more individual purchasing decisions, the more you cut it into pieces, the less people buy. The paradox of choice. Decisions decisions! So many more options to make the wrong one! You cannot make the decisions more and more numerous and expect humans to follow into the "perfect market society". "Buying" has a price in addition to the money.

The current system favors those who can offer larger packages. If we had a system and organization who could organize for everyone getting paid from a lump sum and remove the psychological obstacle), this would greatly reduce the disadvantages of smaller players and lead to a much more even playing field. So having a "government" and a "tax" would actually be good market capitalism. The decision would not be "do I buy this" but "do I use this" (but with payment!).

This is especially for things that are not essential, when having to make the decision may (and does) prevent a sale. Since we do have a lot of free alternatives this is what most people turn to.

When it comes to news there's an additional problem: Who reads just one news source? I read very few articles per newspaper, but a lot across many very different sources. There is no payment model for that even if I wanted to.

I first came up with the idea while thinking about how open source projects could be paid. An additional thought is that this increases "market activity" by lowering the entry requirements: No need for a full business organisation, pure developers don't need to become (as) business savvy. If they can assure there stuff gets used that automatically leads to income. Also an opportunity to ensure successful projects don't stop, because there is a stream of income associated with heavily used projects - and that without a sales and marketing department. Now this is really just a very rough thought, I saw no use in refining it since I can't make it happen anyway.

Imagine github had a payment model. In this case it wouldn't be so much for "use" as for "support". Imagine people pay a lump sum for library support, and money gets distributed to people creating code and patches and answering support questions. Something that won't ever happen except on a tiny scale driven by very few people when people have to give voluntary contributions to individual projects, the threshold is just too high. This includes merely knowing that the threshold is high, it's self-reinforcing: You know that library doesn't make the developer any money, so you know unless it's a really big package picked up by industry and supported by thousands of people it will probably die within a year even if it looks good and is good quality.

Now going wild (me and my ideas):

I think if we want more capitalism we need to make the entrance easier. Selling something is HARD these days. I say "these days" because I don't think it was so hard 50 years ago when there was less stuff (and more optimism among the populace too?). If basic income is too controversial, how about starting small with such a project? It has the advantage that following this proposal you know that people receiving money actually did something useful, and it would get people paid who today go without, and it would benefit individuals much more than corporations.

I think we need something big, keeping capitalism but tweaking some of the basics for the changed environment we live in. We need to keep incentives to "do something". I see more chances for this to both be accepted and to actually succeed compared to universal basic income.

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

Professional PC productivity software sells just fine

Console games sell just fine

It's only web and mobile where this becomes a problem, so why is that? The web I understand because it started out free, the App Store certainly didn't though.

matt4077• 10 years ago

I'm sure that the AppStore could be improved, but I doubt it could have the effect people imagine (i. e. doubling revenue or more). Most of the software people used to buy can now be replaced for free (i. e. google docs, and.. nope that's it). If you adjust for that, I'd guess the software market is actually larger than it has ever been.

shiny• 10 years ago

What kind of changes would you like to see made to the app store?

msh• 10 years ago

Not op but I think the app store needs trials and paid upgrades.

philsnow• 10 years ago

Discoverability is horrible, searching for the exact name of some apps doesn't return that app in the first page of results sometimes. Likewise, why are apps with 2 reviews ranked above apps with 2000?

I've completely given up on using the app store app for finding apps, I just google and then hopefully there is a direct link to the app I'm looking for in the app store.

mikeryan• 10 years ago

The bulk of the blame here lies with Apple and their stewardship of the app store.

I'm totally unclear how you made the leap from a difficult market for productivity apps on iOS to this being a app store problem.

amazon_not2• 10 years ago

Well, the app store is a pretty big mess.

Search does not work and Apple doesn't curate apps.

It doesn't help that you make an app people want to use and pay for if they can't find it.

vecter• 10 years ago

You're incorrectly attributing the failure of paid productivity apps to the app store's structure, when in fact it is entirely unrelated. It just so turns out that the market for paid productivity apps on iOS is small, no matter what Apple does with the app store.

chavesn• 10 years ago

It sounds to me like the point is that the market could be much larger if the transaction value were clear to consumers.

In the current app store, with the methods that consumers are used to spending money on their phones, for whatever reasons, it's not.

It's like when you'll easily spend $30 on drinks on a Friday night, but suffer a shitty note-taking system for years when you could have many of your problems fixed for $5 one time just because you don't know the possible transaction exists.

reitoei• 10 years ago

The bulk of the blame here lies with Apple and their stewardship of the app store.

Uh, maybe the app just wasn't that good, or someone made a better/cheaper one.

The only reason this is even being talked about is because of who the author is.

jbigelow76• 10 years ago

    >The only reason this is even being talked about is because of who the author is.

It seems to me that post mortems of shutdowns and discontinuations of apps, be they web or mobile, show up quite regularly on HN despite the relative fame of the author. People love to armchair quarterback this kind of stuff.

elicash2• 10 years ago

Maybe if Gruber hadn't been such a huge voice for reform of the app store, I'd share in your glee that a "partisan" was proven wrong in some way. But he's been consistently on the side of developers while acknowledging that Apple will always put its interests first.

I'm not sure if you actually read Gruber, but he's been critical of Apple when it comes to the app store on a number of fronts over the years.

jdswain• 10 years ago

There is a lot of price pressure on iOS apps, people expect them to be free or at least under $2. At that price you need to sell a lot of apps to make a profit, and probably very few apps reach that level. I've tried the opposite, selling a higher priced app and accepting the much lower sales numbers, and I think it has resulted in a better return than going low cost, but it's still not earning enough to grow. I do look at the prices that desktop apps get with envy, so maybe it is time to go back to that market? The idea about designing for mobile first though, that makes a lot of sense.

John mentions having to redesign for iOS 7, but the reality that there are many of these events that mean that you have to keep developing. New iOS versions, new screen sizes, WatchOS, (tvOS), new input methods, updating UI, all add up to quite a bit of work just to stand still feature wise.

