AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers
Malin and Kai, creators of Orbit.
Malin and Kai, work and live together in Vancouver Canada. Their company is called Triple Glazed Studios. Their main product is called Orbit. They are two very enjoyable people to talk with and they have travelled around the world together. Listen in on our conversation and hear how they got started in tech and how they ended up where they are right now.
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So I'm sitting here with Marlene and Kai from the cup of tech podcast, but also from orbit, a product that both of them are working on. And it's an interesting story that the two of them actually share. Because not only are they partners in business, but they're also partners in life. And yeah, well, let's just begin and see where we'll end up. So, Molina chi Hi, welcome. Thank you. So. So Marlene, just to start with you, because we had the first contact on this whole recording thing. What made you get into software development?
Malin:Okay, I always struggle keeping this concise and like making making it short, but I guess I, I sort of, am not really like, traditionally, when I was growing up, I didn't really use computers that much. I wasn't like a power user, like many developers finger. But I think when I started using a Mac, I think was in high school. That's when I really started thinking that like technology was a very, like, interesting area. So I always I really enjoyed using my MAC, I started enjoying other Apple products. And then I still didn't move over to development. At that point, I started studying psychology and sociology in university. And this actually goes together with case studies, I'm going to talk a bit about you too. So I started out studying that chi studied business. But then chi took a course in computer science, because he had a general elective that he could take. And then I saw his assignments. And I was like, wow, that actually looks really interesting. And I'd always I'd always been really interested in like, logical thinking, and like, the creative way of thinking. And also, like I was quite interested in in like that part of math, like the logical thinking part of math and the sort of problem solving part. And so I saw case assignments. And I was like, wow, that seems really interesting. And then I actually ended up deciding to take the same course the year after. And that year, I took that one course, and then ended up just changing and doing computer science instead. But I think at that point, I sort of felt like, I'd been missing out on this like technology area for a long time throughout my sort of childhood. So I sort of went quite like full in on it and decided to spend quite a lot of my time, all of my free time just learning about technology learning development. So that was sort of like that course, was the entry point. But after that, I pretty much Continue, continue doing a lot of things like everything I did was somewhat related to take, and that I picked up iOS development, as well.
Jeroen Leenarts:And how many years ago did all of this occur?
Malin:So I think this was probably eight years ago, I think. I started thinking, I started doing iOS development When Swift came out. So that's like six years ago. But then I already done some other development. So yeah, I don't swift UI, sorry, I don't swift and iOS development. Since swift came out, I sort of thought that was a good entry point to get started. Objective C was not as nice of a language, but I did end up having to learn that afterwards. So I think it's good to know both Swift and Objective C, but now I spent most time with Swift and swift UI as well.
Jeroen Leenarts:Cool. And car you were already mentioned a couple of times. This bit of backstory by Marlon. So what's your story in all of this?
Kai:Yeah, now I got to figure out how to how to fill in the gaps with my part of the story. So I was always super interested in technology, like from from very early on, I disassembled like every single toy I had that had batteries and I had to take apart figure out how it all works and put it back together. My family was very much not into technology. So it took a lot of convincing to to get a computer in our house household. My my, my family thought that was a waste of money. Same for the internet. It's like no one no one wants to spend money on an internet connection. So I had to jump through a lot of hoops so it like weird. I actually used a video game console like a Sega Dreamcast because it had a built in modem and I use that whenever my my parents will leave the house to connect it to online to get access to internet. So I was always really into technology, but for some reason, I didn't think I should go into development. I don't really know why. It was just a thing as I thought doesn't seem to be the right thing for me. So I started sewing business when I went to university. And before that, I actually did like a whole bunch of other like tech related jobs like I I first kind of fixed iPhones for friends and family, like, take them apart and fix the components. I was kind of. I feel
Malin:like you were always very interested in the hardware part of it. Yeah. Yeah.
Kai:Yeah. But then, because I didn't know what I should do you know, what do you study if you have no idea what you want to study business, so pick that. And then As Molly mentioned, when we moved from Sweden to Australia, the education system or the university system is very different there. So in Sweden, it's fairly rigid and and kind of your the university provides you with your schedule, and you kind of go go through that degree, kind of more like high school in a way. While in Australia, it's a lot more flexible, you have general electives, you can pick courses you want to take and choose which ones you don't want to take. So at some point, a friend convinced me Hey, you should really try this computer science thing. I'm sure you'll love it. Okay, might as well give it a shot. And it was amazing. Like, all the other parts were way more annoying, like the business part was always feeling a bit like it dried. But this was just I enjoyed doing it. It was just a fun thing to do. I did super well it at a time had like the highest score that they've ever had. And of course, I was like, Cool. That seems like a way easier way of getting a degree of doing things that are actually fun and super easy to do, rather than writing a whole bunch of long articles about random business concepts that I mean, they're they were fun, too, but it just didn't mean to write articles about it. So I decided to switch over to a computer science major
Jeroen Leenarts:about the coursework that you shared during your studies. Was it like that? Both of you elected to do the same courses? And that's actually how the two of you met or Oh, no,
Malin:no, no. That would be easy that we'll make the storytelling Yeah, that's
Jeroen Leenarts:like too cheesy. Okay. Yeah. Both of you are from Sweden. If I'm correct, no, I'm actually
Kai:from Germany. Oh, boy. Yeah, sorry.
Malin:I wish we met at university.
Jeroen Leenarts:Okay, Marlon is from from Sweden. That's like a non complicated version. And you're from Germany. So did you get through Canada, through Sweden? Or did you go directly to Canada, so.
Kai:So Maya and I, we actually met in France. And then when I finished high school, I moved up to Sweden, so we could be together. And then we move to the Arctic Circle to start universe also also in Sweden, but the Arctic Circle, then we realized Arctic circles really, really cold. Right? And so we thought, hey, how about we move to Australia? So we we moved to Australia and continue to our degree there in Australia. We then took those general electives. Then we moved in Australia one more time. And then we finally ended up moving to to Canada, two and a half years ago, three years ago.
Malin:Yeah. So three years ago.
Jeroen Leenarts:So for studies, both of you went to Australia. Yep. And then in Australia, the decision was made to like, move over to Canada. Yeah. Why Canada?
Malin:I think I think we actually already thought of Canada, when we originally moved to Australia, it was like, we want that because none of us would get an advantage, right? We should go to an English speaking country. That that was, we did honestly want to go to the English speaking country, because we felt like that was the way we communicate with each other. And also, it felt like a lot of things in tech are in English, right? So that made sense. And then we were sort of when we back then when we were thinking of moving from Sweden, we weren't like, she would really go Canada, that's another cold place, we should probably probably tried something else and then wait about, let's try the polar opposite for us. And then because obviously, we're in between, we like it. And I like Australia, it's it's very hot a comparison. But we'll just things that were like it just feels very far away at some points. And there were many, like conferences that we want to go to. And a lot of the tech industry is sort of focused in the US or around the US and Canada. I include Canada as part of that, I guess know, North America. And that's where we felt like we wanted to go to Canada. But we wanted to go to one of the warmer places, because we still we still like the weather in Australia. So we decided on Vancouver, which is not not a terribly cold. It's like the woman City, one of the woman cities in Canada. So we'll start and also just like this, the city cares a lot about like, the environment, they care a lot about, like those type of things. And we just we just felt like there was also this sort of outdoor part of it in Vancouver. I don't know if you've seen many pictures, but it has like a lot of mountains in the background. So it's a beautiful city and we sort of wanted something where we can sort of enjoy the outdoor life and go go on hikes and things like that. And here you can just like take a bus up to the mountains and just go go hiking in the afternoon which is awesome.
