Lessons for Micro Focus from Indie Mac Development Johnnie Odom School District of Escambia County Enterprise Software Has a Lot of Hidden Costs

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LESSONS FOR MICRO FOCUS FROM INDIE MAC DEVELOPMENT

JOHNNIE ODOM SCHOOL DISTRICT OF ESCAMBIA COUNTY

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE HAS A LOT OF HIDDEN COSTS

Localization

Documentation

Accessibility

Marketing

QA

Support

Security

Legacy

Industrial Certification and Auditing

INDIE SOFTWARE: A WORKING DEFINITION

Small teams

Often one person

Niche markets with loyal customers

Both parts of this important

Emphasis on exploiting the unique culture and personality of a specific platform

While we look at the Mac, do some of these points look familiar?

OUR EXAMPLES

Panic

Fetchsoftworks

The Omni Group

Delicious Monster

Bare Bones Software

We could also discuss Red Sweater Software, Vesper,

Rogue Amoeba, Smile, and Marco Arment

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF EXAMPLES

Longevity and profitability of business

Longevity of codebase

Best in class applications

Quick adoption of new platform functionality without

fundamental rewrites Unafraid to sell or retire applications

Emphasis on design and interface

“Serious” applications

NOVELL’S MAC ATTITUDE

Market is too small for significant focus

Shared Java codebase with Linux clients is a good solution (GW, iPrint,

Zen) Users would want too many features in a v1 client

Platform has no future

User Awareness in application is not a priority

(By implication) Platform-specific features too costly to implement or

not important You can also extend some of these attitudes towards Linux and mobile

WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF THE MACINTOSH?

Unity of Hardware and Software

Driver stability

Ability to move hardware forward (Floppies, GPT)

Expectation / Assumption of Functionality (iSight, Bluetooth, High-Resolution Displays)

Perfectionism

Deciding what “The Right Thing” is and implementing it.

Perfection on core features may mean delays on other features or simplification of entire

feature set. “Design is not how it looks, it is how it works.”

Liberal Arts

Software is for humans to fulfill human goals

Make it easy for the human user, not the machine or the developer.

DEVELOPER APPEAL

User base is willing to pay for high quality software

True on OS X, not iOS

Toolset

“Easy things are easy, hard things are possible”

Developers like being Mac users

FEATURES (SOMEWHAT) UNIQUE TO THE PLATFORM

Lots of hardware

Applescript / OSAScript / Automator

Strong visual interface with animation

File metadata

Application and preference encapsulation

Sandboxing and code-signing

AND NOW, A WALK THROUGH SOME INDIE DEVS

FETCHSOFTWORKS

One major product: Fetch FTP Client

Compare to FileZilla, SCP

Surely such a niche platform only has one good commercial file transfer client

Came out of Dartmouth (Academia)

First release 1989

Remember when universities made software?

Free for educational use

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The Vax Challenge

Who is Fetchsoftworks?

Jim Matthews

PANIC (THE SOFTWARE) PART 1

The Audion Story

So, these guys make toys, right?

Transmit

The other great, commercial Mac file transfer program

Unison

The best NNTP / Usenet client ever made

Recently retired and free

Take a look at the Novell forums

Can you imagine putting that much care in a Usenet client in 2014?

PANIC (THE SOFTWARE) PART 2

Coda

All-In-One Web Development

But not like Dreamweaver

Piecemeal, like web designers actually work

Lots of functionality only in GUI

Bespoke GUI elements

And much, much more

PANIC (THE COMPANY)

Caleb Sasser and Steven Frank

Offices in Portland, Oregon

Profitable, No Debt, Growing

Support via Twitter amongst others

Blog with year-end reports

iOS vs. Mac stats

THE OMNI GROUP (THE COMPANY)

Began as NeXT Consultants, not Mac Developers

Even More Serious Software (with prices to match)

Track suits yes, Fish tank walls no

Consulting to software (sound familiar)

OSX, iPhone, iPad products all separate components of distinct

lines Regular and Pro versions

Mac Development Mailing Lists

THE OMNI GROUP (THE SOFTWARE)

Make some products directly mapping to Microsoft products

Omnigraffle - Visio

OmniPlan - Project

Omniweb (retired) - IE

Omnifocus

Omnioutliner

Presence

DELICIOUS MONSTER

Wil Shipley

Prodigal Son of Omni

Writes in coffee shops

Delicious Library

A Bog-Standard App

With one great feature

“Pimp My Code”

The Delicious Generation

BARE BONES SOFTWARE

BBEdit

Released in 1992 for System 6.

Entire books have been written on it.

Free version is TextWrangler.

Yojimbo

The craziest notes application you will ever use.

SO, WHAT DID WE LEARN IN THE END?

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To show the armadillo what could be done.

It is possible to build serious, beloved Mac

software with small teams and profitability. Any Questions?

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