Solo Acts: Marco Arment and his podcast app Overcast

For the final episode of our Solo Acts mini series, Ashley Esqueda talks with Marco Arment about being a solo app developer, going from Tumblr to Instapaper to his own podcast app Overcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:26Alex Cranz?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of podcast apps. I know, that's a surprise. I didn't know it either. I'm your friend Alex Cranz, and today we have a new episode of our solo acts miniseries, which features interviews from people who are working independently to create great things on the internet. Every Monday on The Vergecast, our friend Ashley Iskada has been curating and hosting these interviews, and this is the final one. Oh, no, I'm very bummed. This is the last one, but also very excited.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  So sad, but also, yes, very excited. Very excited.

• 0:55Alex Cranz?

  You saved some really cool stuff for this one, right?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Yes, my final interview for the solo acts miniseries is a friend of The Verge, the one and only Marco Arment.

• 1:06Alex Cranz?

  All right, so Marco makes, he makes his own podcasting app?

• 1:10Speaker 02

  He does. He makes Overcast. And so he's responsible for apps listeners have almost certainly heard of, so Overcast and also Instapaper, which I know is a very popular app, one of those top five read later apps. But what they may not be aware of is that those apps were created by a single person, and that person is Marco. So Instapaper is no longer a solo developer effort. It has changed hands a few times over the years. But Overcast is still, in fact, being developed for and managed by Marco by himself. So it was really, really cool to hear him talk about his journey to solo app development and what kinds of freedoms and limitations he has while he walks that path,

• 1:55Speaker 02

  and how he feels app development has really changed over the years. So I really hope you enjoy my chat with him.

• 2:01Alex Cranz?

  I am so excited to listen to this chat. I can't wait to get to it.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Marco, thank you for being here today.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Okay, we got to start at the beginning. Why tech? Why become a developer? Who did this to you?

• 2:25Speaker 03

  I feel like I kind of had no other choice. I've always been a huge nerd, ever since I got my first computer in middle school. And I wasn't very good at the rest of my schoolwork. So here we are. I kind of fell into this as a job. And thank goodness for that, because I was not a very good student or worker in other areas. But I've just kind of always wanted to do this. It's always come very naturally to me. I love it. I love the world of tech. I love programming. I love being a tech enthusiast of all the cool gear and computers that we get to play with and use. And audio gear, too, has always been a thing of mine. So it all kind of came together over the years. And here we are.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  We're just about the same age. I think we're like a year apart from each other. So you are part of, as I like to refer to it, because I think it's my favorite name, you're part of the Oregon Trail generation. And I'm sure you played much Oregon Trail in the late 80s and early 90s at school. I feel like most of the kind of millennia, older millennials that I know are like very like very kind of locked into tech specifically because of that. It almost feels, but also there's a skepticism there because we remember the days before we were connected to the internet at every second of the day.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. And I think tech for a lot of us was a peaceful break from the world. Because if, to be an enthusiast, to be a nerd about anything in the 90s was really uncool.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  So uncool.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Especially to be a techner. Now it's much more mainstream. Thank goodness for that. But back then, it was like, in mass culture, it was not cool to love anything and to especially be good at anything or to be smart at anything. And so tech was where we would retreat to from the hostile world that didn't like us very much. And so we guard this jealously. Like, we are so into our world of tech, or at least the world that we used to have of tech, that we're trying to keep going in the modern world. But it meant a lot to us back then. And I think those feelings continue to the present day. Because this was what kept our minds safe and sane during that time when it was pretty hard to be a nerd.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  So, okay, fast forward to launching Tumblr. So you build and launch Tumblr with David Karp. It becomes really successful. But you decide, even when user growth is continuing to go up in 2010, you pull a Seinfeld. I'm going to call it a pull a Seinfeld. You're leaving while it's like, kind of moving. It's at the top. Then you leave while the app's still hot to launch Instapaper. So what was the reason to leave at that point? Especially because the app was still growing?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  It was really more about where the company was in its growth and what it needed from my role. And it was, you know, David and I kept the company very small for very long, probably too long in retrospect. I think even he would agree with that. Where it was, he and I were the only programmers for the first few years. And then eventually we broadened out. But it was, it was a very small team for a while longer than it would have been in most cases back then. And that was mainly just because we, you know, we were control freaks to some degree. And, and we didn't really want to, at any point, take a break to have to go hire people. That's, you know, that's a complicated and difficult and time consuming process. And so we kind of never had the time. And so the company kind of grew all of a sudden. And because we had restricted it for so long.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  And as the company was about to explode in, in growth of, you know, employees and complexity and time and usage, we both realized like, you know, what my specialty is here is being like, the, like, the one backend programmer who like owns everything. You like, think Guilfoyle from Silicon Valley. Like, that was kind of like, you know, my area of expertise there. And Tumblr was about to need that role to become much more of a people manager. And that's not in my skill set, nor do I really want it to. Like, it's not something I would enjoy or be good at. And so we both realized, like, you know, you know, if I had something else to do, this is a good time to go do it. And coincidentally, I did have something else to do. Because that whole time on the side, like, the App Store and the iPhone were really ramping up. This was, you know,

