My Mac App Store Plans
The recently unveiled Mac App Store is, unfortunately, an affront to Mac developers. Importing the iOS’ closed model and applying it to the Mac, the new store carries with it all of the major disadvantages of its smartphone equivalent. I can’t stand the thought of losing thirty percent of my revenue, in return for which I get harsh restrictions on what I may do, week-long approval queues (even for critical updates,) a public expecting a ridiculously low price, months of revenue held off by Apple, and the risk of being cut out from said revenue at any time.
I’m not even going to get into how I will lose control over my own customers because Apple won’t let me send them promotional emails or sign up for an account. It won’t let me give away my software either, or have flexible pricing structure, educational discounts, volume discounts, promotions or giveaways.
Most excruciatingly, though, the App Store itself rocks. It’s beautifully designed and as a user, it is pure joy to use. Unfortunately, I am not willing to sign my soul to the devil to be a part of it. I was willing to deal with the limitations on the iOS platform, because it was presented as a new option, an is still somewhat reasonable on a smartphone. However, on the Mac, where we’ve been restriction-free for decades, this is most unwelcome. So here are my plans regarding the App Store:
My apps will always be available from my own store. This will function the same way it always has: Sparkle updates and email-based licenses and trial versions.
My apps will also be available on the Mac App Store (provided they get approved), crippled however Apple may wish. They will have a 30% price premium over the standard price, to make up for Apple’s cut. I will make sure that the standalone version is never inferior to the App Store version and I will advertise the cheaper, standalone version heavily.
The first solar eclipse of 2011—The Big Picture
How do you want to change the world?
This essay is part two of my application to the Thiel Fellowship. It’s rare for an application essay to spark genuine reflection, but I think this helped me formulate and articulate what my beliefs and ambitions are.
Problem-solving ability is the key to making the world a better place. People need to be presented with more—and better—solutions to the challenges they encounter in daily life. Technology needs to be made easy to use and understand, and must help make people’s lives better without involving a compromise. I intend to make the world a better place by creating software that is well designed and that will have a positive effect on as many people as possible.
British philosopher and ethical theorist John Stuart Mill presented us with an interesting theory in the form of his Greatest Happiness Principle. The Principle is a doctrine by which to judge the ethicality of actions, and it states that the ethical course of action is that which will generate the most happiness for the greatest amount of people. I find that it is relevant when applied to the field of software. In that context, it states that what one should strive for is to build something which will generate great happiness for a great many people. Happiness is a loose term, in that it could refer to a game which will keep users happily entertained while waiting in line at the bank, or it could be an app or a service that can save lives, generating happiness on a much more profound level. The form does not matter, only that it has a net positive gain.
Some examples come to mind. A product that I use and respect a great deal is Mint.com. Its founders saw a deficiency in the way people dealt with their financial lives (mostly ignoring it because of extreme complexity,) and decided to harness the power of technology to come up with a radical new solution. Mint has been of tremendous help to me personally, and to millions of others. Another product I look up to is Tumblr. Taking a simple idea that already existed, Tumblr re-imagined what blogging could be, and presented their carefully redesigned solution to the world. Even though it does nothing to solve a fundamental life problem, it generates happiness and thus is a success in my books. Lastly, Instapaper is a highly underrated product from Tumblr’s ex-Lead Developer, Marco Arment. It was a side-product that Arment built to scratch his own itch, and that after polishing, he released for the public to enjoy. It has deservingly been enjoying growing success, and is a product that I use daily.
My software projects have kept this in mind. My first foray into the world of development, Exces, was an app that sought to make encryption easy to use and understand for anybody. Geared towards the novice user, the application simplified and abstracted the complexities of secure encryption by using a metaphor that people are already familiar with: bank vaults. My next big project, iLaugh, was a lighthearted iPhone app which entertained users with jokes and funnies, while being a joy to use and keeping users engaged through carefully considered design decisions. My next big project is a cloud-based notes-to-self app which lets people quickly jot down thoughts from anywhere, and deal with them later.
The feedback I have received from users show that I am already succeeding at making people’s lives slightly better. There is no better feeling than receiving an email from a happy user thanking me for my work. Though this is nowhere near the scale I envision eventually affecting people’s lives at, I see this as a step in the right direction. I moved from Switzerland to San Francisco in order surround myself with people who will make me better able to achieve that goal. I believe in taking every opportunity I get to learn something new and enrich my knowledge and world view. Because of this, I have gained various interest and hobbies, from graphic design, to languages, to software and business.
What I hope to gain from the fellowship is a network of people who share my way of thinking, and who will be able to mentor me and eventually make me better able to change the world. I’m looking for a way to kickstart my journey in the world of the startup.
Tell us one thing about the world that you strongly believe is true, but that most people think is not true.
This essay was written for my application to the Thiel Fellowship. It’s rare for an application essay to spark genuine reflection, but I think this helped me formulate and articulate what my beliefs and ambitions are.
I believe that with enough willpower and effort, anybody can change the world for the better.
While this statement may sound naive and cliché—it rings fundamentally true to me. It is the basis upon which the American Dream is built, and which has driven the United States through the past century. Unfortunately, the dream has been bastardized to the point that it is now more evocative of a fantasy than a dream.
The american political landscape—in its constant bickering and back-and-forth—tries to capture the public’s goodwill by using and glamorizing ideas that appeal to their humanity. Things like religion, freedom, and the American Dream are prime topics to drive agreement and enthusiasm. This, unfortunately, has made the few who diverge from the status quo, and who think for themselves, wary of beliefs like that.
