I dig that.

Anyway, here’s the page for our conversation:

The competitive advantage of hiring artists, A conversation with Chris Ashworth

Despite the specificity of the title, we hit a bunch of topics in that hour of chatting. Listen in and hear me:

• railing against sick days
• pleading with businesses to question the rules of their workplace
• ranting about pricing your work
• wondering whether your art can be better instead of cheaper
• hollering “F permission”

and

• making my case for how Star Trek, positronic brains, human evolution and racism all relate to hiring.

See, at the moment the world of indie theater is having a great big-ol’ chew-it-up hash-it-out discussion about the pros and cons and wherefores and howtos of dynamic pricing.

I find this fascinating, and entirely worthwhile. But, aside from believing some version of dynamic pricing is probably a great idea, I don’t have any direct experience using it. So: can’t really comment.

Thing is, the general topic of “pricing” is something I do have a little bit of experience with, and all this talk of dynamic pricing has been getting me hot and bothered about a related subject which has been festering on my blogging back burner for months.

Well, on Friday Dan Granata made a comment on Twitter that made the pot boil over. Dan wrote:

So it’s been a few days, but the comment re: my theatre, “Let’s be clear, tickets are $18, this isn’t Broadway” is a depressing datapoint.

I asked:

Wait, what? Someone was complaining about an $18 ticket being too expensive?

To which Dan replied:

No – they were saying *because* it was $18, they respected us less. Because we charge so little, we must not be worth much.

I tried to clarify:

Ah. Then: depressing because of all the work that goes in to it, and the quality that isn’t being respected?

And Dan explained:

sort of. More that someone who saw the show (and liked it) would still use ticket price as a indicator of quality.

And also that it supports my long-held fear that a low ticket price may actually hurt your reputation, rather than up sales

Which was, it turns out, the precise moment that

My Pot Boileth Over

First off, let’s just set a ground rule here: you know your customers better than I do. (Or at least I hope you do.) If I say something here that feels clearly stupid, and seems to suggest that you should do something that would offend or abuse or exploit your customers, then the rule is: your gut trumps my bloviation.

But I do want to humbly relate a few things I’ve learned in setting a price on my own hard work. It may be instructive. It may not. But at least hear me out, because the way I think about pricing now is very different from the way I thought about pricing at the start. I think it’s useful to know how, at least in my case, things that seemed obvious from the beginning weren’t always true.

Dear indie software friends, dear indie theater friends, this is a letter to you both, from four years in.

First, a few datapoints.

I make a product called QLab. There have been two version of QLab so far.

QLab version 1 had an audio license priced at $49. It had a video license priced at $149. It was very popular. It won a fancy award. It was so successful, in fact, that I quit my day job to work on it full time.

When I released QLab version 2, however, I changed the pricing. To wit:

• QLab 2 has an audio license priced at $249.
• QLab 2 has an educational discount for the audio license: $199.
• QLab 2 has a new rental licensing scheme. It allows renting a license starting at $3/day, or $1/day for educational purposes.

The story I am telling today is about:

• Why I decided to change the pricing,
• What happened when I did, and
• Whether or not I regret it.

While I don’t want to be overly prescriptive here, I have enough evidence at this point to draw a few firm conclusions. We’ll get to them in a second. But first,

The curious case of the complaining customers.

I’m about to tell you a story which I can only really describe as “freaking weird on the face of it”.

It is the story of how my customers complained about my prices for QLab 1. Specifically, how they complained that those prices were

Too low.

I spend some time paying attention to what people are saying about my product. I check the mailing lists. I check the forums. I check the Twitter. And what I found in the days of QLab 1 was that, mixed in with the astonishing news that some people were buying their first Mac ever just so they could use QLab, was the equally astonishing news that some people were unwilling to buy QLab at all because it didn’t cost enough.

Even weirder, I started getting emails from people who did buy it, asking me to raise the price.

Whaaaa?

That’s freaking weird.

I know, right?

But actually… it’s not. And here’s why: my customers knew themselves. They knew themselves much, much better than I did. I had started down this QLab road unsure there was any destination at the end of it. The first steps were for fun, the next steps were for fun and curiosity, and the next steps were for fun, curiosity, and maybe a little extra spending money on the side.

Yet, for my customers, it was more than that. I’d made something that people wanted to be part of their lives. They looked at my prices, and they knew: if this guy doesn’t raise his prices, he’s not going to be around long. They saw this problem clearly, and they saw it long before I did. So they told me.

And you know what? They were right. It took me a while, but eventually I realized they were right. Because at first, hey, I was actually doing pretty well for myself. I quit my job! I was working for myself! I was living the dream! I’d tell my wife at dinner the sales for the day and she’d look at me astonished and say “how many sound designers can there possibly be?” and I’d say, with a hint of hysterical terror in my voice, “I don’t know! Maybe that was the last one! Ha! HAHAHAHHAHAHOHGODOHGODPLEASELETMESELLANOTHERCOPY” But they kept coming! Eventually I managed to even view each sale not with terror, but merely with mild discomfort. Because they kept coming! Surely probability was on my side!

