"The new CECH-3000 series PS3 requires HDMI only for BD movie output in HD, in compliance with AACS standards," Sony told Ars Technica. "PS3 continues to support component output for HD gaming and streaming content." The restriction is just on high-definition video from Blu-Ray discs.
...
The strange part, then, is that the PS3 ever supported HD Blu-ray playback through component. Digital Foundry speculates that the rule didn't kick in officially until the AACS Final Adopter Agreement in December 2010, and thus only affects PS3s produced after then. That would mean that Sony (and pretty much every other electronics company) skirted its own rule for as long as possible. [emph mine]

Labels: blu-ray, DRM, Other Stuff, PS3

I've done these enough now that I'd would've thought I'd have accidentally memorized it already, but thanks to the ease with which you can learn the exact syntax of any concept stuck if your head with a half-second of googling, I hadn't yet.

Anyhow, SQL Server object checks are pretty easy. All you need to know is...

IF OBJECT_ID('name') IS NOT NULL

Now you can leave out the object type and use the above for anything in your db:

IF OBJECT_ID('myFreakinView') IS NOT NULL
    DROP VIEW myFreakinView;
GO

Or you can use object types to ensure you're really getting the object type that you're checking for, in this case, a view:

IF OBJECT_ID('myFreakinView', 'V') IS NOT NULL
    DROP VIEW myFreakinView;
GO

Seems I've listed these before...

SQ = Service queue
TA = Assembly (CLR) DML trigger
TF = SQL table-valued-function
TR = SQL DML trigger
TT = Table type
U = Table (user-defined)
UQ = UNIQUE constraint
V = View
X = Extended stored procedure

In other news, my Y700 is supposed to show up today. Ordered yesterday, free shipping option, on the truck this morning. Not too shabby. Guess that's what ordering the preconfigured loadout does for you. Of course I don't think I'll be home when it arrives. ARGH. Oh well.

Labels: noteToSelf, SQL Server

I think I have a winner for the April 2016 MyFreakinName Programmer Laptop. I was looking for something that was relatively small -- the 14" class, so to speak -- and that had a reasonably powerful processor, as you may have guessed from my Programmer Laptop Shootout: Processors post.

Also keep in mind that I've never spent a "lot"^ on a laptop. My ThinkPad T430 was about $1000-$1100, and I purchased it because it was sooooo much less expensive than a MacBook with similar specs. For the last three years, that's been a great choice.

Which is just to set up the decision criteria...

• Emphasis on maximizing a quad-core, fast processor.
• Ability to upgrade to more than 8 gigs of RAM.
• 1920x1080 or greater resolution
• Reasonably inexpensive -- all equal, cheaper > featureful

I'm afraid my desktop's i7-4790K (11206/2529) has made me greedy. Wow, it's fast.

Top Candidates

Old laptop (T430) CpuBenchmark: 3998 multi, 1626 single

1. Lenovo ThinkPad T460p: $1100 as spec'd (includes 3rd party RAM)
   • CpuBenchmark: 6443 multi, 1932* single
   • A 14" ThinkPad modified to hold a quad-core processor
2. MacBook Pro 13" $1100
   • CpuBenchmark: 4375 multi, 1716 single
   • Either a current gen at $1100 refurb, or
   • ... wait for new one in a month or two
   • But $1100 is only 8 gigs RAM; $1269 (!!) for 16.
   • Dual core only.
3. Alienware 15 R2 $1200
   • CpuBenchmark: 5734 multi, 1643 single
   • This category really means "any gaming laptop"
   • Eyed the Razer Stealth & Asus & MSI options

The ThinkPad was my first choice for a long time (see below for when that changed). The MacBook Pro was too expensive and didn't have two of my criteria -- more than 8 gigs of RAM & a quad-core processor. You could fix the first, but then you're at $1270+. The Alienware was simply too expensive. The Razer Stealth was affordable ($1k), but had the same issues as the MacBook Pro: anemic processor and soldered RAM. Other manufacturers generally had their most attractive hardware in a 15 or 17" case. 15" would be okay, but then you're paying at least $100 over the ThinkPad and losing the thumbprint sensor and TrackPoint. I'd rather save the money and keep the ThinkPad keyboard.

The Asus ROG GL552 (review here) is pretty tempting at about the same price. For $1000, it has USB-C, an i7 6700HQ, 16 gigs of RAM, GeForce GTX 960M, and even a num pad, maintenance hatch, & an optical drive. Reviews on Newegg aren't great, however. Doesn't seem to have the best build quality, but great specs for the price.

So I'm back to the ThinkPad. Yet the ThinkPad is hampered a little in that, first, the i7 model still isn't for sale in the US and threatens to be several hundred bucks more expensive if you convert the Australian version's processor markup to $US. Second, the T460p throttles its processor's power from 45W to 35W to, as far as most reviewers and forum posters can figure, help with cooling. NotebookCheck claims that doesn't affect performance, but I don't see how it couldn't at times. Otherwise, the processor would be 35W.

The bottom line is that the quad-core Skylake doesn't really like being pushed into a T460 chassis.

It's also disappointing overall how little single thread performance seems to have increased since 2013. These are less than 10% gains in the CPU benchmark I'm tracking. Can that be accurate? Seems insane. If I wasn't getting a better screen too, I'd consider not upgrading.

If money wasn't an object, I think a 15" MacBook Pro wins easily. Runs OS X and Windows, and has great processor options. The build quality is excellent, including the trackpad and keyboard, and I bet it gets a USB-C port in the next revision. I just can't justify $2000 on a laptop, I don't think. If it was going to last me six years, maybe, but that's a lot of coin. Still, I think it's the smart choice, even moreso after they're refreshed in a month or two, for, let's say, a company looking to treat their developers The Right Way.

Enter the Darkhorse: $700 IdeaPad Y700-14ISK

But then, clicking around the Lenovo site and NotebookCheck.net, I bumped into Lenovo's 14" "gaming" laptop, the IdeaPad Y700. Great processor, the same that's in the second tier, $1250 Alienware 15 R2, and it only runs $700.

