wildchocolate

Dear Mac/iOS Developer Community,

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who may be different from yourself and attempt to understand/have compassion towards that person’s feelings, especially if their feelings are different from your own. If you do not consider yourself to be a particularly empathetic person, there’s no need to read any further.

I attended a Mac developer conference recently and overall had a great experience. I had the opportunity to meet and get to know many great developers while learning a few things too. Unfortunately, I left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. This feeling I attribute to a lack of conduct standards, and a failure by many of us to understand the changes in the industry that have been occurring, like it or not, over the years.

Here is what happened. I sat down to listen to a talk that I could tell by the title of the talk, was going to be inappropriate. I thought to myself, I’m at a respectful Mac conference, the organizer is walking around in a suit and conducting himself very professionally, I’m sure it will be ok. This was, in fact, a poor assumption. The speaker prefaced his talk by basically stating there was a little substance, but that most of the topics were being presented simply because of the sexual or otherwise inappropriate jokes that could be formed from the topics. For instance, jokes that can be made about “autoreleasing”. I’ll let you think about that for a second and you basically understand how this went. About ten minutes in, I was thoroughly disappointed in the immaturity and inappropriateness and walked out of the room. As others informed me later, it did not get any better. There were tidbits of information weaved in, but the overarching theme remained the same.

Sadly, this was not the only offensive point in the week. The highly respected keynote speaker managed to weave in a reference to a female celebrity’s “tits and ass” in his discussion, which I found awfully distasteful.

Now, I know that being one of the handful of women in attendance at the conference, I am in a serious minority in terms of the way I experience and react to things such as this. I also know that it’s quite possible that others would not be offended as they may have the same, in my opinion immature, sense of humor. Yet, in discussing with others, including members of my team, I found that I was not alone in finding these references uncomfortable.

Why is it that an inappropriate talk would even be permitted on a stage at any respectable conference? How does this in any way further the advancement of the software industry at large, and the Mac community especially? In my opinion, it sets us back quite a bit. During one of the much more informative and respectable talks of the week, the topic of diversity was brought up. The speaker pointed out the fact that the Mac community is full of mostly men from an educated and higher income background. The context was in discussion of how we tend to gravitate towards like minded people. And in fact, it’s impossible to argue that this is a truly diverse field by any means because women and minorities are grossly underrepresented as I’m sure you know.

However, what this experience and other similar encounters I have had in the last three years as a Mac developer have started to suggest is, maybe the Mac community doesn’t want people like me to be comfortable? Perhaps they would rather keep this a boy’s club forever, and it’s simply irritating when people like me disrupt that.

Wow, does that thought scare me. Coming from a different industry where diversity is praised and encouraged, could it be that software developers want the exact opposite? Clearly not all of us. But, perhaps some of the organizers of this particular conference gravitate toward that mindset.

The Mac development community has changed a lot over the years. There are new iOS consulting companies popping up all the time. Macs are in more homes than ever before in history. Mac developers are hiring business partners, even donning suits sometimes, and prancing into major corporations to work on exciting applications. It’s a new world, folks. And as a result, there will likely be growing pains.

All I ask is this…

First, if you are in a position where you can control the conduct and standards at a software event that is intended to be in any way professional, you are therefore obligated to do so. Or at least warn people who may be attending otherwise, so we may steer clear.

Second, before you start to defend this kind of inappropriate behavior in a professional setting, think about how you would feel if I were your daughter or your sister. I’m not against inappropriate humor by any means, I just think there’s a time and a place. This was not it.

Do we want the Mac community to be a place where anyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. feels uncomfortable?

Diversity is great. It shows that our field is growing up. But diversity can only happen with acceptance, tolerance, and the ability to empathize with those who may feel uncomfortable, even if you yourself do not. I sincerely hope that at future Mac community events, I will not be similarly offended.

Thank you to the wonderful guys who provided support and feedback in preparation for this article. It’s nice to know we have some gentlemen out there in the Mac community!