I think the days of making money on the App Store are gone.

kalleboo• 10 years ago

Price elasticity also depends a lot on the type of app and marketing. I've seen the sales numbers for an app where increasing the price from $0.99 to $1.99 and ultimately to $2.99 had corresponding drops in sales where the revenue was actually kept the same. This app is very popular through word-of-mouth and blog recommendations which is the key. If you're relying on sales through search results and rankings it might be more price-sensitive.

cocktailpeanuts• 10 years ago

He says he would have made more money with desktop apps but I think people buy even less apps on the desktop appstore. I download apps on the iOS appstore all the time and sometimes even purchase iOS apps (including Vesper), but I would have never bought vesper if it was a Mac app (I wouldn't have bought it even if it was $5, but he's saying he would have put the price at $20....)

CivilianZero3• 10 years ago

I agree with you that I am, for some reason unknown to even me, more likely to spend $20 in increments on things I will never use on iOS than I am to spend any amount on the Mac App Store.

On that note, however, Mac Apps do seem disproprotionally more expensive for similar functionality but that is a different topic.

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

Mac apps, even without any updates usually run on the OS 8 years+ later

Same can't be said for iOS apps. It's just a much better investment.

sohkamyung• 10 years ago

I find this part somewhat surprising: "iOS 7 was introduced at WWDC 2013, just a few days after we shipped Vesper 1.0. [...] So we spent the summer of 2013 not building a sync system, but rather building an iOS 7 version of Vesper."

Didn't they know, before the launch, the look-and-feel of iOS 7? I don't believe Apple would have launched iOS 7 without telling developers beforehand the changes required to make their apps compatible with the look-and-feel of iOS 7.

Disclaimer: I'm not an App developer (either iOS or Android). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

sitharus• 10 years ago

WWDC is the developer launch event, so that's the first time any non-apple developer would have seen the new UI.

It generally isn't released to the public until september-october ish.

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

Although to be fair it was just a visual refresh they honestly didn't have to redesign anything. They could have built the sync system then redesigned.

Rather than shipping then starting a rewrite just days later.

astrange• 10 years ago

iOS is always revealed at WWDC in June, and launched in September, so you're both right.

phonon3• 10 years ago

That was the "before the launch"... iOS 7 was announced June 10, 2013, and was released on September 18, 2013...so it makes sense they spent the summer updating it to iOS 7.

pan69• 10 years ago

Would you not build a web version first? I mean, you can use that on both a phone and a desktop.

While I'm reading this I can't help thinking that this is a great example of a bunch of developers who are more interested in building an iPhone app and are using a product idea as as excuse to do so.

But hey, if you don't try you certainly fail. I have been there too. Live and learn.

AlexandrB• 10 years ago

Would you not build a web version first? I mean, you can use that on both a phone and a desktop.

And provide an inferior experience on both. I'm just one user, but I would have been reluctant to buy it.

eropple• 10 years ago

Agreed. I think the only web "app" I've bought, ever, is Pocket Casts' web version. (It was nine bucks and saves me a bunch of battery life--easy decision.)

voltagex_2• 10 years ago

the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface. We’re losing money every month.

Okay, what's the cost/benefit for buying a custom font for an app? I'd never even have considered it as something I should do.

rocky1138• 10 years ago

Honestly, I'm blown away that 1) people would pay monthly for a custom font and 2) that someone who loves their work so much would see their app close before scrapping the custom font to lower expenses in an effort to salvage the app.

I feel like this is a statement about iOS development in general; that perceived design is more important than the continued functionality of an app.

Or, maybe I'm just reading it wrong and the custom font was a one-time purchase.

voltagex_2• 10 years ago

No no, it's a monthly fee. I bet it's not small, either. But if it really makes the design that much better then it's probably worth it.

I reckon that even if they removed the font and somehow reduced the syncing costs, it still wouldn't be worth it to keep the service running.

adamlett2• 10 years ago

someone who loves their work so much would see their app close before scrapping the custom font to lower expenses in an effort to salvage the app.

I don't think that's strange at all. The look and feel of an app -- especially a simple tool like a notes app -- is a large part of what makes it valuable. There are many people who don't care, but they were never going to pay for an app in a category that has so many free alternatives. Those who are willing to pay are exactly the sort of customers who are delighted by the attention to detail that is exemplified by using a custom typeface.

jpalomaki• 10 years ago

It makes more sense if you think it that way that the application is also a way for showing your skills as developer or designer. If you need to cut down on things you feel important and can't be proud of the work, then it might make more sense to just kill it.

phonon3• 10 years ago

It's $299/y I think?

http://www.typography.com/apps/

http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17

If so, kind of surprising that's of an order of magnitude to be an issue.

muglug• 10 years ago

Depends totally on the licensing cost – some are very cheap, but anything from Hoefler & Co is going to be very expensive, probably prohibitively so.

allenu2• 10 years ago

Having a custom sync server and a custom font are both surprising decisions to me. I suppose they both have to do with a certain design quality they wanted with the app.

I'm not that familiar with the features of the app, but the reason I question the former is that the Day One journaling app has had a great sync model that uses Dropbox from the get-go. No custom server needed. For simple notes, it seems trivial to be able to piggyback on an existing file service like that. (I do note that their comments mention wanting to use iCloud but it not having everything they needed.) For fun, I'm writing my own task management app and I made sure to avoid my own cloud service just because I know I didn't want to pay or maintain it.

The custom font decision is also interesting. They must've been fairly certain of their profitability level to go down that route.

oarsinsync2• 10 years ago

the Day One journaling app has had a great sync model that uses Dropbox from the get-go. No custom server needed.

Agreed. Unfortunately, they're not the best example as they then withdrew the "Classic" app from all stores, and released a new app that forces to use their custom sync servers.

They also include really misleading text about the nature of the encryption being used, and whether or not they can read your data.

http://help.dayoneapp.com/day-one-sync-faq/

In its currently available form, Day One Sync encrypts the data “at rest” on our servers and securely transfers the data from our servers to the Day One app (the same level of security that Dropbox and iCloud provide). Following our 2.0 release, our 2.1 update will provide full end-to-end encryption. Our encryption features will utilize the user’s private key to encrypt all entries before they reach the server. In short, the server will have no access to the user’s unencrypted data. Neither iCloud nor Dropbox currently provide this level of security (see: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 and https://www.dropbox.com/help/28, respectively), thus making Day One Sync even more secure than these other sync/backup methods.