I read through a few reviews of the Y700, but it was hard to find many for the 14" version. The most informative I could find was this one from laptopmag.com. There's also a pretty reasonable YouTube review here:

Best quote? "For fake carbon fiber, I think they did a good job."

There does appear to be a consensus on the laptop's cons.

• The Radeon R9 M375 GPU is underpowered for contemporary games
• The laptop is purposefully showy (fake vents, red accents, etc)
• The keyboard is okay, but a little flimsy and not snappy
• The trackpad stinks and it's difficult to make the hard clicks work
• Only one video-out option, a single HDMI port
• Smallish, unremovable battery, maybe 3 hours time.

Yet it has...

• An i7-6700HQ
  • CpuBenchmark: 8030 multi, 1791 single
• User upgradeable RAM and drives
  • Includes an m.2 slot for dual drives
  • +16 gigs from Crucial is $65
  • Max 32 gigs. Sorry, MacBook Pro.
• A 1920x1080 screen
• Even comes with eight gigs of RAM instead of the usual entry-level 4

Again, that processor is the same as the $1250 tier of the Alienware 15 R2!

Seems like a pretty good fit. I don't care about the graphics card; this is for work, and there even the M375 is much more than enough. Replace the hard drive and/or add an m.2 SSD, and you're off and running for around $800.

The low battery life worries me a little, I'm worried build quality will be significantly under the ThinkPad, I wish it had an option for a better screen (the ThinkPad I spec'd includes $70 to step up to 2560x1440 /swoon), I'm going to need to find my USB-to-HDMI adapter for another screen, and, even though I'm usually pretty comfortable with unconventional looks, I don't know that I'd bring it to an interview. Might keep the T430 around just for that... ;^)

Also wondering how bad the keyboard will be, as that's been one of the best parts of the ThinkPad. I actually got the ThinkPad USB keyboard in preparation for getting a MacBook so I could still have the TrackPoint handy, at least in the office. I wonder if the ThinkPad USB keyboard will fit over the Y700 keyboard with a right-angle micro type b cord, or if I'll end up trying the Bluetooth keyboard. This guy might be crazy, but I'm not convinced he's not crazy like a fox.

A final con: No Windows 10 Pro option. Right now, that'd run $140-$200 to "correct". Not cool. The only thing I really need pro for is Hyper-V, however, and I'm doing a lot less of that recently.

You know, I'm having my usual immediate buyer's remorse wondering if I shouldn't've shelled out another $200 for the USB-C on the Asus GL552, but I think I'm going to appreciate the Y700-14's portability. I mean, that's what you're really buying a laptop for anyhow, right?

Anyhow, that's too cheap to pass up. I'm biting. Far and away the cheapest phat Skylake quad-core I can find in a portable laptop. Man, I hope that keyboard doesn't bite me back.

^ A "lot" of money for a laptop is pretty subjective. I bagged a Lenovo IdeaPad Y100 (?) for $150 a few weeks back, and though it doesn't have enough hard drive space for Visual Studio and the Win10 SDK, it's plenty to do web programming or console/Powershell work. You could actually make a living with it, and I keep it in the car for "emergencies" when I'm caught laptopless. But $1200 seems to be my comfortable max for a "personal" business laptop.

* Again, as I said on my "Processor Shootout", that single-thread score for the i5-6440HQ doesn't jibe with expectations or its scores at Geekbench. I think it's wrong and/or not based on enough samples.

Labels: alienware, hardware, indie, lenovo, macbook, razer, thinkpad

A few quick additions to yesterday's Thoughts on Dependency Injection...

• An article about the "death of repositories" by the Hibernating Rhinos founder.
• A longish post on managing DbContext with DI.
• A call to educate, not protect, developers.

From the second:

This EF behaviour can result in subtle bugs as it is possible to be in a situation where queries may unexpectedly return stale or incorrect data. This wouldn't be possible with NHibernate's default behaviour. On the other side, it dramatically simplifies the issue of database transaction lifetime management.

That would have been good to know a few months ago. ;^)

That post's real take-home is this, however:

While it can be fine to re-use a DbContext across multiple business transactions, its lifetime should still be kept short.
...
Re-using the same DbContext instance for more than one business transaction can also lead to disastrous bugs where a service method accidently commits the changes from a previously failed business transaction.

I believe it also rightly argues against overusing lazy-loading. I tend to invoke queries fairly quickly, often forcing EF queries to call the database, with a ToList() call. As anyone who has read this blog for long would know, I'm painfully aware of pulling too much, and I don't put database logic in the business layer as a rule -- use the database engine; that's what it's there to do. Doing complicated logic in your "business" layer outside of your rdbms is kind of like writing your own JIT compiler for string manipulation in C. Insane. Use your tools; that's why you license them.

Know that an overuse of lazy-loading can get you into insanely inefficient queries. That is, just because you're "lazy loading" doesn't mean that you're using your rbdms correctly. You should have what amounts to a query builder inside of your business logic. Understand your use cases, write a view or sproc, and let your rdbms optimize. Don't get lazy with the justification that you're going to lazy load and that it's the same as writing SQL [in that it's work pushed to the dbms]. It's not the same.

Also keep in mind that Dependency Injection isn't nearly as fancy as it sounds. I think DI is usually couched in a very specific context that also involves an injection system, making the actual injection a somewhat obfuscated process, as I complained earlier. Getting familiar with all of that system's dependencies can be overwhelming at first glance, but, trust me, the concept itself is simple.

AndN .et MVC already has DI installed! Though I can never approve of sleeveless shirts for men in tutorial videos, this one is otherwise quite useful showing how quickly and easily DI can be in a .Net MVC project.

And even then, keep in mind how simple Inversion of Control really is. You probably do it a lot already to keep your code defensive and maintainable. You don't want your objects to depend on anything extraneous, so you'll often find yourself sending along something major to help your business objects get their work done. For instance, when you send along event handlers to widgets, that's a sort of IoC already! Told you you were familiar with it.

Labels: coding, DI, ef, style

Edit (27 Apr 16): I should've probably led by saying that I am a big fan of Inversion of Control. That also means I'm a decent fan of DI. But I'm also a fan of not over-engineering, and somehow the "culture" around DI is one where over-engineering seems to be fairly commonplace (see the Joel on Software post I talk about, below -- he's not talking about DI specifically, but I think you can inject it (hahahahaha) into his generic critique in this case).