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Right. A couple of years after the App Store started, right? Because it was iPhone 2007 and then App Store a year later. And then, you know, this is like a couple of years into the, the birth of the iPhone. So, and the App Store. So this is like a very exciting time for solo app development.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Exactly. And I was in that world from day one with Instapaper, which was, you know, it started out as just this little side web project with this horrible web interface that I had made, you know, in the evening one day. But I was there on day one with Instapaper and it was just something I was just doing on the side and it was really taking off, but I still had my day job at Tumblr. And at Tumblr, I wasn't involved with the iOS app at all. I was doing all the server backend stuff. And meanwhile, I'm falling in love with iOS app development during this time. Like it's taken off like crazy, 2008 to 2010. Like, and I had this great app going on the side. And so as the Tumblr role changed to the point where I was going to have to either become a boss or start putting some more bosses above me, David and I realized, you know what? Let's part ways here. Everything's cool. You know, we're on good terms.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Nothing's gone bad. Like, this is a good time to bring in somebody else to this role. And I'm going to go do the app thing because that's kind of where my heart was going anyway. And so I went off on my own to take Instapaper, which was already, it was already established. I would never have had the guts to do it if it wasn't. But I took it on my own and I've been independent ever since. That was, that was late 2010 and I'm now pretty much unemployable by anybody, both because I wouldn't tolerate anyone else's crap and also because I'm probably at this point too old for any startup to want to hire me.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  We're going to take a quick break and then come back and talk about the launch of Overcast.

• 8:10Speaker 00

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• 8:59Speaker 02

  Okay, we're back and I have Alex Krantz with me.

• 9:02Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so I gotta ask, it's the summer of 2014. Marco is about to launch Overcast. I kind of know what podcasting was like because I was making my own really terrible one then. And I thought that was going to be the peak of podcasting, but it wasn't, right?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  It is actually kind of amazing how prescient Marco's launch of Overcast is because he launches Overcast officially in July of 2014.

• 9:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  And there were already some very popular podcasts happening at this point. So there was the Ricky Gervais Show and the Adam Carolla Show and Comedy Bang Bang. But there was one in particular that was about to crack the entire podcasting industry wide open. Alex, what podcast do you think that is? I'm going to give you a guess.

• 9:46Alex Cranz?

  It was totally my podcast that hasn't been on the air since 2014, right? No, it wasn't. It wasn't?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  You did it.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  It was Serial.

• 9:55Alex Cranz?

  Yes!

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Serial hit podcasts in October of the same year. So really, really amazing timing on Marco's part. I don't know if he's got a crystal ball or some sort of psychic that he refers to or asks questions about launching his apps. So that was a really good time to launch a podcast app.

• 10:14Alex Cranz?

  How was he this prescient?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  You are in luck because I asked him exactly that. I said, why choose a podcasting app in particular to develop? So let's dive back in with Marco.

• 10:26Speaker 03

  Honestly, I didn't think I was doing much disruption doing the podcast app. You know, I didn't think this was an area that was going to have massive growth the way it did. It seemed like this nerdy, you know, passion project that I was going to do as a labor of love that would maybe make some money, maybe. But I wasn't sure if it would have a lot of legs to it long term. I did it because I was super into podcasts at that time and still am and was even for a long time before that. And I just wasn't very happy with podcast apps that I was using up to that point. And the world of podcast apps was still fairly young. You know, it had only been a couple of years since Apple had allowed them at all.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  There was a weird brief time in the in the early App Store days where Apple wouldn't allow apps that quote duplicated existing functionality. So any functionality that was provided by built-in Apple apps, you were kind of sort of sometimes not allowed to make apps that did the same thing.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  They fortunately quickly realized that was a stupid policy.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Well, and also, I mean, that podcast app was, let's all be honest, it wasn't great. That that initial one was.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Well, at the at first, it was it was just like a tab in the iPod app. Like, we would just play music from this app that was the iPod app on the phone. And so anyway, so I wasn't happy with the apps that were out there. And because I'm a nerd and I like podcasts a lot, I was like, you know, I think I'm gonna make my own.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Overcast itself, you've been doing this for almost 10 years, or pretty close to 10 years at this point. So working on Overcast, and you're still doing this solo. How do you compete with the giants of the podcasting app world? I mean, how do you how do you set yourself apart as an app?