And yet… each sale also meant a new person in our community. New people in the community brought wonderful energy, wonderful stories, and lots of new questions, new requests, and new emails in my inbox every morning. I loved it! But I’m only one guy! And I was running a company that could only afford to be one guy!

And my customers knew it. And eventually, even I knew it. Which brings me to

What happened next.

Or

Probably the most anxious 9 months of my life to date.

Wow, was it really nine months? Let’s see, I quit my job in April, and I released QLab 2 the following January. Ha! Nice! Symbolism, that was a perfect place to step in. Thanks for that.

What did I do in that nine months? I rewrote my product, and I reexamined my company. Both needed adjustments. The product would become QLab 2. The company would become…what, exactly?

I said in my illustrated history of QLab that I was “literally shaking” when I pressed the send button on the email that announced QLab 2. It’s true; I was.

Whatever happened next was essentially going to determine the future of me and my company. Would people like the product? Would they be willing to support it at the new prices? (The audio license had increased in price by 500%! That’s not a little bump!) Would I be able to make a real company, that could support real employees for the real long term? It had been nine months of hundreds of hours of coding, testing, designing, tweaking, second-guessing, hair-pulling work. And all nine months of it came down to pressing that one button. You’d shake too.

Well, here’s what happened:

<insert stunned silence here>

A fluke? Turns out: no. Here’s the bigger picture:

And here’s the breakdown by count, gross, and license type:

So. What to make of this? The graphs tell part of the story, but what was going on at the human level? Was I fielding outraged emails from customers that could no longer afford my product? Did I raise my profits by turning away large swaths of the community I’d worked so hard to find? When I actually did raise my prices, did everyone, in short, freak the hell out?

To my astonishment, the answer was

No.

Really. It really was.

People did not get angry. I can count on one hand the number of angry emails or Twitter messages I’ve seen about QLab’s price. And for each of those angry messages? I reached out. We talked. I listened to what was making them angry, and we talked about it. And not one of those people are angry anymore.

People did not get turned away. I know of a single customer that turned away because of the price. One. And while maybe there are people who turned away and didn’t tell me, I will remind you that we are selling more licenses. And those licenses are being sold, as far as I can tell, to the same kinds of people as before. How? How could I possibly raise my prices by 500% and not turn people away? Because, remember, I didn’t just raise our prices. I rebuilt our entire pricing structure. I still had the free version. It was still really powerful. I added the rentals. They’re even more powerful, but they’re also really cheap for the situations where it’s most justifiable that QLab should be really cheap. And I added the educational discounts on everything. And, at the end of the day, there was me, a human being who cares and who really wants people to use my software. If someone reaches out to me, we talk. We figure something out. And only once did it get that far and reach an impasse.

In short: I fixed my broken prices, and everyone won.

Or, to put it a different way: Pricing is a single variable in a multiverse of important variables. In this complicated universe of ours, it’s rare that myopically optimizing one variable does the universe any good.

Or, to put it a third way: Pricing reminds us that

There is. No. Spoon.

There’s this single moment in time when money changes hands for a product or service. That’s an unusual moment, because at that moment the product, in some sense, has a real, definable “price”. But before and after that moment the value of whatever is being purchased is a probabilistic blur where reality, emotion, and psychology mix in strange ways.

Each person who buys your software, your theater ticket, your whatever, will assign their own value to the thing. In a perfect world you would charge each person exactly how much they value your software, your theater ticket, or your whatever. But you can’t do that — not just because it will be different for different people but because it will even be different for the same people, depending on when and how you ask them.

By setting a price, you are basically taking a stab or three into a probabilistic soup. We all know there’s no cosmic ledger of “correct” prices. We all know we’re taking a stab. But what we don’t always fully consider — or, at least, what I didn’t fully consider — is how deeply

Psychology trumps.

There is disturbing anecdotal evidence of this in the form of people who spend money they don’t have. But the best evidence I have from personal experience can be summed up in two words: Educational. Discount.

Recall that above I told you the initial price of a QLab audio license was 49 dollars. That was the flat rate. That was the take-it-or-leave-it. That was the here’s-the-best-I-can-do.

And you know wanna know something? You wanna know what question I fielded most often? Any guesses? It was:

“Do you have an educational discount?”

On a 49 dollar license! For a piece of software that, it may also interest you to know, was offering a genuine and viable alternative to a product that, at the time, cost around — wait for it! — 1000 bucks!

Now fast forward to version 2. The price of the audio license has gone from 49 dollars to 249 dollars. But, knowing my most common question about version 1, I also add an educational price: 199 dollars. Or, to put it another way, the new discounted price is 400% greater than the old standard price.