I love separation of concerns. What I don't love is hipster programming. If you're never going to reuse something, and it's significant to insane work to abstract it, don't. If abstraction was a bit more, knock yourself out, but, for instance, QueryOver in NHibernate when you're so deeply invested in SQL Server there's no great business case to leave, stop it. If your devs know SQL, stop it already.

A better solution to a potential change in stack is to become familiar with microservices, and use them appropriately. The only place I can think of where this sort of gross abstraction might make some sense is when your stack is just getting off of the ground. But then it's no big deal to rip it all up if your old, crufty C# guy leaves and is replaced by Node Grrrl.

Was doing some quick reading before talking about Dependency Injection tomorrow, and ran into a link from an SO question to a Joel on Software post I don't think I've run across before, Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You:

These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts. It's very hard to get them to write code or design programs, because they won't stop thinking about Architecture. They're astronauts because they are above the oxygen level, I don't know how they're breathing. They tend to work for really big companies that can afford to have lots of unproductive people with really advanced degrees that don't contribute to the bottom line.

A recent example illustrates this. Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away.

All they'll talk about is peer-to-peer this, that, and the other thing. Suddenly you have peer-to-peer conferences, peer-to-peer venture capital funds, and even peer-to-peer backlash with the imbecile business journalists dripping with glee as they copy each other's stories: "Peer To Peer: Dead!"

The Architecture Astronauts will say things like: "Can you imagine a program like Napster where you can download anything, not just songs?" Then they'll build applications like Groove that they think are more general than Napster, but which seem to have neglected that wee little feature that lets you type the name of a song and then listen to it -- the feature we wanted in the first place. Talk about missing the point. If Napster wasn't peer-to-peer but it did let you type the name of a song and then listen to it, it would have been just as popular. [emphasis mine, as usual -mfn]

Man, that's good.

Honestly, Wikipedia currently does an excellent job explaining the pros and cons of Dependency Injection. Here are a few from each...

[Some] Advantages [taken from Wikipedia's entry on DI]

• Dependency injection allows a client to remove all knowledge of a concrete implementation that it needs to use. This helps isolate the client from the impact of design changes and defects. It promotes reusability, testability and maintainability.[20]
• Dependency injection allows concurrent or independent development. Two developers can independently develop classes that use each other, while only needing to know the interface the classes will communicate through. Plugins are often developed by third party shops that never even talk to the developers who created the product that uses the plugins. [that's give or take what the last point said -mfn]
• Dependency Injection decreases coupling between a class and its dependency.[21][22]

[Some] Disadvantages [taken from Wikipedia's entry on DI]

• Dependency injection creates clients that demand configuration details be supplied by construction code. This can be onerous when obvious defaults are available.
• Dependency injection can make code difficult to trace (read) because it separates behavior from construction. This means developers must refer to more files to follow how a system performs.
• Dependency injection typically requires more upfront development effort since one can not summon into being something right when and where it is needed but must ask that it be injected and then ensure that it has been injected.
• Dependency injection can cause an explosion of types, especially in languages that have explicit interface types, like Java and C# [23]
• Dependency injection forces complexity to move out of classes and into the linkages between classes which might not always be desirable or easily managed.[24]
• Ironically, dependency injection can encourage dependence on a dependency injection framework.[24][25][26]

Okay, I admit it. I kept all of the disadvantages up there.

I have worked with a system that overused DI before, and we had it so far upstream of our entities and controllers that you could work for months without ever coming into contact with the construction of a repository. That's not necessarily good. The "explosion of types" was definitely a problem, which means that over-abstraction was as well. "DI! DI! We can run the whole world with DI! DI venture capital funds!" /sigh

I like interfaces. And my C# rdbms finally talked its way to using DI. I'm (slowly; I haven't had much time to work with it right now, as I don't have a product for which it's an absolute requirement) factoring it into a portable library, and that means I have to inject a class in that writes to files. Not a big deal, and certainly The Right Way to do it.

What I dislike is when the DI is so abstracted that you're essentially cargo culting your way through repo instantiation, where you can create a repo from scratch and the inheritance hides that some base class is doing all the DI for you. That is, it's way too easy to end up in that last "con" from above: "Ironically, dependency injection can encourage dependence on a dependency injection framework."

Wikipedia has an interesting link to some Uncle Bob Consulting jive. I haven't closely read it all, but some of this rings true on first skim...

But Uncle Bob, you’ve violated DIP by creating concrete instances!
...
I don’t want a bunch of secret modules with bind calls scattered all around my code. I don’t want to have to hunt for the particular bind call for the Zapple interface when I’m looking at some module. I want to know where all the instances are created.

But Uncle Bob, You’d know where they are because this is a Guice application.

I don’t want to write a Guice application. Guice is a framework, and I don’t want framework code smeared all through my application. I want to keep frameworks nicely decoupled and at arms-length from the main body of my code. I don’t want to have @Inject attributes everywhere and bind calls hidden under rocks.
...
But Uncle Bob, That means I have to use new or factories, or pass globals around.

You think the injector is not a global? You think BillingService.class is not a global? There will always be globals to deal with. You can’t write systems without them. You just need to manage them nicely.
...
I like this because now all the Guice is in one well understood place. I don’t have Guice all over my application. Rather, I’ve got factories that contain the Guice. Guicey factories that keep the Guice from being smeared all through my application. What’s more, if I wanted to replace Guice with some other DI framework, I know exactly what classes would need to change, and how to change them. So I’ve kept Guice uncoupled from my application.
...
But Uncle Bob, don’t you think Dependency Injection is a good thing?

Of course I do. Dependency Injection is just a special case of Dependency Inversion. I think Dependency Inversion is so important that I want to invert the dependencies on Guice! I don’t want lots of concrete Guice dependencies scattered through my code. [emph mine again -mfn]

That sounds about right, though it also seems to create a situation where you've got at least one of the "secret module" situations he was trying to avoid.

The takehome message when considering Dependency Injection? Never outsmart yourself. Or, as Zakas put it a while back, "don't be too clever".

