Justin Williams on how it can sometimes feel to be a developer listening to the WWDC keynote:
WWDC keynotes take a different turn when you transition from being an Apple user or fan to an Apple platform developer. About 70% of those ninety minutes watching Steve Jobs on stage are spent being excited what direction Apple is planning to take the Mac and iOS over the next year. The other 30% is that cautious concern that what is next on the agenda is going to put your product out of business.
I’m not a developer, so I don’t really feel his pain, but I will say that, just as I never took much of a shine to Apple’s RSS feed reader in Safari, I’ll be surprised to find myself trading in Instapaper for Safari’s new Reading List feature.
Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, I think, sees this issue in the proper light:
Today, fewer than 1% of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners are Instapaper customers, despite Instapaper spending a lot of time (including today) at the #1-paid-app spot in the App Store’s News category for both iPhone and iPad. The potential market is massive, but most people don’t know that they need it yet.
The reality of the matter is that Safari’s Reading list is more likely to point users in the direction of really excellent, beautifully designed programs. Reading List, as Arment implies, is really more likely to see that they have a need for something that they never really knew that they had a need for.
For me, the non-developer, I’ll take the innovation. I hope that developers take the same cue, and continue to innovate more.