I love creating apps.
Starting from nothing but an idea, to something that helps people around the world with the same exact tool we’ve all used to, just a small slab of glass in your pocket.
I genuinely find that inspiring. The fact you can do so much with such a small item. That anyone can find an app that was made just for them, just to help in something very niche they're into. You're into gardening, especially with cactuses? We got you. Lucid dreaming is your nighttime passion? Get this little tool and you'll be able to fly in your dreams in no time. Fan of glassworks and want to discover artisans’ works, or learn it yourself? I'm certain someone made an app for it.
You wake up in a world knowing someone cares about the same things as you, and use their skills to help people like them, like you, do what they like even better. Like what books were before, there are now tools, experiences you can access at any time that compile knowledge and practical use. Books told you how, Apps actually hold your hand - even taking care of some boring stuff for you.
Being able to make someone, anywhere around the world, feel - ever so slightly - that someone cares, is a gift I would never trade with anything else.
Yet, some days I wonder if that dream I’m pursuing is really where we're heading and part of where we are now, if I am really helping the cause I’m certain to serve, if I wasn't foolish. Are we really helping the world? Sometimes I get recognised for what I’m doing, see how my work helps real people in their real lives. Sometimes, however, I read a post, look at an app's details, or learn about some company's news, and all of a sudden it feels like everything I just explained before never existed, like I’m just as useless as anyone else, and that i'll never actually succeed in that world.
I often find myself hearing strange words from other developers that keep bugging me, like "ASO", "Conversion rate", or even "Content strategy". When I dig it up a little bit more, it feels like it's a norm everyone is trying to master even before any thought of the actual function of the app. It seems to be the key to success. On another occasion, I come across a developer and realise that I can precisely track which social media trends led to any of their apps. Then I slowly realise that everyone around me does the same, and not doing so penalizes me. I suddenly feel like everything around me is a lie, a nightmare nobody seems to be willing to wake up from. It feels like everyone around is chasing visibility rather than purpose. And maybe even worse, it works. How did that happen?
9:41
The phone has become an important part of our life; we spend minutes, hours, and sometimes the whole day on it, navigating through apps, through experiences provided by professionals whose job is to keep you there. Before, there was no such item that fulfilled this role, rather a multitude of options to keep you occupied, entertain, help you do your job, or connect with friends. Now it's here, always near you, if not in your hand, and it has your attention. It became a mirror of our society, empowering the best in ourselves, revealing our deepest secrets, harvesting our fears, and feeding from what's worst in all of us.
I'm a part of the generation - or at least part of the generation - who grew up using PCs, Macs, and other laptops. I had an iPhone years after I got a Mac, and it shaped my way of being way more than i'll ever admit. I still, to this day, spend way more time on it than on my phone - even when not considering job or study-related activities. Yet, and I am so sorry for my ego who hopes this so much, I’m not the centre of the world. Most people use their phone more than any laptop. Some people don't even own a laptop or a PC. It's not rare to find someone that doesn't know how to type on a mechanical keyboard properly. Phones are so much more important in everyone's lives than other form factors of computing. Laptops can't be social; phones make you think they are.
The Mac is a more quiet space, focused on work, while our phone is constantly buzzing with the excitement of our social life. On Mac, there are no social apps. Everything lies in your browser, as a second thought. The indie development scene is much smaller, and often even more passionate.
Sure, some people on here are absolute nerds, who can't align two buttons right, and whose apps look like coming out of the early days of macOS. But there are also some of the most well-thought, detailed apps I’ve seen. I'm intimidated by macOS development; yet each time I go for it, I have so much fun. You’re much more free to do anything you want, in the way you want it to be. You know most people who find your app looked up on Google for apps just like you, and saw you through the less intense noise.
Who?
Maybe it's not just about us developers, or even ordinary people. Maybe it's about the place we've let those devices take in our lives, and the system that turned them into yet another market. If tomorrow the Mac became the device everyone had, it'd probably become what I find most depressing in the iOS world. We'd make the same mistakes, over and over again.
So I find myself in a weird place, trying to help the people that need it most from what's already in their pocket, weirdly fitting into that mobile industry whose essence I can't truly grasp, still hoping to find the humanity I feel from those small Mac developer circles.
The app industry has lost its soul, and I fear it might never come back. Every single day another studio or indie developer releases apps that have absolutely no goal or other soul than those very statistics that make an app successful.
We lost the meaning of things, and, if it wasn't enough, we perverted needs, niches and passions into a cash machine, pretended to solve someone's problem by merely copying other apps, replaced people by consumers, ideas by market research, creation by production.
Of course, some genuinely inspiring apps - the ones that actually make you feel things - find their way into everyone's mind from time to time, get the recognition they deserve. Come back the next day, it already has dozens of copies, ambushing you with smart paywalls and marketing stunts. Don't get me wrong - some of those remakes are actually better than the original, made by real professionals who are paid for it and have years of experience making good, qualitative and snappy apps - but they don't feel the same. You know it's up to something, it wants something from you. And it's fine, right? Everyone needs a place to stay at the end of the day. Yet it feels wrong.
What matters
I still find true joy in teamwork. When you can focus on what matters, fool yourself into thinking you're doing all of this because it's fun, because it matters, because you think it could help you and therefore help so many people around you, creating apps is a genuinely amazing occupation, and I would trade it with nothing else in the world. When that mask falls, when you face yourself with the choices all alone, realise you need to pick between humanity and success, that half of your time should be dedicated to marketing and finding out the newest hot psychological trick to make someone certain they do need to pay more for the same thing, you lose all the purpose that led you here in the first place, and you realise that whatever you do, someone will always sell more of their soul than you, and come up on top.
So what's left in the world for you? When everything has been done, what's left to create?
I guess you'll have to sit down in a café or a library for a few minutes, go for a walk, exchange a few words with people around you, and maybe more words with the ones you never thought you would. Figure out who you are and what you stand for, who are the people you want to help, think, think, experiment and learn, have fun at every step, and be honest.
Maybe then, I hope, the world will do its thing, and reward you - ever so slightly, but meaningfully - for your deeply honest humanity.