Labels: coding, DI, style

AppleInsider has a post on Apple & recruiting, and it doesn't sound good for tech workers.

In the past, Apple has relied in part on recruiters to bring in the best and brightest Silicon Valley talent, but that might soon change, according to a report from VentureBeat. Citing an unnamed source, the publication said Apple's "recruiting engine" has slowed down drastically over the past few weeks.

If this was good news, it wouldn't get leaked the day of the earnings report. This means Apple isn't "surge" hiring. That'd mean Apple growth is likely a long-term bad bet. That means my stock is going to take another hit. It's already started.

Argh. I've lost thousands in the last year or so. Why I didn't sell at $120 when I was thinking about it, I don't know. I mean, long term, I guess I'd still pitch in with Apple, which is why I talked myself into leaving my money were it is, but there's something to be said for "profit taking".

To be clear, the "profit taking" proposition is this: Sell when you think they've peaked ($120, even though they eventually hit $130), then wait for the drop (say in a week, when it's $95), buy the same number of shares back, and you get the difference to put into your pocket (here, $25 a share over six months. Sheesh. I'm making myself crazy thinking about it). It's not a vote of no confidence. It's a guess for a temporary downturn, where you can get more stock for your money shortly, if you want, or keep your position with a lot of extra cash in your pocket. This is slightly different than selling short, but the mathes & idea are essentially the same.

But what's worse...

... is if you're a tech worker. If Apple's not recruiting, that's already a significant blow to your demand-side. I'm not sure if I'd label Apple as a canary just yet, but can't talk myself out of it either. If Apple doesn't see room for mad growth, and their software isn't the best of class, well, why should anyone look for mad growth? If I had to guess, I think the tech "lump", if it's not a bubble, is coming down for a while.

Shoulda tried to bite on that iCloud opening when I saw it. That could've been interesting. ;^)

Labels: apple, business, tech

I've had my ThinkPad T440 for over three years now, and though I've been exceptionally happy with it, I'm looking to upgrade. Biggest want? A fast processor. Everything else seems pretty fungible from one computer to the next, including screen resolution (the other place my T440 lacks), with the possible exception of ports. But as long as I have a USB in and video out, I'm fine, honestly. I like the "always on" charging port on my T440, which lets me charge my phone anywhere, but that's about the only "want".

Of course this means I'm wasting hours price comparing and processor spec studying. I'm also doing a really poor job putting all the info somewhere I can find it easily. So let's sum, just for me.

Pro tip: Don't get hung up on the huge red number. Also compare the "Single Thread Rating!

Processors (all scores from cpubenchmark.net)

Current Desktop (to make me feel badly):

Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA1150 Clockspeed: 4.0 GHz Turbo Speed: 4.4 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 88 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2014 CPUmark/$Price:  32.96     Overall Rank:  63 Last Price Change:  $339.99 USD (2014-07-09)	11206 Single Thread Rating: 2529 Samples: 9749

Current laptop (ThinkPad T440)

Intel Core i5-3320M @ 2.60GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: BGA1023 Clockspeed: 2.6 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.3 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 35 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2012 CPUmark/$Price:  16.66     Overall Rank:  558 Last Price Change:  $239.99 USD (2012-11-24)	3998 Single Thread Rating: 1626 Samples: 992

ThinkPad T460p (quad-core)

Entry price is $935. i7 not available yet.

Intel Core i5-6440HQ @ 2.60GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA 1151 Clockspeed: 2.6 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.5 GHz No of Cores: 4 Max TDP: 45 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6440HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q1 2016 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  285 Last Price Change:  NA	6443 Single Thread Rating: 1932 [I'm not buying this. Geekbench puts it 11% lower than the i7, below. See that there's only 12 samples -mfn] Samples: 12

Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 2.70GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA 1151 Clockspeed: 2.7 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.6 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 45 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6820HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  163 Last Price Change:  NA	8640 Single Thread Rating: 1874 Samples: 127

ThinkPad T460 (dual cores, 3 options)

Entry prices by proc: $875, $922, and $1050.
P50s runs the same stuff, give or take. P50 speeds aren't significantly better.

Intel Core i5-6200U @ 2.30GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1356 Clockspeed: 2.3 GHz Turbo Speed: 2.8 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 15 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  575 Last Price Change:  NA	3902 Single Thread Rating: 1501 Samples: 388

Intel Core i5-6300U @ 2.40GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1356 Clockspeed: 2.4 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.0 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 15 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  508 Last Price Change:  NA	4296 Single Thread Rating: 1646 Samples: 227

Intel Core i7-6600U @ 2.60GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1356 Clockspeed: 2.6 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.4 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 15 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  434 Last Price Change:  NA	4777 Single Thread Rating: 1847 Samples: 161

Current MacBook Pro 13"

Entry prices by processor are $1300, $1400, and $1600.

Intel Core i5-5257U @ 2.70GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1168 Clockspeed: 2.7 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.1 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 23 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5257U CPU @ 2.70GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q1 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  491 Last Price Change:  NA	4375 Single Thread Rating: 1716 Samples: 56

Intel Core i5-5287U @ 2.90GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1168 Clockspeed: 2.9 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.3 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 28 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5287U CPU @ 2.90GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  454 Last Price Change:  NA	4636 Single Thread Rating: 1873 Samples: 5

Intel Core i7-5557U @ 3.10GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1168 Clockspeed: 3.1 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.4 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 28 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5557U CPU @ 3.10GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q1 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  5.42     Overall Rank:  413 Last Price Change:  $915 USD (2016-02-04)	4959 Single Thread Rating: 1899 Samples: 133

Current MacBook Pro 15"

Worth remembering that these are, entry-price for each proc, $2000, $2100, and $2300

Intel Core i7-4770HQ @ 2.20GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1364 Clockspeed: 2.2 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.4 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 47 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770HQ CPU @ 2.20GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2014 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  152 Last Price Change:  NA	8917 Single Thread Rating: 1888 Samples: 43

Intel Core i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1364 Clockspeed: 2.5 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.7 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 47 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4870HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2014 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  122 Last Price Change:  NA	9372 Single Thread Rating: 2058 Samples: 135

