Noodlings

Apple devs have had a lot to talk about in the past couple years. The App Store has changed the landscape in significant ways. As devs, we’re constantly concerned with issues of pricing, conformance to Apple’s rules, marketing, advertising… I may post about those issues sometime in the future but not now. There’s been a bit of soul searching amongst devs lately and I think it’s important for me to step back and talk about where I’m coming from and what motivates me. What I’m finding in a lot of these discussions is that some people seem to think that the raison d’etre for doing anything commerce related is to make as much money as you can with everything else being peripheral to that. There seems to be a disconnect when talking to people about my business. Where they are talking about profits and growth, I’m thinking in terms of cool things I can add to my product.

Sure, one of my goals is to make money as I want to make a decent living but beyond a certain point, the money doesn’t interest me so much. I find the most important things in my life aren’t bought. Yes, I’m fortunate enough that I make enough now to live comfortably and I understand that that is a luxury but when I look back on my life, I fondly remember what I’ve done and the people I’ve met, not how much money I’ve made.

For me, it’s about the product. I wrote Hazel because I needed it and when I realized other people did as well, I seized the opportunity. Many of the jobs I’ve had in life were working on products that I didn’t use myself. Sure, there were interesting technical challenges and many of the jobs paid well. While at times I was passionate about the work, I was rarely passionate about the product itself. Now that I’m creating something that I do use, it’s a world of difference. Some companies have a policy where employees can work on what they want for a small percentage of their time and what a difference it makes. Now imagine if they could do that 100% of the time.

As a result, my company is just a vehicle for selling the product. I could care less about growing the company into some major concern. If I had to make the choice, I’d fold my company in a heartbeat if it meant my product would live on.

Apparently this will sound strange to a certain segment of people, but I’m also not interested in having a huge number of customers, in and of itself. I don’t really get satisfaction from people who buy the product in a promo or based on hype and don’t use it. I’m not hit-driven. I want users buying my product, not consumers. What really motivates me is when I hear about people that have been using it for years and it’s one the first things they install whenever they get a new machine. It’s when people get excited as I am about new features. It’s when users comes up with unique ways of using the product that I wouldn’t have come up with myself.

And Hazel’s not just some thing that I put out there only to move on to the next thing. I think I’ve shown that Hazel is a long term commitment for me (nearing 6 years). I intend to keep working on it until it doesn’t make sense anymore or external forces somehow shut it down. I haven’t put out any other apps besides Hazel so far, but when I do, I’ll try and make sure they are things I would use myself. I feel that  scratching your own itch can’t be replaced by stock options in terms of the commitment one has to the product. And if it does come down to having to move on, I’ll try my hardest to make sure that the product can live on in some form or another.

I consider myself very lucky. Going indie has been the best career decision I’ve made and I’ve been fortunate that it has panned out for me. And I intend to stay indie. I don’t have an exit strategy and I’m not looking for a big payout. I’m doing what I want and doing it on my own terms. This is it for me and it’s how I want it to be.

Actually, this is probably old news since this happened last Thursday, but I finally released Hazel 3. For those of you who don’t know what I do for a living might want to check it out. If anything, you’ll understand a good part of the reason why I haven’t posted here much in the past year or so.

To say I’ve been busy is an understatement but it seems the launch was a success. Ok, so the store was not quite working for the first hour and even after I got it up, there were all sorts of glitches. And nevermind that the links in one of my emails was wrong resulting in thousands of people emailing me asking me about it. And overlook the fact that there were quite a few instabilities in Hazel for people running on 32-bit that were missed in the beta. And it wasn’t all that fun when my bank froze my corporate debit card because it thought that all the charges I was making that day were possibly fraudulent. I can ignore all that because a bunch of people actually bought the result of my hard work and for that, I say thank you.

And also, as a heads up, I will be splitting this blog at some point in the not-too-distant future. I will be starting up a Noodlesoft/Hazel specific blog targeted towards my users which will have tutorials, tips and news while keeping Noodlings as my blog for much more developer oriented stuff. Keep your eyes posted here for updates on that.

After all the delays, dead ends, procrastination, wool gathering, futzing around and some actual hard work, Hazel 3 is finally open for beta testing. There’s no set duration for the beta period; it ships when it’s done.

If you’re feeling lucky, you can get the details from this forum article (you need to register for a forum account if you haven’t already). By the way, I hear Time Machine is pretty cool.

Five years ago today, I shipped Hazel 1.0.

Hazel started as a personal project that I wrote for my own use but over time I realized that this might be useful to others. Sometimes you just have to dive in. I quit my job to work on Hazel full-time and some months later, I finally shipped my 1.0. Sales were modest at first but over the years it’s paid off. It was a lot of work but it was worth it. If anything, I’ve clocked in more hours over the past few years working pantsless in my home office than over my entire career previous in various other offices.

This blog has been quiet for a while mainly because I’m still at it. Hazel 3 is nearing the testing stage (expect a beta release and more details soon). It’s a bit overdue; I was hoping to release before Duke Nukem Forever but then again, they had bit of a head start. With each new version, I feel like Hazel is fulfilling the vision I had when I first released it five years ago, and then some. Of course, I could never predict the new and interesting ways you have used Hazel over the years and hopefully you, the users, will help shape the product for many years to come.

Enough about the future. It’s Hazel’s birthday today and in celebration, you can get 20% off until midnight tonight (Tues, Sep. 6, Eastern time). Just use this link. Most of you reading this probably have a copy already but I’m sure you have a friend/relative/corporation with deep pockets that could use a copy (or twenty) so send the link along to them. Or buy an extra copy for yourself because you’re just crazy like that. And while you’re at it, have a drink on Hazel’s behalf, or even better, have a drink (or five) before you hit that order page. I hear you save more money have more fun that way.