Jeroen Leenarts:Yeah, so and also France was mentioned,
Kai:that was just during holidays, that's where we met. Didn't leave there.
Jeroen Leenarts:So just both of your families were on vacation in France or like where you're on your own in front of you. So that's, that's, that's interesting. So Sweden, Germany, then France, then a lot of stuff happened, and then back up to Sweden, and then go to Australia, move around a bit there. And then end up in Vancouver, Canada. Yes. So I took a long way to the West Coast. It does help to take notes, while the two of us, actually,
Malin:we should send the map.
Jeroen Leenarts:Yeah, but I you like these kinds of people that have like this world map on the wall with like, the spins like place? No, I mean, you know,
Malin:we move so much will be a lot of work taking it down.
Jeroen Leenarts:So okay, so that's a little bit of the backstory of the two of you. But that's like, up to like the formal education that both of you don't. And what's interesting is that both of you started at a different entry points, but ended up in computer science. Yeah. So were you like, in the same year, when graduating or less, that was the like, difference. One was,
Malin:yeah, we ended up being pretty much in the same year, we took a lot of courses together after that first one, MCI started it. And he mentioned that he set the record and got the highest grade in his class that year, but a semester after I came and beat him by 1.0,
Jeroen Leenarts:that was, like an ongoing competition between the two during the studies.
Malin:I live it in general, and life would like to compete.
Jeroen Leenarts:I'm feeling for you, okay.
Kai:So it's, to be honest, the university part was really more of an entry point for us. So it wasn't after, after the general elective. I think I got a job as a software developer to same semester. So I started just to intro course, I was like, this is fun. And I think a few months later, like before I even finished a course already took on a part time job as a software engineer. So it was very much like, alright, it just needed this kind of starting point, and then then took a job and kind of, from then on university felt like more of a secondary party, because at that point, we were already working as a software developer. So and we already learned a lot of things on our free time. And at and work at that point. So University kind of drifted in the background. It's something we wanted to complete and needed to complete, because we knew we probably want to live in other countries. And the university degree is such a essential tool. I think it's an essential thing for a software development job anymore, which is great. Yeah, but
Malin:I never been needed. I never needed a software development degree in order to get the job.
Jeroen Leenarts:No, but but for paperwork when moving around, it's very helpful to have a high level he agreed on your name.
Kai:Yeah, yeah, I think every single country that we move to, since having a degree was was decor part why we could write, we could move, like moving to Canada was no problem at all. Because we both had degrees, we both worked as software developers, had, we had not had the degree, we probably couldn't have moved to Canada. So it's, we consider the degree more of a tool for kind of freedom of movement, rather than a tool to get jobs and those kind of things.
Jeroen Leenarts:So, um, so And what year did both of you start working? So you guys already mentioned that you started working during your studies? And it seems that Marlin pretty much did the same thing?
Malin:Yeah, I'm trying to think if we get started, like, the year after Swift was introduced. Oh, yeah. What do you think? So like, 2015? I think? Yeah, yeah. But before that, I also did work on my own apps. But yeah, that's when I when I got the job as a developer, and that's when I ended up learning objective C, because code base was in Objective C, which I tried to convince people we I think we did start to like, add some swift flavors here and there. But overall, I think, Objective C it was, it was an interesting interesting path to go to like no swift your nose, I keep on saying swift dry because I'm just so in it. But it was quite interesting to start with Swift and I'll have to move over to Objective C. But at same time as you learn Swift especially back then there's like a lot of StackOverflow articles and blogs and those things everything was available in Objective C back then now it's more the opposite, right? If you're looking for something Objective C, you're gonna struggle finding your solution for
Kai:tip look for a macro solution. A lot of Objective C still,
Jeroen Leenarts:Yes, true. And it is, I must say that the beginning days of Swift were quite rough. If you asked me, you know, the transitions from like, major versions of Swift. Every Xcode release, you will like, I don't know if that happened to you guys. But in my case, We had like this project ongoing. And then Swift was the thing that we were doing on the code base, and then deadlines and planning and everything was like set out like, Okay, this is how we're going to do it. And then Xcode pops the new version. And it was like, we're not gonna make the sprint, this time around, because we need to do some migrations. And how was that for you to actually to like to, because man indicates that she learned iOS development with Swift in its beginning days. So that's not the most easiest entry point, I think,
Kai:iOS development, we watched the WWDC keynote and State of the Union. And as soon as the beta tool chains became available, in a developer portal, we downloaded and started doing swift development. So we, we were there from day one, because we thought that is such a, I think, actually started learning iOS development or start to get into it, like a week or two before adopt up. And then when they announced swift for like, what a great opportunity, because it's kind of like resetting a lot of the community. Right, a lot of people will be new to it. And a lot of new things to learn, there will probably a lot of kind of beginner or kind of early, really developing resources available. So we'll be so many new people. Yeah,
Malin:yeah. And it's also fun to just be part of that sort of community, right. And just just be part of the journey, I think, I know, it was a lot of pain, sort of getting through all of the all of the new versions, and Xcode continuing to crash and things just not working. But overall, it was it was fun to be there. As part of part of that, you know, you can talk about the war stories afterwards.
Jeroen Leenarts:All the pain and suffering this year. So yeah, but money in the EU actually indicate that the launch of Swift was actually a big catalyst for the two of you to actually get into iOS development with everything you have available. But what were the two of you doing in software development sense before you like dove into iOS development? So you must have been doing something right?
Kai:Yeah. So for me, you look like you want to think about it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So for me, I started off with back end development. So I did like PHP, Java does kind of things, mostly PHP at a time, then a bit front end stuff with JavaScript. And so that's kind of where I started my professional software developer career. I didn't, it was fine, I didn't enjoy more, the things around it, then I, for example, at one of my jobs, I was supposed to use a Windows box for development. So I don't want to work on on a Windows machine at job at my work. So I convinced him that we should really build an iOS app, because that forced them to to buy me a MacBook to work from because obviously fires engine development, you want a Mac. So I thought, hey, if I get them to, to, to wanting to build an iOS app, and I say I'm happy to learn it and figure it out and build an app, they have to buy me a Mac. And then I can just even if I do back end development, I can at least do it from a Mac. So that was kind of my strategy of getting into iOS development to dodge that terrible Windows box that I had to work from before. And
Jeroen Leenarts:So Amanda, what about you? Yeah,
Malin:so I think at that point, I was still sort of exploring what I wanted to do. Right. So I didn't start. I was I wasn't working as a software developer at that point. So I was still studying and also learning my own face. So I think it was focusing a bit also on the on the backend side, and also a bit on the website, learning learning those things. And then it wasn't, it wasn't that it wasn't hooked on something. But I was very much still sort of trying to figure out which area wants to focus on. So that's when swift came out. And as I mentioned, like the sort of entry point for me into technology was with Apple Apple technologies, right? And I think already before swift came out, I was sort of looking at iOS apps. And that was something I was always intrigued in. So I think it was sort of, even if swift would not have come out, I think that would probably have been the next step that I was going into like, and I think I would have stuck with that. But Swift was definitely like, a good like trigger to do it right. And just just a good workplace to like get started and just building your own apps and learning about it. That seems I mean, that's what I really like about sort of software development when you learn that you can, if you have a thing in mind that you want to make that is a really motivating thing for me. So like having having a specific app or a specific thing that you want to learn about related to apps is a good entry point, right? And then seeing that I could start using Swift and learning swift while I'm making my own apps was just, like really intriguing, I think.