Sincerely,

Brit

Update: After getting in touch with the conference organizers, I have a lot of hope regarding this issue. They were very concerned, apologetic, and acknowledged that this should not happen at a professional event. Thank you!

I recently attended a traveling Cirque du Soleil performance called “OVO” which was an insect themed performance. If you haven’t seen a Cirque du Soleil performance before, you must go because they are fantastic! When you arrive, you enter a humongous tent and are immediately transported to this bizarre kind of circus that’s all grown up. The costumes are incredible, the music is live and fantastic, the sets are extravagant and capturing, and the performers are amazingly talented. It’s a great experience. But the thing that really sets a performance like that apart are the details. Nothing was overlooked! From the elaborate costumes to the scenery, to the pre and post show entertainment, you could tell that someone had been over everything with a fine tooth comb. Naturally, I related this to software.

Great software is all about the details too. It’s the little things that picky development teams refuse to overlook, that really make a user’s experience with software exceptional as opposed to just fine or average. Certain personalities tend to be more detail-oriented than others, but I find that developers seem to be more often than not, concerned about the details.

With so many apps out there these days, it takes more than just functionality to make your products stand out. I think the details take you that extra mile. You don’t just throw fields onto an editing screen and call it a day. Even if it’s just simple text input, you really have to think about the layout, the appropriate width and height, is this blue the right blue, how strong should the font be, etc. We can’t afford to forget the user’s interaction at every level. If you’re writing low-level code, think about performance considerations. Could the user experience a slow down with a large data set? Think about your team as well. Who may have to work in this code file in the future? Is your code clear, organized, and concise? The more details you take the time to really consider, the better!

Ok, wait. By now, you must be thinking in the back of your head, “That’s great and all, but then I would never ship! Who has the time to leave no stone unturned in their app?” Yeah, I don’t either. And I certainly have not mastered this balance yet.

Here are some of the ways my team currently manages this dilemma:

- Make small adjustments/improvements in incremental releases (the first release cannot be perfect, but over time will get better)

- Prioritize tickets regularly to sort out the most important issues to the user, and which tickets can wait a little longer (we think about a ticket as must-have/nice-to-have/ or should consider)

- Never create a new UI without showing at least one other person, preferably several, for critiques and improvements

- Capture all ideas for improvements so that they are not overlooked or forgotten

- Use mockups! Even if it’s just a piece of paper or scribbles on a chalkboard. It’s amazing what you can eliminate before you even begin coding if you do this often.

- Test! This is one area that we are trying to improve on my team. It’s so critical to have others test out your changes before you send them out to the world. Catch as much as you can before it gets out there.

If you’ve never looked back at a feature you did and said… “Wow, was I drunk when I did that?!” then you deserve an award. For everyone else, I think it’s important that you’re willing to go back and re-work a feature (even if it seems minor) when it’s just not right. If you’re satisfied with mediocrity, then by all means leave it. But you are taking a big risk that users will overlook the details too. My guess is they won’t.

Right now, I have so many things I want to improve about the product I work on that it can seem overwhelming at times. The steps above seem to help break it down into manageable pieces. Just saying it’s good enough, though, will not allow any product to stand out. Details, details, details.

A moderately terrifying thought occurred to me the other day and it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. I don’t have a plan. I have no idea what I will be working on one year from now. I have absolutely no clue what my tiny company’s product portfolio will look like in five years. In ten years will I still be a Mac focused developer?

There are about a hundred and one questions like that in my head, and not a single one has a definitive answer. And here I thought that in order to be successful you needed a plan. It appears that I am successfully not having one.

The good news is this seems to be fairly common right now. There are thousands of tiny little tech companies like mine out there and they are led by people who are just as clueless as I am about the future. Why? Because the future of technology is not something you can discuss long term. Heck, you can hardly even discuss it short term. I could never have predicted that I would be thinking about user interface design for a tablet device two years ago. The iPad didn’t even exist yet!

So, what happens when your business background tells you to have a plan, but your industry makes this virtually impossible? Herein lies my dilemma.

