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The 2014 Panic Report

210 points by jmduke 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
wwweston 12y ago
Perhaps the most interesting part for developers currently targeting or considering targeting Apple's App store: "We had a very long, very torturous situation with Status Board almost being pulled that we’ve never written up out of sensitivity to our relationship with Apple. I only mention it here because it proves that it is possible to fix these awkward rejection situations without Apple suffering negative PR in the public eye — we did that 'offline'. But it took an absolutely massive amount of mental energy and time to work through — positively Sisyphean. I would never want to do it again — I’ve run out of patience, I guess. I can say for certain that the 'bad PR' version of the app dispute process is monumentally more effective. Which is a shame." Apple's process is a favorite punching bag, of course, and for good reasons. But I find it so common that 'bad PR' disputes that gain traction (or from parties who can easily command an audience) are more effective that I'm honestly have trouble thinking of exceptions to contrast Apple with. Anyone know of some? If not, what does this say about the limits of businesses to address systemic problems?
- serve_yay 12y ago
  I have seen some bloggers theorize that these problems are bubbling up more in recent months because of some kind of internal conflict within Apple. It does seem rather schizophrenic, with one team releasing a bunch of features in iOS and the SDK, only to have the App Store team disallow the features' use.
- modfodder 12y ago
  I feel this is unfortunately the case with a lot of businesses (not to give Apple a pass here). A lot of problems get fixed quickly when the customer has a large enough online following (or is lucky for their story to go viral) to cause a negative pr.
jfernandez 12y ago
Amazing transparency! Imagine if the whole industry behaved this way, we'd all be better for it. Maybe a minor point to some here, but I'd love to know more about the QA process changes they're hinting at.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- paganel 12y ago
  > because trying to do SSH without an actual keyboard is really frustrating and no, I don't want to buy a keyboard for my iPad. A little OT, but reading your comment I remembered how I used to SSH to my home-server using my ex-wife's Nokia E71 sometimes around 2008-2009, when we were going out with friends and I was getting bored. That phone was pure genius, it had a nice keyboard, no need to purchase any SSH client, you could write Python code for it (I was always too lazy for that, though) and it was just pleasant to use.
  - beaumartinez 12y ago
    If only the Nokia of old were still around.
  - richardwhiuk 12y ago
    I've used SSH on mobile devices, on both iOS and Android, and I wouldn't describe either experience as pleasant - at best it felt like pulling teeth. This is mainly because of the small screen (80x25 would feel like a blessing on a phone) and the terrible keyboard. Maybe a physical keyboard would be better, but I doubt it. On a desktop or a laptop I type in SSH just about as quick as I can think (sometimes faster :p). On a phone, it's way slower, and when I can type quick enough, the latency over wireless networks is slow enough to make it tiresome.
  - statictype 12y ago
    The E71 was both great and maddening. The keyboard was good. Being ably to write Python on it was great. The music player and camera were junk though. Worse than the equivalent on many lower end phones.
- matt_s 12y ago
  With free iOS options it is hard to have a compelling reason to purchase something which is basically a novelty use case. Although, I do have a Sharkk keyboard for my iPad and using SSH with that is pretty slick. I have yet to link dropbox with one of my cloud servers to enable an edit, save-to-dropbox, server update loop. The behavior typically is search for "free xyz" first and if I find something that meets my needs then so be it. I wonder if having "lite" versions that have features removed and are offered free would have any impact on their revenue.
sedev 12y ago
I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you assume, very generously, that an iOS app can use a smaller project scope and only take half the investment of company time, that's still a heavily skewed ratio. It's a bad situation for developers that can't absorb losses or make their money via IAP (and I'm not sure how long the IAP route will be around, considering the utterly vile marketing practices some entities are using to juice up IAP revenue). The problem is that this is not that Apple, Google, or consumers are doing something to development houses. It's an emergent feature of the market and the incentives, so there's no simple way to make it reliably financially viable to develop for mobile (subscriptions and IAP are not simple and don't fit all business models). I hope Panic can afford to stay in the business of writing iOS apps. Their apps are great. But the money those apps are making them, isn't great.
- lordbusiness 12y ago
  Indeed. Increasingly I'm viewing iOS apps as value-add only, that is to say apps attached to a given service or other offering, designed to augment such a service. I am sure people will cite a zillion examples of businesses that make their living from iOS apps, but increasingly this appears more like winning the lotto, akin to 'making it' in Hollywood, than as a viable business model for all comers. The reliable way to make a living as an iOS developer is to develop for a bigger company that needs an app as a side-show.
  - richardwhiuk 12y ago
    Agree. Almost all of the apps on my phone are basically value add only.
  - sedev 12y ago
    I think I'm gonna start looking at it that way, since that's much more actionable than what I said.
benologist 12y ago
I hope this is the year Panic upgrades Transmit to have a retry button for failed uploads - it's especially painful that entire syncs and batch uploads have to stop or be accepted as incomplete if a single file fails.
mappu 12y ago
USA-based company releases a closed-source SSH client and remote file manager. Sorry, i'll pass.
- post_break 12y ago
  But look at how pretty they are.
terranstyler 12y ago
Obviously "Panic" is a well-known company for developing IOs applications and for at least 145 people on HN this is common knowledge. Is there anything special about this company? EDIT: Although the people downvoting (currently -1) this won't read this edit anymore, the question was (and is) meant serious.
- RustyRussell 12y ago
  Agreed. I felt a bit like I'd accidentally clicked on an ad. Came here to see if I'd missed something.
- netnichols 12y ago
  Panic is actually more well known as a company that makes Mac apps. Many would call them the preeminent developers for the Mac platform (along with Omni). So think of it like this... A hugely popular (for its market), established, independent, and profitable software company gives clear and transparent insight into how the past year has gone for them and their products.
- archagon 12y ago
  They're considered a design darling in terms of their OSX and now iOS apps. Really high quality software.
- hellweaver666 12y ago
  Panic are one of the longest standing developers of Mac Apps. They used to make one of the earliest Mac MP3 playing apps (called Audion) which very nearly got purchased by Apple as the foundation for iTunes. https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
- bhaak 12y ago
  Panic is one of the best-known Mac-only software developing companies that are out there, well connected in the blogosphere, been around for quite some time and their products generally loved by their users. It is a matter of opinion if that makes them special or not. I guess their Panic report hasn't been upvoted just for being from Panic but also because we have here another critical voice of Apple and the Appstore processes from a company that for sure doesn't just like doing Apple-bashing.
akramhussein 12y ago
Really great apps and bar is being kept high which is always great for the s/w industry. If I could achieve just 1% of what Panic has I'd be proud.