Jeroen Leenarts:Okay, and then To people learning a lot about Swift, probably trying to land some income from that as well. So how did that happen? Because I reckon that if you're like completely new to a new tech stack, finding this first set job position, it's like, it's an interesting challenge. I think it's funny.
Malin:We were talking about this Saturday, right? Okay. Um, we we feel quite, quite lucky. I think we were just at the right place at the right time. So I actually got my first iOS job from a tweet. Yeah, so it was me with this. That was the year the first large iPhone came out. And I think I took a picture with the iPhone and I wore during fiable t shirt. And I think I brought I don't know if you know of Mike Hurley from relay FM. So he always had this thing that like large phone, Mr. phone that you should go with, you had this sort of argument about it. And then I tweeted something with my during fireball and said something like hashtag Mike was right. As a side note, now, I don't really believe in that, I think we should have small phones again, I'm completely completely opposite now. But back then I was tweeting that. And then one of my like, later on, co workers saw that. And he knew that one of the other developers are actually the founder of the company I started working at he was really into doing fireball and he was really into iOS development. And so he just sort of, I guess, looked me up online and just tried to figure out what I'm doing. And then he saw that I, I do iOS development, and then he thought it would be good would be a good fit. And that's sort of how that got started. I just chatted with them over a coffee. And then I ended up starting working there probably like a week after.
Jeroen Leenarts:That's cool. And then of course, you have like an environment that you can really dig in and start learning a lot of things about just software development and iOS development specifically. Yeah, yeah. And kind of how did that happen for you? Because you were, if I remember correctly, already doing some work on the sides, you were working like during your studies? So how did that transition into iOS development once you started, like really diving into iOS development,
Kai:for me was also I was also lucky, I was actually a professor at the University recommended me to a local business saying, Hey, you should hire this guy. He's, he seems to know what he's doing. I was like, so I went to that interview, and said, Hey, I know nothing. If that's what you're looking for hire me. And I like, cool. Let's do that. Like, weird?
Jeroen Leenarts:Did they? Did it involve a cup of coffee as well? Or
Kai:there was there was some type of beverage could have been tea coffee.
Jeroen Leenarts:But it was under script. It was like from a machine? Most likely.
Kai:Yeah. But it was like the easiest interview ever. It was like no, no tech question. Nothing really was like I literally said, I know nothing. I started. I wrote my first line of code two weeks ago. And if you look for someone who's never done anything, and just probably not going to be useful for a while, that's let's do this. And and he was, he was, well, you
Malin:can't say no to that selling.
Jeroen Leenarts:It's like a unique selling point I'm willing to learn.
Kai:Yeah, but I mean, I don't know if there was just a lot of demand, or I mean, I was probably also cheap. But yeah, so we started working together. Also, I think, a couple of weeks after maybe a week after that. And I did like back end development. And I was actually feeling fairly productive fairly quickly. And then when, as I mentioned before, when I realized that I would really like to work from and back again, I kind of floated the idea of potentially building a an iOS app. For one of the project when it made sense, I at least thought it made sense. And they agreed. So that's when I got a Mac and figured out how to how to build the building. But you had your own Mac, like I had my own Mac, that was the work. Yeah, the work computer. And at the time, I already built a few like kind of sample apps or apps for myself at home. So I felt like fairly confident that I would be able to get an app together for for that client project. And then we started with that. And that's, I've I think I've been doing pretty much iOS development professionalized development ever since that day.
Jeroen Leenarts:So both of you are now working for a company and just to like, position yourself on a timeline again, what year are we talking about? Just in general because like, we went from like, graduating, finding like the passion for iOS and Swift and then transitioning into like, professional life with a paid job, which is always nice that you can do something that you like and getting paid for them. So So what time frame are we looking at? Yes, good.
Malin:We're really bad with dates. But I think so my job that that was the, that was my first job in text that started that year after swift came out, so would have been 2015. And I think you started your job earlier, but I don't know when you transitioned to iOS
Kai:pretty probably started 13. But then the first project was also in Swift, so there would have been 1415 Whenever swift came out.
Jeroen Leenarts:And these jobs, they were both in Australia. That's right.
Malin:Yeah. Yeah. So this was on the West Coast of Australia. And then after that, I got to get another job at the east coast of Australia, in Sydney. So we ended up moving there. And can you continue working remotely for a while there. And then we ended up after I had that job for, like, one and a half years, I think we ended up finding a job at the same company and working there together. In in Sydney, as well.
Kai:There was a bit less developer there was actually, I was kind of, I had no tech lead. And Marlon was the kind of Iris lead. So it was a bit of a different I mean, we still did development, but probably, yeah, maybe 10% of my time, and maybe 50% of your time, Allah.
Malin:Yeah, yeah. So the idea there was that we went to this company that wasn't traditionally in tech, and they wanted to basically explore the tech industry and move to that, like move to that space. So Kai, and I were given the opportunity to, like build a team around that and figure out how like, sort of how how that company could work in a more like, I guess, not modern way, but like the flexible way that you haven't taken, like just working in a different way and focus on
Kai:on sort of point, they only had agencies building tech products for them, but they want to bring that in house. But they didn't have the expertise. So they hired us to figure it out. All out.
Jeroen Leenarts:So and then both of you were employees at the same company. Yes, yeah. So yeah, challenging, because then of course, you have your professional life that you deal with with each other, and maybe even have some work related issues that are like, you know, different projects, different projects, different priorities. Yeah, but also like life together, at home.
Malin:So I think that's never been a problem for us. And that's something we actually decided at that point, we wanted to get back because we had been studying together, right. So a lot of time, like we spent a lot of time together. And we sort of wanted to be able to continue working on that together. And that's what we really, we like working on orbit together as well, which is our app now. And that's so so we always sort of worked really well together. And I guess it does definitely mean that your work bleeds into your, like daily lives. And I think we probably worked took a lot of work with us home and like we always sort of bicycle to work bicycle back from work and what was chatted about it and chatter about the day. I would argue that that made us more efficient, though, which I guess is good. But and like in general, I think that we always sort of like to soak ourself into tech in general. So if we have, so we do other things like organizing meetups, and we like to be part of the community. So everything that we do tend to be tech related. Anyways, I think we didn't really see it as a problem that that part of our life also sort of became became sort of focused on our work or on tech, right?
Kai:Yeah. And in general, for us, I think, life work balance isn't that much about cutting on work and increasing other things that felt more like, as long as we were able to do the things we wanted to do at work, it felt like, you know, it felt like a life extension, rather than like you do the things you don't like to do at work. And then you need to get away from that. For us, it felt more like, because we were in a situation where we could shape the team and kind of shaped the way the company was working. It just felt like we all had fun all the time. So it was just we built cool products and a team that we we hand picked, right? So we only worked with people that kind of shared similar attitudes or slightly different ones, but we're willing to kind of discuss those in a friendly manner. So we just for us, it felt like not that much. I mean, if you would measure that hours, you would maybe think we were like, excessively working, but it just felt like fun. And because of the team and the dynamics, we sometimes had like board game nights right after work. And it was just a fun thing to do or when they were like,
Malin:and then yeah, and I know that sort of been criticized that many companies sort of almost like it's almost like seem to be forced that you spend all of your time at work. But there was really not that way. It was many people in our team. They had families that they had to go home and pick up the kids from from school and that totally made sense. It was just that I think we just had such a tightly knit the team at that point. And we just enjoyed spending time with each other. So I think I think many of many of The people that we met, we know from there we wanted to hang out with anyways. Right? So it it worked out quite well.