Translation: We currently encrypt your data after you send it to us, so we can read it. We may offer pre-transmission local encryption in future, and only for our own service, and this makes our service superior to the alternatives that we could (but have chosen not to) offer this level of encryption for too.

So yeah, they're a terrible example to use, unfortunately. Their original app was beautiful too. I didn't get around to buying the Mac app before they withdrew it, so my options are either manually extract my data, or risk giving them a copy (and pay them for the privilege).

Massively disappointed in Day One.

BooneJS2• 10 years ago

Double-edged sword. 1. Running your own sync service [can be, is] expensive. 2. Relying on [Google Drive, Dropbox, Box.com, Amazon Cloud Drive] is less expensive but devastating if they vanish.

So many iOS developers jumped on Dropbox that when iCloud Drive finally appeared it had a lukewarm response. Dropbox has been in startup mode since 2007, with plans to IPO, but what if Amazon/Microsoft/Google were to have killed it?

Waterluvian• 10 years ago

Why did they target all the apple devices? What drives a decision like that?

Don't you want to target the largest demographics first? I would imagine there's a ton of Linux and windows and Android users?

Retra2• 10 years ago

Maybe you want to target the most profitable demographic?

hota_mazi2• 10 years ago

iOS stopped having this privilege a few years ago. Android and iOS are about equally profitable these days.

And even if they were not, you will get about five times as many users on Android than you will on iOS, there are many ways to monetize these users once you reach such a volume.

Part of the failure of Vesper was due to Gruber's infatuation with Apple (on top of the fact that a note taking app is just not that compelling enough in 2016).

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

His audience is almost entirely Mac/iOS users.

niftich3• 10 years ago

I made the jump to smartphones late, and I've always used Android, so I missed out on a lot of what iPhones bring to the table. However, I have owned an iPad mini since 2013, and got a few games and (vaguely) 'productivity' apps for it, all free (EDIT: nevermind, I paid for Angry Birds)

But reading contemporary accounts of what Vesper was [1][2], it sounds a lot like yet-another-notetaking app, like Evernote, and lately, Google Keep, albeit one with nice typography and pleasant UX. I sympathize that the price pressure on mobile apps is intense, but could it be that it just didn't offer a compelling enough value, or differentiation from better-known competitors? Perhaps the question is, is there truly space for a dozen different apps that on the surface appear to do the same thing?

[1] https://www.macstories.net/reviews/vesper-review-collect-you...

[2] http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ip...

valleyer• 10 years ago

Agree 100%. I use the built-in Notes app on iOS with no problem. And it has a macOS app. Gruber is overthinking it -- his app simply wasn't compelling.

ghshephard3• 10 years ago

Keeping in mind, when Vesper was originally released, Notes was pretty kludgey, but it was dramatically improved. So, I halfways agree with you - Vesper became less compelling after Notes got it's major rework.

I still use Vesper as my preferred "really quick" note/scratchpad taking client, even though I'm an Evernote Plus subscriber, and basically run my entire life off that App.

I think that's the major problem for Vesper - the top end of note-taking is owned by tools like OneNote/Evernote, and Vesper was never going to be able to compete in that market. People are happy to pay $30-$60/year for a world class, secure, multi-platform note taking app, but probably not willing to pay that much for a scratch-pad note taking app, when the built in one is free, and syncs well across platforms.

ww5203• 10 years ago

Aren't better design and better UX a compelling value differentiator? Of all people, Apple users would have appreciated design more.

richie5um• 10 years ago

As per some other comments, I think the problem with Vesper is that it is too niche in a very well served market. The design is fantastic, but that doesn't matter if you can get more (functional) value elsewhere.

archagon2• 10 years ago

This latest shutdown inspired me to write a blog post in response[1] when I first heard about it. Although the reaction is understandable, it's a shame that developers feel compelled to adopt a scorched earth policy when they no longer wish to (or are no longer able to) support their products. These indie apps are often marketed as beautiful, wholesome alternatives to grimy corporate or open source software, but how could I possibly rely on these products for essential tasks like note-taking if they're just going to disappear out from under me in a few years? The idea that software has a lifespan controlled by the developer is, in my opinion, toxic to the market. It's just one of the many things pulling the App Store down, and one of the many downsides of living in a walled garden.

As time goes on, and as I see more and more apps simply disappear off the face of the Earth when developers deem them no longer worthy of their time, I find myself switching over to software that's either backed by large corporations or open sourced, regardless of how clunky it might be compared to "designer" alternatives. My hope is that we soon find a way to collectively monetize the latter. It's simply awful that an app can just "pop" and take so many years of developer and user time with it.

(None of the above is meant to blame Vesper or even comment on the sustainability of the app economy. It's just my sad reaction as a user and, um, app enthusiast. And props to Gruber for the introspective and humble post-mortem.)

[1] http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2016/08/21/tool-reliance/

api• 10 years ago

It's largely an artifact of the cloud dependency of mobile apps in particular. Every app has a bill someone must pay and a server or other cloud presence someone must maintain, patch, etc.

App stores also contribute in that an app without a dev account ceases to exist and can't be easily installed by anyone. So if the maintainer goes away so does the app.

In the PC era software could live forever. Even closed source PC apps can still easily be run today on emulators.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

Yeah, cloud, app stores and breaking platform APIs. I know people who still use ATnotes on their Windows 7 machines, despite the fact that it was discontinued more than a decade ago.

Still, PC era shareware (the equivalent to these small apps made by a couple developers) wasn't immune to cloud dependency, particularly when they had online license validation mechanisms.

elsurudo3• 10 years ago

They should open-source the backend (and hell, the front-end, too). That way you could self-host, or someone else can provide hosting.

oarsinsync2• 10 years ago

This. I'm surprised this is the only comment on here suggesting this. It's the most obvious way to gracefully sunset an app.

