iPad Pro Has an App Store Problem | Hacker News Reader

iPad Pro Has an App Store Problem

theverge.com

48 pointsmilen61 comments

As a iOS/Mac developer for the last five years, I have seen steady decline in sales, developer quality and customer quality. Turn towards low level consumer markets that took place few years ago can't be mitigated with any amount of trickery to boost sales. Trials are needed but they won't fix the problem. Problem is that we all inflated the market way beyond its capacity and such bubble can't stay inflated for long.

I have some six Mac apps in MAS and I consider that number too high -- some of them will have to go. On the other hand any other Asian based developer has 70+ apps, all at $0.99 and not worth the cost of the web page they are on. Apple loves to brag about number of apps in any of the stores but in order to do so they let any crappy app in as long as it does not break terribly. That drives normal customers away, then sales drive normal developers away.

I don't see any solution, it is downwards spiral, unless Apple enforces 'quality police' to leave low quality apps away from App Store. And that won't happen.

You're basically just arguing that there's too much competition. Unless you have a truly differentiated product you should expect prices to tend to zero.

Not really. Competition is good and I don't mind competing with any company that has not-crappy-app to sell. I am arguing about general quality of the apps in the store: if 95% of them are bad there is no motive for normal paying users to even visit the store. That's something enforced (or not) by app store owner, Apple in this case.

Agreed, this is also degenerating on Amazon with some consumer products, low-cost clones and paid reviews. The cost of searching/discovery becomes too high and an entire category becomes unusable for purchase.

"Crappy apps" is your characterization but I suspect is a red herring. In fact most of the developers I follow who complain about the App Stores seem to point to everything except the real reason, that there's more competition than there ever was before the App Stores existed.

Volume != competition, if users cannot even tell the difference between apples and oranges without a prohibitive investment of time in off-appstore research.

I suspect you are not looking at the app store. I just opened Mac App Store and found random 'developer' with 80+ apps. One app is 'add border around image'. Other app is 'crop image'. Third app is 'convert image (to jpg/png)'. And so on, 80+ of them.

They are not apps by any definition. They are two lines of code each, doing simplest possible job at $0.99 cost. They don't add anything to the App Store apart from making all the other apps less visible. It is not competition by any definition. Their only real effect is that potential customer can safely assume all the other apps in the App Store are same unusable crap.

I would never confuse competition with noise. This 95% of apps are pure noise, making App Store less usable, driving customers then developers away. Their only value from Apple point of view is 'keynote value' that 'we have zillion apps in the app store'.

Those apps would never be featured by Apple so they would only be seen if they were searched for. They also wouldn't get the downloads to dominate the top charts. So unless your apps are at the same level, you're not going to be impacted by it.

And "driving customers away" is hogwash. Customers actually see the high quality apps featured by Apple before anything, so even if seeing a poorly designed app actually drove customers away that wouldn't even be an issue. It's also not borne out by the data, app store sales and downloads have only grown over the years.

True but they effect list of all the new apps in each category they appear. That makes any new app much less discover-able, because new app slides down too quickly. Plus having noise there (where it counts) makes any new app much less interesting for the potential customers.

Waiting to get featured by Apple is not really what most of the developers can count on, making high quality apps or not.

I spent months developing each of my apps so I assume they are not 'at the same level' as crappy two liners. But they are as discoverable as those apps...

Maybe the argument that you people are looking for is that the app store has a search interface that isn't good at finding what the customer wants / sieving out noise. At least that's how I felt when I recently acquired got a phone and looked to get new apps.

I'm okay with spending, but I had a lot of difficulty finding or searching in a way I felt was fruitful. And with apps I plan to use often, notwithstanding quality, I unfortunately don't want some app that smells like it might die as soon as the developer changes their mind in a fiercely competitive app store.

It is interesting how Apple sells a premium product with high margins but is willing to allow any old cheap shit into the store as long as it uses the right API's.

What do these people call the huge problem of Blackberry/WinMobile/Tizen/etc stores and there real lack of meaningful applications? Those have become niche devices and got pretty irrelevant.

Beside that even on iOS and especially Android (due to the bad inbuilt privacy control in <=5.1) many remove native apps like Facebook/Dropbox/Twitter/etc and rely on their web apps. Those run just as good and don't record the GPS, voice, upload photos and SMS, etc.

I'd be interested in reading why neither Apple or Google have support for trial apps in their respective app stores. Microsoft has this in the Windows store, both for phone and computer and I'll grant that Google has a very quick and easy return system (push a button and it's done, unlike Apple). Is there a reason to not do it that I'm missing?

My curiosity comes from practicality: I'd love to try out the more expensive apps on iOS but I don't want to pay out up front and then be disappointed and have no trivial way to say "nah, wasn't worth it." Even Target lets me show up with a thing and some manifestation of having paid for it then takes the thing back with minimal fuss.

FWIW, the refund system for Apple seems pretty quick and straightforward, even if it's not a simple one click process. Not saying it couldn't be better, but I wouldn't be put off trying expensive apps because of it.

I have no idea how to claim a refund for a shitty app, so it certainly fails my bar for straightforward.

I'm not very price sensitive, but would buy a lot more software with a quick built-in refund. I've installed and then almost immediately uninstalled way too much junk to take the risk on a £10 battery app, for example, that I'd have gladly spent on the best one I found.

Google does automatic refunds if you uninstall an app within 2 hours from purchase, which seems like a good system to me.

