Ship It
Posted on
One of my favorite quotes:
Real artists ship. — Steve Jobs
Today I shipped Cheddar for Mac. I'm not happy with it. I actually really hate it. It lacks all of the polish and details that Cheddar for iOS has.
I think the polish and details are what makes Cheddar great. It's such a simple app, that is the only thing that sets it apart.
I've been sitting on Cheddar for Mac for months. There haven't been any big changes in a long time because I haven't had time to work on it. (More on that here.) In the App Store, you can only have a name reserved for so long. I got the email from Apple saying I had 30 days or I could never use the name "Cheddar" in the Mac App Store again.
After thinking about it for awhile, I decided shipping was better than polishing forever. I would rather have it be awesome, but if I had to pick between awesome and no one ever seeing it and it being okay and lots of people enjoying it, I would obviously pick the latter.
I suck at shipping sometimes. When I'm not happy with a product's quality, it ruins my attitude on the whole project. There is a balance between putting out crap and polish. The right spot on that spectrum is what makes great products.