Jeroen Leenarts:So and was this also the work and life situation that led to the two of you deciding to go from Australia to Canada? Or
Malin:what do you want to take this
Kai:I mean, to move to Canada was, we kind of knew that we probably want to work together for for extended periods of our career. But we also knew that we probably didn't want to build our entire careers in Australia. So that was actually quite a conflict for us. Because we really liked a team, we really liked the work environment, we liked everyone we work with, we we made money there, they paid very well. So that was nice. We lived in a nice place. But we knew that Australia was not the place, we thought we want to stay for next 10 years. And when we realized that we probably not going to stay there for next 10 years, we thought, why wouldn't we move as soon as possible? Because the sooner we figured out where we want to stay, the sooner we can build all the things that we build there. But we might be able to to do them forever, or as long as we want to. So what's actually, I think, insanely hard decision for us to leave because all the parameters like everyone we talked to like why would you leave this you make a lot of money? You love your job? You'd like it when you're working with Why would you leave? We were
Malin:also like, yeah, yeah. And we were also quite engaged in like the development community, we were organizing cocoa heads and those things. But yeah. So did they make us question our decision?
Kai:It's, it's probably not the location, we want to stay for next 10 years. So we thought rather than extending it, let's let's move fairly soon. And figure out if Canada might be the place we want to stay. Because I mean, the younger we are, the easier it is to move around. The longer we stay somewhere, the harder it is to uproot and leave, right. So as soon as we realize that we're probably not going to stay, we figured, alright, let's let's move fairly soon. And see if that's the if Canada or Vancouver in particular is the place to be. And because of how immigration worked, we couldn't initially work together, we actually have to work at different places. But we knew that at some point we want to, to work together again. So when we moved to Amman and actually worked for, for different company for a while. And I kept working remotely for a little bit. And then once once all immigration stuff was done, and Marlene was kind of feeling like she can accomplish what she planned to do. At work, we decided, alright, maybe we should start a company together and work together again.
Jeroen Leenarts:So and So told Gary, that you moved from Australia to Vancouver, Canada, that, of course, because of circumstances you had to like do some different things. And then at some point that was settled, and you started your own company. And what is the purpose of the company that you created? Chris, you have a product called orbits. But is there more that company does push you both? Have you already mentioned that was there's also some project work that that that comes by every now and then because in the end of the month, you have to make sure that there's enough income to actually sustain the company for the longest duration? I guess. Yeah. So how does that work?
Malin:Yeah, so I think the the way orbits sort of came to be or but this time tracking and invoicing app for Porphyry, for free. I'm trying to like keep it short, but also make it sound more exciting. But it's a it's a time tracking app for freelancers, who needs to get paid for their work, right. And Kai, and I want to get paid for the work, you want to get paid for their work that makes sense. So it's very much focused on like, the invoicing piece, and also having a really nice native app. But it was something that we started making, because we had done, we started doing freelancing and picking up different projects. And then we just felt like we probably tried like dozens of different apps that we wanted to that we want to try out that rediem Find something that worked like perfectly for the way we worked. So that's how orbits sort of came to be. But we so we do that together. We work on orbit together. So the Mac App and iOS app, and we also take on other projects. So sometimes we work on projects together. And sometimes we work on like projects at the moment we're working on two different a few different projects among us and just helping others make really exciting things. So we do we do those project works or like yeah, work with others as well.
Jeroen Leenarts:So are the two with you hired by other companies for longer contracts, so that you like, be an integral part of the development of their product. Or how does that work?
Malin:Yeah, yeah. So those sort of products, I do enjoy, like being on a project from from the start and really, really making making a complete product. So that's the type of project that I'm working on. But we do a bit of a mix. So we sometimes sometimes pick up other small things at the moment, I think we're sort of like, we, we've been doing a lot of Swift UI work and widget work. So sometimes those things come up when people need help with widgets and those things as we do those things as well.
Jeroen Leenarts:Cool. And and when did orbit actually became a thing like, right at the start of the company? Or was it a concept that was created when you were already active with the company that you are both working in?
Kai:I think we probably did freelance work for about six months. And until we,
Malin:but we always had to do time tracking, because I think that sort of the nature of the of our contracts in Australia as well also included us like keeping track of how much how much we're working. So we all really back then it was a frustration point. So I think after six months of like really needing to do it, we thought that we should really make make an app and we had been looking for a project that we wanted to do together. So that's what we had sort of we, we knew that we were looking for something to work on. And the time tracking invoicing just made a lot of sense, because that's something we want to use ourselves. And at that point, Swift UI came out as well. And we knew we wanted to make a mock up. So we thought that's actually a perfect combination, because we didn't know app kit. So swift UI is actually a good introduction. Again, sort of like Swift was an introduction to development or iOS development, Swift UI, we thought would be a good introduction to Mac OS development. But we've, we've heard much played out on hardmode. I think there was back then we started in, I think, January, actually kind
Kai:of similar to the early days. So yeah, when you're like, alright, to tool to kind of, yeah, a little bit of a pain. Swift UI, in its initial form was was a little bit like that. But if you thought it was a bit tricky on on iOS, wait until you started on macros, because macros had almost no documentation, almost no one talking about it, right? If you if you look for a Stack Overflow help for any kind of concept in Swift UI, you find maybe 10 options for iOS and zero for macOS. So it's often more that you're trying to find an iOS solution and seeing if it might also work on the Mac. But it was it was definitely, we had a rough time initially. Yeah. Because I learned this new framework, and we wish we didn't have any experience with before. And we did it on a platform that seems to have the least amount of attention at a time.
Malin:Yeah. So when you asked like, how, how we found this transition, and sort of the early days of Swift, I sort of felt like, that was fine, because swift UI and like the early days of Swift UI has been more painful than than the early days of Swift. So
Kai:but it was also different, right? Because the early days of Swift, we didn't know any better, right? He had some friends who've done Objective C for a while, and they were moaning and complaining, but we didn't know right, we can start with Swift. So we're like, that's just what mobile development is. For us.
Jeroen Leenarts:It's a frame of reference. Yeah. But then when we
Kai:move to Swift UI with with orbit and our Mac app, that was the first time we're like, Alright, we've done UI kit for many, many years now. And we actually experienced that kind of lack of tooling or kind of flakiness in the frameworks for this kind of strong contrast, because I would say, UI Kit has been getting very solid, right? The changes on that one, not that drastic anymore. It's been a pretty mature framework by now. But swift UI very much isn't.
Jeroen Leenarts:So yeah, because at my day job, we also dropped iOS 12 supports, like, last quarter. And we're now like doing our initial steps with iOS 13. And Iris 14. And getting it working on iOS 14 is usually pretty much okay, but then making sure that it works on iOS 13. That's like, oh, that's that's that can be tricky. And you're saying that doing it on the Mac? Especially a year ago was even worse? Because yeah, I am hearing good stories on Swift UI on Big Sur, but are they true or
Malin:big size much better? I mean, we sort of been in this point because we still support Catalina because we released the app, two weeks before WWDC, so we didn't want to like drop Big Sur or drop Catalina already. So so that's sort
Kai:of also I mean, Big Sur when it Big Sur come out October, October. We released in May or June, June. So we there were months before we knew that Big Sur would be out. So yeah, we definitely want to support Catalina.