Intel Core i7-4980HQ @ 2.80GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1364 Clockspeed: 2.8 GHz Turbo Speed: 4.0 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 47 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4980HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2014 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  85 Last Price Change:  NA	10060 Single Thread Rating: 2234 Samples: 102

Alienware 15 r2

Though prices change on a dime, right now it's $1200, $1250, and $2550

Intel Core i5-6300HQ @ 2.30GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA 1151 Clockspeed: 2.3 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.2 GHz No of Cores: 4 Max TDP: 45 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300HQ CPU @ 2.30GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  335 Last Price Change:  NA	5734 Single Thread Rating: 1643 Samples: 123

Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA 1151 Clockspeed: 2.6 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.5 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 45 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  190 Last Price Change:  NA	8030 Single Thread Rating: 1791 Samples: 1259

Intel Core i7-6820HK @ 2.70GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: LGA 1151 Clockspeed: 2.7 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.6 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 45 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6820HK CPU @ 2.70GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  142 Last Price Change:  NA	9069 Single Thread Rating: 1904 Samples: 120

Razer Blade Stealth & QHD+

$1000, $1800 (Pro is the same proc as QHD+, so not including it in "entry price" list)

Intel Core i7-6500U @ 2.50GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1356 Clockspeed: 2.5 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.1 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 15 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q2 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  497 Last Price Change:  NA	4331 Single Thread Rating: 1647 Samples: 499

Intel Core i7-4720HQ @ 2.60GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: BGA1364 Clockspeed: 2.6 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.6 GHz No of Cores: 4 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 47 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2014 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  187 Last Price Change:  NA	8100 Single Thread Rating: 1935 Samples: 1959

MacBook 2016

Intel Core m7-6Y75 @ 1.20GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: FCBGA1515 Clockspeed: 1.2 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.1 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 7 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) m7-6Y75 CPU @ 1.20GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q4 2015 CPUmark/$Price:  NA     Overall Rank:  622 Last Price Change:  NA	3704 Single Thread Rating: 1501 Samples: 27

My quick take home (again, for my specific use case; it is my blog, after all! ;^D) is that the MacBook Pros are impressively spec'd, and that the T460p, my initial choice b/c of price and quad-core proc, has an excellent single thread on the i5, tempered by there only being 12 samples taken.

I think the take-home is to wait on the new MacBook Pros this summer, to either get a deal on the old or to see if the new procs make sense. The real crux is whether I think I need mobile Mac hardware to write up some Xamarin apps for iOS. I have good but dated desktop Mac hardware, and can't figure out if $300-$500 is worth it to take a Mac on the road. I want to say yes, but with Xamarin Forms, it's not quite the deal breaker it used to be. And man, that T460p is cheap, relatively speaking.

EDIT: One more quick addition -- my Mac mini 2012, bottom of the line, as I try to convince myself to get a Windows laptop and use the mini as a Xamarin iOS build server...

Intel Core i5-3210M @ 2.50GHz  + Compare	Average CPU Mark
Description:  Socket: PGA988B Clockspeed: 2.5 GHz Turbo Speed: 3.1 GHz No of Cores: 2 (2 logical cores per physical) Max TDP: 35 W Other names:  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz CPU First Seen on Charts:  Q1 2012 CPUmark/$Price:  17.18     Overall Rank:  606 Last Price Change:  $220.33 USD (2016-02-29)	3786 Single Thread Rating: 1518 Samples: 4334

Labels: alienware, hardware, hats of money, lenovo, razer, thinkpad

From the Ray Wenderlich (I hate liches) interview of Marco Arment:

It’s easy to look at successful, painstakingly crafted, impeccably designed apps from well-known developers like Panic or Omni and attribute their success to their craftsmanship, design, and delightful details. Far too many developers believe that if they polish an app to a similar level, they’ll be successful, too. And then they pour months or years of effort into an app that, more often than not, never takes off and can’t sustain that level of effort.

This is part of what I tried to say in, "Your app's not Marco's" last year.

If I was going to be blunt, I also don't think Unread has quite as much market appeal as Overcast. Overcast has some serious bugs -- I've had it display many and even download one latest podcast from feeds I've listened to and am not actively subscribed (no response yet from support@overcast.fm) -- but it's arguably a better podcast app [without excuse] than, say, Downcast. I stopped using Unread a few months after I purchased. Even in the non-IAP state, Overcast is a pretty good app. I had to have faster playback speeds, so I shelled out the cash. It hasn't given me a reason to stop using it yet.

Jared Sinclair went all-in with Unread. Look, I'd argue $42,000 over six months of sales is a success. But he went all in for eight months before that sales period started. That's the crux of Marco's warning. Don't do that.

Your app's ceiling is only as high as the need it can potentially serve. See how high the ceiling is sooner than later (he says as he continues to test his markdown editor that he hasn't released...)

Labels: business, indie

My new favorite quote of Marc Gravell's from StackOverflow:

based on the SQL, all I can say is: both queries look horrible. I knew there was a reason I normally write my own TSQL... – Marc Gravell♦ Jun 15 '12 at 7:29

I understand having entities for editing and manipulation, but don't know why every read that's done a system that employs a conventional rdbms isn't done with native SQL.

Labels: entity framework, orm, SQL, stackoverflow

Just got an email asking me how likely I was to recommend Ting on a ten point scale. I've been a customer for years, and it's exceptionally inexpensive if you don't use too much data. But though I used to say 8 or 9, today it's a 6.

Then they asked, "Why a 6?" Here we go...

RingPlus is just an insanely good deal so far. I worry about their business model, but the "free" plans that keep popping up that seem too good to be true aren't -- they really provide free service after your buy-in. It's CDMA only, but I have a few. So we've got 3 phones on Ting, but might transition another off soon.

Data is simply too expensive on Ting when there's such an inexpensive alternative, and I now encourage those with a CDMA phone or who don't mind using an inexpensive phone to go with RingPlus now instead of Ting, my old recommendation.