And now? Now we sell more of these than we ever did with the standard price of version 1! Does the new rental license have something to do with this? Probably. It certainly gives a fantastic alternate discount for those who have an exceptionally tight budget.

But I’m telling you that I used to get the “educational discount” question on almost every single license I sold to an educational institution. Now, I have an educational discount, and it’s 400% more expensive than the old non-discounted version, and I have never once received a request for an additional discount!

Psychology is weird!

But also: important to respect!

Alright, let’s bring this home.

Here’s my thing.

You care about your customer. You’re on their team, and they are also on your team. That’s an important relationship. My goal here is not to abuse or break that relationship, but if anything to strengthen it. The right price is the one that’s fair to both of you, and if you’re genuinely on each others’ team, you can stand up for this fact without shame or greed.

When you’re starting out, you try to guess how your customers will value what you do. You’re probably going to be wrong, and you’re probably going to guess low. Because you’re a nice person. You want to make your work “accessible”.

Now, in my experience, there is such a thing as accessibility, but it has a bad psychological influence on you when you’re setting your base price. It skews you low. You’re new at this, you’re not sure what you do is worth money, you’re thinking of all those hypothetical customers who can’t afford more than X dollars for your product, whatever. Point is, here you are, you’ve just started out, you have no data, and you’re a nice person, so you tried to be fair, and accessible, and your price is really low.

Now, shooting low isn’t automatically a terrible way to start. You can always change your price, and it’s not so bad to come out of the gate humble instead of cocky. So the problem isn’t so much where you start, as it is,

What you do next

This is the tricky part, and this is the part I see my fellow young people flubbing.

You essentially have one data point. “This is what happens when I value my work at price X.” Maybe it even works okay. You’re selling a bunch of tickets at 15 bucks a pop. Sure, you’re living on egg noodles, but you’ve got young people coming to see your shows that couldn’t otherwise afford it. Well, maybe. You probably don’t actually have hard data to confirm that, but you’re pretty sure it’s true.

But what if it’s not?

Consider QLab for a second. Lucky for me, I wasn’t just a little ignorant about pricing, I was a lot ignorant. I priced my work so extremely low that my own customers knew I’d overdone it. I’m blessed with smart, professional customers, and they knew my market (i.e. themselves) way better than I did. They knew that in the long run I couldn’t survive on the prices I’d picked. They wanted me to survive. So they warned me: “Your prices are too low. You need to charge me more.”

You’re probably not as dumb as me.

So back to you, and your 15 dollar ticket. Or your 40 dollar piece of shareware. Whatever. The point is, you’re probably not as dumb as me. When you stabbed into the probabilistic soup of prices, you may have aimed better, and gotten a better number up front. If so, that may be a problem, because the warning signs may be less obvious. Maybe your patron thinks to themselves “huh, 15 bucks, that’s a really great price”. And silently enjoys your show. For 10 bucks less than their internal value-ometer was inclined to suggest.

And now, week by week, month by month, where does that extra 10 dollars go? Well, if you never needed it in the first place, good on you; you’re not greedy. A little odd that you’re willing to value yourself less than your customers, but that’s your prerogative.

But if you DO need that extra 10 dollars, then the common wisdom is that it’s going to come out of your budget. Sure, that’s probably true. That’s probably partly where it comes from. But I suspect that maybe only 7 bucks of that really actually comes out of your budget.

I suspect that the rest of it probably comes bleeding out of you.

And that’s a problem.

And, tragically, it may not even need to be a problem. And you don’t even know it.

You’re worth it.

You’re on the same team as your customer. You know that. They know that.

By all means, make your work accessible. But be careful about what you think that means, and how you choose to do it.

Your customer thinks you’re worth it. For the sake of you both, act like you are.

Or, rather, we basically came to the same conclusion as Steve Jobs.

Via Engadget:

Walt: Is the tablet going to replace the laptop? Tell me what you think about where it’s going?

Steve: You know… (long pause). I’m trying to think of a good analogy. When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy. The PC has taken us a long way. They were amazing. But it changes, vested interests are going to change. And I think we’ve embarked on that change. Is it the iPad? Who knows? Will it be next year or five years…

Walt: Well you don’t think it will be next year?

Steve: Well… who knows?

When I read the article, I tweeted:

Indie Mac devs, I recommend you read this: http://bit.ly/9ZJ8Fq I have this thrilling-slash-terrifying feeling it might be true.

My friend Chad Sellers, the indie developer behind the fabulous application Pear Note, responded:

@Chris_Ashworth While bits of that post may be true, most of it sounds like dumb predictions from 10 years ago (e.g. SaaS kills the desktop)

And this morning Chad followed up with a blog post that expands on this position, arguing that “premium computers are not dying off”, and that Stross’s arguments are tired old lines we’ve heard before, and make as much sense now as they did then, which is to say: not much sense at all.

