powerOne version 4.0

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When Apple released iOS 7 it became pretty obvious that any “old style” apps were going to look out of place. While I always enjoyed powerOne’s design aesthetic, it was clear that the original style, with dimensional buttons and 3D look-and-feel, was not going to hold up for long. Furthermore, keeping the old aesthetic and supporting iOS 7 at the same time was nearly impossible.

A complete re-design was in order, and that’s exactly what we did.

powerOne is completely refreshed. We removed over 1000 images, completely redesigned the calculators, and improved everything else. Not to mention the wide array of bugs we tracked down and squashed. The update is free to anyone using our apps on iOS 7.

I’m sure a massive change like this is going to be divisive for my customers. Unlike us techno-geeks who like a steady stream of improvement and change, most people want the app to just keep working the way it always did.

Personally I like the new design. I think it is a massive improvement in multiple ways, including the fact that it simplifies the app and gives us tremendous flexibility to do some things we could have never done in the past. I hope our customers will enjoy it as well.

Who Cares That The Calendar Changed?

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While the calendar has added a a year, the headaches and heartaches that ended 2013 continue. The last couple of weeks of the year are always painful for me. We did finish some things up and got ready for a new year, but the lingering issues about money and survival continue. Making matters worse, pretty much everything stops for two to three weeks while the holidays progress. Just like last year, this year I get a couple of weeks to fret about my position while there is little I can do about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the holidays, even though I didn’t truly take much time off. I spent time with my kids, time that has been sorely lacking lately as I’ve been running like a chicken with my head cut off, and spent time cleaning up before the new year. While I worked, I worked more humanly sane hours, not the 14-15 hour days I was putting in before. I literally have a clean slate right now as I shipped powerOne version 4.0 to Apple just after the new year. We are just waiting on approval now. The goal is to find the next contract work to start in February while getting the first beta of Equals out in January.

While I had a little down time I also scheduled some surgery I’ve been avoiding for almost ten years now. Last week I had surgery on my nose, fixing a deviated septum and enlarged turbinates. I haven’t been able to breath through my nose for years. Now at least I have hope. The first 48 hours were pretty miserable but now it feels like a bad cold (with the lethargy to go with it). I hope, in the next few days, I should be back to normal.

I know this is rambling and not exactly the uplifting, beginning-of-the-year, rested-and-ready-to-get-back-to-work post I’m supposed to write. Just because the calendar changed doesn’t mean the fears and pressures did.

My 2014 Mantra: Focus Focus Focus

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Brad Feld wrote a great post on focus:

Early on, especially pre or early revenue, lack of focus is the death of so many companies. Sure, there’s a point where you are still thrashing around looking for “the thing.” You are using all the Lean Startup and Lean Launchpad techniques to find your product-market fit. You are iterating and pivoting. You’ll want to use a freemium model to capture the low-end customer while selling directly to a high-end customer. How’s that – I just used a bunch of buzzwords to help rationalize the “search for focus” – clever, eh?

But at some point you have to focus. What word do you own? Who is your customer? What are you selling them? How are you selling them it? Why are they buying it?

This is the goal for myself in 2014: focus.  The past year has been scattered across multiple projects, learning and indirection regarding Equals. But as I complete 2013, as I complete many projects that won’t go into the New Year, I hope we can focus on building a company again. Yes, we will still do contract work but I hope with the launch of Equals coming up shortly that we will start to shift the balance of powers back to product, focusing on making it the incredible service I know it can be. The direction is clear.

Here’s hoping you find focus in 2014, too. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. I’ll see you next year.

3 Really Good Criteria For Making An App

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Justin Williams lists three really good criteria (from a really good programmer) to make a product:

  1. It’s something I want. (I’m selfish).
  2. Either no one is doing it, or no one has hit a home-run. (I’m ambitious).
  3. It could maybe, possibly theoretically be used by my mom. (I want to be loved).

#1 is a good reason. #2 and 3, as Justin points out, make it profitable (and possibly a business). Justin’s latest app is Photos+. Check it out in the App Store.

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disclosure: I know Justin.

A Massive Undertaking

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I’ve wanted to update powerOne for six months now, ever since the iOS 7 announcement. Actually I wanted to update powerOne long before that. The problem is I couldn’t justify it. The product’s sales have dwindled horribly over the years and even a weeks worth of work was more than a months pay. I didn’t have the money or time to devote to it.

But still… it’s powerOne! It’s the product I’ve labored over for more than a decade, that has been with me through marriage and children, love and loss. Not working on powerOne, letting it languish and die, felt like I was a god handing out cancer to long ago friends.

I’ve been trapped in this hell for months, trapped between I can’t pay the bills with this product and I don’t want it to die. I spent too much time thinking about how to revive it and modernize it. What if powerOne was free with ads? What if we could make it easier to create templates? What if there was only one version? What if we could turn it into a web service? What if… what if… what if.

But the reality is the product was designed for a different software era. It was designed for an era when we called it software and spent $100 for it. It was designed for an era when most software was sold in the US. It was designed for an era when there was two major mobile computing platforms, Palm and Windows Mobile, not one where we think about Android and iOS and Mac and Windows and web (and maybe Windows Phone).

Most of my time has been spent on contract work this past year or so, mostly out of necessity. Got to pay the bills, after all. And any extra time we’ve had Rick and I have worked on Equals, which in my mind is a better powerOne, designed for the modern app era with many of powerOne’s shortcomings in mind.

So here we are, reaching the end of 2013, almost six months after iOS 7 was announced and three months after it launched. powerOne sales continue to languish and I have a gap in my schedule as I await Rick’s work on Equals. Finally, a chance to work on powerOne. We already had the designs. I just had to convince myself not to do a major overhaul. Modernize without disrupting, as much as possible.

And that’s where I have been the past week, trying to modernize powerOne. I thought, given other experiences with iOS 7, that it shouldn’t take more than two or three days of heavy lifting. Ha! Updating the calculators (iPhone and iPad are separate) alone took three days! I worked straight through the weekend and I’m still going as of this writing.

It’s not going to make it in time for Apple’s break (Dec 21-27) but we should be ready soon thereafter. I’m at least excited to see the old girl with a beautiful new facelift and some fine-tuning under the hood. She looks thoroughly modern. And who knows? Maybe that’s all she needs to help pay the bills again.

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