Honestly, if you've got a CDMA phone, it's a no-brainer. I'm on an unlimited plan right now. For $40 buy-in, I'm getting 500 megs LTE, unlimited texts, unlimited minutes, and unlimited 2G data after the 500 megs are out. For free. They've had 1.5 gig plans (again, for free, just without 2G fallback. Instead, they'd charge for overages) as well.

Some day the other shoe's going to drop, but until then... I even bought a new Sprint iPhone SE so I could burn through my 500 megs in record time.

Labels: business, cellular, review

Sometimes, code smell comes from your documentation:

In some case, the browser will keep suggesting autocompletion values even if the autocomplete attribute is set to off. This unexpected behavior can be quite puzzling for developers. The trick to really force the no-completion is to assign a random string to the attribute like so:

autocomplete="nope"

Since this random value is not a valid one, the browser will give up.

Giving invalid data until "the browser will give up" is a best practice, is it? Whew, that smells. I love the, "The trick is to really force" line. "Really force"?

"Hey, Firefox, remember when I told you to turn off autocomplete? It's just an informal request. If I want you to really honor it, I'll really force you to."

/sigh

Protip for Mozilla: Firefox form autocomplete is broken. I don't really care if it follows standards; most users and nearly every web developer will tell you its behavior is broken.

I hate to see [sic] it, but it looks like Firefox usage may be down over 12% over 2015. It was my favorite browser to use for dev and home. I think the trend is pretty clear: There are now only three browsers. Edge/IE on Windows, Safari on iOS (and OS X, if you count it), and Chrome.

Labels: firefox, html

I got a Lenovo ThinkPad compact USB keyboard last month, as I noticed that I really haven't gotten too much hand pain using my ThinkPad T430 the last three years, and I really do like the TrackPoint. The TrackPoint is much handier and the keyboard much more comfortable than I expected.

Two serious issues with the ThinkPad Compact Keyboard, but it's my daily keyboard in the office now:

1. No backlighting
2. Can't swap the Fn and Ctrl keys!

The first was reasonably easy to fix, especially when you're in your office.

Voila. Instant ThinkLight.

The second is more difficult, and a little surprising. Why wouldn't they give you this option, when it's important enough that they have it as an option in every ThinkPad's BIOS?

Regardless, the point of this post is that when I was looking for folks brave enough to mod their MacBooks with TrackPoints (didn't find any), I did find this, simpler, smart solution that also seems to be a big benefit of keeping the compact keyboard, well, so small.

Ijustfarted said:

what I'm really going to miss is the thinkpad keyboard. I love everything else about macbooks but the mac keyboard compared to a thinkpads doesn't compare :(

Realizing I'm zombie threading, check out this guy. That's hilarious. I bagged a ThinkPad USB compact keyboard a month ago to use when I'm in the office with my Mac, and wondered if anyone had modded a MacBook to use a TrackPoint. Not sure if this counts, but it's not a horrible idea...



I've got a USB cable right out of the back of my keyboard, which would make it cover some of the trackpad, but the Bluetooth version seems like a perfect overlay.

(Fwiw, I use the TrackPoint when I need to move the mouse once -- & just a little -- and don't want to move my hands all the way off of the keyboard... Also like the feel of the keys. Almost enough that I'd break one out at the coffee shop to lay over the MacBook if I had the Bluetooth one!)

Labels: apple, keyboard, lenovo, macbook

Sling just added another base package to its stable. There are now two, which I'll call...

1. Sling for ABC -- The Original
   1. ESPN
   2. ESPN2
   3. Disney
2. Sling for FOX -- New
   1. Fox (normal, OTA Fox)
   2. FX
   3. Fox Sports 1
   4. Regional Fox sports channels

That last one is the game changer. Forget being able to stream three places at a time, having your regional sports for $20 is a huge deal. It used to be that you'd pay $120-$300 a season to watch out-of-area teams, but you had to pay full price for bundled cable to get your local games. Regional sports are insanely expensive.

• Sunday Ticket -- Full bundle plus $250
• NBA League pass -- No bundle plus...
  • $200 for all out-of-area
  • $120 for a single team
• MLB.tv -- No bundle plus
  • $85 for a single team
  • $110 for all out-of-area

The important take home is that cable and dish bundles with regional sports teams ran $60 and up a month. So for your typical season of four months or so, you're paying $240 to get in the local sports door, which is more than you paid to watch every other team.

Now, who cares about local blackouts? Just pay $20 a month and watch. I can finally watch Hornets and Braves (so Nats against Braves) for a fair price.

The launch of our new multistream service is exciting for a lot of reasons, but one in particular for baseball fans: along with FOX and FX, subscribers to the Sling TV Beta Multi-Stream service will have access to more sports than you can swing a Louisville Slugger at with FOX Sports 1, and applicable FOX-owned Regional Sports Networks (RSNs).

YES! When you sign up for the Sling TV Beta Multi-Stream service, your billing zip code will determine which FOX RSNs you’ll have access to. Baseball season just got a whole lot better!

Here are the teams featured on the various FOX Sports Local channels:

FOX Sports Arizona – Diamondbacks
FOX Sports Detroit – Tigers
FOX Sports Florida/Sun – Marlins, Devil Rays
FOX Sports Midwest – Cardinals, Royals
FOX Sports North – Brewers, Twins
FOX Sports Cincinnati – Reds
FOX Sports West/Prime Ticket – Angels
FOX Sports San Diego – Padres
FOX Sports South/Southeast – Braves
FOX Sports Southwest – Rangers
Sportstime Ohio – Indians
YES – Yankees
[emph mine]

But if you want ESPN, you're back to shelling out another $20. And if you want ESPN U and ESPN News, that's 20+5 = $25 a month more. Unless you can really eat just one from the a la carte line, you're right back in cable's lap. And if you don't have a Fox regional network, well, I'm sorry. That continues to stink.

Labels: sling, TV

Yay?

I guess I could do something like add ESLint to the list of alternatives to JSLint on the JSLint tag wiki, but that's not that horribly exciting.

The next priv on SO is "Access to Moderator Tools", which actually is awfully powerful. I would've never thought I'd make it there, but with the way points from old answers keep coming in like dividends from old investments, I guess it could happen.