Malin:But even Big Sur is like we do get real nice things and Apple has really focused a lot on like specific things for the Mac and for Mac OS development in Swift UI. But there are certain things that are just not perfect and things that are like the default. But if you don't want the default behavior, you're going to have to, it's actually going to be a little harder now to try to get your custom behavior than it was before Big Sur, because before Big Sur, you could sort of move over to app kit. But now there are some some limitations there. So you have to Yeah, I
Kai:think it's more about to transition, right, because we do support Catalina and for example, there was no way in like the initial swift UI, if you target the Catalina SDK, to spawn separate windows, which on a Mac is fairly common, right, you double click a an item in a table row, a table view, and you would expect it to pop out into a separate window. You couldn't do that back then on big so you can, but on kelenic couldn't. But we wanted to do it. So we kind of bridged to advocate and kind of hooked into a table view is to kind of set a custom selector that we would then fire and kind of bridge into into the Swift UI world. Unfortunately, I mean, both unfortunately, and kind of nice. Apple decided to kind of build that feature into Big Sur the same way that we did. So now we have a situation where our workaround to bridge those kind of actions into into the Swift UI world would conflict with apples. So apples would actually overwrite ours on Big Sur, so we had to do a lot of work to kind of make certain things only happen on Catalina. Other ones only work on Big Sur. And now I know there's a lot of things where it's like, kind of half this entire COPPA pass for one platform and the entire other one for the other one. And we had to figure out how do we make both of them work. And on iOS, with simulators, it's actually fairly nice, right, you can run something in the iOS 13 Some later and you run something there is 14 simulator, it's not quite as trivial on Mac wise, because you haven't entire operating system on your, you know, there's no macro simulator. So actually had to run like virtual machines, which are kind of flaking weird, especially for development environments. So we can have like, essentially, one computer on our side that is, was the big server computer and one that was a Catalina computer, because that just seemed to be the most efficient way for us to try it on a different operating system, because we've tried a lot of things very differently on on Catalina and Pixar. So I think those were probably the areas to cause the most pain to just figure out how to how to build for both platforms. And so sometimes things would break from one point release to next one. So we always had to, even if we didn't make any code changes every time there was a new beta, we had to download them on a device. Try our app. And same for for the arm transition, like some some code paths and swift UI, especially during a beta period. were executed in very peculiar ways. Yeah, broke stuff that Yeah, unfortunately, we're fixed. But we didn't know at that time, right. We didn't know if they would be fixed before all those M one Max ships. So we still needed to find workarounds in case we needed to ship them. So I think yeah, considering how many transitions they were on Mapquest during that period, that was probably what's causing the most pain, right? Big swift UI change, new operating system on Mac was probably the largest design change for macros in, I don't know, five, six years, just after we shipped an app, and the arm transition all happening kind of while we tried to get familiar with macros development in the first place, I think that kind of package cost, for us at least the most amount of trouble.
Jeroen Leenarts:So Orbitz is now on the iOS platform. And on the Mac platform. That's great. Any other plans for orbit to be available on other platforms by Apple? Yeah,
Kai:our goal is to bring it everywhere, because Apple said onstage swift UI, one framework, and you can learn it once and write to all platforms to their supporting. So we're like, alright, let's stress just this, this theory. So that's where we start with the macros. We always knew what to do iOS and iPad wise. But I'm, I'm almost done with the Watrous app as well. We definitely also going to do a TV iOS app at some point for because we have a nice dashboard. Right? So if you if you work, I have dashboards of how much time do you spend on which day? And how much money did you earn? And how did your day look, and there are some improvements that we're working on at the moment for that as well. So we thought it would actually be quite nice to bring just a dashboard component to Apple TV, because I don't know if you've seen that. But a lot of agencies have kind of status monitors where you can see what people are working on and kind of how far through the budget or how far through the project there are. And we actually thought it might be a fun way of having the companies that use orbit as a team would actually be quite a nice way to kind of display what what people are working on what the state of das projects aren't those kind of things. So it's it's definitely low priority, but we think at some point, we'll probably also bring it to TBLs.
Jeroen Leenarts:That's going to be interesting, I think I've heard some stories on people that do like, all platform support. And yeah, they had some challenges. And but, but the sound of things that I think the two of you had the worst of it's already.
Malin:Yeah. I think what was we decided to do? Because TVRs is obviously not, it's not going to be my most popular platform, I hope I, I would be very surprised if that was the case. But since since we assume it's not, then we feel like we rather want to sort of polish up the app and add, like, there are a lot of things we want to add to the dashboard. So we want to focus on adding that to the platforms that we support, and then move that over to, to to TBS, because we don't want to have to, like continue iterating on features and continue adding more features to all of those platforms once but
Kai:be honest, if it is a pain, we're just going to abandon T vos. It's not, you know, if we start a project, and we're like, alright, this is way more work than we thought and we're not going to do it. We're only going to do it because yeah, we only going to do it because we think it's probably going to be trivial. And would be fun to have our app everywhere. If it's not trivial. Look, then I'd much rather spend more time on the Mapquest up.
Jeroen Leenarts:So and then if you look at the orbit as a product, so it's it's time tracking and then invoicing, the time that you've spent. And is it is it aimed at a single individual? Or does it also work with teams of people?
Malin:Yes, we have both. At the moment, we have a team of up to five people because we we sell it we we have we sell it through the app store, right. And I think it's hard to actually get up to that point when you have like 50 people support and people buy it through the App Store. So at the moment, it's it's sort of focused on one to five people teams. And when you work together, you can at the moment, you can see sort of how like how your time is split and who is working on what. But the next thing that we want to do related to teams is to actually add some more like flexibility in who can see what and also potentially you might want to add a person to a project who's helping you out for a month or so. And they should be able to, like we have this, this concept of them potentially having their own orbit account that they can make next sort of migrate with your company's orbit accounts. So synchronize, synchronize with your orbit account, so that they can keep track of their own time themself and then invoice the client. And then that client can also see in their orbit dashboard, how much time
Jeroen Leenarts:so that would actually work that if you like the business owner, you would take out on an Orbitz account, and depending on the number of seats that you would need, you would actually pay some amount of money through the App Store as an in app purchase. And then you could provide access to individuals who would be on a different Apple ID.
Kai:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool. Okay. Yeah. So that's doing at the moment. Yeah. Because we were two people from the start, right. Yeah. So he didn't want to build something that only works for one person, because we wanted to use it together. Yeah. So we built everything already with teams in mind. So that was, that was always part of the plan. And in theory, we could support like, hundreds of people in a team, it's just tricky to do that through the App Store. And realistically, we already have that now, when, when companies have like multiple employees, most of them do not have a business Apple ID that they because if you like, we charge money, right? If you would have 100 company team, you probably wouldn't want to do that on your personal Apple ID. So our plan is to in the future, when mechanics banding our team kind of limits to actually sell that outside of the App Store, because then people can use that company credit card or a company bank account or whatever ever way to usually paying company expenses for we assumed that that's probably making more sense to be out of the App Store. Because realistically, who's gonna have a you know, it's it's such a small amount of such a small fraction of people that have specific business Apple IDs that are connected to business bank accounts, and
Jeroen Leenarts:and just out of curiosity, what is what is the backend? Made up of? Is it like cloudkit? Probably not. Or what is
Malin:your way? So rather than paper? So swift on the server?
