David Barnard, indie developer of fine iOS productivity apps, took an awesome look at Sparrow this week. He was able to closely compare it to his own development of Launch Center Pro. For those unaware, Sparrow was a highly publicized email client for Mac OS and iPhone. Most people loved its design. Late last week it was announced that Sparrow sold to Google, who promptly discontinued development. Lots of people (customers, developers, press, more and more) all chimed in on the good, the bad and the ugly of this.

David’s comments mirror my own productivity app experiences:

Sparrow did everything right. They built an incredible email app with broad appeal and released it into the hottest software market the world has ever seen. And yet it was a financial flop.

Keep in mind that this app, and David’s Launch Center Pro, are some of the most successful apps ever launched in the App Store. They are among the Top 0.1% of all productivity apps ever launched, and David’s response is that Sparrow was a financial flop. Read the post because he goes on to demonstrate exactly why it was a flop.

It is important to note that David’s post is geared toward productivity apps in particular, but here is his spot-on conclusion:

The age of selling software to users at a fixed, one-time price is coming to an end. It’s just not sustainable at the absurdly low prices users have come to expect. Sure, independent developers may scrap it out one app at a time, and some may even do quite well and be the exception to the rule, but I don’t think Sparrow would have sold-out if the team — and their investors — believed they could build a substantially profitable company on their own. The gold rush is well and truly over.

I’m not convinced, though, that there ever really was a gold rush in productivity software. Games [1], yes, but not productivity apps. A few of us have been able to scratch out a lower-than-market-wage living for the past few years but I think those days are coming to an end, too, for 99% of developers.

As I look ahead I am uninterested in one-off revenue applications. Without being paid to do so, I doubt I will ever write one again. [2]

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[1] And even there the games market is abandoning one-time paid apps for recurring revenue models using in app purchase.

[2] To my existing customers who will inevitably ask: yes, we are getting paid to write for Android. It will be a one-off priced product similar to the iOS version.

Last month I was on a panel for Mobile Portland on Mobile Marketing. I haven’t done one of these for a while but had a great time. The video is here (or at Vimeo’s web site). Enjoy!

Mobile Portland June 2012 from Mobile Portland on Vimeo.

Yesterday I had commented that the iPhone wasn’t the first pocket computer but it was the one that figured out the combination of browsing, media and general computing the best. There was this other thing that the iPhone did that others failed to do well before it: multi-touch. MG Seigler linked to this Ted Talk from 2006, one year before the iPhone shipped, of Jeff Han demonstrating multitouch. This came up because Jeff’s company was recently bought my Microsoft.

An amazing demonstration, even six years later it is very cool.

There has been a lot of talk lately about how Apple’s introduction of the iPhone was an amazing change because they treated cell phones for the first time as computers. But this isn’t true. It wasn’t the first time.

When PalmPilot’s shipped, Palm positioned it as a connected organizer. Microsoft released Windows Mobile and positioned it as a computer you would carry around in your pocket. Palm responded by becoming more and more computer-like. For some reason, Palm dropped hand writing recognition for hard keyboards, as did everyone else in the industry.

Apple wasn’t the first by a long shot.

When Apple came along, though, the industry was moving into silo-ed products. My desktop computer accessed the entire web, my cell phone was used for calls and the occasional app, and my iPod was used for entertainment. I, personally, was very frustrated that I had to carry multiple devices around. Sure, there were mp3 players for Treo’s and BlackBerry’s, but the experience was horrible, much like Rio MP3 players before the iPod came along.

Apple had the perfect timing. They combined their amazing infrastructure for entertainment and music playing with the full Internet in your pocket on a stunning device that did just enough to make phone calls. That’s not “bringing the computer” to your pocket. That was an old idea. What it did do is bring the right combination of capabilities on a single device.

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[1] In a twist of fate, I wrote this last week but didn’t post it. Horace Dediu of Asymco basically said the same thing in an interview with John Cox at Network World that I just saw this morning.