13 ms·

Vesper, Adieu

193 points by 8ig8 10y ago

BooneJS 10y 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 10y 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.
- reitoei 10y 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 10y 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.
- perishabledave 10y 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 10y 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.
    - skrebbel 10y ago
      Fully agree. Before the App Store was launched, people were used to pay an order of magnitude more for software. The App Store didn't have a time-limited free trial option, which meant that every purchase was a gamble. You don't take a $20 gamble, but maybe a $2 gamble here and there won't hurt so much. So the only way to make money on the App Store was to be priced so low that people dared click "buy". If you ask me, this is completely nuts. Apple could've easily quintupled their App Store earnings if they'd just have a "try" button next to the "buy" button from the start. People would've owned fewer, better apps that they'd use more intensively. (for all its faults, the Windows Store does this right. but hey, too little too late)
      - bobsil1 10y ago
        Apple wants apps to be free/cheap complements to expensive hardware.
        skrebbel 10y ago
        I'm not convinced. If you invested $200 into apps over the course of a few years, you're not going to switch to Android.
- matt4077 10y 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 10y ago
  What kind of changes would you like to see made to the app store?
  - msh 10y ago
    Not op but I think the app store needs trials and paid upgrades.
    - sudhirj 10y ago
      It already has paid upgrades via in-app purchases. Upgrades, both one-time and subscription are explicitly supported. Trials are a bit of an issue, though, but it's quite possible for an app to offer the upgraded experience free for a limited time.
      - gnicholas 10y ago
        True, but conceiving and building the right IAP structure takes substantial time and money. If there were some sort of trial system that all customers could use to try out any app, then some app devs (not all) could ship apps much more quickly. I know we spent a ton of time figuring out what we should offer for free, what we should charge for, and how we should draw a line between the two. If there were a 15-min trial we would have just used that and not worried about it. (And if you're wondering why we didn't simply implement a 15-minute timer in our app, it's because people would have thought it was weird, since pretty much no other iOS app uses that. But if it were standard, this wouldn't be a problem.)
    - chubs 10y ago
      There's a lot of low-hanging fruit there. They could copy some Play Store features such as: * Auto-refunds if you delete the app within 15 mins (this de-risks the app purchase) * Suggestions for apps that your friends have used * Better search Other non-play store often-requested ideas: * Don't disincentivise upgrades by zeroing out your reviews when you upgrade. * More reasonable app reviews. * App subscriptions instead of up-front fees (eg pay $1/month for each month where you use my app more than N times). * Better curation of the app store (eg don't only feature games).
- mikeryan 10y 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_not 10y 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.
    - neap24 10y ago
      I don't disagree that the app store is a mess, but it doesn't seem any more of a mess than other markets for media. Think about trying to discover good indie films, video games, or music. It's not that easy. No central authority "curates" them and the main avenues of consumption barely recognize them. Basically, you have to subscribe to blogs, magazines, and independent reviewers that rate and rank them. This seems exactly the same for apps in the app store.
      - amazon_not 10y ago
        Sure, but Apple is that central authority that both provides the store and the search functionality. They could do better.
- vecter 10y 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 10y 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.
    - Retra 10y ago
      Most anyone with something to sell will claim it is the cure for what ails you.
    - niftich 10y ago
      People often say 'the discoverability [in the App Store] is horrible', which, I believe is inexact wording, but largely results in the outcome you raise. It's not so much discoverability as in 'stumbling upon an arbitrary app', but more of learning about what that app does, and why it's something you want. Once you learn about a solution to a problem you may not even realize you had, you'll be a lot more likely to make a purchase. This is why app makers jump to be featured in compilations like 'top 5 note taking apps for iOS'; other options are word-of-mouth, bundling, or being promoted somehow out-of-band.
- elicash 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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....)
- CivilianZero 10y 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.
  - intoverflow2 10y 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.
    - CivilianZero 10y ago
      Is that really still true? I know most apps I use have either required purchasing an update or have simply been replaced by OS functionality. And there's something about committing to a Mac app when you're not sure if, in a week, one you like more will be available as opposed to iOS apps, which are basically disposable. Of course all of this is tempered by my desire to support the products I use and the people who develop them.
sohkamyung 10y 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 10y 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.
  - intoverflow2 10y 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 10y ago
  iOS is always revealed at WWDC in June, and launched in September, so you're both right.
- phonon 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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_ 10y 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 10y 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.
  - adamlett 10y 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.
  - voltagex_ 10y 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.
  - jpalomaki 10y 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.
Waterluvian 10y 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?
- Retra 10y ago
  Maybe you want to target the most profitable demographic?
  - hota_mazi 10y 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).
    - nodamage 10y ago
      > Android and iOS are about equally profitable these days. This is really only true for games, i.e. Candy Crush is not terribly different on iOS vs Android so it makes sense that the revenues are similar. But if you consider paid productivity apps, iOS sales still dwarf Android sales.
    - 7Z7 10y ago
      Have you got data to support that? Last data I read (2015) disagreed with you. https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and-android-apps-grows-thanks-to-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-an...
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  His audience is almost entirely Mac/iOS users.
niftich 10y 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-your-thoughts/ https://www.macstories.net/reviews/vesper-review-collect-you... [2] http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ipad-evernote-drafts-vesper-and-more http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ip...
- valleyer 10y 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.