Jeroen Leenarts:Yeah. So swift all the way.
Malin:Yeah, and our website is using HTML so
Jeroen Leenarts:it's rendered with vapor. So I was that then using vapor as a back end technology, was it like? Or,
Malin:yeah, like I honestly liked it a lot. I think it was surprisingly little of a learning curve. Like the Chi has worked with vapor backends for a while, but this was the first time I realized
Kai:I clearly like pain because vapor one, migrate to vapor to migrate to vapor three. So this is actually my third or fourth vapor back in the project. attempted. Yeah,
Malin:for me, it was just like quite quite quick to learn. And also what I really liked is that you you're sort of able to keep on using the tools that you're familiar with, right? You can keep on using Xcode, and you can also, even if you you might not even go ahead Head and like share your models, but you can always copy things across. And you can use the same syntax for everything. So I think overall, I really enjoyed using it. How about how about UK? And I mean,
Kai:you were talking about maturity, I would say vapor four is feeling way more mature than swift UI does. Even right now, it definitely feels solid. You're not, you know, sometimes with Swift UI, you feel like, ooh, this, this area of the framework seems a bit flaky in certain circumstances. And you kind of have to find workarounds, like simple things are not there yet, for example, in Swift UI, right? Vapor fields, like, I mean, it's been around for quite some time. Now there, it's yeah, it's definitely not the largest back end frameworks, but it definitely feels solid. And I don't think we fed any vapor related issues since
Malin:Yeah. And there's never been something that we were missing either, in the same way, as we had on Swift with Swift UI.
Kai:But it's just I find it like coming from a PHP back end. Background, it's just so nice to have a compiled language, because you know, how often, I don't know how that reflects on my untyped language skills. But how often were like, accidentally not validating some some kind of type that it's in the specific format that you're expecting. And vapor just makes it super trivial, like an example of a route, right? If you're saying, Alright, super simplified, let's say you have your API slash and a user ID, and you know, your user ID is an integer, let's just say, you're actually specifying that route in vapor to be user slash integer. And if someone puts into the route a string, that route will just return a four, four, because there is no route user slash string, because you defined it as integer. So it kind of the type, Swift type kind of part of enforcing routes, rather than kind of a PHP approach where you like, anything is kind of the same thing. And then you figure it out yourself, whether it's an integer or a string later, and you didn't have to return, like some kind of error. But vapor just makes those kinds of things just expecting, like, if you're, if part of your route is a UU ID, if that if it's not a UU ID, it will just spit out an error on your behalf, you don't even have to worry about whether it's a UU ID or not. And those kind of things are just making really quick to get started. And it kind of removes some of the things to worry about, you know, like you specify the route, and then you do things with that data, which which I think is making making it for really quick and comfortable workflow.
Jeroen Leenarts:So and and what is the infrastructure that you're running? The vapor backends on? Is it like, obviously cloud based? That's what I would guess.
Kai:Yeah, not an hour.
Jeroen Leenarts:Now, but it's like Amazon or Azure, or you're using digital ocean for digital. So that's like on a V PCs, and or is like running the Docker
Kai:products? No, no, it's just a bunch of private servers.
Jeroen Leenarts:Cool. Now, because that's all that's what I wonder about with with Viper, what's actually the deployment model of their state?
Kai:I think the recommendation now is, I think even part of the default template is now a Docker file. So definitely, I think if you look at most tutorials, Docker is the default route for most people. And the thing that's, I mean, if you're comfortable with Docker, I think it wouldn't take long to spin up a vapor instance.
Jeroen Leenarts:So I think we've pretty much covered like the to fuel all the way from like, what was it again, it was France, all the way to like orbits. But I definitely know that are also some things that the two of you together or individually have done, like next to all of this, some mediums and I read something and I hear something about a podcast that to you are actually acted upon. So let's let's like, sidestep a bit into that, because I know Marlon had a tweet online, like a few days ago on Xcode is Vancouver or what's the Yeah, yes. So is that something that you've been organizing? Quite a while now? Because I also heard that you the two of you were involved with cokehead Sydney.
Malin:Yeah, yeah. So I think when when we left, when we left Sydney, we were really feeling like we wanted to have a community around us. And we also feel like many people in Vancouver or Canada are either working remotely for US companies or are leaving to the US. So we sort of felt like we we knew that there were many people around who were sort of potentially working remotely on their on their own or working with indie developers. So we felt like we really wanted to sort of have a strong community here because that was something we really liked in Sydney. Like no matter which company you're at, people who are like particularly excited about iOS development are about programming in general, they tend to get together. And I think having that sort of place where people can just learn from each other's experience and just chat and feel like not feel lonely, right. It's great to see other people around you doing things that you do. And it's very motivating. And I think that's why so many of us like to go to WWDC, it's not necessarily because we want to learn about all that, like, we want to go to all the sessions. That's part of it. But you can watch that online, right? I think the big thing is that you're networking with people and that you have an opportunity to just be inspired by by what other people do. And that sounds really cheesy now. And I said it out loud. But like, just just like being able to talk to other people and see what they're doing, I think is something that's like will motivate you what you're doing. So we're really
Kai:just fun, right? Yeah, even if you don't get any kind of career advancement, it's just fun to talk to people about things you're passionate about. Yeah, dub, dub DC is a great opportunity to do that. Because by by default, right, everyone around you is probably doing similar things to you. And they probably care enough to spend whatever $2,000 on a ticket plus 1000s of dollars for hotel rooms. Obviously, it would be nice if all of those things would be cheaper. But that means that most people around you are probably fairly passionate about Apple's ecosystem development. And meetups are a similar thing. Right? If you go to meetup, you probably don't find a lot of people who go there who hate everything about IRS development. That would be weird if they will
Malin:probably spend their evening some some other way. Right? Yeah.
Jeroen Leenarts:Well, actually at Coca, Hudson, no, we've seen an interesting thing happening, because I'm like, organizing Cocottes in Amsterdam for like, seven years now. And our format is that we have like locations that's like companies, and they provide food and the venue and a speaker and we provide the second speaker. So very simple, very convenient. And it was all pre COVID thought that this was possible. And what we started noticing is that there was every single time there were like a few people like two or three that like came in at start started eating. Once they were done eating, they left. It was always the same people it was like, like four or five faces that like over the months, we were seeing that they were basically the same people all the time. And at some point, I was like, I don't really care, because there's plenty of food. But I'm curious. So I'm I was just gonna ask him, Why are you actually coming in just eating? Yeah, then just leaving, why not join the evening, because you're more than welcome to join. And it turned out, this person knew nothing about software development. He just figured out concepts that were like meetups going on. And that was like that it was like a very cheap way to get a decent meal. I was like, Wow, that's some sheer dedication that you have. Because all the trouble of like finding the meetups and figuring out figuring out which one have food, which ones have good food and
Kai:see if that person would stay for the talks. They would probably pick up development in no time.
Jeroen Leenarts:Yeah, and eat and then they would like, don't have to, like, get their food anymore. But it's very interesting that you mentioned it because, yeah, people are coming to Meetups for, like the content of the evening. But obviously there are exceptions. But how were the meetups organised in, in Australia, in Sydney? And are they different compared to how the meetups are organized in Vancouver?
