"I was so annoyed with the closed nature of the App Store that I stopped developing for the iPhone. The iPad will still have those frustrations, but the large screen opens up a whole new class of applications. It's impossible to resist."

Will there be a Clipstart for iPad? I hope so. This platform will be the future for plenty of customers. Apple lived up to the hype not because of the hardware or distribution or anything entirely revolutionary, but because of the software. Splitviews and popovers. Keynote and Pages. These apps are just as competent as their desktop versions.

Daniel and I talked about the iPad for most of Core Intuition 26.

When I started working on a more advanced search parser, I realized that I was about to write a bunch of code that surely someone had already generalized and shared with the world. Tada! ParseKit by Todd Ditchendorf is that framework.

Clipstart 1.3 now supports these kind of searches:

christmas and (@julian or @kids)

also...

(uploaded=no and flagged=yes) or (date=2010 and @vacation)

I use ParseKit's tokenizer to take these apart and then I translate to SQL myself for SQLite. New in 1.3, Clipstart also allows saving any search as a "smart tag" for quick access. I'm very happy with how well it's working.

Why not use NSPredicate and friends? I wanted more control over the parser, for example for the @kids shorthand for tags. Eventually I'll have a more traditional NSPredicateEditor-like UI for managing searches, but I find that text input is a much quicker way to find things in my video library.

"You don't have to try to please everybody and eventually create an application that is liked by nobody. In fact, since your users are in all likelihood in a situation where they can switch applications easily, and since they probably are not locked in by the need to open a specific file format in its native application, it might be a really bad idea for you to go down the 'simply add up all the requested features' route of application design."

He also links to my Wii Transfer survey, so I thought I'd post a quick follow-up. I eventually did remove a feature, and the survey to customers served as a nice sanity check that the feature wasn't heavily used. The interesting part, to me, is that the feature I removed was the entire 1.0 product for Wii Transfer. Literally everything that 1.0 did is now gone.

It's been two weeks so far without any complaints. I like to think that it removes a distraction from the app — one less place in the app that could lead the customer down the wrong path. And hopefully it'll eliminate a tiny part of my support load, as no one can ask me questions or have problems with that feature again!

On an internal company mailing list I once wrote:

"Products that don't exist yet have a way of attracting new features because everyone sees the potential in something that has no form".

I was talking about resisting the urge for everyone on the team to pile on their favorite features before 1.0, but I think this applies to apps with a minimal design as well. A simple app shows promise. A cluttered app with too much going on looks "done", and sends a message that it is mature and maybe going in a different direction than what the user wants. In that way, the irony is that removing features (the wrong features) may actually make an application more appealing to new users.

I like the content but not the title in John Casasanta's blog post about the so-called death of Mac software. He shares some great stats and lays out the case for why iPhone development is more appealing and successful for him, but that doesn't make the Mac dead. What he really meant and says later is that it's dead to him.

For those of us who love writing Mac software and who don't feel the pull of get-rich-quick blockbuster apps, the Mac is alive and remains just as healthy as it was before the iPhone was announced.

That's not what I want to write about, though. The real question is how do we learn from the App Store and expand the market for Mac software. Compared to the iPhone, the Mac has a fragmented application discovery and an inconsistent purchasing experience.

When Keith Alperin and Rick Fillion talked on the MDN Show about a possible Mac app store, Rick revealed some interesting numbers from Bodega's installed base: 80,000 downloads and 10,000 active users. They're not 1.0, and I don't see anything wrong with these numbers, but it's not big enough yet to make an iPhone-like impact on how we buy Mac software.

What Bodega does have is a technology head start. My products have been listed there since launch, and they have a polished application and feature-rich backend for tracking releases and collecting usage metrics. The key is solving the chicken-and-egg problem of getting the Bodega app in everyone's hands.

There are two approaches: either get people excited about installing Bodega because it's useful for updating existing apps (which it is), or sneak a copy of Bodega on to many more Macs (which is what this post is about). This solution isn't perfect, but short of Apple building a real Mac App Store or a marketing giant like MacHeist getting involved, it's the only idea I can see working.

First, start with PotionStorefront. There are a few of these in-app purchase frameworks out there, but I like the Potion Factory's aesthetic and Potion Store is popular. The web service used to submit orders could be supported by other custom store backends, including Bodega's own purchasing system when they have it.

On top of this in-app purchase foundation, you bundle a subset of the Bodega application discovery UI directly into the framework. Users can download and install demo versions of new apps without leaving the catalog. Think of it as a "lite" version of Bodega, streamlined to fit inside everyone's app. You also include the full Bodega application so that it can be launched and optionally installed in the user's applications folder.

What you've effectively done here is give everyone who buys a third-party app access to a new store where they can discover other apps. It's compelling for developers because the more companies that participate, the wider their reach becomes. And it's great for users because over time it starts to create a consistent user experience, and familiarity reduces the effort in buying Mac software.

Some tricky issues remain, though. You don't want to distract users from buying their first application, or muddle that app's branding, and you want to later encourage users to find or be notified about new applications without it looking like an advertisement. The challenge is in finding a balance that most developers would want to use.

Back to the iPhone's success, from a post by Guy English:

"People, lots and lots of people, people who have no idea what software even is, will download Apps like they're snacking on potatoe chips. What's my proof? Well, two million downloads of an App in a week supports that and I'd argue that a total of three billion Apps downloaded backs up my argument too."

We've never seen anything like it, and I'm really happy for my friends who have had success on the iPhone. Luckily, the iPhone and Mac don't actually compete. The App Store can sell ten thousand times the amount of software as the Mac does and it doesn't change the fact that Mac users need software too. It's our job as developers to continue to provide solutions for users and help those users find us.

