I’m very honored to be chosen as part of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders class of 2015 alongside some really amazing folks. I spoke at Davos a few years ago and it was a very interesting experience — I think they snuck me in on a media badge, which is why I wrote … Continue reading Chosen as Young Global Leader →

If you follow these sorts of things, you would have read recently that iOS is a goldmine:

In a fascinating report from Horace Dediu, we learn that:

"...in 2014 iOS app developers earned more than Hollywood did from box office in the US."

Pretty impressive. Dediu also notes that:

"The app economy sustains more jobs (627,000 iOS jobs in the US vs. 374,000 in Hollywood)"

iOS, as a whole, is clobbering Hollywood financially and getting stronger every year.

Wow! ...Right?

Well, maybe. The first thing I find odd about this analysis is: what is meaningful about comparing these two industries? Is Hollywood the standard unit of measurement in business? By its nature it occupies an outsize presence in our collective mindshare, but commanding a spot in our collective mindshare is a limited proxy for financial value.

The second thing I find odd, or perhaps just funny, about this analysis is that it goes so far as to describe the App Economy as healthier because it likely compares favorably to actor income:

"I would guess that the median income of app developers is higher than the median income of actors."

Speaking as someone who comes from the world of theater, I didn't need to look at Dediu's cringe-inducing footnote to know that "a large majority of actors earn less than $1,000 a year from acting jobs".

If some app developers "earn more than Hollywood stars", and the median developer income is better than abject poverty... that doesn't tell us that the App industry is healthy so much as at least slightly less insane than working as an actor. Which, and I say this as an actor, is true of, well, basically any other job. So, not much to learn there.

The third thing I find odd about this analysis is that, having grazed ever-so-slightly against the question of an absurd distribution of revenue, it leaves the topic otherwise untouched.

Digging a Little Deeper

If you follow these sorts of things, you would also have read recently about troubling numbers from some of the most beloved names in independent Mac and iOS development. For example: The venerable and famous-among-people-who-follow-these-things developer Panic Inc just posted a 2014 Report in which they note several challenges of their past year. Among these challenges, Panic notes the revenue breakdown of their products:

Wow! 51% of our unit sales came from iOS apps! That’s great!
But now look at this revenue chart for the same month...
Despite selling more than half of our total units, iOS represents just 17% of our total revenue.

Now, if you know Panic, and you read that blog post, you might well have imagined the sound of a record player screetching to an abrupt halt at this point in their description. Panic? The multi-award-winning, Apple-featured, impeccably developed, multi-million dollar Panic?

For many of us, Panic is the gold standard for indie Mac and iOS developent. Reading their blog post, to an indie iOS developer in a pessimistic mood, might well be what we imagine it looks like when the canary drops dead in the iOS coal mine. "Not enough oxygen down here, get out."

But wait, there's more!

You, attentive reader, might also have noticed this other year-end report by the similarly famous and well-respected Marco Arment. In it, Marco generously shares his raw sales numbers for a new iOS app he describes as having "a perfect launch". He also links out to three other posts that share raw numbers for other iOS products.

The revenue numbers in these posts range from a modest $42,000 to a fantastic $4,786,496.

What's a developer to make of all this? Is iOS healthy, or not? A goldmine, or short on oxygen?

Quick, someone who knows math, do something!

Now enter Charles Perry, who performed an analysis of Marco's numbers and a follow-up analysis with more data.

Perry concludes that, based on the numbers developers are sharing publicly, the revenue in the iOS app store is skewed heavily to the apps at the top of the charts. If Perry is right, the iOS ecosystem is actually pretty similar to Hollywood after all: a few actors take home a lot of money, and most everyone else takes home, well, not much.

Okay, so... what does this all mean?

Great question. I get the feeling that a lot of us who develop software aren't entirely sure. The fact that the experienced and reliably great developers among us are asking this question at all is, I think, in itself somewhat alarming.

If it's true, is it someone's "fault"? Can it be changed? What are the consequences if it doesn't?

Our Own Data

You've somehow made it this far, so let me share (for the first time ever, as it turns out) some of our own raw sales numbers.

We sell two iOS products:

QLab Remote is a remote control for our flagship OS X show control product QLab. It does nothing on its own, and is only useful in conjunction with QLab running on OS X. QLab Remote sells for 19 bucks.

Go Button is a self-contained product which puts an entire audio playback system in your pocket. Go Button was initially created by developer Brent Lord, and at first sold for $19. When Brent joined us at Figure 53 and brought a new version of Go Button with him, the price was raised to $39.