210 points by jmduke 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Perhaps the most interesting part for developers currently targeting or considering targeting Apple's App store: "We had a very long, very torturous situation with Status Board almost being pulled that we’ve never written up out of sensitivity to our relationship with Apple. I only mention it here because it proves that it is possible to fix these awkward rejection situations without Apple suffering negative PR in the public eye — we did that 'offline'. But it took an absolutely massive amount of mental energy and time to work through — positively Sisyphean. I would never want to do it again — I’ve run out of patience, I guess. I can say for certain that the 'bad PR' version of the app dispute process is monumentally more effective. Which is a shame." Apple's process is a favorite punching bag, of course, and for good reasons. But I find it so common that 'bad PR' disputes that gain traction (or from parties who can easily command an audience) are more effective that I'm honestly have trouble thinking of exceptions to contrast Apple with. Anyone know of some? If not, what does this say about the limits of businesses to address systemic problems?

serve_yay 12y ago
I have seen some bloggers theorize that these problems are bubbling up more in recent months because of some kind of internal conflict within Apple. It does seem rather schizophrenic, with one team releasing a bunch of features in iOS and the SDK, only to have the App Store team disallow the features' use.
modfodder 12y ago
I feel this is unfortunately the case with a lot of businesses (not to give Apple a pass here). A lot of problems get fixed quickly when the customer has a large enough online following (or is lucky for their story to go viral) to cause a negative pr.

jfernandez 12y ago

Amazing transparency! Imagine if the whole industry behaved this way, we'd all be better for it. Maybe a minor point to some here, but I'd love to know more about the QA process changes they're hinting at.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