Chad’s a smart guy, and his argument made me take a second look at Stross’s article, trying to figure out why I had felt such a visceral reaction when I read it the first time.

I think I’ve figured it out.

But first, a summary of the story so far.

I believe Stross’s argument may be fairly boiled down to the following:

1. “PCs are becoming commodity items” with very little profit. Even premium hardware is vulnerable to this trend.
2. Simultaneously, software and data is moving out onto the Internet. The more we see ubiquitous wireless broadband, the less digital stuff will be stored inside the physical computers we personally own.
3. To survive the hardware profitability apocalypse, Apple must transform from a company that primarily makes money on the hardware to a company that primarily makes money on the software.
4. Conclusion: Apple is trying to build the software of the future (the AppStore ecosystem) and buying up cloud computing companies (Lala.com) which will define what software means in the next era of computing and over which they have total control. That way they don’t have to make money on the hardware, ’cause they’ll own the channel for the software.

Chad’s response is, essentially:

1. Don’t be silly. Premium hardware doesn’t die. And everything Apple does is to sell premium hardware.

(Note I say that’s his response, rather than his argument. If you want the argument, read the original.)

My take. FWIW.

You know what? Chad is correct. Stross’s argument doesn’t make a lick of sense. In addition to all the reasons Chad cites, I’ll add one more:

If we’re entering the age of “software as a service”, what the heck is Apple doing building a software channel that is tied to their specific hardware? “Software as a service” does not mean “software compiled for iPhone/iPad/iWhateverTheHellAppleIntroducesNextMonth.” “Software as a service” is hosted on the web. Using the open web standards that Apple supports. In fact, using the web standards that Apple supports so well, that they use them as an argument for why they’re willing to kill Flash. If Apple is trying to own the software sales channel, they’ve left a hole in their plans the size of the Internet. Which I hear is big.

So why did I feel so nervous when I originally read Stross?

Well, mostly I was just being stupid. I didn’t think about his argument carefully.

But another part of it was that I was focusing on small nuggets inside the larger piece. Nuggets that are keeping me up at night. Nuggets like:

• “The PC industry as we have known it for a third of a century is beginning to die.”
• “My take on the iPhone OS, and the iPad, [is] that they’re the start of a whole new range of Apple computers that have a user interface as radically different from their predecessors as the original Macintosh was from previous command-line PCs.”
• “This year, for the first time, the Apple Design Awards at WWDC’10 are only open to iPhone and iPad apps.”
• “I’ve got a theory, and it’s this: Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market.”

Why would I focus on these? They’re mostly just conclusions that, as I mentioned, he fails to back up with good arguments.

But they’re conclusions I have been stumbling toward before reading Stross’s piece. Which painted them in big red blinking letters between the pale gray glow of the arguments around them.

My bad.

FWIW part 2.

So here’s the thing. I actually do think that the cloud computing revolution is happening right now. Yes, people have been predicting it for a long time, but, you know, “the information superhighway” got that silly name way before it actually deserved it. Sometimes the end game takes a lot less time to see than it does to implement.

Back when Jesse Kriss and I were first building QLab, we had the wondrous experience of discovering what a truly beautiful programming ecosystem felt like. We’d need to solve tricky—but boring—problems, and Apple had already solved them. Just a quick search through the documentation and we’d find the Cocoa framework we needed. It felt like magic.

Well, Jesse and I just started building a new product, except this time, yes, the product is on the web. And that magic feeling? It’s happening again. “Gosh, it would be really handy to use HTML 5 web sockets to push update notifications.” “Have you seen PusherApp?” “Gosh, in this spot all we need to do is send a lot of email, and be sure it all just works.” “Golly, those MailChimp guys already do this really, really well.” “What about multi-state load balanced servers that abstract away nearly all the system administration tasks for getting our application up and running and robust?” “Helloooooo, Heroku.”

Jesse likes to say (and I like to agree with him), that we are entering the Golden Age of Internet Development.

And none of this matters.

None of this has anything to do with whether Apple might be planning the demise of Macs as we know them.

After all, Macs are as good a way as any to reach out into that magic cloud of computers in the sky, right?

Actually, that might be the problem.

Computers suck. And it has nothing to do with cloud computing. And Apple knows it.

Here was my response, in three parts to the announcement of the iPad:

Starting to see the critiques roll by: lack of feature X, high price tag Y. First off: folks, remember the iPod & iPhone? Yeah, same deal.

Second: Interaction design. Third: Interaction design. Fourth: Interaction design.

You cannot separate an application from the way you interact with it. It’s just that this part was never a differentiator before. Now it is.

There is a revolution happening here that is relevant to the argument at hand, but it’s not cloud computing or “software as a service”. Those things are good. Those things will happen. Those things don’t matter.