Here's the full sales data for both products:

At $138 per day, these two products are averaging a total revenue (after Apple's 30%, but before taxes and other costs) of about $50,000 per year.

Now, 50K per year, after you account for taxes, health insurance, and all the other stuff, is somewhere in the ballpark of a single half-time employee working on these two products for a salary that can't be described as ultra-competitive.

The problem, of course, is that these two products were not built (and are not maintained and supported) by a single half-time employee. And while we probably can't ever compete, and frankly don't want to compete, purely on the basis of ultra-competitive salaries, neither do I want to ask any of my teammates to make deep financial sacrifices for the pleasure of working here.

Our OS X products, in contrast, make up the difference in our costs to run this 12-person company. There are many reasons for this. The maturity of our flagship product QLab, the much higher price of that product, the fact that we sell it outside of Apple's app store and don't have to give them 30%, etc.

Does this mean I'm pessimistic about iOS? Well, no. I'm not. I wouldn't have asked Brent to join us with Go Button if I was. I care about iOS for many reasons, both today and looking to the future.

But it puts us in the same boat as the Panics of the world: what is our relationship to the financial reality of iOS, and what does it need to be to make sure we can keep working on that platform?

The IOU of iOS

The sense I sometimes get with iOS is of work done in exchange for a vague IOU. A belief in the obvious technical and design merits of the platform, an acknowledgement of the unprecedented rates of adoption for these devices, and perhaps an excitement watching the stars strike gold. A culture thick with the pervasive mantra "mobile first", which might make all the sense in the world to one kind of business endeavor, but may make no sense at all for other kinds of toolmakers.

Apple is not, I would say, directly (or consciously) responsible for promising something that iOS can't deliver. But neither are they entirely neutral. They design the mechanics of the App Store. They design and construct how apps are discovered. They chose not to support offering upgrade pricing for previous sales. They built an app review system in which developers can not respond to customers. They created a deployment pipeline which prevents developers from fixing bugs quickly. They choose how software is licensed on all devices. They even choose what discounts you will give to educational customers, which are defined by them. And of course they take a 30% cut of what you sell.¹

The nature of making choices for everyone is that you'll be making bad choices for someone. Apple isn't being dumb or malicious. To the degree that they've shaped the financial landscape of iOS entrepreneurship, it's all been done with good intentions from smart people who've successfully created a beautiful, complex, and powerful technology ecosystem.

But as we pull into year 6 of the iOS app store, maybe we're seeing some longer-term, difficult-to-predict consequences of the design choices they made when dictating how developers build and sell software. Or maybe the developers and our customers raced together into a mutual pit of low prices, from which we now must extricate ourselves. Or maybe it will never feel right to pay a lot of money for software that runs on your phone, and developers have to bide our time until some future crossover device that runs iOS and offers its unique interactive possibilities but runs on hardware that feels more substantial than the thing you throw in your purse when you go to the grocery store.

So, again, what does it mean?

Well, I guess we'll see. We'll see if the ecosystem on iOS begins to shift. Maybe some apps stop getting built, because developers finally learn the lesson that they won't pay off. Or maybe we all begin to raise our prices to make it sustainable to keep building software for these devices.

For us, I still love iOS. I want to make things on iOS. But I think we'll need to push against what seems to be a culture of expecting extremely low prices.

Back in the day, when an early, audio-only version of QLab sold for $49, I'd often hear that the price was too low. Folks explained that they wouldn't run a professional show on something so inexpensive. Now, in the early days of Go Button, which is functionally very similar to that early version of QLab, we hear that asking for $39 is bold to the point of presumptuous. We're warned that we'd better keep adding free feature updates if someone is to pay a price that high.

How does that happen? How is $39 presumptuously expensive on one computer, while $49 is laughably cheap on another?

I don't know. I don't know what psychology is at play here. I don't know how much is guided by Apple's design choices, how much is inherent to the physical devices themselves, and how much is the developer community lying in the pricing bed it made for itself.

But I do suspect that we will see these prices changing. We'll have to. From Panic, and from us, and from others. We will, I suspect, continue to make powerful tools that bring great value to the people who use them. Those powerful tools will happen to run on the modern form of the computer, which happens to fit in a pocket. And those powerful tools will increasingly cost higher, professional prices. Because if they don't, they won't exist at all.

In theater, at least some actors continue to make art because art is often its own reward. iOS, however, can't rely on a similar incentive to keep the tools coming. If developing for iOS is nearly as unhealthy as acting in movies and plays, something will change. I'm just not sure what.

