Issue 480

30^th October 2020

Written by Dave Verwer

Comment

Pricing is a vast, complex topic, and it’s hard to talk about in generic terms – it’s far too dependent on the product being priced.

Business models are easier to talk about, proven by the multitude of posts every year about paid-up-front vs in-app purchases vs subscription. Upgrade pricing, feature unlocks, I’m sure you’ve read plenty of them.

I really enjoyed Jacob Eiting’s post the 85%/15% subscriptions revenue split this week. The reduction in Apple’s cut for subscribers that stay subscribed for more than a year is sometimes cited as a benefit over other business models, but how much difference does it actually make? It’s hard to say for sure unless you can see aggregated data coming in from a huge range of subscription-based apps – which is where this post comes in useful! You should read the whole post, but the tl;dr is that unless you have incredibly low churn rates, the reduction in cut probably isn’t affecting your bottom line much.

I’ve often said that I feel that it’s far more beneficial to concentrate on growing your business rather than worrying too much about Apple’s cut, and I think this article reinforces that point of view. Just as there’s no “best” price for an app, there is no “best” business model. Don’t be tempted to think subscriptions are the best way because Apple’s cut reduces, or because it’s what everyone else is doing. Not every app is well suited to a subscription business model.

It’ll seem obvious if I say that the best price for your app is different from the best price for other apps. That’s obvious! I’d suggest thinking about business models in the same way. Base your choice on how you think your app will be most successful, not what’s fashionable or the possibility of a potential reduction in Apple’s cut. Getting both price and business model right will make a much bigger difference than any percentage cut in the long term.

For full disclosure, RevenueCat (which Jacob is the CEO of, and who’s data this blog post is based off) has previously been a sponsor of iOS Dev Weekly. However, I wrote about this post purely because I found it interesting. They did not send me a link to the post, I read it via their RSS feed.

Dave Verwer

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News

After saying all of that in today’s comment, if you did choose subscriptions as your best business model, you’ll be interested in this news! 💵

Tools

Xcode 12 brought with it the ability for Playgrounds to import Swift Packages, but the process of getting a playground imported are not as trivial as they should be. I’ve linked to Arena before but this week saw Sven A. Schmidt release 1.0, with full support for Xcode 12. 🎉

It’s not quite as simple as clicking a button yet, but it’s certainly moving in that direction! Listen to the story at 2m58s in this podcast for the story behind the emphasised text!

Code

Creating adaptive UI with UIKit always felt harder than it should be, especially if you came from a web development background. Luckily, the situation is much improved with Swift. I really enjoyed Federico Zanetello’s post on the subject, full of real-world, practical examples.

Using Codable to parse well-formed, predictable, error-free JSON is an easy decision to make. But what when things are a bit more … real-world? 😬 Andy Ibanez gives us the low down.

For years, DI with UIKit, especially if you used storyboards was tricky. That improved last year, but how are things with SwiftUI? Gio Lodi gives us a breakdown of a couple of ways to approach it.

macOS Development

macOS development has never been easier with the arrival of Catalyst and SwiftUI. So Pádraig Ó Cinnéide thought it might be the perfect time to launch an … AppKit blog. 😍 I couldn’t be happier though, because as you might expect, it’s great. You should immediately go and read this first post on view controllers.

Business and Marketing

Should you build the Minimum Viable Product or the Maximum Viable Product? I loved Brian Donohue’s take on this, especially this line:

Whenever I’ve seen teams build bad products, it’s because they built fast and slow at the wrong times.

Just like with pricing and business models, it’s a fine balance.

Videos

Would you like to watch a few short videos on Swift? Vincent Pradeilles has a new YouTube channel where he spends just a couple of minutes on a topic. Put the kettle on, and you’ll have watched one before it boils. 🍵

Jobs

Senior iOS Developer @ Atomic Robot – Atomic Robot works with some of the most exciting companies and brands to help them bring their innovative projects to life! We have a highly collaborative team that is focused on high quality engineering and continuous learning – Remote, or Cincinnati OH

Software Engineer, iOS @ Lyft – Lyft is looking for iOS developers who want to own large projects and have a monumental technical impact in a 100% Swift codebase. Come join the ride and help us fulfill our mission of creating the real-time transportation network of the future! – San Francisco CA

iOS Engineer @ Karbon – Join our dedicated, all-remote agency and help us build amazing iOS apps for amazing clients. We’ve spent the past 10 years helping companies ship apps to millions of users—join us as we focus on the next 10 years. – Remote, or Portland OR

And finally...

Cthulhu Enforced Tracking is going to be the next big thing, trust me. 💵