What matters is that computers suck. They just suck. They’ve sucked for a long, long time, and they’re not really getting any better. It’s hard for us to remember how bad they suck, because almost all of us have gotten used to it.

It’s hard to remember how complicated and non-obvious a computer really is. It’s hard to remember how many layers upon layers of mental models and abstractions we have built up in order to let us manipulate the electrons inside this box. And I mean all of us. Not just your grandpa who has no mental model, but has memorized the precise series of button presses that allow him to write and send an email. Not just the mildly geeky computer user who is generally savvy but doesn’t really understand directory structures very well. I’m talking about those of us who program the damn things. Yes, I know some basics of what is happening to the electrons down inside that chip, but to really follow the story of one electron up and down every layer of abstraction until it comes out my printer as my airplane boarding pass? That shit is real, bro.

I am telling you I have watched my mother-in-law, who has chosen not to use computers, try to use a mouse. And I am telling you that she watched her hand move the mouse, and then she looked up to try to find where the arrow had gone. And I am telling you that this makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

I am telling you that COMPUTERS SUCK.

And not only does Apple know it, but

Apple is doing something about it.

This, friends, is what thrills and terrifies me.

If you’ve used an iPad, you know that this is a different way of connecting your brain to a computer. It’s a better way. And if you haven’t used an iPad, you just have to watch a 2-year-old doing it, and you can take the hint.

“Better way? Don’t be an idiot! Have you tried typing on those things?!”

Stay with me buddy, staaaaay with me.

Yes, I know. The iPad is not the pinnacle of human/computer interaction. Typing on them without a physical keyboard stinks. And, well, it turns out it’s actually pretty handy to be able to type words into your computer easily.

I’m not saying the iPad is perfect. I’m not saying that everything the tech industry made up until now was garbage. Yes, computers basically suck, but there’s a reason we use them. Once you get over the suck hump they’re actually pretty handy. And some of the ways we interact with them today are not completely terrible.

But a new day is dawning. And Apple is basically doing it single-handedly. They are redefining what it means for a human to manipulate the electrons in the box, and they are making it better. Significantly better. Paradigm-shiftingly better.

And here, speaking as an independent developer who runs a small software company based on Mac OS X, is where things get… interesting.

When the paradigm shifts, something will be left behind.

In his rebuttal, Chad rightly points to Apple’s most recent earnings report.

Check out that last graph. Down there at the bottom. The one of total revenue. iPhone and iPod? Whupping. Mac’s. Ass.

Simple computers with the world’s best interaction design have, almost overnight, become Apple’s single biggest moneymaker.

[Interjection: DEAR PRODUCT TEAMS THAT STILL THINK INTERACTION DESIGN IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE ON YOUR FEATURE LIST—HOW ARE YOU MISSING THIS?]

Apple is not just creating a new kind of computer. Apple is not just creating a new market. Apple is creating a new era of computing — the era of friendly machines. And for those of us who work in this field, this is awesome — in the original sense of that word, where admiration and apprehension mix in equal measure.

But you’ll always need a Mac to run Photoshop

Photoshop? You think Photoshop, or a whole line-up of high-powered desktop apps, can stop this?

Maybe. It’s possible. But as far as I can tell, your Photoshop may not save you.

Look at that graph again. Think about the complexity of the desktop environment. Think about how much it costs to earn that Mac-based revenue. Look at that iPhone and iPod revenue. Think about the comparative simplicity of that ecosystem. Think about how much more money they’re going to make on those devices in the future. It’s not like the iPhone/iPad revenue is flatlining.

Apple is not shy about killing off a successful product to replace it with a new, more successful product. (Hello, iPod Nano.)

Would Apple kill the Mac and OS X ecosystem to focus on the 80 percent of computing activity that works great on the new devices?

No? How much would you be willing to bet? Would you bet the company?

I’ll say this. I definitely don’t know the answer. But I also definitely will not bet the company that the answer is “no”.

Edited May 9 to add: On reflection, and on the observations made in the comments, I’m inclined to refine my outlook on this to the following: Apple may be able to throw out a bunch of desktop software that requires the old style of computer, but the one thing they can’t afford to throw out are the developers, who (currently) still need Macs to write software. So if Photoshop doesn’t save you, XCode may.

Tommy Howells once said:

Truth wanting to lead a quiet life often settles between the extremes.

And that’s probably not a bad bet on this one either. In the mental roadmap I’m trying to form for my company, I’m settling most comfortably near the prediction that Macs will become more of a niche, rather than disappear completely.

But it sure is interesting to imagine what a Mac-less future might look like. And if Apple eventually moves the development environment for iPads on to the iPad? Watch out.

Or: “So THAT just happened.”

Or: “In a few hours the circle closes and I am going to yell about it from my little rooftop because although it ain’t really all that huge — wow it sure feels huge to me.”