  - ghshephard 10y 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.
- ww520 10y ago
  Aren't better design and better UX a compelling value differentiator? Of all people, Apple users would have appreciated design more.
archagon 10y 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/ http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2016/08/21/tool-reliance/
- api 10y 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.
  - icebraining 10y 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.
gkanai 10y 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.
- intoverflow2 10y 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 10y 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.
nodamage 10y 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_launches_3mo_subscription_w_web_access/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4vziyr/1password_lau... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_pro_499mo_or_3999year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_...
- ghshephard 10y 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)
  - nodamage 10y 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.
jbk 10y 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.
- intoverflow2 10y 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.
twblalock 10y 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 10y 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- oddevan 10y 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.
- WA 10y ago
  So what would be a good way for me to implement sync nowadays if I also want to have a web app?
  - twblalock 10y 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.
bouncingsoul 10y 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.
- elsurudo 10y ago
  I think the point is that he likely quit due to financial reasons.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y 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.
    - veidr 10y ago
      I can confirm that; as a long time Mac dev, Omni has for over a decade been at the top of the list of companies I would want to work for, if location wasn't an issue. (It is, though, because I live in Tokyo and that's important to me, too; Omni, last I talked to them at least, doesn't do remote.) But still, one of the awesome things about working at Omni is that they pay you. A minimalist note-taking app that only runs on iOS — even if tastefully designed by famous-in-the-niche and well-liked programmer, and publicized by the most widely-read Apple blogger — not so much. They say flat out that it didn't make enough money; I don't see any reason to second-guess them and develop alternate theories...
- doe88 10y ago
mark242 10y 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.
- archagon 10y 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.
  - mark242 10y 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 10y 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 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 https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android).
mmackh 10y ago
I'm the sole developer of InstaPDF (https://instapdf.com 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
- ww520 10y 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.
  - mmackh 10y 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 http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper With all the effort going to export - he could have added CloudKit.
    - mmariani 10y ago
      And here's the link with the complete series about syncing http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary
- markdown 10y 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.
Darthy 10y 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!
- pluma 10y 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 10y ago
    Both cocktail and this http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green) http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green)
    - pluma 10y ago
      That explains it. I've kinda been in denial that there were any Bond movies after Brosnan so I thought this was more of a 70s era Bond reference than '00s.
  - Darthy 10y ago
    Vesper Lynd broke Bond's heart, the committed suicide. The cocktail is named after the character.
markdown 10y ago
Relevant: https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/767627633421058048 https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/76762763342105804...
- smcl 10y 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 10y ago
  http://daringfireball.net/preferences/ http://daringfireball.net/preferences/
kazinator 10y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSEPR_theory :)
hota_mazi 10y 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 10y 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.
- gadders 10y ago
  From the article, he still has to pay for font licensing.
  - perlgeek 10y ago
    Substituting the paid font(s) with freely available alternatives shouldn't be a big deal, no? Less pretty, but still usable.
    - gadders 10y ago
      I would imagine so, but he didn't mention that option in the article.
  - SyneRyder 10y 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 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/768302562030202881 [2] http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/apps/
    - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
      Curious. You should be able to run an (evidently not that popular) text sync service on a Hetzner box for a fraction of that price. I wonder what was costing them $3600.
      - lee_a 10y ago
nalllar 10y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6hpsGjcIo
- adamlett 10y 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 10y 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-mimeimap-backed-note-taking-app/ http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2013/10/please-build-a-...
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  Isn't this how Apple Notes worked until recently?
  - osi 10y ago
    Yes. As well as the Reminders functionality.
    - mercutio2 10y ago
      Reminders sync using CalDAV, not IMAP.
rodgerd 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.
danpalmer 10y 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.
- arielm 10y 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-end-6a8d13977a72?source=linkShare-9f4203d6eb7c-1472044002 https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...
  - danpalmer 10y 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.
    - arielm 10y ago
zellyn 10y 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…
karmajunkie 10y 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.
- phonon 10y ago
  $299/y http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17 http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17
  - karmajunkie 10y 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 10y 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.
IanDrake 10y 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.
paulcole 10y 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.
- elicash 10y ago
  That he allows for the possibility that he's wrong? Yes, it's a good trait to have.
london888 10y ago
Anyone want to estimate the monthly server/font licensing costs?
sathomasga 10y ago
> the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface Ideal Sans, $199 (currently on sale): http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/ Lato, Free: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato
rajington 10y 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/ https://rajington.github.io/vesper-trello/

