VengefulCynic

To my mind, it's not a huge market, but purists definitely exist. Do they justify the cost? It seems worth analyzing, but it's definitely a big cost if you want to stay cross-platform but use native tools.

Much as I would like to give Gruber credit for asking about the developer relationship with the App Store at the top of the interview, the question really felt like a softball. I know he's got a relationship to preserve, but Hey is one hell of an elephant in the room to let pass without a follow-up question.

As an Iowan who has had the dubious pleasure of having used Shadow's software, I would like a lot of scrutiny directed at both Shadow and their software.

I worked as a Precinct Captain for one of the Caucuses in Iowa last night, and I didn't personally have any issues. But I heard from colleagues who definitely did. Also, yesterday we got an email with a 7-page google doc instructing us on how to reset the browser caches on our phones to avoid issues with data carry-over from the Mock Caucuses that we had been holding.

It's entirely possible that my ability to follow directions and my status as Not-an-Octegenarian-Caucus-Volunteer is all that kept me out of trouble.

As a software guy, all I can say for sure is that I'm overwhelmingly grateful that we kept paper backups so we don't have to rely on this software.

By way of talking my own book, I would note that the experience of having a big-screen tv, surround sound, and your PS4 on the plane is nothing to sneeze at.

As someone who puts in-flight entertainment systems in private jets, the only common thing I've seen in the ownership groups is an ability to afford the price tag. There are definitely a lot of buyers who are getting into this for time gains, but there are also buyers who are simply interested in privacy, luxury, or some peace and quiet. I ended up having to troubleshoot an in-flight issue on a ~$60 million private jet and the investment in sound-proofing insulation is totally worth it.

Large defense contracts tend to span large numbers of Congressional Districts in order to enable the sort of economic protectionism that keeps the F-35 and JTRS funded to the tune of billions of dollars, in spite of cost overruns and schedule deficiencies.

I would be shocked if this lead to significant site consolidation due to the backlash that this would cause from Congress. If anything, this will enable Raytheon (the company with more defense content) to use United Technologies facilities to create a larger network of appreciative Congressmen for large projects.

Within the financial services industry, there are significant monetary incentives for whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of malfeasance. The SEC offers something like 0.5% of recovered funds, which can amount to millions of dollars... which is important because even with the protections afforded by Dodd-Frank, it's a very real possibility that you won't work in the finance industry again.

By contrast, while it might not be a permanent career-ending event for an engineer to blow the whistle at an engineering company, it holds the significant risk of ending the engineer's career at that company. Not to mention lawsuits and the cost of finding a new job. Most every engineer I know wants to do the right thing... but those are powerful headwinds. So on the mere suspicion of misfeasance or malfeasance, the prospect of losing a job and being embroiled in a lawsuit serves as a powerful deterrent.

People will point out (correctly) that adding financial incentives will inevitably lead to a combination of malicious compliance and misreporting, so there's a line that has to be drawn. Also, protections in private sector are either toothless or come with expensive oversight, but it's clear that if the government wants more whistleblowing from the ranks of normal engineers (and that's a big 'if'), they probably need to do something more to cause it to happen besides just keep asking.

  “There is no loyalty in business, Ashley.
  You’re a single mom. You have a family and you owe it to them to see this Microsoft interview through.”

A truth that is not repeated nearly often enough by employees.

Obviously going out of his way to implement in a secure way as a software practitioner. I would love to see a review of the design and implementation from the standpoint of a security expert.

  Smile is doing this because they have to

100% agree. I feel that a lot of the commentary on this (mine included) has left out the fact that Smile is a classy company owned by a classy bunch of developers that have always done well by the community. They sponsor podcasts, they provide top-notch Mac/iOS apps, and they do excellent customer service. If they've changed their cost structure to $50/yr/customer, it doesn't reflect well on the App Store's monetization model.

TextExpander has always been straddling the markets of "casual consumer with $20 to spend on an app that reduces pain" and "professional customer willing to spend $199 to reduce major time costs." It looks like they've decided to focus on their professional customers... I hope that this works out well for them.

As someone who doesn't need $5/month of TextExpander services, this also leaves me in the market for a new solution.

Looking at your pricing structure and FAQ, it looks like a better approach would be to discriminate based on number of properties, raise your monthly rate and just make it unlimited paperwork... 1-2 properties a month at $19/mo, 3-5 at $39, 6-20 at $99 and then a "slumlord" option. (or something like that... obviously it's your business and you know your own costs)

Mostly, it seems unnecessarily fiddly to have entries in your FAQ about an average number of pieces of paper and special rates on processing paperwork backlogs.

I know way too many developers whose understanding of server infrastructure only extends as far as the API for S3. Marco's advice is dead-on: learn the nuts and bolts rather than becoming reliant on a leaky abstraction. You can always specialize to a specific cloud host after you understand the basics... much harder to go the other way if you've made your app reliant on Amazon or Rackspace-specific services.