---

1 — The 30% cut Apple takes really is huge. It also, I think, encourages us to build apps that are free. And if the apps are free, they're in service to something else that isn't free. Some software-as-a-service, or a product sold through another channel which can be made more attractive with a mobile extension. This gentle pressure to push the actual value outside of iOS strikes me as problematic, long-term. Surely it is counteracted by pressures in the opposite direction, so maybe it doesn't mean much at the end of the day. But I wonder.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – A top prosecutor for District Attorney Kari Brandenburg’s office was shut out of a briefing after a fatal police shooting near San Mateo and Constitution NE on Tuesday evening, Brandenburg told KRQE News 13.

Police officials and others were gathering to discuss the most recent developments in the investigation a few hours after the shooting, Brandenburg said. Chief Deputy DA Sylvia Martinez attempted to join the briefing, but Deputy City Attorney Kathryn Levy would not let Martinez attend.

What Brandenburg said happened Tuesday evening would be an unprecedented move by city of Albuquerque officials, and it comes a day after Brandenburg charged two APD officers with murder in the March shooting death of homeless camper James Boyd.

Levy invoked the charges in barring Martinez from the briefing, according to Brandenburg.

“Sylvia was told that our office has a conflict of interest because we charged the officers,” she said.

Reached by telephone for comment Tuesday evening, Levy, who has for years worked as APD’s attorney, refused to answer questions.

Police said officers went to the area of San Mateo and Constitution after a report of “suspicious activity” shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday. The took one man into custody, but another man fled on foot. That man fired shots at two officers, who chased him on foot, according to police.

The chase and shootout ended when the officers shot and killed the man, according to police.

The DA’s Office plays an integral role in investigating police shooting cases. Prosecutors are involved from the very beginning of the process, from providing legal advice and approving search warrants right after an officer shoots someone to deciding whether the shooting was justified at the end.

Levy also told Martinez that APD “wouldn’t be needing any legal advice or help” and that Martinez “could go home,” Brandenburg said. “They told her we could call another prosecutor’s office to come down.”

Prosecutors’ presence at the scenes of police shootings and inside the investigatory briefings has been ubiquitous for decades here. In fact, the DA’s participation in the investigations is memorialized in a written agreement with APD and other agencies signed in 2004.

“I have never seen anything like this. Ever,” Brandenburg said in a telephone interview, referring to a city official shutting one of her prosecutors out of a briefing. “Clearly, this could compromise the integrity of the investigation of this shooting.”

The written agreement that governs police shooting investigations in Bernalillo County says representatives from APD, the county Sheriff’s Office, New Mexico State Police and the DA’s Office are to designate designation representatives to take part in the inquiries. The agency that employs the shooting officer “shall be designated the lead agency,” the agreement says.

Last fall, Mayor Richard Berry’s administration signed a settlement agreement with the U.S. Justice Department of Justice to implement hundreds of reforms at APD. The agreement came after an 18-month DOJ investigation in which federal officials found widespread use of excessive force by APD officers, including in police shootings.

The Justice Department, as part of ongoing reform efforts, adopted the local agreement that spells out the process for police shooting investigations.

“It is my opinion that the city violated” the agreement, Brandenburg said. “And that means they violated their agreement with the DOJ.”

After Brandenburg announced the murder charges against officer Dominique Perez of the APD SWAT team and former detective Keith Sandy in the Boyd shooting on Monday, Berry issued a written statement.

“We trust the judicial system will provide the family, our community and the officers a fair, transparent and unbiased opportunity to explore and present the facts as they relate to this tragic event,” Berry said in the statement. “It is important for all of us to allow the process to progress without prejudice in order for our community to move forward.”

Chris Pepper:

The immigrants I interview and work with are not 100–1,000 times as effective as US Citizens, which is the implication I get from Paul’s article: that the US has plenty of non-great programmers, but we need to recruit outside our borders to find enough great programmers. Immigrants are not hired with an understanding or expectation that they will be twice as effective as US candidates. We hire immigrants (and employers deal with the costs and paperwork) because we need people to do lots of (often basic) jobs, and there are simply not enough qualified candidates — whether programmers, system administrators, or other tech types. […]

But be honest. H-1B visa demand is not high because companies are striving for excellence. The visas are being used to preserve the existing labor market (salary levels) rather than paying higher salaries as dictated by supply and demand.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – With a new state gaming effort, you can now do something in New Mexico’s bars that you can’t do in casinos: drink and gamble at the same time.