"This isn't making us any money, it's costing us money to maintain. If you still depend on it, here's the tools that will allow you to continue to depend on it"

toyg2• 10 years ago

I think the other way around would actually be profitable: opensource the front-end to drive adoption, and charge for back-end access.

It's all a red herring anyway, you can't pivot without a single developer.

arielm6• 10 years ago

I like the idea in theory but in reality the number of people who can get a somewhat complex backend running on their own is small and the reward (syncing notes) isn't really that compelling so I think it isn't a great idea...

Instead of sun setting the app I'd switch it over to use iCloud (free backend), make it free, and set up a public support forum. This way it'd work and there would not need to be any ongoing investment of time or money.

freshyill2• 10 years ago

They should just do whatever other people want, regardless of how comfortable they are with it.

leejoramo2• 10 years ago

In Brent Simmons' second blog post about shutting down Vesper, he mentions that Open Source is being considered:

Some people have asked that we make it open source. The request is getting serious consideration, but I can’t make any promises.
The code is all Objective-C. It’s an iOS 6 app with just enough changes to keep it working on iOS 7 and beyond. It knows nothing about size classes, presentation controllers, and so on. Doesn’t even use auto layout. It’s not an example of how you’d write an app these days.

http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper

jgruber2• 10 years ago

No promises, but we are looking into open-sourcing what we can.

jvdh• 10 years ago

In this case the reason is that not only the sync service costs money, but also the custom font they use costs money. So just letting it sit there would still cost money (on top of the fee for the app store itself).

wvh• 10 years ago

Software going out of fashion shouldn't be an issue if you take care to use applications that have open data formats, or can at least export their data to something usable by other software. Hardware became a commodity; software is on its way there too thanks to its face-paced nature and devaluation from "applications" to trendy, cheap "apps". But your data will likely always be valuable, so whatever you choose to use, make sure to have continuation plans.

There is no vendor lock-in if your data stays yours. Some inconvenience perhaps; the sort of inconvenience that comes with freedom.

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

And that is the reason I avoid most cloud-based solutions. I want my data to be in files on my drive, and not just in some database rows on a third-party server.

Personally, I store all my notes in plaintext org-mode files in a Dropbox-synced folder.

rrdharan• 10 years ago

I think it's potentially underestimating the nature of the problem and OP's complaint to simply write off potential switching costs as "inconvenient".

For example if I've developed a whole workflow around keyboard shortcuts, APIs, whatever, for manipulating a set of data using an app, and then that app disappears, even if I have the underlying dataset it might take me quite a while to get up to speed with a suitable replacement.

All of that might argue against investing heavily in developing expertise with a closed, indie, proprietary, or even an OSS app[1]. Ultimately whenever you invest your time in developing a skillset or workflow you are inherently also obligated to evaluate the future risks involved.

[1] Despite it being OSS, if it becomes unsupported and stops working on newer OSes/platforms and no one steps up to do the non-trivial work, or host the servers or whatever, you're still in the same boat.

mathattack2• 10 years ago

There is a market for "life support" level maintenance of companies if they get large enough. Look at companies like CA buying (and gutting) companies who have lost their mojo. I think there is an opportunity for people to do this with smaller tech companies.

mooreds• 10 years ago

I think you'd need a certain scale of market size to make it worthwhile. And if you didn't have the size to support continued development, will you have size to support continued maintenance?

On the other hand, if the devs have just moved on, there may be a sustainable company. See https://railslts.com/

ryanmarsh• 10 years ago

This is where the concept of source code escrow comes from. Maybe consumers should demand something similar.

arielm6• 10 years ago

I echo the sentiment and think there's misalignment between the value and the monetization strategy for many apps.

I wrote about it as well https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...

Ultimately a lot of the sadness comes from what looks like missed opportunity IMO, which is really tough to predict.

specialist• 10 years ago

Reading your comment, I now wonder if there's a way to sell (formally transfer) these indie projects. Like how patio11 sold BingoCardMaker thru a broker.

Then someone like you could take a swing with a different business model.

Maybe a few dollars upfront and a tiered royalty model, to minimize risk for both sides.

admax88q• 10 years ago

I think you illustrated a key problem with proprietary software, particularly that which is used for practical tasks.

Free Software puts the user first. All other forms do not.

freshyill2• 10 years ago

Free Software puts the user first. All other forms do not.

If you look at it as a programmer, sure. To most people however, "how it works" is a lot more important than how it's licensed or even what it costs.

biztos• 10 years ago

If I were an indie app dev building a similar product, then in addition to all the questions of business strategy I would try to bake in graceful abandonment from the start. That is: make it a paid sync service (as Gruber would've in hindsight) but build the client such that the sync service could be easily overridden, and pointed at anything that would support a particular API. Then if I have to stop supporting the app, but I have users I still care about, I can just unlock the sync service override, publish the API spec, and give people some time to come up with alternatives.

Though I guess that doesn't solve the problem of fixing bugs in the app itself. Especially if I might not have time to babysit an open-source app.

Are there any examples, in iOS, of apps that were open-sourced and are controlled by some kind of committee or foundation and still kept up-to-date in the app store? What's the lightest-weight version of that that still keeps it totally free?

(I bought Vesper over a year ago and thought it was nice but it didn't become one of my regular-use apps. No biggie: I've long been a DaringFireball reader and I'm happy to throw a few bucks Gruber's way. Plus, I was really hoping the "quality paid apps" model would work, sigh.)

gkanai• 10 years ago

It is interesting to me how someone who is so knowledgable about Apple could make such basic mistakes about his own app strategy. Lots of people make apps that are not popular but Gruber is someone who has seen them all come and go and yet he built something that was just not compelling.

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

This project always felt to me like him wanting to prove that the App Store was still a place for the classic sort of high quality artisanal app you associate with the Jaguar to Leopard era of OS X (or the first 12 months or so of the App Store before it started the race to the bottom).