Malin:So in Sydney, it was quite similar to what you had, oh, Coco heads, and I think what we did was that we were working together with Atlassian. So Atlassian provided all the space or the food and all the drinks, which I think was they were very generous with it as well. So I think people might stayed for the whole evening because it lasted quite long as well. But I think that was that was awesome. And for them. Like we also we did see some people who worked at Atlassian who might just drop in and get a pizza, right? Because, you know, if they hosted they might just come by and have some food, which I think it was it was nice to see that they like they really they had like every every evening I think they had at least two meetups organized and they they always had had things going on so that was awesome.
Kai:And had a great space for two that like yes, this kind of environment with like proper audio setups and like a place to give talks from and like big screen and nuff space and it was just a really good venue for that.
Malin:Yeah, but I think we actually haven't had people just come in just like from outside for the pizza. I don't think we ever really had it but that was probably because we had you had to be like let in at the door and you had to like actually say hi to someone and present yourself and that might have made people a bit less uncomfortable, less comfortable with that. And it
Kai:wasn't technically I mean Atlassian office was just not on the ground floor it right you need like a badge to get into later. So by definition, well, I don't think it was the security mechanism. As much as it was a necessity, because you needed to have an employee to let people in, and probably naturally kind of detracted people that would just go for a pizza,
Jeroen Leenarts:it does increase the barrier a little bit. Yeah,
Kai:it's quite a lot of effort for that. It's at that point, you have to, if you have to have small talk with a developer in an elevator for a few minutes for your piece for your slice of pizza, maybe you're like that, that
Jeroen Leenarts:would be a bit much. But that that was like strictly at Atlassian office. So that basically, it was something that Atlassian was providing to the larger developer communities.
Malin:Yeah, yeah. So they had a lot of different different meetups as well, it wasn't just iOS. So they, they just had the space. So they, like it just made sense for them to organize it.
Kai:And I do think they also care about community and yeah, yeah, right, because Atlassian is one of the biggest, if not the biggest tech company in Australia. So they also, I mean, it's quite a lot of synergy, right. They, they want to community, they want people that they care about technology that will encourage that. They also, you know, there are some people that started off going to a meetup that then started working at Atlassian. And people that worked at Atlassian, that are iOS developers that cared about community, so it just kind of worked really nicely as a package. And it was a venue that fits that could fit 120 people, which was nice. So we I think Cocottes was probably at capacity. Every single Yes, right. Yeah, it was 120 people. It was usually even a waiting list.
Malin:Yeah, yeah. So that was awesome. But then when we moved here, we didn't have a company like Atlassian, who could sponsor us with pizza. So Kai, and I decided to start a meetup, which was more of a sort of casual catch up, because we always really enjoyed a sort of gathering and being able to chat with people. So we and we also really into coffee. And we noticed that there were many independent coffee shops around Vancouver. And we felt like we wanted to sort of combine that and get people to get like familiar with the coffee shop. So they don't go to Starbucks all the time. Like, we wanted them to like be introduced to
Jeroen Leenarts:five bucks coffee.
Malin:So we wanted them to like get introduced to like specialty coffee at the same time as catching up about about tech. So we actually had like a moving type of meetups. So we tend to go to like different coffee shops every second week and catch up there. And that was that was really fun. But then we also like I always liked this sort of talk meetups as well. And we I got in touch with Elon, who is running X coders in Vancouver, and he's been doing it for a while and just asked if he needs help organizing anything. And then Kai and I ended up helping out just sort of at the evening in the beginning. And now when we're doing it online, we are also taking care of like finding speakers and things like that. So we felt adding and hosting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we were sort of doing everything online now. And I think that was because we we took a bit of a break from like talk meetups, just because we thought it was a bit. It wasn't as trivial to find people who were willing, like who were willing to speak. And we focused on sort of the social gathering, because we thought during the pandemic, it's very important that people have other people to talk to because everyone's working from home. Right. But then we really started missing like the the sort of like talk based meetup. So we started doing that quite recently, I think was the first one was in January. Yeah. And we have another one coming up now on Thursday, the 25th. With Josh Holtz, and Curtis Herbert. Am I pronouncing his last name? Right? Yes.
Jeroen Leenarts:By the time that this recording is live, I'll make sure to link to the next version, I guess. Yeah, yeah. And maybe there's a recording because I did ask online and you were like, yeah, maybe we'll see what we can arrange. Yeah, so British,
Kai:conscious of online meetups working differently, right? Because in person, you it's a lot easier to be comfortable. Like if you're kind of going off your script a little bit and talking about things that you might wouldn't want to have recorded, right? Because in a like personal kind of smaller setting, it's It's easy, right? There's a lot of interesting things that can happen in those kind of settings, where you talk about kind of nuances of your work or decisions that you've made, that people might not want to have forever online, on YouTube, or some other kind of video service. So we don't want to force speakers or also to reverse right, you might be more nervous, if you know that this will be somewhere forever. So we don't want to force speakers at all to record it. We're happy to help if someone's like, Hey, I would really like this to be a talk that delivers on YouTube. We're happy to help but we don't want to kind of force people or push people into that. And then also with the online kind of situation that we're in right now. People might want to give a talk multiple times, right? Maybe someone is using this kind of venue for as a kind of preparation for a conference talk they're giving and then those speakers might not want to give a talk on a free youtube video if they know that in a conference that people might paid money for. So we, we don't want to kind of have a strict every talk, it's recorded because of all those kind of factors. But if someone wants to talk recorded where we're happy to help out
Jeroen Leenarts:with Cocottes. Now, it's like, it's pretty much the same, except that the default is the other way around. So yeah, it's like a, are you okay? That we record it is perfectly fine if you don't. And what you guys actually ask is like, hey, if you'd like we can record it. Yeah. Yep. So that's, that's it's both both work, I think. And let's see. So, yeah, as Marlon, you already mentioned, the pandemic led actually to a lot less interaction with the local community. And how does the podcast that too few do actually fit into all of this?
Malin:Yeah. Because we actually put the podcast on hold for a little bit, just because we were like, all three of us. So it's kind of me and our friend, Zach, in Australia. Yeah. And we were all just really busy in the beginning of the year. And we first we put it on hold, since there were no like special Apple events. So we figured we wait till next Apple event. But the sort of idea behind that was that we always went with our friend to get coffee in Australia. And then we knew that when we moved to Vancouver, that we would sort of miss that sort of casual chat that we used to have. And we used to chat about tech and development
Kai:heroes, we usually did it in the morning before before, like we all worked at the same company. So we would usually go down and get a coffee and chat about like tech news and what happened over the last 24 hours and kind of our opinions about that. And we thought, hey, if we make it into podcast, we still kind of do is catch up. I mean, it will be once a week, and then there for maybe a little bit longer. Maybe instead of it being 15 minutes, let's make it like 20 minutes. As you know, tech podcast, it escalated now our episode for like, almost two hours.
Malin:Yeah. So we started,
Jeroen Leenarts:I'm cutting the two of you a little bit slack. timewise? Because I usually try to keep it within an hour. But the two people it's always a bit longer.
Kai:Yeah. And I mean, realistically, we could we could be here for 10 hours talking about tech and industry, because there's so many things, right. Just a community aspect is like specific tech aspects, their products and how products happen. And there's so much to talk about. It's hard to fit. Yeah. So yeah, that's,
Malin:that's sort of yes, what the podcast is talking about a lot of tech things and Apple development. And sometimes we play games and like have like, predictions of what's going to happen at the Apple events. And we tend to think those
Kai:are usually my favorite episodes, we do some kind of multiple rounds of with very strange rules, we kind of think of very, out of the box rules about how we allocate points, depending on what kind of event it is like we. And then we usually have wildcards and challenges. So we're like trying to predict the next. I don't know WC, and then everyone kind of gets we have different rounds, and you can pick it but you can only pick one thing one time. And then you can challenge someone and get double points. But if your challenge is wrong, but you lose points, if it's if if your challenge is something that actually does happen. And they're they're wildcards of things that couldn't have been rumored. It's a lot of fun. I like that. Yeah,
Malin:I think the rules are part of the fun.