• 12:02Speaker 03

  I think that that value has changed over time. And when Overcast first came out, the competitive landscape was, you know, the big Apple Podcast app that everyone used, and it was okay. And then you had all these other like power user apps that were very nerdy. They were very complicated. You had like these walls of settings and everything. And they usually, you know, were not super attractive either, if I'm honest. And, you know, it was, it was a very kind of, you know, very nerdy power user world that was not very accessible. And so I wanted to have a really good balance of like, I want to offer powerful features and customization, but not in such a way that causes me to have pages and pages of settings and all these confusing, hacky, ugly UIs and stuff like that. And so that was part of my appeal back then. But then over time, it has shifted, you know, as the world has gotten bigger in podcasting, we've had a lot more

• 12:46Speaker 03

  entrance into the world by, you know, larger entities, by Spotify being a big one, of course. And of course, and Apple has, of course, moved along since then. But as those entities have come into the the market, they have goals that are different from the goals that I have, and that are not always aligned with the goals of the customer or the listener. You know, like many of these apps, they'll have various, you know, they'll want you to upsell to something, or they'll want to use their recommendation engine to like force some content on you. And it's same thing with like streaming. On TV where they know like if they bury the thing you want to see below the fold, then you'll have to go through the top stuff first. They can promote more stuff to you. And, and all of that is, is a little bit customer hostile. And so Overcast is designed kind of to satisfy, you know, two, two main themes.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Number one is like, I am not doing things in the app to benefit myself over my customers. You know, it, the app serves the customers. It serves what you want because what you want is what I want. Cause I'm a podcast listener. And number two is that I am a podcast listener. That, that's a big thing here because if you look at, for instance, listening to podcasts in Spotify, uh, or some of the other big apps that have launched in the last few years, it's not clear to me if these were, if these are used by podcast listeners, if they're designed by podcast listeners, it seems like they're designed by people who learned the podcast existed six months earlier and just wanted to take as much money out of the market as they could.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  And they don't seem like they are designed by podcast lovers.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  It seems designed by data is what I like to call a lot of stuff where it's like, oh, this is designed by some analytics that a team did. And, um, we think this is what people want, even though none of us are those types of people. Like we can look at the data and, and decide like what we think they want. And a lot of times it's, it's not quite, it kind of misses the mark.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  Exactly. And, and it also, it seems like a lot of these new apps and new designs are coming in from the point of view of somebody who just is getting into podcasts without trying to understand the market first. They're, they're getting into the market as an opportunistic move, not as like, hey, maybe I actually love podcasts and want to, you know, listen to them myself. Like there's a, there's been a lot of that throughout podcasting history of, you know, people will hear that there is something going on over there and they won't like or listen to podcasts themselves, but they'll want to somehow get a piece of that. And that usually does not land very well with people like us who actually love the medium and have been here for long enough to know what makes it good and, and what we're looking for here. And so that's what, you know, I think what sets Overcast apart today is it is designed by a podcast lover