193 points by 8ig8 10y 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 10y 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.

reitoei 10y 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 10y 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.
perishabledave 10y 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 10y 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.
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    Fully agree. Before the App Store was launched, people were used to pay an order of magnitude more for software. The App Store didn't have a time-limited free trial option, which meant that every purchase was a gamble. You don't take a $20 gamble, but maybe a $2 gamble here and there won't hurt so much. So the only way to make money on the App Store was to be priced so low that people dared click "buy". If you ask me, this is completely nuts. Apple could've easily quintupled their App Store earnings if they'd just have a "try" button next to the "buy" button from the start. People would've owned fewer, better apps that they'd use more intensively. (for all its faults, the Windows Store does this right. but hey, too little too late)
    - bobsil1 10y ago
      Apple wants apps to be free/cheap complements to expensive hardware.
      - skrebbel 10y ago
        I'm not convinced. If you invested $200 into apps over the course of a few years, you're not going to switch to Android.
matt4077 10y 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 10y ago
What kind of changes would you like to see made to the app store?
- msh 10y ago
  Not op but I think the app store needs trials and paid upgrades.
  - sudhirj 10y ago
    It already has paid upgrades via in-app purchases. Upgrades, both one-time and subscription are explicitly supported. Trials are a bit of an issue, though, but it's quite possible for an app to offer the upgraded experience free for a limited time.
    - gnicholas 10y ago
      True, but conceiving and building the right IAP structure takes substantial time and money. If there were some sort of trial system that all customers could use to try out any app, then some app devs (not all) could ship apps much more quickly. I know we spent a ton of time figuring out what we should offer for free, what we should charge for, and how we should draw a line between the two. If there were a 15-min trial we would have just used that and not worried about it. (And if you're wondering why we didn't simply implement a 15-minute timer in our app, it's because people would have thought it was weird, since pretty much no other iOS app uses that. But if it were standard, this wouldn't be a problem.)
  - chubs 10y ago
    There's a lot of low-hanging fruit there. They could copy some Play Store features such as: * Auto-refunds if you delete the app within 15 mins (this de-risks the app purchase) * Suggestions for apps that your friends have used * Better search Other non-play store often-requested ideas: * Don't disincentivise upgrades by zeroing out your reviews when you upgrade. * More reasonable app reviews. * App subscriptions instead of up-front fees (eg pay $1/month for each month where you use my app more than N times). * Better curation of the app store (eg don't only feature games).
mikeryan 10y 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_not 10y 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.
  - neap24 10y ago
    I don't disagree that the app store is a mess, but it doesn't seem any more of a mess than other markets for media. Think about trying to discover good indie films, video games, or music. It's not that easy. No central authority "curates" them and the main avenues of consumption barely recognize them. Basically, you have to subscribe to blogs, magazines, and independent reviewers that rate and rank them. This seems exactly the same for apps in the app store.
    - amazon_not 10y ago
      Sure, but Apple is that central authority that both provides the store and the search functionality. They could do better.
vecter 10y 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 10y 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.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Most anyone with something to sell will claim it is the cure for what ails you.
  - niftich 10y ago
    People often say 'the discoverability [in the App Store] is horrible', which, I believe is inexact wording, but largely results in the outcome you raise. It's not so much discoverability as in 'stumbling upon an arbitrary app', but more of learning about what that app does, and why it's something you want. Once you learn about a solution to a problem you may not even realize you had, you'll be a lot more likely to make a purchase. This is why app makers jump to be featured in compilations like 'top 5 note taking apps for iOS'; other options are word-of-mouth, bundling, or being promoted somehow out-of-band.
elicash 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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....)