Warning: personal story ahead. And yeah, it’s kind of long. Skip it if you want. I don’t care. I’ll yell this to empty streets and feel damn fine about it.

Everyone gone? Cool. Alright empty streets! Just you and me now!

[Deep breath in.] Aaaaaannnd…..

August, 2004 — Swallowing the seed

In August 2004, I join my Actor’s Theatre Apprentice buddies John Catron, Jenna Close, and Bradley Wayne Smith as they take their newly-formed theatre company to the Edinburough Fringe.

We pass customs!

We roam the streets!

We hawk our wares! (Seen here: John Catron as the Smallest Full Grown Man Alive!)

We even put on a show!

I serve as light op, sound op, stage manager, and house manager. From inside a coat closet. A very, very small coat closet.

Audio runs from iTunes, on that laptop balanced precariously on a stool there in the middle. To the left: light board and audio mixer! To the right: script and wall switches! Not pictured: the furious concentration needed to run this (uncomplicated) show!

October 14 2004 — “I’m wondering…”

Later that year, John writes me an email. Says they’re doing a new show in January. Says a CD player won’t cut it. Asks if I know of a Mac-based application for running sound effects. I think to myself, “sure, I’ll Google one for you”.

Huh. Doesn’t seem to be a lot out there for Mac. Wasn’t expecting that.

I write an email to my buddies Jesse Kriss and Jen Wang:

Editor’s note: you should check out Cricket. It’s cool, and it does stuff QLab doesn’t.

Jesse writes back:

And, in perhaps the most loaded one-line email afterthought I’ve ever received:

And so it begins.

And when I say “it begins”, I mean “it begins from scratch”. To wit:

• We’d never used CoreAudio before.
• We’d never used XCode before.
• We’d never used Objective-C before.
• We’d never written a Mac application before.
• We’d never written a full application of any kind before.

Remember above how I said they needed something in January? And how it is currently late October?

October 17, 2004 — Who cares?! We’re young, we’re ignorant, and sketching interfaces is fun!

Jesse lobs the first sketch at me (click for larger version):

October 18, 2004 — Hello rabbit hole! Mind if we poke our nose in?

In an email entitled “i heart obj-c”, Jesse writes:

So I’m doing my reading and playing around a bit. Obj-C is pretty damned cool. And the Apple frameworks are pretty nice, too.

October 19, 2004 — Hey this thing makes noise!

I write:

I actually managed to get a little bit of other work done today (although I haven’t even STARTED the ten page paper technically due tomorrow! Wheee!!), but I couldn’t resist putting in a little time on this as well. I am now able to read, write, and play the following file types:

AIFC
AIFF
MPEG Layer 3
NeXT/Sun
Sound Designer II
WAVE
AC3
AAC ADTS

I’ve also been thinking about design choices and I hope to send along some sketches of possible design patterns and object models we could use in the next couple of days.

This is all just to say…ummm…”Cool. We’re making progress.”

Cheers,
Christopher

November 24, 2004

First test version sent to John! Sweet!

John tries it. And…it doesn’t work! Suck!

A few hours later, we figure out the problem. (Hi ZeroLink! A note from future me: you suck, and Apple later kills you because you suck. Just FYI.)

And finally: Off and running!

November-December, 2004

Bug report, fix, add, bug report, fix, add, scramble.

3AM iChat sessions with Jesse.

Homework be damned.

January 14, 2005

First show. IT LIVES! And it looks like this!

Winter, 2005

Exhaustion.

Oh, yeah, and school. Probably should work on that.

Spring, 2005

Man, school sucks.

I want something fun to work on. Hey, that sound cue project was pretty fun. Maybe I’ll dust that code off and take another look.

Summer, 2005

Write write write rip out write write delete write rewrite write rewrite sleep write sketch write.

June 14th, 2005

Hey Jesse! Look at this cool widget I just made!

December 29, 2005

First public beta release. Hey, theatre-sound@listserv.aol.com! Um, anyone here want to take a look at this thing I’ve been fiddling with?

Hi all,

My name’s Chris; I’m a new member of the list.

I’ve been working on a new sound design/playback application for Mac OS X, and I am looking for folks who can help me improve it.

[...snip...]

Theatre making is damn well hard enough, in my opinion, so I set out to build a new tool: QLab. After over a year of work, the first beta versions are ready for public testing. Here’s the address:

http://figure53.com

QLab is free, and will remain so. [Editor's note: yup, we've still got a really nice free version.] My background in theatre makes me hungry to improve it, and my background in computers gives me the tools to do so, but I look to you–those with a strong background in sound design–to help me know how it should evolve to serve you best.

Remember, this is beta software; I need your help to push it and poke it and learn how to make it better.

I hope to hear back from any of you who can spare a moment to give me some feedback.

best to all,
and (early) happy new year,
Christopher

Winter 2006

Wow! People are trying it out! And emailing me! This is so much fun!