And I can't help myself. 5000 came from another JSLint answer -- one I posted yesterday. I'm always surprised at the amount of venom JSLint gets on SO. There's almost always a stupid an ill-advised comment about how horrible JSLint is, and how the asker should use ESLint or JSHint instead, for many questions with the JSLint tag. Yesterday's was no exception.

Within a few minutes of the question's posting, there's that second comment...

I'd strongly recommend finding an alternative to JSLint, and it's outright silly rules warning about perfectly valid JavaScript. Consider ESLint, JSCS, or even JSHint.

... and it's got four votes. So five people have complained about the topic of the question within a few minutes of its posting, and rewarded pretty inflammatory, off-topic speech. So I finally did it; I replied too harshly.

Good heavens. Sorry to vent on you on this question, but if it's a JSLint question, give a JSLint answer. I don't spam up the ESLint & JSHint questions with, "You really should take out all of your dimestore opinions about JavaScript and use a linter with strong opinions to more universally standardize your codebase." Commenting "your tool stink0rz" is like saying, "Stop using JavaScript. VBScript rulez!1!" It's just opinion. Crockford's rarely demonstrably wrong; often, folks who make these comments don't take the time to understand what he recommends or why.

The implicit VBScript comparison might have been too much. ;^) I'm sure JSHint & ESLint are good tools. I've followed both a bit and used JSHint for a while, and they're fine, if you want lots of room for customization... and intra-office debate.

Painfully, I replied twice, ending with, "Show me where JSLint "actively harms Javacript" & I'll show you someone who doesn't understand the lang," which I'd still stand behind, I think. You can disagree with JSLint, and it will, famously, hurt your feelings, but it's almost never wrong in any definitive way.

Okay, actually I ended with...

/sigh I'm ending this transmission. (The irony, of course, is that I think krillgar's found a bug in the new JSLint.)

Always makes a quick exchange more fun when you can drag in Thumb Wars.

Still, I just don't get it. Is there another tool that gets this much flame? Honestly, I really do believe one of JSLint's strengths is, as I've mentioned, that you precisely don't have to get together as a committee every time someone wants to change some minor piece of JavaScript coding style. Crockford's not dumb, and, again, his prescriptions (well, proscriptions) are very rarely, if ever, wrong. And if it's wrong, he'll fix the code quickly, as I've seen a number of times (and even been a part of once or twice).

Why is more opinion always better? I hate JSLint's whitespace rules, particularly with hanging lines and end parens, but say what you want, at least it's an ethos.

WARNING: Some NSFW language here:

Often, it's lazy to decide for yourself instead of figuring out why a convention suggested by an expert might be smart.

I'm also much happier looking at JSLint's code. Have you looked at ESLint's repo? I mean, nothing wrong with it, but it sure isn't a single file. Looks like it's a node-directed solution too. Why must tools become so complicated so quickly? (I know Nicholas wanted "a JavaScript tool with pluggable linting rules", but I'm not sure all the overhead is necessary.)

Anyhow, there's nothing wrong with JSLint. If it doesn't work for you, I'm sorry. But when a JSLint user has a JSLint question, give them a JSLint answer. If you've got to throw in a, "But I usually use ESLint or JSHint," that's fine, but answer the question first.

/rant

Labels: coding, gamification, JSLint, stackoverflow, style

Was listening to The Talk Show with Jason Snell talking about the latest Apple event, and heard them talking a good deal about why, say, the SE had top of the line hardware and why the iPad Pro 9.7" had some new stuff but not everything the larger Pro has (it has True Tone, but not USB 3).

I think the Apple strategy when designing new consumer products is pretty simple: Use whatever's best today.

We first saw this with the new iPod touch. The iPod touch surprisingly had the same stuff inside, give or take, as an iPhone 6, then the Apple flagship, but without a price increase over the previous generation. Wait, what? For a while, it the iPod touch was the best iOS deal going. (Where was Ben Thompson's "cannibalizing" argument then? Apple's cards were already down.)

Same thing happened with the iPhone SE. They're redesigning an iOS device, and they grab the state of the art off that's already on the shelf -- and if some dates and chip serial numbers (?) are to be believed, many of the SE's chips were made well before the SE was.

And this makes good sense if you want to maximize your users' experience. I'm going to bet that the marginal cost of making a million more A9's is essentially the same as making a million A8's. And if that's true, what do you use on your SE? For your users' sake, you use A9's. Apple had the A9 in hand, was making a new motherboard, and poof, it's an easy design to use your design dollars to make that mobo hook up to the A9.*

The only reason to use an A8 would be so you're not competing with yourself. It's not a cost thing. It's not a supply-side concern. The only reason to make more A8s instead of more A9s would be so that the SE doesn't undermine your iPhone 6s.

Apple's telling us, I think, that's it's not doing that any more.

This is sorta what Ben Thompson's been saying, though he doesn't (surprisingly for him) do a good job explaining it yet -- Apple is giving maximum customer experience even though it'll cannibalize its own flagship sales. No SE? I know I would've jumped once the 7 came out. But once you put aside the temptation to undercut your own product, you release better ones. And ones that you can sell longer.

But this is not the same as a Celeron. This is not crippled hardware going downmarket. This is the best existing hardware without compromise.

Aside: And with the price cut, Thompson has completely whiffed. Decent retrospective save, but absolutely no warning from him this might happen. I really meant to email him before the SE to ask what price we'd have to go to before he would 100% talk the over.

Instead of predicting Apple's SE price drop, I'd say he'd at least implied the opposite would happen. At what point is there a "middle market" that he says currently doesn't exist with smartphones? That is, if this is a broadening of the high end, give me a price at which the high is no longer high.S

The iPad Pro is interesting in that it does get bleeding edge state of the art with True Tone. But it's a "Pro" device. It should be chasing and integrating the state of the art. But it's the Tiny Pro... which means we can sacrifice features to get the right size inside. Though I would be curious to know how much it was developed in parallel with vs. orthogonal to the Giant Pro. Did the Pro have extra space that allowed USB 3? Did Apple decide that USB 3 wasn't important?

Guess when the next iPod touch refresh is going to happen? We're probably still a couple of years out. Would you be surprised if it got top of the line stuff when it is refreshed, though? I wonder how closely the iPod touch refresh will mirror the SE's.

