DevDialogue – Alien Blue App Developer Speaks

Jason Morrissey helped bring Reddit back to life with his exceptional Alien Blue App for iPhone and iPad. Alien Blue connects iPhone and iPad users to Reddit in an extraordinary manner and makes Reddit better with its perfect interface. This is what Jason had to say about the idea, future of Reddit, Apple’s approval process and the future of Alien Blue in an interview with TheAppleGoogle.

1. Alien Blue is an App for utilizing the power of Reddit from the iPhone or iPad. How did you conceive the idea for the App?

Like most redditors, once you discover the website, it’s really difficult not to become addicted. I consume most of my reddit content on my phone, and even more frequently, late at night.

Alien Blue was originally intended to be an app for myself, to allow the content to be drawn in larger text with night-colours. My eyes are weathered from years of monitor abuse, so this would be a welcome addition to my evenings. It came out of personal necessity, and it’s evolved immensely since sharing it with Reddit for the first time.

2. Reddit also has its official App for the iPhone. How do you compare your App with the competition?

Oddly enough, I actually wanted to contribute to iReddit (the offical app) originally. Unfortunately it wasn’t open sourced until after I began developing Alien Blue. I never saw Alien Blue as a commercial venture, and so the thought of competition didn’t make sense.

I love iReddit. I used it for a long time, and had only minor problems with it. In fact, to this day, some redditors still prefer iReddit over Alien Blue despite the countless revisions it undergoes. They really did a good job with it.

In an effort to distance Alien Blue from iReddit, the launch version had nothing in common with the official app. With feedback from redditors, Alien Blue got closer and closer to iReddit’s interface over 2-3 months of updates. It’s a true testament to how well iReddit was put together.

3. Alien Blue is currently available for iPhone and iPad. Do you intend to enter the Android Market too?

There’s been a flood of requests to bring Alien Blue to Android, and I will be looking into recreating the app natively for Android users. My biggest concern at this stage is underwhelming users, as features would need to be rolled out in stages.

I (somehow) managed to do this successfully for the iPad, and I’m hoping that I can do the same for Android also. I don’t want Android users to feel that they’re getting a watered down version of Alien Blue, and making a launch-worthy release will be the real challenge.

4. Can you describe your Eureka moment with the App?

So many of the really good ideas have come from redditors. You can think of my role as the man who puts together lego blocks. Redditors give me the pieces and I put them together. Very few of the ideas you see in Alien Blue can be attributed to me alone.

The Eureka moment for me was not so much about what goes into the app, but how to reach out to people and find out what they want. When users see their requests translated into a functioning part of the app, it makes the experience better for everyone.

5. Can you give us a sneak peek into the future of Alien Blue?

I’m currently working on a full featured and free version of Alien Blue HD for Reddit’s support communities (like SuicideWatch, Anorexia, Depression etc.) I want there to be zero barriers for people who need help, and those that spend hours a day monitoring threads and providing support. These versions are also heavy on privacy (like the ability to password protect Alien Blue).

6. Were you satisfied with Apple approval’s process?

I’ve been very lucky so far with regard to rejections. However, due to the complexity of the app, updates take quite a while to get through to users (approximately 2 weeks).

I’m always a bit anxious about releasing another bug that I can do nothing about for weeks following approval. Strangely, the approval delays can actually discourage you from releasing updates because you don’t want to release another bug out into the wild and sit there helplessly while support emails come rolling in.

Bugs are a part of life. No matter how good your quality testing is, you’ll always miss something. Feature rich apps are more prone to bugs, and end up spending far more time in approval. In the time it takes to approve an Alien Blue update, I’ve typically got another release ready with new features and fixes. This then leads to the “reject binary” vs “release later” debate.

I do appreciate that my apps get a final run before being released to thousands of people, but it can be heartbreaking to see your users suffer from problems that you fixed weeks ago.

Developing for iOS is a pleasure. The tools that Apple provides are second to none. In fact, the developer tools encourage the development of complex and feature rich applications, while the approval process indirectly discourages it (in favor of simple, single/infrequent release apps with little functionality).

There are so many one-trick-pony apps on the App Store, but it really is a case of “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Developers that produce the most basic of applications are typically impacted the least by the approval process and delays.

If Apple can drastically reduce the approval time for updates (or remove approval altogether), I think it would encourage more developers with feature-rich app ideas to jump on board. I know that it would certainly remove a cloud of stress from developers that truly care about their users and prefer to release early and often.

7. What do you think is the future of Reddit? What other features would you like to see on the site?

What can I say about Reddit? The people who run it really care about the community. The admins clearly favor their users over profits and most of their decision making revolves around what makes redditors happy. The guys in charge could walk out of that building and probably earn twice their salary elsewhere, but it’s their passion that keeps them there.

If not already, I think we’ll see Reddit becoming a household name. With thousands of subreddits and support communities, Reddit will become a single point of news/advice for a lot of people. “There’s something for everyone” is a tired cliche, but I think Reddit is a website that can genuinely carry out that promise.

We’re moving towards a point in which we trust the opinions of anonymous people over established “trusted” sources. Reddit’s comment threads are usually packed with information that objectively refute published articles in mainstream media. As more people discover the site, their opinions will be challenged and I think that’s a good thing.

As far as features are concerned, I’m going to bug the admins to see how they would feel about supporting Push notifications for mobile devices. They’ve already got a lot on their plate though, so I’ll have to approach this gracefully.

8. What help from Apple would have made your development efforts more enjoyable?

Honestly, I think the tools they’ve provided for developers are jaw dropping. The first time I launched Instruments, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Apple’s developer tools make common and annoying programming issues disappear, and can actually performance testing/improvement fun.

For users, I think developers should be allowed to respond to customer reviews and concerns. Unless people get in touch with me directly, I have no way to communicate with App Store customers. If someone is having a problem, I would love to be able to respond with a work-around or at least let them know that a release is waiting in approval.

On that note, I think that users should also be notified that there is an update (with release notes) prior to leaving a review.

From a release standpoint, I think that Apple should find a way to discard the approval process altogether (or at least for updates). The two commonly cited reasons for approval are:

1. Device safety (and safety of user’s information)
2. Users receiving what is promised in the application description.

The first one is tough, but apps already operate in a sand-boxed environment. Furthermore, I think that screening applications may be providing a false sense of security to users (as vulnerabilities could still be exploited despite approval). I’m confident that developers who have the know-how to find vulnerabilities in iOS would also be intelligent enough to hide/time-delay exploits through App Store approval.

I think that the time and money spent in screening apps should be directed toward improving the security of the OS itself and in limiting the ability for apps to “phone-home” without the user’s knowledge. They’ve done a spectacular job of this with the Mac without negatively impacting the user experience.

The second item (users receiving what is promised) is a far easier problem to solve. People pay for apps, and Apple wants to avoid customers from being ripped off. Allow users to trial paid apps for a limited time. If a user finds that the app falls short of their expectation, nothing is lost. The user saves money, the developer avoids a one-star rating.

I can’t stress enough that iOS is a spectacular platform to develop for. Apple is 99% there (tools, platform + distribution), the 1% is the approval process. Once the approval process is revised/gone, we would be able to welcome developers like Joe Hewitt back to the party. That guy has never created a fart app.

Alien Blue for iPhone [iTunes Link]