The 2015 Panic Report ⇥ panic.com

Cabel Sasser:

Shelving a New App. One of our interesting app experiments — an app to share and discover music — was 95% done, had a beautiful interface and some interesting ideas, plus a complete server-side component… then got shelved. It wasn’t an easy decision. It was mostly worries about revenue — it doesn’t seem possible that you can charge money for a social app in 2016, since mass adoption is critical.

I cannot imagine getting that close to a finished product only to axe it. That’s a decision that’s impossible to make lightly. I hope Panic can find a compelling business model to ensure its release — it sounds like something I’d be interested in.

iOS Revenue. I brought this up last year and we still haven’t licked it. We had a change of heart — well, an experimental change of heart — and reduced the price of our iOS apps in 2015 to normalize them at $9.99 or less, thinking that was the upper limit and/or sweet spot for iOS app pricing. But it didn’t have a meaningful impact on sales.

More and more I’m beginning to think we simply made the wrong type of apps for iOS — we made professional tools that aren’t really “in demand” on that platform — and that price isn’t our problem, but interest is.

This is a recurring comment from developers and power users alike. The iOS App Store continues to be a race to the bottom.