* It makes a lot of sense that they didn't use an A10 in the SE, btw. When you have the mobo chasing the processor, you've got a much more difficult game. And if you're not ramping up production lines on the A10 yet, well... The SE needed to use the best parts on hand, the best known knowns, I guess. So you see all recycled parts. You don't create a new 4" case; you use the assembly line that you've already got running. You don't add a new processor; you grab the best you're already producing in bulk. Your only new part is the motherboard.

Labels: apple, business, gruber, iphone, ipod, stratechery

Let's take a quick aside from yesterday's post where Adamson says Overcast "is only barely viable". Really?

Wow. 855 * $2 (after Apple) = $1710 a quarter = $6,840 a year.

That's iff those were the only patrons Overcast got all quarter. That seems a higher number than I usually see (On Aug 22, it was 481, and around 480-500 the next week), but let's start playing with 200 a week, and oversimplify to 800 a month.

If we say that they only pay the lowest amount once -- $2.99 for three months -- that's 800 x $2 after Apple's cut = $1600 a month. That's $19,200 a year. Not much, but if you can sustain that without huge programming costs, not bad.

But let's pretend that the patrons pick 12 months instead of three, and pay $11.99. That's essentially $8 after Apple's cut per patron, or four times as much as our first number. $76,800 a year. Again, well below market rate for an 8-to-5, but nobody's working 8-to-5 today on Overcast. (All that previous work is a sunk cost at this point.)

For 400 patrons a week, we double those revenue numbers. Now we're talking.

Here's what it looks like:

At today's rate of 855 (though remember, there's no way that's what it's averaging), assuming no attrition/full years from each, it's $328,320, if my quick calc is right. Not bad for a single app that's not without its bugs.

Let's ballpark a middle ground at $80,000 (maybe close to 400 a week averaging a little over $5.75 each before Apple's cut) for this year. Plus 2014's $164k. Plus whatever happened last year. For a single app plus updates. That's a good investment.

Labels: app, app store econ, business, indie

Chris Adamson on the App economy [via Dan Counsell's weekly email]:

People won’t pay for apps. Therefore, the value of an app is typically zero. However, they will pay for stuff behind apps, for what the app will do for them, or let them do, what it will show them, or let them show their ideas and works to others.

“Fixing” the App Store, saying that Apple needs better curation or promotion of apps, is like “fixing” Yahoo! [of the] the browsable collection of websites that Filo and Yang put together in their Stanford dorm room. It’s premised on a model and a value proposition that doesn’t exist anymore.

Much wrong. Many fix.

First, if you read earlier this week, I think Pieter Omvlee was right. The Apple App Store is a dollar store.. Many indie developers don't want to sell there.

Stop saying it's broken. If you don't have a dollar app, forget the App Store storefront.

What I added to Omvlee's talk is that even those who don't want to sell in App Store storefront still want to be in the warehouse. You have to be if you want to sell inventory.

That is, here are the things the Apple App Warehouse does not do for you, if you don't have a dollar store app:

• Sell your app.

Here's what the Apple App Warehouse does do for you:

• Gives you a URL for downloads.
• Tracks downloads
• Allows you to use affiliate links to get 7 of the 30% cut Apple takes back when you sell yourself!
• Handles updates
• Handles most security issues on the terminal (local device... you know, the phone)

etc etc.

You're really asking for Apple to open another app store

@_DavidSmith @marcoarment You're right, a parallel #AppStorePro (#AppStoreCurated?) sounds like a great idea. 😉

— Ruffin (@r_ffin) March 19, 2016

That's really all anyone's asking for when they say, "The App Store's broken." What they mean is that, "The current store is broken for me," which is to say, "The current store isn't where I want to sell."

For now, that means you have to make your own store on the web. That stinks, but would you really pay 7% of your gross to Apple to create a better store? Maybe. Maybe. If you knew you'd be featured, sure, but just because they make "Apple App Store Pro" or "Apple App Store Curated" doesn't mean you'll be in the window.

Take that extra 7%, put it aside for marketing, and sell like mad.

That said, Adamson has some interesting points. First, on why the Store is sufficient for Apple now:

You know that big check that Tim Cook will show in a keynote, like how Apple has paid developers $20 billion as of 2014? That pales compared to the value of all the companies whose existence is predicated on being a mobile app. A billion for Instagram here, a billion for Waze there, it all adds up. Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp nearly matches the Tim Cook check all by itself.

I'd stopped listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) after they took on Cards Against Humanity as a sponsor -- that game really is evil. It's, as I've said elsewhere, the I Ching (which is not evil) of hate speech (which is) -- but this was interesting too:

And yes, again, there are exceptions, but consider: Marco has admitted on the last two ATPs that his patronage model for Overcast is only barely viable (and he’s starting from a stronger position than most of us), and my friend Curtis stands to make about $20K/yr on his terrific Slopes app, something he sets aside about a third of the year to work on. These are the success stories. Care to speculate what the median is like?

I've been realistically bearish on indies in the App Store for a while:

• In 2014, Overcast bagged Arment $164k, and your app ain't Marco's.
• #8 in the Mac App Store for a year could mean $110k yearly.
• The iOS App Store can only support 3175 developers, total

(That last is a little clickbaity, sure, but only in its simplisticness. It could be a lot less.)

At the same time, I'd want to reframe the conversation a little, like I did when talking about attacks Jared Sinclair got for his Unread numbers.

Stop thinking about working as an independent app developer as something that should pay you something comporable to a 9-to-5er cubicle coder. You could make a lot more as a banker than as tax return dude with a shingle, but you chose the latter. It's a different field.

Stop seeing $20k for one app over a year (really $25k, apparently) as failure. See it as Curtis Herbert does...

My goal with this experiment wasn't just revenue, it was sustainable revenue.

Apps are investments. You sell these investments from the Apple Dollar Store or from your own storefront, your choice. They're delivered from Apple's App Warehouse. You create and maintain enough investments, and you might rival a consultant for salary.

That's the profession you choose. Enjoy your time. That's its best perk of all.

Labels: app dev, app store, app store econ, apple, business, indie