∞ Vesper, Adieu
John Gruber's postmortem on Vesper:
If I could do it all over again, here is what I would do differently. I would start the exact same way, with Dave and me designing Vesper for iPhone. But then, before Brent wrote a single line of code, we would immediately design Vesper for Mac. And that’s the product we’d have built and shipped first. There is downward pressure on pricing for Mac apps, but the market is still there for quality apps that cost $20–100 (or more). The plan would have looked like this:
- Build Vesper for Mac. Sell it for around $20.
- Build a sync system.
- Build Vesper for iPhone.
- Build Vesper for iPad.
- Maybe build a web version.
I think this plan would have worked. For productivity apps, I always want a Mac app first. Otherwise I am not going to invest with a premium price.