It’s not that I believe you truly do need a master plan in order to succeed. It’s just that I am the type of person that feels some anxiety with regards to uncertainty. I feel just a little out of control without a sense of where things are going in the long run. I see value in planning ahead. If you can anticipate the next move, you are one step ahead of your competition.

I may not be able to predict what Apple will change next about their devices, or what the next big thing will be, but I can train myself to be an adapter. In fact, that’s what I have been doing for two years now, I just didn’t realize it. While I thought I was just learning to be a better software developer, I was simultaneously developing my adaptive skills.

In fact, I think that all indie developers at this point in time can be accurately described as adapters. We are working with technology that is constantly changing (usually for the better) and our skills must be continuously developed and improved. I have a friend who is a financial consultant and is currently studying for the CPA. If you’ve never seen the books of material for the CPA test, they are about the fattest books I have ever seen. They are stuffed full of details and knowledge that must be mastered in order to achieve the CPA title. She has been working hard at this for over a year trying to master all the knowledge in these books so that she can finally earn her CPA title and be realized as an expert. Sure, the IRS makes minor changes and modifications every year that CPA’s must be aware of, but they reach a point where they can stop training and learning. Developers do not get that opportunity.

Our little technological bubble of a world is more like riding a high speed train. If we choose to get off at a stop, the train will go on without us. Sure we might be able to manage ok for awhile, but eventually our knowledge, skills, products, they all become obsolete. So we must be constantly adapting to the new if we want to survive. We are adapters.

So now I have a plan. My plan is to try and stop worrying so much about the fact that technology is unpredictable, and to instead embrace my long term career as a master adapter. Maybe I’ll add that to my title. Oh wait, I don’t really have a title.

This June I attended my first WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, in San Francisco. The conference is an opportunity for everyone developing software on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Web platforms to come together and spend a week learning the latest and greatest coming out of Apple headquarters while networking and learning from each other. And when they say worldwide, they aren’t kidding! I met developers from Australia, Malaysia, UK, France, Germany, India, and more. But aside from the knowledge I gained, and cool people I met, what really stood out to me, and what I want to share about my experience, is how I felt about the number of women in attendance. There were an estimated 100 or so women in a crowd of 5500 people. Imagine an occasional rose in a sea of thorns. Ok, I’m kidding! Guys who are reading this, don’t be offended. I have nothing against you! I simply wish to see this ratio become much more equal in the future.

The reason I can’t share with you the exact number of women to men is because Apple declined to share this information with the several women who asked. We didn’t think this kind of statistic would be “confidential” but we’re guessing it’s considered bad press. I can tell you whatever the number of female attendees was, it was small. This became best illustrated when breezing past the ridiculously long lines to the men’s restrooms in between sessions, to stroll into a no-wait women’s restroom (hence the title of this article). Women kept exclaiming with triumph in their voices “this never happens!”. But in reality, it’s a negative sign that there are still so many fewer women in the software industry than men.

Although men and women alike who have attended this conference in the past were extremely optimistic about the number of women in attendance growing considerably this year over previous years, as a first-timer I was not biased by the fact that this was an improvement because the numbers were so disappointing. I am glad to hear that there is an up-swing of female developers, but we are nowhere near equal numbers in this industry! And this conference, more than anything else, solidified that realization for me. I have written before about the gender differences in the technology industry, but it always saddens me when I am reminded first hand. Here’s hoping that next year there is a line for the women’s restroom too!

If you’re interested, one of the awesome female developers I met put together a fun overview video of this year’s WWDC.

When Apple began banning sexually explicit (read: trashy content) from the app store last week, there was a plethora of backlash coming from both sides of the argument. Most definitely the developers of these apps were upset, and rightly so, in the fact that they worked on creating these applications, got approved to sell in the store, started earning a living, only to suddenly have it taken away without explanation. One developer, Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls, who lost 50 apps (how one even comes up with 50 different naked woman apps is beyond me) told Wired:

It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero. This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?

From the perspective of developers like Clarke, Apple’s sudden removal of their work is unfair and financially troubling.

