

 Last week I asked about iOS components, today I released one. Feedback? - MartinMond
http://getsuperpin.com/

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jarpadat
I'm an iOS developer and I have 3-4 location-based products. Maybe I'm just
not in your target market, but this component doesn't solve any problem I
have. Seeing a bunch of dots that change places every time I zoom in is
visually jarring and not very helpful. Only in rare circumstances would I
prefer this visualization over seeing all the pins.

Now if you did a heatmap-type visualization, or had something that crossed
over more smoothly between "wide angle" and "close up" zooms, I would be
interested--that's actually a problem I would pay something for. But I would
be more interested in seeing the component large-format: iPad or Mac or Web.
Dashboard-type visualizations to monitor global infrastructure or something.
Because people aren't going to do a ten-inch pinch on a phone, they just want
to see the ten coffee shops on this street, and notation groups aren't needed
for that. But I might want to visualize the whole world's tweets on a
ginormous zoomable kiosk or do it in a presentation or a dashboard of my
customers or something.

Quite frankly I'm happy to pay for a UI component but I want the vendor to
have put in the time and effort to think about the UI so that I don't have to.
All the iOS APIs have a lot of thought put into the UI (pages and pages of
rationale in the documentation), and for a premium component that's your entry
bar. Grouped annotations sounds like the way I would initially try to solve
this problem, would prototype it and realize that it didn't work, and then try
heatmaps. Maybe heatmaps won't be an effective metaphor either. The value a
good premium component has on iOS is NOT that it's a cheaper component, but it
takes out a lot of design risk, a lot of bad prototypes. The point is, I'm
willing to pay great money for a great UI, and no money for a mediocre one.

The problem with your pricing is that the binary people will need more support
from you than the source code people (who can fix the problem themselves, and
optionally send you a patch). You need to price a few hours of support into
the low-end product especially, so $150 is too cheap. I might just drop that
product, as the source product is priced about right and is also a lower
support burden.

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MartinMond
Hope this isn't too much advertisement, but I got a coupon for YC readers:
HN25 for 25% off.

Btw, if you've got any questions don't hesitate and mail me at
martin@getsuperpin.com

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mtogo
You believe your little iOS component is worth $150-$600? That's about as much
as someone would pay for a fully-featured 3D game engine, something that
thousands of man-hours went in to making and that does an incredible ammount
of work for them-- and you're saying that a 1-week iOS component is worth
that?

I mean this in the most sincere way, good luck.

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jbrennan
I'd be really interested in hearing how Sales of this framework either A) Are
going currently or B) How they go eventually (if you are just launching this).

I've developed some nice components and libraries for iOS and I'm just
wondering how successful one can be selling these. I'd love to hear more about
this aspect.

~~~
MartinMond
We just launched. Can you drop me a mail at martin@getsuperpin.com? Would love
to talk.

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dreyfiz
This looks great, what a good idea! I’ve often found too many pins on iOS maps
annoying to deal with (most recently in the app "Eat Street"). I’ll definitely
keep Superpin in mind for any future map-based iOS projects.

I think the price is very fair.

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MartinMond
Thanks! Do you think people will go for the full source or the binary only
version?

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dreyfiz
I expect the binary-only version will account for most of your sales, since it
costs 75% less. Sales of the source version might depend on whether that
version also includes the right to modify it and redistribute your custom
version in your own apps, or is just a look-but-don’t-touch license. You may
laugh, but people do try to sell that. Which is it?

~~~
MartinMond
It's a modify-as-you-wish license. You're right I can't imagine that people
buy a look-but-don't-touch license.

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kmfrk
Wow, great innovation. I look forward to seeing pinned maps that are actually
useful.

I'm sure Apple are going to steal this eventually, though. :)

~~~
MartinMond
Well Will Shipley still makes a decent living after Apple stole the iBooks
design :)

~~~
jbrennan
I seem to feel they ripped of "Classics.app" more than anybody. That app uses
a bookshelf, to display ebooks for reading, just like iBooks.

Though there's a part of me thinking the designers for Classics.app asked
Shipley for permission, but maybe that's incorrect. It's just a feeling.

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huhtenberg
Binary-only version? $599 for the source code? Seriously?

(edit) To reprhase -- the pricing is basically broken.

No developer in his right mind would create a dependency on 3rd party binary
library, so the binary-only version is a no go ( _or_ you will sell it to the
clueless bunch and they will hammer your support to death).

The $599 needs to be broken down into multiple categories depending on the
projected usage and/or deployment numbers. A very cheap ($19 or thereabouts)
non-commercial use license is a must if you want devs to tinkle with your
library and see if it fits their prototypes well. Then give them N days to
upgrade to the commercial license _if_ they decide to publish the app. And
even then offer tiered licenses. Any given app may or may not get traction in
the AppStore, so paying $599 upfront is to assume that the app will succeed.
Bind the licensing terms to the number of downloads, and require upgrading one
tier up once certain number of downloads is reached... this sort of thing.
Essentially try and assume your customers' position and see what pricing model
would work (while keeping smaller dev shops in mind).

~~~
esad
Red Laser is doing something similar, and being on the other side (we were
developing an app that needed to use barcode scanning) I strongly disliked the
idea that I have to share my sales data with them. There are also cases where
agencies are doing development for their clients and have no overview over
sales once they finish the app. Communicating to clients that they have to pay
% of sales to some library vendor might be very hard.

Superpin is not an app, and even as a component (in difference to something
like an flash/ActiveX chart component) it has a very limited market (iOS devs
doing something with maps and needing to handle lot of annotations) and with
sale volumes we're projecting, pricing it down to something like $19 would
never pay off for the time that went into developing it.

Clustering annotations is not all too hard, but it's certainly not a trivial
problem and it will take even an experienced developer (such developer should
be charging at least $100/h) a day or two to do it right. If you can buy a
well-tested off the shelf solution for this money, why not do that instead?
This is basically the thinking behind our "big" price.

~~~
huhtenberg
$19 is for a license that allows playing with the library, but not publishing
the app. A preview license if you will, just to let people see if your stuff
is what they actually need.

> _If you can buy a well-tested off the shelf solution for this money, why not
> do that instead?_

Sure, but who is to say that it is well-tested? That's exactly what the
preview license is for. But all in all, gotta tell you that you have a tough
task in front of you. What do you think the size of your target market? I am
going to guess that it is quite limited (in fact, you said it yourself), so
your best bet here is to try and land a sale to a very large developer or into
a massively popular app. In either case you _need_ tiered pricing to fully
utilize the opportunity. Think about it. Been there myself a few years ago
trying to sell sophisticated networking libraries (that is a much larger niche
than yours) and it is _tough_ , really tough.

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DerekH
This looks so cool. When I click on one of the +50 buttons, does it expand the
pins?

~~~
MartinMond
Of course :) Have you tried the demo? We've clustered all the airports in the
world (~40k) and it's fast

~~~
DerekH
Thanks, I'll have to try out the demo. I don't have an iOS device available,
but I should try it out in the emulator. Also, when I touch a cluster, does
the map zoom in and show the pins in the area?

~~~
esad
This behaviour is implemented with few lines of code in the sample app, but we
should probably make this the default behaviour in the framework itself with
an option to override it.

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conradev
<http://www.cocoanetics.com/parts/dtclustermaker/>