Think it's time for even die hard Apple fans to accept that the App Store is now the same low quality garbage dump of low income crapware that for many years they claimed the Android ecosystem was.

prawn• 10 years ago

Also interesting is that someone with such a large and relevant audience on tap couldn't maintain a level of sales that could pay for the font and cloud service. That's a huge leg-up on what the average developer can work with. And while their roadmap might've been off, it wasn't insane - you can make a $5 productivity app work.

We have an iOS productivity app (at the same pricepoint) of which Gruber was very, very complimentary. We elected to advertise it on Daring Fireball (not cheap) and saw a reasonable return. It's a focused audience for someone with an iOS app.

Personally, I think they should've swapped out the font and maybe sold the app to someone who thought they could get it on track.

nodamage5• 10 years ago

Ultimately, what we should have done once we had versions of the app for both Mac and iOS is switch to a subscription model. Make the apps free downloads on all platforms, and charge somewhere around $15/year for sync accounts. That’s where the industry is going.

I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect users to pay a subscription fee for productivity apps like this. There's been a ton of backlash whenever developers, even small ones, announce subscription pricing (see 1Password[1] and Pushbullet[2]). I get the impression users are starting to feel nickel and dimed every time one of the apps they use switches over to a subscription model and they start looking for alternatives instead of being willing to pay the subscription cost. Simultaneously, obviously maintaining a sync service has a recurring cost and there needs to be a way for the developer to cover those costs, otherwise you end up in this situation where you simply have to shut down.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4vziyr/1password_lau...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_...

ghshephard3• 10 years ago

Evernote does well, because it offers ongoing value for that subscription fee. That's the key - are you offering a lot of value? If so, then subscription fees are fine. If not, then you feel like you are being nickle and dimed. Other obvious candidates (some of which don't charge) for valuable subscription are Economist, NYT, WSJ, gmail, whatsapp.

And then there is that third class of App, the ones where subscriptions don't offer much value, but honestly, we use the apps so often, we're happy to pay to support them (Overcast, Tweetbot, MyFitnessPal are ones I would put in this class)

nodamage5• 10 years ago

And then there is that third class of App, the ones where subscriptions don't offer much value, but honestly, we use the apps so often, we're happy to pay to support them (Overcast, Tweetbot, MyFitnessPal are ones I would put in this class)

The problem is most indie apps fall into this category. Useful, but not necessarily useful enough to pay a subscription.

daenney• 10 years ago

I'm not sure Evernote is actually doing that well. I find their product useful but they did lay off about 20% of their workforce and closed 3 of their offices.

They're also facing stiffer competition from Microsoft with OneNote and this year's Evernote importers for both Windows and Mac they released which seems to be quite popular, which they might've made worse themselves by clamping down so much on their free users and the relatively limited data quota's on any of their subscriptions. 6$ a month is a lot of money, for barely 3$ more I can get a full Office 365 subscription including a truck ton of Skype credits and a TB of storage with OneNote providing a fair amount of the functionality Evernote provides. I wonder how long people will continue to be willing to pay for it, especially considering it doesn't seem to be evolving much as a product.

twblalock3• 10 years ago

If you think that you will attract enough new customers that you will make more money under a subscription model than a traditional paid model, there is no reason to keep the existing users happy -- if they leave, they have already paid you all they were ever willing to pay, so you aren't missing out on any money from them. (If they aren't willing to pay for a subscription, they probably wouldn't have paid a one-time fee for the next version of the product either. These are the kind of people who buy once and don't upgrade.) Even if they switch to a competitor's product, it's not like you lost any money you would have gotten from them.

nodamage5• 10 years ago

You make a good point, although I don't think I would necessarily agree that just because a user isn't willing to pay a subscription, they also wouldn't be willing to pay for an upgrade. Presumably, a new version of a product has new features that act as an incentive to pay the upgrade cost. A subscription, which is recurring and indefinite, does not, and is therefore a much harder pill to swallow.

mcgrath_sh• 10 years ago

I disagree with your statement about paying users who will not pay for a subscription. I am one of them. I hate Utility Apps as a Service for a litany of reasons. I am, however, eager and willing to pay as much as or more than a subscription price to own software that I use. I don't want to open my notes app, text editor, TextExpander, or password manager one day and find out it is not working. I want to know that if my system never changes, I can continue to use the current version of software without worrying about it not working because I didn't pay my rent.

This is the analogy I use: if I am drilling holes every weekend for three months, I am going to buy a drill, not rent one evey Saturday and pay as much in rent as I would to own it. And when I own that drill, I expect it to work for at minimum 12-18 months (warranty/devleopment) and at that point, if something goes wrong (massive OS changes) or there is a fancier drill, I will buy it if that is worth it to me.

The peace of mind of owning software is more important to me than a reduced cost / continual upgrade of renting it. I will always look for software that sells me a license over one that doesn't.

sidlls• 10 years ago

What users want is the same thing consumers of products have wanted forever: to pay the least and get the most they can.

The whole "free with in-app purchases" model was driven by users' unwillingness to pay for apps. So in some sense this nickel-and-dime thing is a self-inflicted wound. On the other hand, (we) developers ought to be smart enough to figure out how to handle that.

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

It wouldn't be an issue if existing customers were grandfathered into staying in the original free plan, and only new customers had to pay.

nodamage5• 10 years ago

The issue here is that a user that paid for your app many years ago continues to use up sync resources without providing any additional revenue. Maybe you'll be able to convert enough new users to subsidize the cost of the existing ones, but maybe not.

I think the alternative of issuing regular paid upgrades makes more sense for productivity apps. You get recurring revenue, but it's tied to an incentive (new features) to pay the upgrade cost.

The only problem is that the App Store doesn't really have a great method for issuing paid upgrades. You basically have to release a whole new app.

jbk• 10 years ago

Is there really a market for a note-taking app, that cost $20 on the desktop?

That sounds quite difficult to market and sell, when there are many alternatives, like Evernote, or OneNote that are close to free.

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

The hope is the take advantage of his blogger presence to sell the idea of a well designed, trendy, premium to his audience.

I'd say a $20 desktop note taking app is an easier sell than a $10 iOS note taking app.

twblalock3• 10 years ago

Stuff like this is why I try to avoid apps that operate their own syncing services. If Vesper had used some kind of file format you could just keep in your Dropbox, and used that for syncing, all the developers would need to do is stop paying for the proprietary font in order to have zero operating costs.

