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This is going to come off as quite bitter, but the more I listen to podcasts like ATP, the more it angers me how incestuous the Apple indie community is. There

This is going to come off as quite bitter, but the more I listen to podcasts like ATP, the more it angers me how incestuous the Apple indie community is. There are about a million of these kinds of utility apps in the App Store. Many are potentially useful to thousands of people like this one. None of them get widespread podcast coverage, writeups on Techcrunch and Macstories, and trending posts on HN. This is exclusively fame and personality driving sales, and yet nobody on these shows seems to want to acknowledge it. Worse yet, this might make fledgeling indie developers believe that they, too, could make a living with their first or second projects. But I know from experience that merit isn't nearly enough: getting even a single journalist to pay attention will require weeks or months of unanswered e-mails to everyone you can find—and even then, only if you're lucky, and your app actually does something incredible. Perhaps the unstated prerequisite in this market is that if you don't have a network, your app almost certainly isn't going anywhere, no matter how good it is. And if you know a bunch of people within the Apple indie community, you're going to have some degree of success, no matter what. I recently released an app that performs an important task substantially better than all the existing competition, and yet getting anyone at all to pay attention is like pulling nails. It's hard not to feel dejected when you see a newcomer with a comparatively simple app enter the stage and immediately get widespread acclaim. As a long-time fan of the show, I'm happy for Casey's success (because he's a genuinely nice and well-meaning person), but I'm probably going to have to stop listening soon. This release is just an absolute distortion of the app developer experience, and it ticks me off that everyone in this sphere is acting like it's completely normal. In reality, almost anybody else would be lucky to make $100 from the lifetime of an equivalent app, and nobody would be donating $5 to you just because they like you.

graeme 7y ago
>Worse yet, this might make fledgeling indie developers believe that they, too, could make a living with their first or second projects. Where did Casey or anyone else give this impression? I think you're reading a LOT into this that isn't there. Obviously the app has done well because its creator is well known. That's a very viable method of marketing. Anyone hoping to start a business needs some sort of marketing angle, and fame or network is one of them. Not just that: the app has to work, and Vignette works well. And it solved the problem of the people recommending it, too. That's part of why everyone who knows Casey is eager to talk about it: the app genuinely helped them. Can you point to something anyone said, anywhere that backs up your own interpretation? Ie. someone saying "see, anyone can do it" I didn't listen to this week's ATP yet, so maybe I missed something grotesque, but what you're saying doesn't sound like how Casey talked about the app in the runup.
- tastyface 7y ago
  > "Where did Casey or anyone else give this impression? I think you're reading a LOT into this that isn't there." Maybe you're right. I admit there's quite a bit of sour grapes on my part. On the other hand, I think it's more a matter of what's not said. On ATP, the relative fame of the three co-hosts is rarely brought up as a causal factor of success, and Vignette's development has been talked about as if it were an an entirely conventional process, with no asterisks or caveats. To paraphrase several episodes of discussion: "You make the app, and if it's good enough, people will write about it and you will make on the order of several thousand dollars over its lifetime. Maybe you'll even be able make a living out of it." But that's just not how it works for ordinary people. Either the co-hosts are out of touch, or they assumed that Casey's connectedness would substantially help his sales, but didn't outright say it. To be clear, I don't blame Casey for any of this. He did nothing wrong. More than anything, I'm frustrated by the Apple media for (what I perceive to be) favoritism when it comes to picking apps to write about and prop up. Where's the journalistic integrity? You pass over so many fantastic apps, yet a tiny utility app by this one famous developer (who's friends with the higher-ups) gets a full writeup? > "Not just that: the app has to work, and Vignette works well. And it solved the problem of the people recommending it, too. That's part of why everyone who knows Casey is eager to talk about it: the app genuinely helped them." I think it helps connected people in the Apple indie dev scene more than anyone else. If you read the feedback in the corresponding Reddit thread[1], you'll see that most regular people aren't able to make use of its functionality. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bs7z8a/vignette_for_ios_easily_personalizes_contact/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bs7z8a/vignette_for_...
  - graeme 7y ago
    Mmm, I guess I have a lot of contacts with synced facebook ids back when ios let you connect facebook. So I listened to the new ATP, and Casey constantly talked about how fortunate he was to have an audience, and friends with audiences. I really didn't get the sense you're talking about. As for the press, macstories writes about everything. The more famous ones, I agree that maybe they could disclose that. On the other hand, this is the slowest part of the year by far in the apple news cycle, so he may have inadvertently picked an excellent time to launch. Editors had little else to write about.

graeme 7y ago

>Worse yet, this might make fledgeling indie developers believe that they, too, could make a living with their first or second projects. Where did Casey or anyone else give this impression? I think you're reading a LOT into this that isn't there. Obviously the app has done well because its creator is well known. That's a very viable method of marketing. Anyone hoping to start a business needs some sort of marketing angle, and fame or network is one of them. Not just that: the app has to work, and Vignette works well. And it solved the problem of the people recommending it, too. That's part of why everyone who knows Casey is eager to talk about it: the app genuinely helped them. Can you point to something anyone said, anywhere that backs up your own interpretation? Ie. someone saying "see, anyone can do it" I didn't listen to this week's ATP yet, so maybe I missed something grotesque, but what you're saying doesn't sound like how Casey talked about the app in the runup.

tastyface 7y ago
> "Where did Casey or anyone else give this impression? I think you're reading a LOT into this that isn't there." Maybe you're right. I admit there's quite a bit of sour grapes on my part. On the other hand, I think it's more a matter of what's not said. On ATP, the relative fame of the three co-hosts is rarely brought up as a causal factor of success, and Vignette's development has been talked about as if it were an an entirely conventional process, with no asterisks or caveats. To paraphrase several episodes of discussion: "You make the app, and if it's good enough, people will write about it and you will make on the order of several thousand dollars over its lifetime. Maybe you'll even be able make a living out of it." But that's just not how it works for ordinary people. Either the co-hosts are out of touch, or they assumed that Casey's connectedness would substantially help his sales, but didn't outright say it. To be clear, I don't blame Casey for any of this. He did nothing wrong. More than anything, I'm frustrated by the Apple media for (what I perceive to be) favoritism when it comes to picking apps to write about and prop up. Where's the journalistic integrity? You pass over so many fantastic apps, yet a tiny utility app by this one famous developer (who's friends with the higher-ups) gets a full writeup? > "Not just that: the app has to work, and Vignette works well. And it solved the problem of the people recommending it, too. That's part of why everyone who knows Casey is eager to talk about it: the app genuinely helped them." I think it helps connected people in the Apple indie dev scene more than anyone else. If you read the feedback in the corresponding Reddit thread[1], you'll see that most regular people aren't able to make use of its functionality. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bs7z8a/vignette_for_ios_easily_personalizes_contact/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/bs7z8a/vignette_for_...
- graeme 7y ago
  Mmm, I guess I have a lot of contacts with synced facebook ids back when ios let you connect facebook. So I listened to the new ATP, and Casey constantly talked about how fortunate he was to have an audience, and friends with audiences. I really didn't get the sense you're talking about. As for the press, macstories writes about everything. The more famous ones, I agree that maybe they could disclose that. On the other hand, this is the slowest part of the year by far in the apple news cycle, so he may have inadvertently picked an excellent time to launch. Editors had little else to write about.