• 15:11Speaker 03

  for podcast lovers and it puts your needs above any kind of weird data analytics, tracking promotional algorithm kind of stuff.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  I am really curious about what you've learned as a solo app developer that may have surprised you.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  I think what has been the biggest surprise is the increased politicalization, if that's a word, of the podcasting world and the media landscape as a whole. This is something that, again, when I was getting into this world, it was very nerdy still. It was mostly the handful of nerd enthusiasts who were there in the early days, like pre-Cereal, pre-Joe Rogan. It was a very different world back then, and that world is still there. Thank goodness, that's my favorite part of it. But it's now a much larger world that encompasses way more people, way more kinds of people from different walks of life and different backgrounds and different cultures and everything else.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  And so we've had to contend with issues in podcasting that I didn't expect that we would have to. So for instance, one of the very first big issues I had to deal with was there was a large conservative podcast that eventually became so off the deep end in terms of it was spouting some dangerous untrue rhetoric that was causing real harm. And eventually, the platforms all blocked it, or delisted it, rather, from their promotional directories. And I was getting all sorts of pressure to do the same thing in Overcast. And the way I had built things from the beginning was I'd just look at Apple's directory, because they maintain it, they have human editors to check to make sure there's not a bunch of spam or illegal content going in there.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  And of course, being one person as the entire company and app developer, I can't have a staff of people who speak all the languages of the world and can review all these submissions and deal with certain disputes and everything like that. So I have to rely on them for that. And there was an incident a few years ago where Apple didn't delist this podcast for a few days after the crowd kind of brought it to our attention and was demanding its delisting. And so I jumped the gun and I delisted it first. Because I was like, you know what, I don't want my platform to be causing harm. This is the last thing I want to be promoting in my search listings and stuff like that. And so I created and then used a flag that said, you know what, even though this podcast exists in Apple Podcasts, I don't want it showing up in my search results anymore. And so I hit that flag about a day before Apple hit it on their end.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  And that threw me into this world of angry one star reviews and

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  controversy that there are still, I mean, this was probably four or five years ago. There are still people to this day who every time I issue an update, they'll go update their one star review to say, you know, still one star censorship, you know, all these, all these, you know, kind of hot button words. And I don't regret doing that. I would, I would do this exact same thing if it was presented to me today, but that's the kind of thing that I didn't expect to have to deal with when I was making this 10 years ago, thinking I'm making a podcast app for other nerds like me. And that, the need for that has only grown, you know? We have, obviously in our modern media landscape, podcasts have gotten much bigger and the podcast audience has gotten much bigger and we have, we are, we, we keep having more and more points like that or where like there's some dispute about whether a podcast should be listed, whether somebody should be deplatformed or, or hidden from search or hidden from

• 18:26Speaker 03

  recommendations. And those are really tough, hairy problems that nerds like me are not good at dealing with. And I was, I was hoping to be able to outsource those to Apple because they are better at dealing with it, but sometimes that problem falls on me anyway. And I, and I wish it didn't have to, but that's the reality of doing business in today's, you know, media world.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about the current landscape of app development.

• 18:59Speaker 04

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• 19:34Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm back with Alex Cranz.

• 19:36Alex Cranz?

  All right, so we're coming up on the 15th anniversary of the launch of Apple's App Store this summer. And Marco's been there since like the beginning, right? And it was so different between now and 15 years ago. And people have some really high expectations for apps today compared to like 10, 15 years ago when you didn't care. Like, I had one Solitaire app, now there's a billion, and they all suck.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, my Slot Machine Casino apps are out of control on my 1,500, actually, it's got to be more than 1,500 clones of Candy Crush, right? It's like, just some outrageous number.

• 20:13Alex Cranz?

  And you will always click on an ad when you're trying to click on one of the little...

• 20:17Speaker 02

  I'm feeling my blood pressure go up just thinking about it.

• 20:20Alex Cranz?

  So I bet Marco's got some really keen insight into this transformation, given that he experienced all of it.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  He definitely does. So let's jump back in to hear what he said about how creating apps has changed over the last 15 years.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  You know, the world of app development used to be its own little thing, and now it's the whole world. The app development, it's gotten so big that now just so much of everyday communication and media and commerce is now flowing through apps and people doing things with their phones. And that wasn't the case in 2008, when this all started. And everything has scaled to match that, the complexity, the costs, the competition. This is part of the reason why I think the epic trials is interesting is because Apple's original argument back forever ago when they launched the App Store, I think, holds a lot more water than it does today in terms of what people are allowed to do, what they are required to comply with, what fees they're required to pay. That made more sense back