On the other hand, parents and customers can breath a sigh of relief that no longer will the app store be cluttered with derogatory, offensive materials. Or can they?

Behind the Decision

The head of Apple product marketing, Phil Schiller, explained the problem to the New York Times:

Over the last few weeks a small number of developers had been submitting an increasing number of apps containing very objectionable content. It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.

This is understandable as well, especially when you take a look at the kind of apps we are talking about here. Since I was obviously not a customer for these kinds of apps, I was shocked to learn about the — dare I say this — creativity that was applied to what can only be described as pornographic software. Here are a couple examples…

SlideHer: A puzzle where you reassemble an image of a barely dressed woman

Sexy Scratch Off: Fling off a woman’s dress by swiping your finger to reveal her underwear (I have to admit this one makes me laugh)

Schiller acknowledged the effect this decision has had on the developers of applications like SlideHer and Sexy Scratch Off but stated:

We obviously care about developers, but in the end have to put the needs of the kids and parents first.

Considering that a major part of Apple’s market includes parents purchasing computers for their children, as well as women, this seems like a smart business decision. Particularly with the iPad which will potentially become the computer for students.

Mac Developers are Conflicted

There are basically three different arguments from the developer perspective:

What’s to stop Apple from pulling my app next?

Developers who fit into this category, are generally people who were already concerned about the essentially arbitrary, closed decision process by which Apple rejects applications from the store. They see fellow developers lose their entire income source in the blink of an eye and say we can’t let Apple get away with this!

We can all benefit from a less trashy, higher quality app store!

Developers in this group are excited by the prospect of removing the clutter in the app store, to allow the higher quality, more purposeful applications shine through. As iPhone developer Wally Chang put it:

There just seems to be too many of these really simple applications that do nothing but show pictures of girls in bikinis or in suggestive, adult poses. It’s cluttering up the App Store.

We hate hypocrites!

The fact that Apple has removed all these small third party sex apps and allowed big names like Playboy, Maxim, and Sports Illustrated to stay is hypocritical.

I particularly like John Gruber’s take on this argument:

What I see as hypocritical about Apple’s decision here is not about the fact that you can access the same sort of content via MobileSafari, but rather about the exceptions granted to Sports Illustrated, etc. I see why: Sports Illustrated, Victoria’s Secret, and Playboy are not just strong brands but also quality brands. But who’s to say some new brand couldn’t be just as good? The best apps in all sorts of categories across the board in the App Store are frequently from new companies, building new brands. It’s no more fair for the “hot chicks in bikinis” category to be occupied solely by existing major brands like Sports Illustrated/Victoria’s Secret/Playboy than it would be if the, say, photo manipulation category were occupied solely by Adobe and Corel, or if games were only allowed from companies like EA.

My stance is somewhere in between the second and third argument. On the one hand, I am a Mac developer who would like to see better quality apps in the app store, without some of the sleezy and poorly written crap thrown in there, and see this as just one step towards that goal. But I am also a woman, and I find that these applications are, while not affecting my life in anyway, unnecessary and pathetic. I think a lot of guys would agree as well. Let’s have a little class, people! Although I know for the most part it’s just all in good fun — I just have no reason personal, or business related, to support those applications staying. Every way I look at it, I’d rather see them gone.

Still, I find that I am annoyed by the hypocritical approach of rejecting the little trashy guys, but not the big name nudity. I think if it were me losing my apps while Sports Illustrated had basically the same content, but got to stay, I would be pissed.

Apple’s Response to the Hypocrite Argument

As reported by Wired:

Schiller explained that the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps came from more reputable companies. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller said.

What a load of crap.

The Bottom Line

To me, it seems like a business decision. Apple cannot afford to antagonize companies like Sports Illustrated and Playboy, but at the same time, they can’t afford to allow their store to become cluttered with porn and therefore lose big as far as their image and brand is concerned. Especially with the iPad coming out soon. They found a solution, and they executed it. As a woman, I’m glad to see as many trashy apps go as possible. Strictly from a developer perspective, I pretty much come to the same conclusion.