Luminary

News has it that Vesper is shutting down. The application itself is obviously well-engineered so the root cause can be attributed to either founder burnout or an insufficiently built business case.

From my observations the iOS ecosystem is currently consisted of the following categories:

1. Utilities that complement a client-server workflow, i.e. Calendar, Mail, Twitter.
2. Applications that allow consumption of media or time, i.e. Infinity Blade, Movies, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube.
3. Utilities that encapsulate a complete workflow and optionally allow sharing of interim editable versions elsewhere, i.e. OmniGraffle, Word, Excel.
4. Utilities that encapsulate a complete workflow but do not allow editable versions to be shared elsewhere, i.e. iMovie.

You’re in deep trouble if the only iOS product you have is also the only product you have. UIKit is a superior choice to HTML and App Store superior to Nginx when it comes to application design, development and delivery, but I still firmly hold the belief that iOS applications are either loss leaders or loss generators, that iOS devices themselves are thick terminals, and that a proper iOS execution strategy must be backed with a useful service either involving real world consequences (i.e. get a ride or get groceries delivered), or a wider cross-platform strategy (i.e. build your document on one platform, revise on another).

The only outlier category I can currently envision to be entirely immune from serving a single platform is the category in which utilities exploit the unique form factor of the devices and/or the underlying operating system (e.g. on-premise, real-time audio mixing and playback). Gluing a keyboard onto an iPad does not make it a Mac.