Author Archives: Elia Freedman

Taken Out Of Context

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Marco Arment on a recent Accidental Tech Podcast:

People assume because I have an audience in some places means that any app I release will be a giant hit. That really isn’t the case. I have an advantage, certainly, by having an established audience. I have an advantage mostly up-front where I’m mostly guaranteed a pretty good launch. After that I’m in the same boat as everyone else.

Marco released the information to his app BugShot here. Since then, he went on to say in ATP, his sales have dropped further and are now down to about 15-20 per day.

I’m saddened to admit that I apparently was the catalyst for that post based on a footnote in my post The App Store Problem Is Not Price. What I meant by my footnote is exactly what Marco said on ATP: he has an advantage, particularly at launch, and nothing more.

What frustrated me was not annoying Marco, although I wasn’t happy about that. We emailed and worked it out. What bothered me was that other people took my footnote, ignored the point I was really making, and focused on the Marco part, leaving out the update I added to clarify the point.

I’ve had a few highly read posts over the years, that one being one of them. But I’ve never had a post so taken out of context by others before. That was a real eye-opener. It felt like a horrible game of telephone. My offhand, misinterpreted footnote seemed to become something else entirely.

Sorry, Marco.

Failing… Again

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A week ago we launched an update to powerOne. It was mostly bug fixes and a couple of other things. I screwed up one of the fixes and tried to re-fix it late last week. In the process I swapped out one file provided by a third-party (Flurry). I didn’t think much of it and released it to Apple. They reviewed it quickly and released it. Saturday a couple of reports came in that the app failed to launch on iOS 5. I quickly added a message to the What’s New dialog in iTunes, fixed that problem and released it to Apple again. It’s awaiting review.

I’m frustrated, mostly with myself but a little with Flurry and a little with Apple. Look, the bug was my fault. I failed to test a use case, a use case that turned out to be a pretty big one (using it on an entire OS version). Flurry gets a little of my angst, though, as they made major changes in a point release that broke the app if not set up properly, and then failed to mention how to set it up properly. And a little of my angst is aimed at Apple. What kind of review is this if you don’t even run it on the operating systems it is available for? And why can’t you, after six years of the App Store, give me something to help me out when I screw up, like maybe allowing me to roll back to the previous version?

But mostly I’m upset at myself. I failed to perform a very simple test. I released a new version without completely testing one of the changes. The number of things I am doing is piling up bigger than me. In an effort to get one of them off my plate I rushed and screwed up. I’d like to say this is the first time but it’s not. I’ve done this before, although never to this extent. And that’s the part that is really inexcusable. I’ve failed to learn from a lesson I’ve learned before.

 

Winding Down

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The last few weeks have been incredibly intense. My schedule has flipped back and forth from vacation time to programmer’s time to manager’s time [1]. Because we are working on so many things at the same time, I never feel like any one thing gets done.  I really like to complete things and then move on.

The craziness has manifested itself in odd ways. For instance I will sleep from 10:30 to 7:30 but wake up more tired than I went to bed the night before. I get this way sometimes and usually take naps in the afternoon to compensate, but the schedule has been so crazy that there has literally been no down time to do that.

I’ve found that one thing in particular helps: having an hour or two to just sit and read in the evenings. I usually read my RSS feed and the day’s news from other sources. For whatever reason that time helps calm me down and let my brain unwind from the day’s events. Lately, since the resting problems started, I haven’t gotten that either.

Hopefully things are calming down again. I will clear out some of the email this week, have gotten a handle on the Equals communications, and next week have big holes to get back to programming. While the personal stuff is only ramping up (both girls are playing soccer this fall), I will complete a big project this weekend — I’m building a dog kennel — that has been taking up evening time for me.

I woke up this morning feeling better. Hopefully it will last.

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[1] Programmer’s time is scheduled in four hour blocks while manager time is one hour blocks. For more, see Paul Graham’s classic post on the topic.

The Massachusetts Software Tax

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I am lucky enough to work in an industry that, compared to other industries, is lightly regulated. When odd regulations pop up, however, they are glaring. Massachusetts has apparently passed a new tax law for software companies who do any business at all in the Commonwealth. It makes no sense, even after Fast Co Labs tried to explain it:

This added levy is not only cumbersome, it’s super confusing. For example:

  • if you install software (Microsoft Office, Constant Contact, Drupal, etc.), it’s taxable
  • if your client clicks the mouse to install it, it’s not taxable
  • training your client to use this software is not taxable
  • but if you “customize” or configure the software in any way, it’s taxable
  • if you don’t actually make any changes, but just discuss them and plan them, it’s consulting and not taxable
  • if you create graphic design mockups, it’s not taxable
  • but as soon as you implement that design (i.e. program it), it becomes taxable if you’re using “prewritten” software “not developed” by you (such as WordPress)

At least, that’s how we think it works.

Read the entire article. I emailed the article to my accountant, here in Oregon. Sadly he has to be an expert in tax law for all 50 states and maybe overseas, too.

We are starting to see the desire to charge software taxes, first with the Internet sales tax and now with laws like this. Our landscape is only going to get more confusing. And, sadly, we are all going to have to be more active politically to protect our sanity.

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via O’Reilly Radar