Jeroen Leenarts:The rules are pretty much fluid, right?
Kai:Yeah. They're set in stone when we started recording, but we were not maintaining the same set of rules every it's not, we're not doing a traditional podcast, we want to have it to be as chaotic as possible.
Jeroen Leenarts:Yeah. So and from the two of you, who which of you is the more organized one?
Malin:Oh, that's a good question. I would say I'm more organized.
Kai:But I think the question is more who's who is less unorganized?
Jeroen Leenarts:Yes. Well, I hope so that there's some organization to the madness, because running a business does require some reporting and keep an eye on the target and stuff. Yeah, I
Kai:think we're kind of splitting that up. I think I'm, I'm doing most of the kind of tax related things in our business. Marlon takes care of like other parts of the business. So I think we're, we're pretty good in our different buckets of responsibilities. And then there's kind of the kind of product development that happens kind of fluidly between the two of us that's not, you know, our roadmap is changing a lot based on what we think is more important, those kind of things. So we're trying to be fluid about those things and then have kind of more, more kind of proper systems for the things that need Proper systems, I wouldn't have a fluid tech system. I think that tax and accounting system, I think that wouldn't work as well as a fluid product.
Malin:Yeah, I think I'm good at like, organization that sort of like, it requires things like scheduling things and keeping track of just different tasks that have to be done at different points. It's like things that are more like generic and not like product specific, I think product specific, we sort of share. But I'm, I'm sort of like the, the, the dedicated scheduler, I guess. So and I have events and stuff. So so
Jeroen Leenarts:you're also the project manager, it seems. So but but do the two of you have like something that resembles a standard, some wear during the day,
Kai:we tried to take a walk once a day if we can, because we're mostly staying indoors right now. And it's hard. I mean, pandemic in particular makes it kind of hard to go places. So we do try to take a walk, but it's not so much that it is a stand up. It's more we want to take a walk. And usually we try to do that kind of in the times where most people are not out. So because we're flexible with our time, we might go for a walk at 10. Right? After people don't have to go to and from work and no longer on the streets when the elevators empty. So we're trying to pick like off off peak hours.
Malin:And this is specifically during the pandemic.
Kai:And I guess it often kind of becomes something like a stand up coincidentally, because we walk along, walk along outside and then we start talking about what we're planning to do for the rest of the day and just kind of things. Yeah, but it's not it's not scheduled, kind of
Malin:we're not talking about. We're not talking about our blockers and
Kai:we're not assigning story, point it storyboard or story points to any of our task. It's more what do we plan to to get done today? Cool.
Jeroen Leenarts:Okay, um, yeah, I'm looking at my notes. And I think we covered pretty much what I wanted to cover. I hope I did an okay job for you, too. And, yeah,
Kai:it was super fun. So, yeah, that's, I think that's the best metric. Right?
Jeroen Leenarts:Well, so I've seen a lot of smiles. Because for people that are listening, we're actually on video, which we're not recording, but it's, it helps when talking to people online. And so yeah, Marlon and Kai, was a lot of fun talking to you, too. Likewise, yeah. Likewise, I look forward to well, maybe meeting the two of you in person sometime?
Malin:Yeah. Do you also welcome to join our online meetups as well. Yeah,
Jeroen Leenarts:I'll definitely try and fit. But it's like in the middle of the night. For me at least. So thank you so much for your time. And I look forward to seeing what the two of you actually produce in the future. Thank you. And there was one bonus, one more thing, actually. Bonus question. Yeah. Now the name of your company? Why,
Malin:oh, that's gonna be a longer one.
Kai:No, I think we can do that brief. So the company is AAA studios. And we do get that question a lot. And it's actually different people have different Association, like some people don't think about it. Like they just hear a name. And they think of like doughnuts that have a lot of glazing on it. And those people are happy about the name. But actual origin story is, you know, how windows have different like multiple,
Malin:like physical windows, not like the windows, like your,
Kai:your windows in your home. In Australia, in Australia, most windows are single glazed, because it's cheaper, cheaper material, right did also don't have any kind of rubber round windows, it's like, they're just gaps. It's Australian Building styles are very different from like European or, or Canadian building styles. It's just all a bit more designed. I guess. It's designed for hot temperatures. But we have the discussion a lot in Australia, that insulation helps both to heat and cold, but they don't agree with us. So we were kind of frustrated with that. Because in Australia, despite it being a warm place, it's still really cold in winter. If you're like if it's indoors, if it's 10 degrees outdoors, it's 10 degrees indoors, which is I mean, not too cold for an outdoor temperature, but very uncomfortable for an indoor temperature. Right? You wouldn't want to be in your office at 10 degrees. So you use a lot of like and they don't have an kind of centralized shorts. On the shortwave. Yes, that's my shortfall. So it was always one of our pet peeves that all the windows in Australia have to be single glazed because they would save so much money and so much comfort if they would have better windowing winning structures there. So we thought triple Bay studios because it was our pet peeve and where we thought it was funny funny kinda name because we three panes of windows we did some research because we were talking to friends at some some point during a board game night about Alright, does does how many paints window glass actually do make sense. And we found that three panes is kind of the top end of premium before it gets annoying because if you get four panes, it actually gets quite hard. Like if you have like a door, that's a sliding door, it gets so heavy that you usually need like electronic assistance if you want to have a sliding door. So we thought three panes of triple glazed is kind of the sweet spot of high quality without being over the top and inefficient. And we thought that kind of applies to software development that we're doing to where we want to be high quality and efficient, but not not over optimizing too much where it gets cumbersome and unnecessarily expensive. So we thought it was a quite a nice analogy to how we'd like to develop software.
Jeroen Leenarts:So Marlin, how many walks did that take?
Malin:No, this was something that I think we came up with quite spontaneously, I'm quite happy with that name, too. But I would like a shorter story.
Jeroen Leenarts:And that was the last thing that I fortunately, I was able to ask this question, because I had it on the back of my list, actually. Because I noticed that when I was installing the the orbit app, actually, that's, that's an interesting name. And usually, if that's an interesting name, there's like, and a very specific origin story behind it. And yeah, you came through chi.
Kai:Yeah, and it's also good, right? Because in software development in the in the software development world, if you look for that name, you'll find out there there are not a lot of companies that have any kind of triple glazed window related names in them so it's really easy to find out without actually kind of make sense to okay to have rather than having like because sometimes you see agencies that have a techie name and then it's really hard to find them online without is also a good name where we kind of occupying that space on our own if you look for triple glazed and software development you'll you'll only find us
Malin:if you don't put software development in there you'll find
Kai:high quality windowing which is also good.
Jeroen Leenarts:It beats other categories of websites online to actually be like associated with Yeah. So yeah, with that, thank you so much for your time. And yeah, that was fun. I look forward to maybe someday talking to you in person
Kai:I would love to go to court perhaps NL there will be a lot of fun. Thank you for like I've heard you have free foods. I might just eat that in that leave.
Jeroen Leenarts:That's a good idea actually. Save so a lot of time actually. Awesome.