CivilianZero 10y 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.
- intoverflow2 10y 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.
  - CivilianZero 10y ago
    Is that really still true? I know most apps I use have either required purchasing an update or have simply been replaced by OS functionality. And there's something about committing to a Mac app when you're not sure if, in a week, one you like more will be available as opposed to iOS apps, which are basically disposable. Of course all of this is tempered by my desire to support the products I use and the people who develop them.

sohkamyung 10y 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 10y 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.
- intoverflow2 10y 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 10y ago
iOS is always revealed at WWDC in June, and launched in September, so you're both right.
phonon 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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_ 10y 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 10y 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.
- adamlett 10y 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.
- voltagex_ 10y 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.
- jpalomaki 10y 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.

Waterluvian 10y 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?

Retra 10y ago
Maybe you want to target the most profitable demographic?
- hota_mazi 10y 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).
  - nodamage 10y ago
    > Android and iOS are about equally profitable these days. This is really only true for games, i.e. Candy Crush is not terribly different on iOS vs Android so it makes sense that the revenues are similar. But if you consider paid productivity apps, iOS sales still dwarf Android sales.
  - 7Z7 10y ago
    Have you got data to support that? Last data I read (2015) disagreed with you. https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and-android-apps-grows-thanks-to-china/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-an...
intoverflow2 10y ago
His audience is almost entirely Mac/iOS users.

niftich 10y 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-your-thoughts/ https://www.macstories.net/reviews/vesper-review-collect-you... [2] http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ipad-evernote-drafts-vesper-and-more http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ip...

valleyer 10y 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.
- ghshephard 10y 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.
ww520 10y ago
Aren't better design and better UX a compelling value differentiator? Of all people, Apple users would have appreciated design more.

archagon 10y 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/ http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2016/08/21/tool-reliance/

api 10y 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.
- icebraining 10y 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.

gkanai 10y 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.

intoverflow2 10y 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 10y 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.

nodamage 10y 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_launches_3mo_subscription_w_web_access/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4vziyr/1password_lau... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_pro_499mo_or_3999year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_...

ghshephard 10y 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)
- nodamage 10y 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.

jbk 10y 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.

intoverflow2 10y 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.

