February 20, 2012

Drafting this one for 2014, because we like to write our blog posts a couple years early at Impending. Let’s hope I’ll never have to dig it up again.

As we’ve learned from Apple’s latest earnings call, App Store revenue growth for developers has begun to stall and slip behind device sales. We all saw this coming, with dozens of beloved indie studios closing shop or selling to larger companies after folding to the pressures of shrinking sales and vanishing profit margins this past year.

Considering the past couple years, rife with hundreds of scams, fraud apps, hoaxes and clones that have hit the top of the charts, it’s no surprise the atmosphere in 2014 among both App Store customers and app developers can be described as cynical.

Most significantly, what we once took for granted before 2012, the “impulse buy”, has largely evaporated. Consumer trust in apps is now completely broken, and even customer reviews can’t be trusted due to more and more elaborately sleazy services for hire to game the system. In this fallout, we have come to understand how important the impulse buy was in a market environment dominated by rock bottom pricing. Developers have raised app pricing to compensate, kicking into effect a feedback loop resulting in sustaining revenue (for now) but plummeting sales, reach and cultural relevance for popular apps.

Customers have also in turn begun to rely more and more heavily on existing giant brands, and are avoiding less known independent developers and studios, and apps that stray from the familiar. As a result innovation in the App Store is in a slow death spiral.

I remember early in 2012, which we can now recognize as the peak of an App Store bubble, when what felt like a utopia took a distinct left turn for the worse with the first wave of scams. Now that we’re stuck in this hole, the road to recovery, if it exists at all, will be painful and take years of education and pro-active improvements from Apple.

But I can’t help but imagine how things might’ve been different… Continue reading →

February 15, 2012

Three months ago, my friend Dan Counsell at Realmac Software hit me up with a mockup for a goals-focused todo app he was tinkering on with his engineer friend Milen Dzhumerov. It was simple, and it looked different.

I was intrigued, then over the span of an hour chatting with Dan, became obsessed with a feverish vision that can only be described as “without buttons and chrome and extraneous features or distractions”. So David and I promptly became sucked into the project and carried away.

Fast forward to today, and I’m proud to announce that Clear, an Impending-infused take on todo lists, is finally available on the App Store!

With Clear, the mission was pretty simple. Get rid of the bullshit, and focus on easy, quick and flexible task entry and management. We looked at what was out there, and began by forgetting everything we saw.

Clear does not support recurring tasks, or scheduled appointments, due dates, tagging, searching, nested folders, or notes. We understand these things can be useful. But we contend they can also be distractions, microdecisions, and UI clutter that add up into just another form of procrastination.

What Clear does support is doing. Simply, rapidly, and in a satisfying way. Here’s how it works:

Our goal was not to one-up the myriad of more complicated and featured GTD solutions out there, but rather to improve on the pencil and notepad.

We’re curious to hear if you think we succeeded. Try it out and let us know what you think!

And be sure to check the announcement blog post on Realmac Software’s blog: Clear is Here

January 31, 2012

The Internet reacts to Clear:

“The interactive elements of clear are absolutely incredible… It’s actually ruined me for other list apps.”
TheNextWeb

“It’s about as minimalist as you can get, and seems to lack the usual task manager visual bric-a-brac, instead opting for an interesting set of gestures for navigation”
The Verge

“The truth is that the gestures Clear takes for granted are the same ones we’re all starting to take for granted with touchscreen interfaces… Sure, an ancient Greek might be momentarily perplexed by a modern doorknob if he were to be teleported into the 21st century. But that doesn’t mean no one should have ever invented doorknobs.”
Fast Company Design

“Realmac product manager Nik Fletcher gave Ars a preview of the app on the show floor… Because of the app’s simplicity, though, it didn’t take him more than about 30 seconds to show us the entire functionality. That actually speaks volumes about the app’s design—it gets out of your way so you can spend more time doing and less time making lists and sorting them.”
Ars Technica

“While this isn’t a review, let’s just say that I wish every developer put this much time and attention into making apps that are intuitive and simple to use.”
TUAW

The response has been absolutely incredible. More after the break!

Continue reading →

January 26, 2012

Welcome to Impending, Inc., a new studio formed by Phill Ryu and David Lanham.

You probably don’t know of us by name, but there’s a chance you’re familiar with a product we’ve worked on in the past – MacHeist, The Heist, Classics and Twitterrific are our calling cards. We are crazy proud of them and especially proud of the millions of happy customers these products have served over the years.

But the two of us feel ready for something different. Despite some past success, we share an unshakable feeling that now is the time to take things to the next level.

So we formed a new studio. It’s called Impending, Inc. or Impending for short.

At Impending, we are going to tackle and wrangle into existence what we believe the near-future of apps should be, on our favorite devices.

We’re busy right now putting the finishing touches on our first creation with our friends Dan Counsell, who runs Realmac Software, and Milen Dzhumerov. It’s called Clear, and here’s a sneak peek:

Stay tuned by following us on twitter @impendinginc, and thanks for stopping by!

- Phill & David