Later Winter 2006

Wow! People are using it! People are using it!

Spring 2006

Wow…people are…really using it?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

May 10 2006

Okay, okay, calm down. There are just a few people playing around with it for some high school plays and some community theater productions. It’s cool, it’s cool.

Huh, what’s this email in my inbox?

My name is [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] referred me to your software recently. After lengthy discussions and a good bit of testing I decided I could try using QLab instead of our tried and true Instant Replay Systems. While it might have been better to try it out on a smaller, less significant show; timing worked out that my rig was ready for operation just in time for a huge show, produced by one of our most important clients.

Although I was somewhat nervous to try the new technology on such a high profile event, the potential upside overshadowed my concerns. My ambition was quickly rewarded.

[...] QLab has changed everything. [...]

Thank you for such a valuable product. I would be glad to help in anyway you need to further develop this tool. Feel free to quote me on any of this and if you need any specific quotes or anything I’d be happy to help. I have also included a couple of pictures from the [REDACTED] Show.

Also, can I get a copy of the pro version?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.

September 16 2006

Okay, fine. Let’s do this thing.

Version 1.0.0. Base version still free. Pro features available for a small fee. Let’s see what happens.

And man, this is fun.

And it now looks, more or less, like this:

(Click for larger version)

And then, the blur

Things start to pick up steam. More and more folks start using it. More and more folks tell their friends.

February 11 2008

Last release of version 1. I duck into my mental bunker, and begin work on version 2.

April 7 2008

I officially quit my day job. I start working for Figure 53 full time.

More blur

High schools. Community theaters. Regional theaters. Then Broadway. Then the West End. Shows winning Tony awards.

January 30, 2009

Version 2.

My wife will tell you: I was literally shaking when I pressed the “Send” button on that email. Shay. King.

And as a present to myself, I bought a Wii. Thought I’d finally take a day off, play some video games for the first time in, well, years.

Silly Christopher. You really thought you could tear yourself away from your computer on release day? Really? Silly, silly man.

Ze goggles, zey do nothing!

More colleges. More national theaters of foreign countries. More shows winning Tony awards. Then shows that are too big for me to be allowed to mention them. (Hint: do you watch TV? You’ve probably recently heard QLab.) (Edited later to add: The cat’s out of the bag.)

And using the momentum produced by version 2, Figure 53 launches into a new era: I get to invite my dear friend and code ninja Sean Dougall on board.

Closely followed by, yes, you guessed it, the guy who was there at the beginning: Jesse Kriss.

IS THERE A POINT OR ARE YOU JUST GOING TO BRAG AT ME?!?!?

Wow, empty streets, didn’t know you could vocalize.

ANSWER THE QUESTION, IGNOMINIOUS ROOFTOP YELLER!

Okay, fine, here’s the point.

Yes, I’m proud of this stuff, and yes the experience has repeatedly sent shocks of adrenaline through my system, and, god, it’s incredible to serve professionals of such deep intelligence and skill.

But right now all that stuff is just the context for my point. Which is a very personal one, and which is this:

A lot of milestones have come and gone. Except one. I’ve never been part of a show that actually used the damn thing.

Until tonight. Which, dear empty streets, is why I’m up here embarrassing myself with all this carrying on. Taking out the baby pictures. Talking at you until your eyes glaze over. Because tonight at Single Carrot Theatre the circle closes, and I’ll participate in a show run on QLab, and this has been five years in the making, and frankly I’m feeling a little emotional about it.

…

So, um…thanks.

….that’s pretty much it.

Thanks for indulging me, empty streets.

…which way down from this roof again?

Oh, and, Baltimore: maybe come see the show? It’d sure be an honor to have you there. Click below for tickets:

Some folks affect you disproportionately. Brian has been one of those. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. It’s probably silly for me to pull the word “hero” into the description, but I’m not sure I can really avoid the word either. Little things can confer that status on a young mind, and once conferred, it has a funny way of sticking.

My parents used to live in California. My dad’s a musician, and music was what brought them into a friendship with Brian and his wife Lynne. Music and, I suspect, a shared appreciation for goofiness.

Later on, my mom and dad moved to Kentucky, where dad started teaching at the university. Pretty soon they had their first kid, Cricket. (Actually, Chris, but until about 9th grade there was not a soul in this world who called me anything but “Cricket”. My oldest friends often still do.)

Anyway, Brian and Lynne stayed in touch, and visited a few times. I was five or six. Old enough to draw Lynne a picture of a rainbow, but too young to remember I’d done it. Then a few more years went by and we visited them. I don’t know exactly how old I was then, but it was old enough to remember. And remember I do. Because I was awestruck.

Brian worked at Apple Computer. And despite my infamously porous memory, the day he drove us over to see his office is not something I ever expect to forget.