Obviously you can't avoid all problems this way (Apple and Google and Dropbox sometimes change their APIs, or discontinue them, e.g. Google Reader), but it goes a long way to building confidence that even if the company fails, people can continue to use the app.

nzoschke• 10 years ago

Agreed. The timeline for Vesper is debatable but running a custom sync service is a dead end.

Only major cloud providers, Apple, Dropbox, Google, Amazon can be relied on to run a utility service on a long timeline.

The service needs to be effectively free, stay up forever and add new features over time.

This is not a hobby.

oddevan• 10 years ago

At the time Vesper was written, iCloud sync was not reliable. It's gotten better (good enough for many apps to proudly use it), but by that point Vesper had lost its dev.

There had also been issues around this time with Dropbox changing the way the SDK presented information. A small change, but one that ran afoul of Apple's In-App Purchases guidelines. Debate the merits of the conflict all you want; it was still an issue everyone wanted to avoid at the time.

Basically, you're not wrong, but I believe the devs made the best decision they could at the time they wrote the app.

WA2• 10 years ago

So what would be a good way for me to implement sync nowadays if I also want to have a web app?

twblalock3• 10 years ago

You could use the Dropbox API with oauth. The same files in Dropbox can be used to sync the web API, phone apps, and desktop apps.

You could also roll your own solution with S3 or something like that. The point is that you will be using fairly common and popular services which aren't likely to go away anytime soon, and aren't operated and maintained by yourself.

You could also take the approach 1Password does: operate your own sync service, but allow users to use Dropbox or iCloud instead. The onus is on them to make sure the files are in the right places, but they effectively have total control over the files, which a lot of people like.

HodGreeley• 10 years ago

An alternative to look at is the Couchbase Mobile stack. The stack in includes the Couchbase Lite database (NoSQL), Sync Gateway, which enables syncing and more, and Couchbase Server. All open source. It's pretty easy to run all yourself, or on something like AWS. The db runs on many platforms, both mobile and desktop.

Disclaimer: I work for Couchbase.

bouncingsoul• 10 years ago

The whole pricing/platform debate seems like a red herring.

Brent took a job at the excellent Omni Group in September 2014, and from that point onward the writing was on the wall. We could have, and probably should have, shut Vesper down a year ago. But we loved it too much. Or at least I did.
I even cheat, personally, and run Vesper on my Mac in the iOS Simulator

1. There was only one developer in the company.

2. That developer got a day job (quit).

3. Gruber and the musician partner are stranded with an app they can't update and a Mac app they can't finish on their own.

Gruber clearly loves Vesper. He runs it in the freaking simulator. I really doubt he needed to see huge financial returns to keep at it.

It sounds like the real lesson is: It sucks when your technical cofounder quits.

elsurudo3• 10 years ago

I think the point is that he likely quit due to financial reasons.

ZeroGravitas• 10 years ago

I've not followed the Apple scene for a while, but working for Omni seems like a great gig for an Apple-centric developer, so it's not necessarily about money.

doe88• 10 years ago

[...]

You're blunt.

It sounds like the real lesson is: It sucks when your technical cofounder quits.

But I think you're right.

nihonde• 10 years ago

For a guy who opines all day about Apple, the fact that he can't maintain a pretty simple iOS app is telling. If you really care about the app and your users, you read the damn docs and get to work. I taught myself in less than six months, and my app is free. Although I don't have much time, I still keep it running out of respect for my 50 thousand or so users.

This especially annoys me after their enfillade of blog posts about best practices for UI and pricing of Vesper.

panglott• 10 years ago

This is true, but I was glad to see Gruber put his money where his mouth is and spend some time in an app developer's shoes.

rtpg• 10 years ago

I feel like nobody's really obliged to do anything. Maintenance is work, after all. Though I think it's cool when things exist for the community.

If you're abandoning a project, releasing the source seems like a Good Thing To Do. But people should be allowed to walk away from things if they do not enjoy it as much anymore (modulo service contracts).

Unbeliever69• 10 years ago

This is what drove me to abandon Ux in favor of a life-long dream of programming via a mid-life career shift. I was simply tired of relying on programmers to realize my visions AND being beholden to them if decided, for whatever reason, to jump ship. Luckily, I've been a lifelong programmer, but never professionally. The result is that I'm much happier and only have myself to blame if a product doesn't come to fruition.

mark2422• 10 years ago

Pardon me while I go off on a bit of a rant. I've played with Vesper and it is a fine app. It is also the perfect example of the power of the web.

There isn't anything that Vesper is doing that can't be done on the web. You could even write Vesper as a single-page app, and use a ServiceWorker with Firebase or PouchDB or whatever to run the sync. The infrastructure to do all this is very, very easy to do on the web.

This is not rocket science-- this is how far the web has come in a very short time. The UI could absolutely be the same as the iOS native app and while you might have a bit of scrolling hesitation on the interface, it would be perfectly accessible.

Suddenly you're on every mobile device, Android, iOS, iPad, desktop, whatever. The absolute hardest and most time-consuming endeavor would be to get the Stripe account set up for the one-time "in-app" payment to get sync working.

John and Brent and Dave made a fine app in 2012, but I would certainly hope that the next Vesper starts out life as a web app.

archagon2• 10 years ago

Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever used a web app that feels anywhere as good as a native app. You can feel it in every interaction.

You say "a bit of scrolling hesitation". I say that... and janky button taps... and broken back/forward navigation... and browser chrome always getting in the way... and random divs constantly getting selected along with text... and mistakenly-tapped links taking me who-knows-where... etc. Plus: if the developer decides to shut down their web app, it's actually done, forever, with no recourse.

mark2422• 10 years ago

What you're seeing are apps that aren't optimized for mobile. Once you start moving application logic, network IO, and anything that doesn't involve the DOM off the main rendering thread via a cached ServiceWorker, mobile web app performance jumps by an order of magnitude.