I knew I'd regret it this year if I didn't take advantage of the small indie pavilion kiosk. So with frighteningly little planning so far, I've booked the expo, flights, and hotel. I'll be at the show and I'll be demoing the just-released Wii Transfer 2.7 and the unannounced Clipstart 1.3. The rest of the details... not so clear.

But I'm pretty excited about the conference and hope to see many of you there. The expo runs February 11th - 13th, and you can get a free expo pass here.

I'm happy to announce that Riverfold is participating. Since my wife and I already gave to the Red Cross, I decided to donate my sales to Save the Children, an international organization working in Haiti now. It's amazing how many Mac and iPhone developers have come together for Indie Relief, and great that we are able to do something that reaches more charities and has a bigger impact than if we were all just making individual contributions.

So if you've been on the fence about whether you need Wii Transfer or Clipstart, buy a copy today. Thanks!

For this release, I sat down with Wii Transfer and a ripped copy of Star Trek, and I just watched it over and over, experimenting with different Flash Video conversion settings and tweaking networking code. I wasn't going to release this until I could watch a 2-hour movie without any rebuffering. The quality is never going to be as good as a console or set-top box with dedicated video streaming features — this is Flash on the Wii we are talking about — but I'm happy with what I came up with.

Wii Transfer is still only $19, and version 2.7 is a free upgrade for any customer who ever bought the application going back to 1.0 over three years ago. Also an important reminder: all sales go to charity starting tomorrow, January 20th, as part of Indie Relief.

"Here's the guy who's responsible for some of the most breathtaking movies of his generation, and the real surprise is this: almost every year over the last thirty, he worked on one or more exciting projects that were never green lighted and produced. Every year, he spent an enormous amount of time on failed projects."

This is the kind of thing I'll try to remember when I look at the apps I've started but never shipped, even as they sit very close to finished for a year or more. Almost everyone I know who has successful products also has experiments and failed prototypes and unfinished work you've never heard of. That's okay as long as it doesn't stop you from shipping the best and making those real.

I have a lot to announce this week. Posts on a new Wii Transfer, the Indie Relief effort, and Macworld all coming up.

(This also seems like a good time to link to nominee Daniel Jalkut, who got his own version of a community award last month.)

I had a tough time singling out a specific developer among a dozen or more fantastic people, many who I consider my friends. But for me it was an opportunity to reflect on something at C4 that I didn't get a chance to write about earlier, and since he won anyway I'll include the email I sent to Scotty here.

"There are so many worthy candidates for the MDN Community Award — people who are helpful to the Mac developer community by writing books, blogging, and sharing code — but when I heard about this award I thought about leadership. My pick is Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch.

"A leader sets the tone and attitude of the community. For example, at the C4 conference when some attendees used the Twitter backchannel to turn against and openly mock a presenter, Wolf shamed the audience instead of glossing over or ignoring the event. It was a community course-correction and a reminder that Mac OS X developers come from many different backgrounds: old-school classic Mac programmers, NeXT developers, Linux and Windows users, even designers and web application developers.

"The community went through a rough transition point migrating to Mac OS X over 10 years ago, and is in the middle of another transition to embrace everyone excited about the iPhone platform. What I learned from Wolf is that we should never be afraid to welcome 'outsiders' to the community even if they haven't yet caught up on the history and conventions of the platform."

I have nothing but great things to say about everyone listed on the MDN page. Congrats again to Matt, Wolf, Mike, and the rest of the nominees.

I've given away over 1000 licenses for Wii Transfer and Clipstart to Apple employees since I started doing it a few months ago. I didn't expect this number to be so high, but I guess it makes sense. Apple folks are getting a link from their internal site directly to my special registration page, and many of them probably request a serial number just in case they need it later.

The question I have isn't whether it's worth it; it only took a few hours to set up, and even if it just makes a handful of Apple employees happy then that's a success. But I was curious about the greater impact of giving away my software. Is the $0 investment in a pile of other free licenses enough to engage someone to, for example, take the time to set up Clipstart and move a collection of videos into it, let alone recommend it to others? (See also: Worthless apps.)

To find out more, I sent a special newsletter to all the @apple.com addresses in my registration database, asking if they used the software, how they liked it, and whether they'd recommend it to others or not. And I included in the short survey a place for general feedback, and a choice about upcoming features.

Some developers I talked with were concerned about a potential backlash. Although I send a newsletter to my customers once or twice a year, it's debatable whether some of the people I was including had implicitly signed up by purchasing (with a 100% discount!) or whether I had crossed a line. The last thing I want to do is upset any of my customers, and I provide the same level of support to everyone whether they've paid full price, received a free license, or just tried the demo.

In the end I decided it was harmless. The email was short, plain text, and had an obvious one-click unsubscribe link. One of the things I like about using Campaign Monitor is that once someone unsubscribes, any new mailings are automatically scrubbed against the unsubscribers list. Even if I accidentally add the customer again in the future they won't receive an email. So far, 2.2% of recipients have unsubscribed.

As for the survey results, here are a few graphs. Not many people filled out the survey (like unsubscribes, just a couple percent, though they're still trickling in after 2 days), but the other feedback I received in the comments and feature questions was very helpful. 100% of users said they had mentioned the product to someone else.

Would I do this again? No, not such a narrowly-focused newsletter as this. The quick survey served its purpose, but I am always nervous about wearing out my welcome. I plan to add an explicit newsletter opt-in checkbox to my free license page, and I should do a better job of differentiating free licenses and paying customers in the future. I'll send another general newsletter out to all customers (and opt-ins from contests) when I have something major to announce later in the year.