• 21:15Speaker 03

  when it was closer to a game console or closer to, quote, an app console. Whereas now, it's like, this is such a major part of commerce and society that I think some regulation is probably needed. But to directly answer the question, I guess, everything, the requirements are bigger everywhere. So people's expectations are bigger. People expect, for instance, that, first of all, everything has to be free. Like, that's number one. Is like you have an app that charges money for anything, there better be a really good reason for that. And you're going to have a ton of people, if any paywall you put up, you got to assume almost nobody will go over it. So you had your free version has to be really good. And that's going to be the majority experience of your app. That's why like, you know, when I did my free version, Overcast has always been free.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  And I've always, I've had various, you know, schemes over the years to try to make any kind of money from it. And I went through a bunch at the beginning that didn't work very well. But I eventually settled on this model where I had these ads that would promote podcasts in Overcast. And, and when I made the system, you know, I did it all myself. I very briefly had like a Google ad unit in the app and I was trying to figure out my business model and I hated it. I hated those ads. I hated having to bundle the Google stuff in my app and I hated not knowing what they were doing with the data. And frankly, the ads were terrible as well, like the quality of the app was terrible. So when I finally figured out like this, putting my, you know, ads for podcasts in there, I made the whole system myself and it uses pretty much no data. It's like, it's a very simple thing. And this was something that, you know, I had the luxury being one person.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  I have the luxury to do things like if a, you know, ad buyer writes in to say, hey, could you give us demographic information on, on the people? I can just say, nope, sorry, don't, I don't collect it. I'm not going to collect it. That's it. Like, I don't have any pressure from other people telling me, we, we just sold this big deal and you're required to now try to get, you know, geographic targeting and stuff. And it's like, I can just do things how I want to, and I know exactly all the data that I'm collecting and not collecting. And like, you know, the privacy policy, I wrote it myself. And I based it on other people, so I made sure I wasn't missing anything. But, you know, I, I know, because I've written all the code, I know everything I'm collecting and everything I'm not collecting. And I don't have to like worry, am I accidentally, am I missing something? Am I violating something, not knowing what I'm doing? Nope, I know everything that's in there.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  But being one person in this modern world, people expect apps to have tons of functionality. They expect it all to be free and they expect all sorts of things like, you know, sync, cloud versions. They expect, you know, for, for an iOS app, it's, it's got to have an Apple Watch app. It's got to have iPad and maybe even Mac. It's got to have widgets, you know, it's got to have Siri integration and, and all these different system level features it has to have. You have to have some kind of web presence so that links can be sent around. And then you can maybe have an app clip if you really go nuts. Or you can have at least rich previews for when people message your links. And you're supposed to have some kind of growth marketing efforts where you're trying to get new customers.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  And that's increasingly difficult as there's way, way, way more competition for everything than there ever was before. And so those are the areas where like, it can be hard as one person to compete in those areas. If you're not doing something, if you're not being very careful choosing what not to do. And that's the only reason I'm able to compete at all is that I very aggressively prune my idea list and other people's request lists down to what I can actually do as one person. And so there's certain features that I'm never going to offer. Like for instance, there is no way anywhere in Overcast that you can write text that will be visible to other users. Because that requires moderation and that's a huge can of worms that you open up. Huge potential for abuse and spam and things.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  And so there's no way to review podcasts in Overcast. And people often ask, hey, how can I leave a review for the podcast? And I have to say, no, sorry, I'm not going to do that feature. I can't do that feature.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  I think it speaks to, to go back to what you were talking about, about why you left Tumblr. Once you start adding staff, then you're managing more than you're doing. Right? So it's, it kind of also comes back to that where it's like, that's the reason you left a corporation, a company. You know, that because there was that tipping point of, well, now I'm going to have to manage and I'd rather do and be really hands on. And, you know, why would you want to go back to that if that's the whole reason you walked away from it in the first place? You know?

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And not only that, but that's, not only is it a different job, it's a different skillset. You know, like you can't, one of the big problems our industry has had for a long time and companies have tried to solve it in various ways. Is like, you know, when you advance in your career, oftentimes the only way to advance to the next level is to become a manager. And that's not the path for everybody. And, you know, so, you know, good companies have found ways to make, you know, individual contributor paths that are not into management. But, you know, because that's, they realize that's a whole different skillset. And so, you know, not only would I, would I not want to be a manager of a staff, I also would be terrible at it. Whereas like, I'm pretty decent at making an app. And so I'm just going to, I'm going to stick with what I'm decent at and try to avoid this messy hairy area where I think I would do more harm than good.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  How do you keep all the plates spinning? Because you're not just a solo app developer. You don't just work on Overcast. You're podcasting. You've got multiple podcasts that you work on and you do other things. So how do you keep all of those plates spinning? Like, what is your personal process for time management and self-discipline?