Fundamentally, though, there is some truth to the idea that the world is a place where anybody has an opportunity to make a difference. It is not an easy thing to go against to the common wisdom, to persevere when everybody thinks you are crazy. It takes courage, self-confidence and determination. But time and time again, we have seen people do it and achieve inconceivable results—from Ghandi and Thomas Edison, to modern luminaries like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
Achievements do not necessarily have to be of that magnitude either. Some of the people I respect most are neither famous nor widely known. But they are people who take their craft to heart and are determined to make a difference however they can. They strive to be the best at what they do, and in so doing make a positive difference in the world. A small difference, sure, but if the majority of people thought and acted that way, it would go a long way towards alleviating the world’s problems and making it a more pleasant place to live in.
One of the qualities I respect most in people is their ability and willingness to think for themselves, and take action to back up their ideals. Think there’s a problem with an aspect of your life? Quit bitching and do something about it! (Within reason, of course.) Creativity and entrepreneurship are the basis for innovation, but they are fragile things. In today’s remix culture, it is far too easy to spend hours watching videos on YouTube, or shows on TV, or doing entertaining yet inconsequential things instead of actually creating something.
Ambition is another important factor in making a difference. When you hear Musk or Jobs talk, they will tell you about having an insane utopian vision for the world. Jobs sees a world of interconnected and designed technology, that just works and is accessible for all to use and enjoy. Musk sees a world where every car is electric, where our energy is clean and solar, and where we have expanded into space. They see their current achievements as the first step towards their lofty goals. They probably won’t achieve those goals in their lifetimes. But, in trying to get there, they have already changed the world in a major way. If you set your goal far enough, even if you only get ten percent of the way there, you’ve already accomplished something amazing.
These are all principles that I take to heart and try to apply to my life. My skills lie in software and design, and thus when I encounter a challenge in my life I try to design a better solution through software. If it is a challenge that other people may also encounter, I will polish my solution and turn it into an actual product. If, as a result, I have made a million people or just one person’s life more pleasant—I will have made a positive difference in the world. Originally from Switzerland, I moved to San Francisco by myself in order to be closer to a community of people who strive for the same thing I do. People who can enrich my knowledge and view of the world and will ultimately enable me to make an even bigger difference in the world.
One project that caught my attention this summer is Diaspora. While TechCrunch and everybody on the internet were busy complaining about their disagreement with Facebook’s privacy policy change, a group of students from NYU decided to actually do something about it. I was compelled to donate to the project, because even if the project goes nowhere, their willingness to act is something to be encouraged. My belief is that with enough willpower and effort, I will be able to make a notable difference in the world. And my hope is that many other people will too.
Beer Wars — Alex Varanese for Playboy’s January 2011 issue.
The more I think about it, the more I am opposed to the way in which Wikileaks and Julian Assange operate. While investigative journalism and the questioning of government are vital to a free society, I find myself increasingly convinced that Wikileaks does not constitute investigative journalism, but rather a random and harmful dump of classified information for the sake of making a political statement.
There are valid reasons for secrets and “white lies.” Without them, civilization would collapse and social interaction would become pointless. In a well-reasoned and quite convincing article, Jaron Lanier writes:
What if we come to be able to read each other’s thoughts? Then there would be no thoughts. Your head has to be different from mine if you are to be a person with something to say to me. You need an interior space that is different from mine in order to have a different, exotic model of the world, so that our two models can meet, and have a conversation.
[…]
Asking whether secrets in the abstract are good or bad is ridiculous. A huge flow of data that one doesn’t know how to interpret in context is either useless or worse than useless, if you let it impress you too much. A contextualized flow of data that answers a question you know how to ask can be invaluable.
On the argument for Wikileaks as investigative journalism:
If we want to understand all the sides of an argument, we have to do more than copy files. It’s not as though we are supporting reporters out there on the ground to do independent investigative journalism. Random leaking is no substitute for focused digging. The “everything must be free and open” ideal has nearly bankrupted the overseas news bureaus.
I don’t mean to make this a pro-government rant. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s plenty of things that are wrong with the US government and political landscape as it is. I just think Wikileaks’ approach to the problem is neither helpful nor ethical.
Really neat packaging design from student Mika Kañive. If I had one reproach, I would suggest removing the ampersand from the logo and calling the product frts|ygrt.
A short list of currently ultra-popular songs vs. the originals they’re stealing an integral part of the song from.
- Eminem—No Love
— Haddaway—What Is Love
- Jason Derulo—Whatcha Say
— Imogen Heap—Hide and Seek
- Kanye West—Stronger
— Daft Punk—Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
- Pitbull—Hotel Room Service
— Nightcrawlers—Push The Feeling On
- Pitbull—Krazy
— Federico Franchi—Cream
- Far East Movement—Like a G6
— DEV—Booty Bounce
- Black Eyed Peas—The Time (Dirty Bit)
— Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes—(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life
Some spreads from my Graphic Design Tools project. We made a small-format magazine on a subculture of our choosing. My topic was Gyaru girls.
Download the a pdf of the whole magazine here!
Second assignment for Graphic Design 1 class. The brief was to make an agitprop poster, and I chose to promote Prop 19 (marijuana legalization) from an angle that would appeal to voters who dislike marijuana. I want to show the social and economical benefits of Prop 19, because I am personally not inclined to promote drug use.
