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

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?