The New Mexico Lottery is rolling out a new game and they hope it will be one of the keys towards saving the ailing lottery scholarship. The number of people buying lottery tickets in New Mexico hasn’t been generating enough money for the state lottery fund for a while now.

“We’re trying our very best to stay relevant,” said Linda Hamlin, a spokeswoman for the New Mexico Lottery.

In order to stay relevant, the lottery says it’s now turning to bingo in a place where most people don’t expect: bars and restaurants.

“People like to come and play the games and hang out and drink,” said Louis Chalamidas, owner of the Copper Lounge in Albuquerque.

The Copper Lounge on Central is one of about 60 different bars, restaurants, bowling alleys and motels statewide now letting people play the “Lucky Numbers” bingo game. Eight of the establishments with the bingo game are in Albuquerque.

State law has always permitted the New Mexico Lottery to allow its games to be played in businesses that serve alcohol. However, the bingo game is the state’s first large effort to mix gambling with bars and restaurants, or “social environments” as the New Mexico Lottery calls them.

“Be in the places where they want to play games. They’re not going to come to us, we have to go to them,” said Hamlin.

The New Mexico Lottery has been struggling for years to raise enough revenue in order to keep up with the number of lottery scholarships that it’s dolling out. Now, they hope is that this new game will help rope in new gamblers.

“Especially the new young and up and coming players, they’re not playing the way their parents and grandparents did. They want to play with their friends, they want to play when they go out and eat,” said Hamlin.

The Lucky Numbers game has payouts between $1 and $10,200. New games are drawn every four minutes. The lottery hopes it will bring in an extra one-million dollars for the lottery scholarship revenue by July 1, 2015.

The Copper Lounge says the game is already bringing in more people.

“People seem really interested and as time has gone on, more people have played,” said Chalamidas.

KRQE News 13 spoke to several potential players on Monday, who gave mixed opinions.

“I don’t know if it will really help to be honest with you,” said Louie Gonzales.

“I’m looking at this thing on the wall and I have no idea how this thing works so they need to give instruction before they’re going to put out some type of social game,” said Eric Gonzales.

“This sounds interesting, why not!?” said Rosario Sandoval.

Beyond the 60 different restaurants, bars, bowling alleys and motels that have the game on big screen TV’s, the lottery says people can also play the bingo game at the nearly 1,200 places where lottery tickets are sold, then watch the games online.

The New Mexico Lottery says it’s also working on a smartphone app that will allow gamblers to check to see if they’re a winner. The agency hasn’t set a release date on the app yet.

SANTA FE (KRQE) – After an election many people called before Election Day, Gov. Susana Martinez was re-elected for a second term, beating Democrat opponent Gary King.

The race hadn’t looked close for a while, but King worked through the final hours trying to sway undecided voters in his direction. Both candidates spent the last few days meeting with voters and traveling around the state.

Nationally, Gov. Martinez has grown in popularity the last four years, with many people whispering that she could be on a ticket for the next presidential election. In 2013, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine. Also last year, business tax rates dropped from 7.6 percent to 5.9 percent after Martinez signed into law the New Mexico Jobs Package.

Areas where the governor has been criticized, however, include policies on education, a proposal to only offer food stamps to working residents and lack of much progress with job creation. She has also had frequent crashes with the state’s Democratic-led House and Senate over tax policies.

King and Martinez spent a lot of effort trying to prove to Hispanic voters in the state that they were the right candidate for them. In 2010, 38 percent of Hispanic voters supported Martinez. A month ago, they both participated in a televised Spanish-language debate on Univision, where Martinez was able to answer all the questions in Spanish and King used a translator.

A few months ago, King accused Martinez of not having a “Latino heart” and for requesting to have an inaugural event four years ago that wouldn’t be a “Mexican affair.” Then-Chief Deputy District Attorney Amy Orlando, who wrote the email describing what Martinez wanted for the event, said that portion was taken out of context and that she was not quoting Martinez.

Throughout the election, Martinez had a solid lead for the most part, except for in July when the race was tied in a Rasmussen Reports poll. Martinez also had more money for her campaign and a lot more cash for ads.

In 2010, Martinez became the first female Hispanic governor in the country. Recently, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, both came to New Mexico to help sway residents to vote for Martinez.

She succeeded Democrat Gov. Bill Richardson who had been in the position for eight years. Before running for governor, Martinez was a longtime district attorney in Doña Ana County.