paganel 12y ago
> because trying to do SSH without an actual keyboard is really frustrating and no, I don't want to buy a keyboard for my iPad. A little OT, but reading your comment I remembered how I used to SSH to my home-server using my ex-wife's Nokia E71 sometimes around 2008-2009, when we were going out with friends and I was getting bored. That phone was pure genius, it had a nice keyboard, no need to purchase any SSH client, you could write Python code for it (I was always too lazy for that, though) and it was just pleasant to use.
- beaumartinez 12y ago
  If only the Nokia of old were still around.
- richardwhiuk 12y ago
  I've used SSH on mobile devices, on both iOS and Android, and I wouldn't describe either experience as pleasant - at best it felt like pulling teeth. This is mainly because of the small screen (80x25 would feel like a blessing on a phone) and the terrible keyboard. Maybe a physical keyboard would be better, but I doubt it. On a desktop or a laptop I type in SSH just about as quick as I can think (sometimes faster :p). On a phone, it's way slower, and when I can type quick enough, the latency over wireless networks is slow enough to make it tiresome.
- statictype 12y ago
  The E71 was both great and maddening. The keyboard was good. Being ably to write Python on it was great. The music player and camera were junk though. Worse than the equivalent on many lower end phones.
matt_s 12y ago
With free iOS options it is hard to have a compelling reason to purchase something which is basically a novelty use case. Although, I do have a Sharkk keyboard for my iPad and using SSH with that is pretty slick. I have yet to link dropbox with one of my cloud servers to enable an edit, save-to-dropbox, server update loop. The behavior typically is search for "free xyz" first and if I find something that meets my needs then so be it. I wonder if having "lite" versions that have features removed and are offered free would have any impact on their revenue.

sedev 12y ago

I wince a little when I read the section titled "Low iOS revenue." The iOS App Store's race to the bottom on pricing (and the parallel problem in Androidville) are very hard on developers. Panic reports that their unit sales are nearly even on iOS and OS X - but that the revenue is on the far side of an 80-20 split, that they make more than four times the revenue from a desktop sale than from an iOS sale! Even if you assume, very generously, that an iOS app can use a smaller project scope and only take half the investment of company time, that's still a heavily skewed ratio. It's a bad situation for developers that can't absorb losses or make their money via IAP (and I'm not sure how long the IAP route will be around, considering the utterly vile marketing practices some entities are using to juice up IAP revenue). The problem is that this is not that Apple, Google, or consumers are doing something to development houses. It's an emergent feature of the market and the incentives, so there's no simple way to make it reliably financially viable to develop for mobile (subscriptions and IAP are not simple and don't fit all business models). I hope Panic can afford to stay in the business of writing iOS apps. Their apps are great. But the money those apps are making them, isn't great.

lordbusiness 12y ago
Indeed. Increasingly I'm viewing iOS apps as value-add only, that is to say apps attached to a given service or other offering, designed to augment such a service. I am sure people will cite a zillion examples of businesses that make their living from iOS apps, but increasingly this appears more like winning the lotto, akin to 'making it' in Hollywood, than as a viable business model for all comers. The reliable way to make a living as an iOS developer is to develop for a bigger company that needs an app as a side-show.
- richardwhiuk 12y ago
  Agree. Almost all of the apps on my phone are basically value add only.
- sedev 12y ago
  I think I'm gonna start looking at it that way, since that's much more actionable than what I said.

benologist 12y ago

I hope this is the year Panic upgrades Transmit to have a retry button for failed uploads - it's especially painful that entire syncs and batch uploads have to stop or be accepted as incomplete if a single file fails.

mappu 12y ago

USA-based company releases a closed-source SSH client and remote file manager. Sorry, i'll pass.

post_break 12y ago
But look at how pretty they are.

terranstyler 12y ago

Obviously "Panic" is a well-known company for developing IOs applications and for at least 145 people on HN this is common knowledge. Is there anything special about this company? EDIT: Although the people downvoting (currently -1) this won't read this edit anymore, the question was (and is) meant serious.

RustyRussell 12y ago
Agreed. I felt a bit like I'd accidentally clicked on an ad. Came here to see if I'd missed something.
netnichols 12y ago
Panic is actually more well known as a company that makes Mac apps. Many would call them the preeminent developers for the Mac platform (along with Omni). So think of it like this... A hugely popular (for its market), established, independent, and profitable software company gives clear and transparent insight into how the past year has gone for them and their products.
archagon 12y ago
They're considered a design darling in terms of their OSX and now iOS apps. Really high quality software.
hellweaver666 12y ago
Panic are one of the longest standing developers of Mac Apps. They used to make one of the earliest Mac MP3 playing apps (called Audion) which very nearly got purchased by Apple as the foundation for iTunes. https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/
bhaak 12y ago
Panic is one of the best-known Mac-only software developing companies that are out there, well connected in the blogosphere, been around for quite some time and their products generally loved by their users. It is a matter of opinion if that makes them special or not. I guess their Panic report hasn't been upvoted just for being from Panic but also because we have here another critical voice of Apple and the Appstore processes from a company that for sure doesn't just like doing Apple-bashing.

akramhussein 12y ago

Really great apps and bar is being kept high which is always great for the s/w industry. If I could achieve just 1% of what Panic has I'd be proud.