twblalock 10y 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 10y 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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
oddevan 10y 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.
WA 10y ago
So what would be a good way for me to implement sync nowadays if I also want to have a web app?
- twblalock 10y 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.

bouncingsoul 10y 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.

elsurudo 10y ago
I think the point is that he likely quit due to financial reasons.
- ZeroGravitas 10y 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.
  - veidr 10y ago
    I can confirm that; as a long time Mac dev, Omni has for over a decade been at the top of the list of companies I would want to work for, if location wasn't an issue. (It is, though, because I live in Tokyo and that's important to me, too; Omni, last I talked to them at least, doesn't do remote.) But still, one of the awesome things about working at Omni is that they pay you. A minimalist note-taking app that only runs on iOS — even if tastefully designed by famous-in-the-niche and well-liked programmer, and publicized by the most widely-read Apple blogger — not so much. They say flat out that it didn't make enough money; I don't see any reason to second-guess them and develop alternate theories...
doe88 10y ago

mark242 10y 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.

archagon 10y 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.
- mark242 10y 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 10y 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 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 https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android).

mmackh 10y ago

I'm the sole developer of InstaPDF (https://instapdf.com 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

ww520 10y 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.
- mmackh 10y 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 http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper With all the effort going to export - he could have added CloudKit.
  - mmariani 10y ago
    And here's the link with the complete series about syncing http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary
markdown 10y 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.

Darthy 10y 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!

pluma 10y 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 10y ago
  Both cocktail and this http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green) http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green)
  - pluma 10y ago
    That explains it. I've kinda been in denial that there were any Bond movies after Brosnan so I thought this was more of a 70s era Bond reference than '00s.
- Darthy 10y ago
  Vesper Lynd broke Bond's heart, the committed suicide. The cocktail is named after the character.

markdown 10y ago

Relevant: https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/767627633421058048 https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/76762763342105804...

smcl 10y 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 10y ago
http://daringfireball.net/preferences/ http://daringfireball.net/preferences/

kazinator 10y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSEPR_theory :)

hota_mazi 10y 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 10y 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.

gadders 10y ago
From the article, he still has to pay for font licensing.
- perlgeek 10y ago
  Substituting the paid font(s) with freely available alternatives shouldn't be a big deal, no? Less pretty, but still usable.
  - gadders 10y ago
    I would imagine so, but he didn't mention that option in the article.
- SyneRyder 10y 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 https://twitter.com/gruber/status/768302562030202881 [2] http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/apps/
  - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
    Curious. You should be able to run an (evidently not that popular) text sync service on a Hetzner box for a fraction of that price. I wonder what was costing them $3600.
    - lee_a 10y ago

nalllar 10y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6hpsGjcIo

adamlett 10y 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 10y 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-mimeimap-backed-note-taking-app/ http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2013/10/please-build-a-...

intoverflow2 10y ago
Isn't this how Apple Notes worked until recently?
- osi 10y ago
  Yes. As well as the Reminders functionality.
  - mercutio2 10y ago
    Reminders sync using CalDAV, not IMAP.

rodgerd 10y 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 10y 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 10y 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.

danpalmer 10y 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.

arielm 10y 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-end-6a8d13977a72?source=linkShare-9f4203d6eb7c-1472044002 https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...
- danpalmer 10y 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.
  - arielm 10y ago

zellyn 10y 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…

karmajunkie 10y 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.

phonon 10y ago
$299/y http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/apps/ http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17 http://www.typography.com/faq/category.php?topicID=17
- karmajunkie 10y 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 10y 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.

IanDrake 10y 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.

paulcole 10y 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.

elicash 10y ago
That he allows for the possibility that he's wrong? Yes, it's a good trait to have.

london888 10y ago

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

sathomasga 10y ago

> the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface Ideal Sans, $199 (currently on sale): http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/ Lato, Free: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato

rajington 10y 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/ https://rajington.github.io/vesper-trello/