Every single performance issue that you're talking about can be seen in native apps; check Twitter, for example, or Facebook. There is a definite lag there caused by the network sync being front-and-center. That's unavoidable, but for an app like Vesper where you're not looking at a huge data transfer, running the sync in the background is absolutely viable.

LVB• 10 years ago

I really like open source projects for certain things, especially these productivity apps that may bring their little twists and design flair but ultimately end up holding a ton of user data. I'm pretty sure Vesper users would love to be able to easily move their data to a less beautiful (bye Ideal Sans!) but still functional alternative right now, without a massive conversion/migration process.

I ran into this with todo.txt on Android. The flagship app (https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt-android) was basically abandoned, but it is open source and some time ago was forked into what became an active--and better--alternative (https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android).

mmackh3• 10 years ago

I'm the sole developer of InstaPDF (https://instapdf.com) and have been so for 4.5 years. It's a completly self funded project that I am working on in my spare time. Even then, my cost do not exceed $35 a month.

However the things I've learnt during building and maintaining it have been invaluable and helped me in so many other projects.

I don't get how running a sync server or adapting the product with in-app purchases would require too much time. When it is a labour of love and you still use it every day - why shut it down? Is he going to reverse his decision once it gets all the attention with the news of it shutting down? How can it cost so much when all it does is sync text? Why not hook into CloudKit for sync?

These are questions I would much rather prefer that he addressed

ww5203• 10 years ago

As mentioned elsewhere, the developer left. I think we developers tend to forget how seemingly simple things to us can be real barriers for others.

mmackh3• 10 years ago

I don't think the developer left - he's a part owner. He wrote a whole blog series about sync. Here's his latest entry about Vesper: http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper

With all the effort going to export - he could have added CloudKit.

markdown3• 10 years ago

OT, I'm always reluctant to sign up for products/services that hide their pricing. I looked for it on your website and found nothing. You should fix that.

mmackh3• 10 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion - I will. It's free so there's no pricing table but I'll add some information. Here's why https://instapdf.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/16...

criddell• 10 years ago

Even then, my cost do not exceed $35 a month.

And how about the opportunity costs of working on your project?

One of the big selling points of Vesper was the design aesthetics. There's a very real cost to that in the form of license fees for fonts.

So sure, they could replace the fonts with free fonts, turn off sync, and keep distributing the app. At that point it's a different product, one that they aren't proud of.

Darthy2• 10 years ago

With “Vesper” we were thinking things like beautiful, smart, clever, strong. In the end, the name was more apt than we knew, because it also carries heartbreak.

That was sad and beautiful. I shed a tear after reading this. Man, this guy can write!

pluma3• 10 years ago

Is that a Bond reference? Apparently Vesper is also the name of a cocktail? I've only seen it as meaning "evening" (in German I think it typically refers to a cold dinner).

hboon• 10 years ago

Both cocktail and this http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green)

Darthy2• 10 years ago

Vesper Lynd broke Bond's heart, the committed suicide. The cocktail is named after the character.

markdown3• 10 years ago

Relevant: https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/76762763342105804...

smcl• 10 years ago

I have no idea why it's hard-coded to 11pt font - disabling that makes it far more readable. I also tried to make it less skinny - #Main has width set to 425px, if you disable that it's a little bit better still. If you start screwing with the margins things get weird though...

Udo_Schmitz• 10 years ago

http://daringfireball.net/preferences/

kazinator• 10 years ago

However, something called "VSEPR" is impossible forget: "valence shell electron pair repulsion" theory. Ah, high school chem ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSEPR_theory

hota_mazi2• 10 years ago

What's fascinating to me is that despite claiming hindsight and knowing now what went wrong, Gruber still completely fails to see that not even considering developing the app for Android was certainly a factor in the failure of his product.

I'm not saying that their app would have succeeded, just that you're pretty much doomed from the start if you don't develop for both markets these days.

Besides, making a whole business on a note taking app in 2016... seriously.

This is what happens when you let emotions drive business decisions: failure.

reacweb• 10 years ago

There are so many cheap hosting solutions, I do not understand why he does not keep this project as a hobby project in a kind of zomby state.

All the clients will be very sad that their (paid) application stop working.

gadders2• 10 years ago

From the article, he still has to pay for font licensing.

perlgeek• 10 years ago

Substituting the paid font(s) with freely available alternatives shouldn't be a big deal, no? Less pretty, but still usable.

SyneRyder• 10 years ago

Gruber later mentioned on Twitter [1] that in some months they're paying more for servers than they're spending on the font in an entire year. (The font licensing is $299/yr [2], suggesting server costs around $3600/yr.)

[1] https://twitter.com/gruber/status/768302562030202881

[2] http://www.typography.com/apps/

nalllar• 10 years ago

The author states "I’m a firm believer that you always need some good luck to succeed. We would have been luckier, timing-wise..."

This is probably not a good thing. Video by Louis Rossmann: "Believing in luck compromises the influence we have over our own life."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6hpsGjcIo

adamlett2• 10 years ago

I play poker, and if there is one thing poker has taught me, it's that success is almost always a mix of skill and luck. In the short term luck dominates skill. In the long term it's the other way around. The kicker is that bad luck in the short term can preclude the long term skill effect from kicking in, because if you go bust you can no longer compete.

scwoodal• 10 years ago

I read [1] a few years ago about an idea for using IMAP as the storage/sync backend for a notes app.

Added bonus of the notes I write are in my mailbox so no worries about a company shutting down and losing my data.

[1] http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2013/10/please-build-a-...

intoverflow27• 10 years ago

Isn't this how Apple Notes worked until recently?

osi• 10 years ago

Yes. As well as the Reminders functionality.

rodgerd2• 10 years ago

In the pre-iOS 7 era, building an iPad app was like building a second app.

You know, it's funny Gruber was bitten on the arse by this when he was amongst the people who flung poo at Android on tablets for not forcing people to rewrite applications for the tablet form factor.

unfunco• 10 years ago

The biggest factor is that we have recurring costs: the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface. We’re losing money every month.