• 26:30Speaker 03

  If I ever find it, I'll let you know. I don't.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  That's a great answer. Spoken like a true freelancer.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, you know, part of the reason why I'm more compatible with self-employment than I ever was with regular employment is that I'm terrible at disciplined work hours. I would go into my job and I would be there from nine to five, but I was not really working that whole time and it didn't really fit the way my brain works.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, those are not necessarily people's most productive hours of the day.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Right, and people aren't necessarily going to have the same productivity every day during that same time at the same level, you know? I've always worked in bursts and I can get just a ton of great work done for like three hours one day and then do nothing of any value for the next two weeks. Like, that's how I've always worked in the kind of erratic patterns.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  We have that in common.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think it's common among nerds, actually.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Maybe it is, yeah. Just I feel like we're kindred spirits in that. I'm a person who's like, wow, I just blacked out and got like just an absolutely bonkers amount of work done in four hours, two weeks' worth of work, and now I will do nothing for four days.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Yep, it's exactly, and that's how I've always worked. And so it was always a little hard to try to like wedge my actual brain into the expectations of a nine to five job. And I was very lucky to have very understanding bosses, really, you know, in the grand scheme of things. But ultimately, the independent life fits me better when I'm motivated to work on a certain project. You know, obviously, I do podcasts, as you mentioned, and so those have schedules. And so that's, that kind of keeps me grounded, so I at least know what day of the week it is. But otherwise, like for coding work, it's pretty much when I'm inspired and when I have the time and the concentration to do it. And that's a bunch of pretty big conditions. So it doesn't happen regularly and I used to feel terrible about that. I used to just feel bad, like I'm not working the way I should. I'm not doing enough work, you know, I'm a slacker or whatever else.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Because that was my whole school career was being told that, basically. Again, probably something that's not super uncommon among nerds. But I've come in more recent times to just accept this is just how I work. And I'll try, I'll work within it as best as I can. And, you know, I'll try not to pass all those insecurities along to my kid along the way, who seems to be working in a very similar way as I am so far. I juggle it kind of poorly, but it ends up coming out OK, largely because I think a huge amount of the actual work that gets done in my field didn't have to get done. There's a huge amount of wasted effort of, you know, either people doing things in inefficient ways, or people working on the wrong problems,

• 29:08Speaker 03

  or putting more work into a problem than it justifies.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Protecting your time, I think, is a really good theme for today's episode. And on that note, I'm not going to take any more of yours. But before we go, I do want to mention, you, as I've said, are a podcaster. And so I would love for you to tell people where they can find your work online and enjoy it.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  Sure. So my main show is called ATP, the Accidental Tech Podcast. And we talk mostly about like, Apple and tech news of the week. We are super nerdy. And if you are into that, atp.fm is our site for that.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Delightful. Thanks, Marco.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Once again, just a huge thank you to Marco Arment for talking to me about his whole entire career, basically, and having a lot of fun in the process. Alex, did you have a good time?

• 30:03Alex Cranz?

  I had the best time. I'm honestly pretty bummed that this is the end of the mini-series.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's only one thing you can do, which is have me back at some point.

• 30:12Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, we're going to do duets. The next one will be duets, just two people.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Duets and trios.

• 30:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  I mean, we could just keep going.

• 30:19Alex Cranz?

  We could just keep going until we're like at Twitter size. That won't take very long, the way Twitter is going.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it'll meet, it'll sort of cross at some point in the middle. There'll be a convergence. It'll be, it'll work out really well.

• 30:30Alex Cranz?

  It'll be fun. Well, thank you again, Ashley. This has been a wonderful time spending with you. I've learned way too much, but I've had an exciting time. So thank you so, so much.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  I am very glad to have had all of the guests that we spoke to. And if anybody is super curious, or if you missed any of the previous interviews, you can go back, you can listen to them. I talked to the founder of Hive Social, Raluka Pop. I talked to Alan Klein. He created micriblocator.com. I talked to a solo game developer, Madison Carr, about her game Birth and the state of solo game development. And then I also talked to Tiny Makes Things, who is a custom keycap creator. If you're into mechanical keyboards, you can go catch any of those previous episodes. And I highly recommend you do if you haven't because they're really just such interesting people. Don't go for me. Go for them. Go listen to them.

• 31:20Alex Cranz?

  Thank you again, Ashley. And thank you all for listening because that's it. That's it for the show today. That's it for the SoloX mini-series. This whole thing was produced by Andrea Marino and Liam James. Brooke Mentors is our editorial director of audio. And The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And if you have thoughts and feedbacks and feelings and you want to know even more about SoloX, you can always email us at [email protected], or you can call the hotline at 866-VERGE11. Again, that's 866-VERGE11. We love to hear your questions and then try to answer them on the show. And we're going to be back again on Wednesday for an all new episode of The Vergecast. Until then, stay classy and thank you, Ashley.

• 32:11Speaker 05

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