Interview with Kenneth Ballenegger on the iPhone SDK
March 13th, 2008 by EDIT-XTREEM
As I am sure many of you know, Apple recently announced the iPhone Software development Kit.
To get a developers perspective on the SDK, I have interviewed Kenneth Ballenegger, the developer of Exces. He runs a personal blog at seoxys.com.
What was your first impression of the iPhone SDK?
This is the coolest thing ever. Apple totally blew me away with that one. I mean, I was totally totally expecting this to be decent at best. But as I followed the keynote, I couldn’t believe it as awesome features kept being announced.
Will the SDK change how you plan your desktop apps?
I’m sure it will affect how I code for the Mac. One thing to consider when creating a Mac application will be whether I can create an iPhone version, or a companion product. Also, the iPhone also has a definite influence on how I think of interface design, even on Mac applications.
What do you think of this $0.99 and $1.99 app concept?
I read an article recently on this (The Beauty Of 99ยข iPhone Apps). The good thing about $.99 apps is the potential for impulse purchases. People will not be afraid to buy an app, because, after all, $.99 is nothing. If the app were priced more expensive, potential customers would have to think about whether they really want to buy the app. With the inability to offer try-before-you-buy, it will be harder to sell a more expensive app. Of course, there are problems with $.99 apps. Firstly, it devalues your product. People will associate your product with the notion of “cheap”. I think the better option would be to price apps between $5 and $10. It is still low enough for impulse buy, but increases profit 5-fold and adds perceived value to the product.
What is your view on the 30% Apple takes per sale, and $100 fee?
In the wake of the announcement, there has been lots of complaining from independent Mac developers about Apple’s 30% profit cut. I think it actually is very decent, and I am totally prepared to pay this. If you do the math, for every $100 I’d make, Apple gets $43 (Apple gets 43% of whatever I get. For every $100 of total sales, Apple gets $30 and me $70. $30 is 43% of $70. Therefore, if I make $100 of sales, Apple gets $43, and the total sales must have been $143). But they take care of all the hosting, Credit Card processing fees, update mechanism, distribution, marketing, and virtually everything other than actually coding the app. Agreed, it is unlikely that it uses Apple’s full 30% to pay for that. They must get a cut from it. But, this does not bother me. What I lose to Apple’s cut, I make up tenfold in extra exposure. My app would be only a few taps away from every one of the 5M iPhones users out there. (Probably around 10M when 2.0 ships). When compared to the rest of the mobile industry, this is actually a really sweet deal.
About the $99 fee, I think it is a good thing. If it was up to me, I would make it even higher, around $500. The advantage of this fee is to let only the serious developers build iPhone applications. We do not want our apps to be drowned in a sea of crappy apps and other junk. The less crappy apps, the more exposure we get. It will also make for a better experience for consumers, who will have a much higher rate of good app to crap app purchase ratio.
Any chance we will see Exces for the iPhone?
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I bought my first iPhone. The main problem is not technical, but more of a design decision. Would Exces be a vault on your iPhone? Or would it be a full app with the ability to open Exces vaults? With the absence of an open file-system on the iPhone, it is really hard to decide how to implement Exces for it. To be honest, I have not decided yet what I will do, and I will keep my options open. However, I am planning on building a new iPhone app that has nothing to do with Exces. But for now, it’s still a big secret!
Thanks Kenneth for the interview. Make sure to check out Exces at excesapp.com, and Kenneth’s blog at seoxys.com.