The costs of running the server I can understand, but if the app had value then surely changing the font to a similar but free alternative would not have made customers stop using it?

dankohn1• 10 years ago

I think commenters are missing the most important lesson from this story, which is that most businesses fail. Even if the product works great. Even if it finds it's intended user. Even if the team is completely committed and sticks with it for years on end. (And even if you have free access to one of the most popular websites for your target base.)

Entrepreneurship is hard, and the big success stories everyone likes to focus on are always the exception.

danpalmer4• 10 years ago

Vesper had one market - Daring Fireball readers.

Ultimately the only people who can differentiate between "Generic Notes App #138" and Vesper, are people who have been trained to care about details that most people don't care about, and that's a very small market. Most people care far more about the fact that an app syncs to Dropbox, or lets you set a background picture, than one that animates screen transitions in exactly the right way.

I'm sad to see another indie Apple-ecosystem developer close down, but I saw this coming as soon as Vesper was announced, and I'm not in the least bit surprised. Unfortunately too many of the Mac/iOS old-school community go for the "I know best" + waterfall development approach, rather than trying to figure out the product-market fit. I say this as someone who has worked in both an old-school Mac OS company, and startups who have been far more agile.

That's what you get when your app design/development philosophy is based on Steve Jobs.

arielm6• 10 years ago

I think there's still a need for a simple/practical notes app. Apple's built in app has improved tremendously since so it's hard to judge but IMO there's still a big enough market that extends beyond John's followers.

But... an app that has monthly expenses but only charges a one time fee can't really be sustainable. It's completely misaligned, and that's why it failed.

I blogged about it here https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...

danpalmer4• 10 years ago

I don't think the monthly expenses should be much of an issue for an actually successful app, I think Instapaper proved that, it was (and still is?) a good business that did not require subscriptions.

I think Apple Notes is fine for the majority of uses, Simplenote is great otherwise, Evernote is popular... I'm not sure there's a need for another, unless you're the kind of person who cares about the particular class of UX problems that John Gruber cares about.

cookiecaper• 10 years ago

This is one of the most annoying things about the Apple ecosystem. People have heard that Steve Jobs was proven to know better than everyone most of the time. They've heard that Jobs didn't care what was popular, he just knew what people would like before they even realized it. Apple fanboys like to fancy themselves similarly.

I don't think the myth was true for Jobs and I definitely don't think it's true for Random Apple Fanboy #2,764,241 (and yes, John Gruber is included in this, though his number may be slightly lower).

It's really irritating when developers approach their audience as sheep to be led rather than customers to be pleased.

danpalmer4• 10 years ago

I wouldn't say that Gruber et. al treat their users as sheep, I think Jobs was infamous for taking it 'too far'. I think it's just that the level of thinking about design that Apple puts into things is neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful product, but it is treated as such by the old-school Apple developer community.

zellyn• 10 years ago

My take on a better path (of course, hindsight is 20/20, right?):

(a) free iOS app (b) paid sync service _with open API_ (c) let other people build web+MacOS+Linux+Android+whatever apps (d) free artisinal, handcrafted MacOS app

Also, could have skipped the complexity of building sync infrastructure by using Firebase.

Also, I know using an inferior font would pretty much invalidate everything that made Vesper Vesper, but it's painful to see a recurring cost there…

karmajunkie3• 10 years ago

Does it strike anyone else as weird that one of the two costs driving them out of business was the licensing costs of a font? Jeez man, I think good design is important too but make a compromise somewhere.

Also, fixed cost sales vs unbounded maintenance costs is just a doomed business model from the start.

phonon3• 10 years ago

$299/y http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17

karmajunkie3• 10 years ago

So that doesn't seem like a show-stopping kind of cost to me... Its not nothing, but does point to the sync server being the main cost there. Wonder what the pricetag on that was.

blihp• 10 years ago

It doesn't surprise me only because I've followed Gruber's blog over the years: he's a typography and font geek in the same way that many of us are tech geeks. The use of a licensed font was a design conceit on his part but hardly fatal at $300/yr. The ~$3,600/yr for servers seems pretty high for what they're doing, but again far from fatal. What likely doomed them was that the market of discerning customers is much smaller than they estimated (yes, even in the Apple ecosystem) combined with a large number of competitors (especially at the crucial price of 'free'.)

Expenses didn't drive them out of business, the lack of revenue did. Sure, they could have switched to a free/built-in font and saved $300 and maybe switched to a cheaper hosting provider and maybe saved $1-2k... then what? At best they're now keeping an additional $1-2k per year (split 3 ways), for now, from an app that they need to keep running on the platform and backend services to keep going 24x7... there's better ROI to be had working the drive through window at a local fast food restaurant.

Your point about one-time revenue vs. ongoing expenses is valid, but that can be fixed via new products / subscription pricing down the line. However, before that happened it sounds like they determined that they lacked the customer critical mass that would make it worth putting any more effort into it.

karmajunkie3• 10 years ago

Yeah, I think that's what sat weirdly with me—the article felt like a 'it was bleeding me dry!' kind of thing, but I have a hard time seeing how that could be the case with those kinds of expenses. It feels more like a "this isn't fun anymore" kind of shutdown.

IanDrake• 10 years ago

The conclusion that building an iOS app second as an enhancement to a pre-existing offering matches my own.

If you want your App to be more then just another lottery ticket, it needs to be additive. It needs to augment a pre-existing product.

If you look at your phone now, how many third party apps are app first products (besides games and camera apps)?

Here's my list: Instagram, Waze, HeartRateFree, Uber. 4 out of 72 apps.

paulcole2• 10 years ago

"I can’t prove that, of course. I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure I’m right."

Daring Fireball in a nutshell.

elicash2• 10 years ago

That he allows for the possibility that he's wrong? Yes, it's a good trait to have.

london888• 10 years ago

Anyone want to estimate the monthly server/font licensing costs?

sathomasga• 10 years ago

the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface

Ideal Sans, $199 (currently on sale): http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/

Lato, Free: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato

rajington• 10 years ago

Not sure if anyone is still reading this, but I wrote a helper to get your Vesper notes into Trello: https://rajington.github.io/vesper-trello/

Vesper, Adieu

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