Fear of Apple
There is an unfortunate climate of fear in the software community today.
As harsh as this article sounds in places, it's a fascinating read. I agree with almost all of it. You can bet that it's causing all sorts of private discussions among developers around the world. I seriously doubt you'll see those discussions happening much in the open though. They'll be confined to Twitter DMs, iMessages and private Slack channels. It's one of those odd instances where if you don't see this article widely distributed, you'll know it hit a bit too close to home.
Google Play Starts Reviewing Apps
“We started reviewing all apps and games before they’re published – it’s rolled out 100%...And developers haven’t noticed the change."
- Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development for Google Play
File this one under "things I never thought I'd see in my lifetime". I don't know how I feel about this yet. The Apple review process is an insane PITA for developers to deal with, so all I can hope is that Google doesn't follow their lead.
[episodes count] == 2
Episode 1 of Topical is out (links: web, Pocket Casts). This brings our total to 2, because hey, we're programmers and that's how we roll.
Our plan is to release a new episode once a week, on Friday. If you're in America that's probably Thursday for you, because you don't live in the future like we do. It's ironic, after explaining in episode 0 about how we weren't just going to be talking about tech that we did, but rest assured the next episode is something else entirely.
Our hope is that we can make a show that doesn't attract partisan support. We want Apple people, Google people...and hey...even People people! Whether we get there or not is anyones guess. In the meantime it's been fun reading the various feedback we've received so far.
We Shipped!
Shipping is hard. So hard that sometimes I like to make joke websites about it. My personal favourite would have to be http://www.hasbjangoreleasedskala.com/, for my friend Marc, who I honestly believe will ship the most amazing design app we've ever seen. Just not today, well let me refresh, yep, not today. A close second was the one I made for my co-founder Philip, when he said he was feeling a bit de-motivated. That's how this site was born. It's half Silicon Valley joke, half long running office gag, but I still go there from time to time to have a laugh.
But today, today we actually shipped a real thing. Pocket Casts 5.0 for Android. An amazing effort spanning many months of development, with some truly awesome design and features. If you want to read more, you could do worse than start here: http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2015/03/05/its-finally-here/.
Apply Weekly
Some of my friends have odd names, but none so odd as Daniel 'Jelly' Farrelly. I mean 'Daniel'...seriously!
If you're into odd names, and you're into podcasts, Jelly and I just happened to have started one. Just for you. Well not really for you, but feel free to pretend it is.
Chances are if you made it to this 3rd paragraph, you might actually like it, so check it out!