The walls. The walls were made of white boards. All of them! Every hallway! I mean, you could just reach out and draw on the freaking walls! And you could see where engineers had stopped and talked and caught an idea right there without having to run back to their desks for paper.

I’m sure that many companies were doing something similar at the time, but I’m also quite sure I’d never seen anything like it and the idea of just walking over and writing on a wall was just mind-blowing to me.

Then there was…the hardware room. I have no idea what it really was, but I remember Brian leading us in. It was long, and it was not terribly wide, and on every surface lay a computer. Dozens of machines, with their skins off and their guts sticking out, and instruments for computer surgery sitting next to them. The room smelled of electronics and plastic. And everywhere, everywhere there were screens. Black and white screens, painted with the curious imagery of a dozen different screen savers. One in particular was burned¹ into my memory: animal eyes. Blinking, blinking animal eyes, staring out into the darkness of the machine room when Brian flicked off the lights and closed the door to leave.

When I trace back the thread of my interest in computers, that visit with Brian lies somewhere near the very beginning. And if you dig through my hard drive you’ll find an old text file where I managed to save a few emails between us. Not a lot, but over the years, you could see his generosity and kindness shining through. I once wrote him an earnest, almost feverish letter describing a vision I’d had for Apple’s business plan. Or I’d talk about my science fair project, and then he’d describe what hardware problem he was working on, which I eagerly read, and then responded with naive but well-intentioned ideas about things he might try.

They were messages full of youthful, impractical energy. A less generous soul might have labeled them stupid.

But Brian was a sweet and generous soul. And he never, ever made me feel stupid.

Brian passed away yesterday at 6:45 pm. Cancer. A mysterious cancer that the world’s best doctors could not understand or, ultimately, treat. He fought it for years. He fought it with incredible humor and good will. I’ve been told that a couple of days ago, when he came home from the hospital, his daughter Mika asked him if he needed anything. His reply? “I could use some hair.”

A few years ago my parents and I met up with Brian and Lynne in Tennessee. He was there to see a doctor. My dad was nominally there for a music workshop, but more importantly we were there to see Brian and Lynne. We took a hike down some gorgeous trails, and we found a rock formation that we thought looked like a throne. Brian hopped up and gave us a regal pose:

Brian’s Apple employee number was 32. ² He was one of four people on the original Macintosh team. He once mentioned that, as far as he knew, he was the oldest continuous employee of Apple. Not Steve Jobs. Not Steve Woz. Brian.

The world is down a creative and generous soul today. A gentle soul with no time for self-pity but all the time in the world for a geeky kid with big, silly ideas. And maybe it’s impossible to trace the causes of a life, but I suspect I might not be doing what I’m doing if not for Brian.

So here’s to you, man. Here’s to your kindness. And here’s to Lynne, too. And here’s to high tea at Tea on the Mountain. Here’s to all those discounts on new Macs you got us when I was growing up. Here’s to listening to kids and treating them with respect.

Thank you.

Edited to add: The Mercury News did a really nice story on Brian. It’s the only place I’ve seen that did.

1- I suppose that’s ironic.

2- “When I forgot my badge just last week, the Building 5 receptionist did the time-honored wait-for-rest-of-the-digits pause.” – Commenting on his ID number in an email from January 16, 2008

I’d like to introduce you to Figure 53’s first full-time employee:

Me.

Starting today, starting right now, I finally have the distinct delight and tremendous advantage of focusing entirely on working for my own company. Full time.

I can barely express how excited I am about this. But in all my excitement, I couldn’t spill the beans before today. Which meant I had to bite my blogging tongue when the following bit of awesomeness occurred:

Last Wednesday an unmarked package arrived in the mail. Inside was found the T-shirt you see below. No name. Black on black.

(You can see our model is gazing fiercely at the future, ready to strike stunning deals on international conference calls, followed by rewarding himself with extra vacation and a mid-afternoon nap.)

I eventually smoked out the responsible party: Jesse Kriss. Thanks buddy. It made my day.

The new iPhone SDK, which gives developers access to the accelerometer, should make it easy to write up a little iPhone pedometer application.

Just tell the app your stride length, turn it on, slide the iPhone in your pocket, and away you go. A friendly display can show your number of steps, approximate distance traveled, a reset button, a history log, and a picture of a puppy. Because who doesn’t love adorable puppies?

Edited to add: Nevermind. Rogue Amoeba reports:

… the SDK agreement expressly forbids using non-public APIs, attempting to touch other applications, and running in the background, among other things.

No running in the background makes a pedometer useless.

Lawyers and software. What a great combination.

I played this as a kid, except all the motion was in my head:

Utterly cool.

(Really, I used to fill up sheets of paper with frozen-in-time contraptions that funneled a ball around the paper into a goal. But turning that into a video game? Stroke of genius.)

I sure love being told that the programmers knew exactly what I was trying to do, but decided they weren’t going to bother doing it for me.