That would work well for me. Don't think iOS does, or if they don't, they don't publicise it well enougj

You can get refunds for iOS as well. You just need iTunes to do it. Do a Google search for "ios refund".

Sure, if you fill out a form from iTunes. The op was talking about automatic refunds on deletion.

I don't get it. Is this about laziness?

Would you consider it acceptable to have to fill in a form in iTunes to install each application? Why not, just laziness?

Many apps in AppStore/PlayStore already have in-app-purchases. So it's basically "Shareware" (a 1990s term) or Lite-version or a demo-version, and to unlock all features you have to pay once or per year.

The difference for the developer is you have to maintain only one version with optional features, and not two different app-versions (demo/lite/trial + full version (maybe even with optional features))

Some iOS developers are using in-app purchases to provide support for trial periods.

For example, a fitness app named "Sweat with Kayla"[1] (apparently a renowned female personal trainer) is currently featured prominently at the top of the front page of the Australian App Store.

The app description states:

Sweat with Kayla is free to download. All consumers are welcome to a free 7-day trial period. Should you choose to continue use of the Sweat with Kayla app, we offer a single auto-renewing subscription option:

Just $4.61/week ($19.99/month)

Is that trial period contrary to the App Store Review Guidelines?[2] Clause 2.9 says: "Apps that are "demo", "trial", or "test" versions will be rejected." Strictly speaking, "Sweat with Kayla" might be a "full" version, because you get the whole thing (at least for seven days).

On the other hand, clause 11.9 says: "Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)." Perhaps Apple takes a broad approach to this clause and Kayla's workouts and food plans were seen to be sufficiently close to the named examples of "specific approved content" to pass muster. It would be surprising if Apple had decided to feature the app without reading its description.

Interestingly, the most favourable feedback left by those who have posted reviews for "Sweat with Kayla" appears to be gratitude for the trial period, which saved reviewers from paying anything before deleting it.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/sweat-with-kayla/id104923458...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

The "7-day trial period" makes me assume they have indeed passed muster, as that is the minimum-length content subscription period:

> Content subscriptions using IAP must last a minimum of 7 days and be available to the user from all of their iOS devices

I think subscription-based apps have always been able to offer a free trial period, but you cannot require a one-time paid upgrade to the full version after X days.

I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense to me. If requiring a one-time paid upgrade after X days is prohibited, why would requiring multiple paid upgrades after X days be allowed?

If you happen to know of any sources for that policy or any examples, I'd be interested in seeing them.

It's possible to offer a free trial as part of an auto-renewable subscription,[1] but that scenario is different to the app ceasing to function X days after you've downloaded it.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Langua...

I am not sure if you aren't answering your own question? It doesn't really make sense, but subscription-based apps can offer a free trial. It doesn't seem to be limited to categories like music and video either, because my current banking app (iOutbank) has offered me a free trial before I have to start a subscription. Non-subscription apps cannot offer a free trial period because of §11.9: "Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)"

I'm not sure trials make much sense when the cost is so low, I suspect you risk diluting meagre revenue even further.

Ben Thompson at Stratachery has several posts on sustainable businesses on the app store, including one on F2P impact on app store revenues and mobile ads, linked in the article. In another post, he notes the historical tension between Apple and ISVs, https://stratechery.com/2013/why-doesnt-apple-enable-sustain...

"… Jobs’ statement was completely driven by Apple’s desperate state and the fact that Apple’s potential users cared more about Photoshop and Office than they did the Mac. For Jobs especially, it must have been humiliating … that Boston keynote was at the root of Jobs’ opposition to any 3rd-party apps on the iPhone, much less app store policies that enable sustainable businesses. Never again would Apple be held hostage to an app that was bigger than Apple."

Anyone who has invested in buying iOS apps knows the challenge of app discovery. The time to find an app costs much more than the purchase price of the app. But even worse is the short lifespan of well-maintained apps, as developers are unable to build sustainable businesses. We are left with apps from very small dev teams or from large dev teams that monetize elsewhere.

The very same author in her original review for the iPad gave it a perfect 10 for "ecosystem".

It is no different in theory when the iPad was first introduced compared to the iPhone.

But I think it is something else - the whole mobile market is stagnating. The beast is already too big for a company to manage it, there are little to no money and with walled gardens innovation is hard.

The only breakout apps in the recent years have been various kinds of messengers or cloud services. For whatever reason nobody wants to write code that does stuff on the devices.

> For whatever reason nobody wants to write code that does stuff on the devices.

Few business models can afford a 30% tax. If you monetize externally to the device, this tax can be avoided.

In addition, on-device computation generates less data for tracking, surveillance analytics and "machine learning".

If Apple cared about privacy and app innovation, they would unbundle the 30% app tax into optional developer services+fees that totaled 30%. This would support a wider range of business models.

"Few business models can afford a 30% tax. If you monetize externally to the device, this tax can be avoided."

What do you think the "tax" is when you sell something wholesale to a distributor that then sells it to a retailer?

"a" distributor (optional 1 of N competitors on terms set by market) = markup

"the" distributor (mandatory 1 of 1 set of terms) = tax

As a happy Windows Phone user, I know a thing or two about App Store problems.

1) tech bloggers love to predict any platform's impending doom by any means possible, and app stores are great for that because you can draw all kinds of conclusions without worrying about real practical problems.

2) if you like the device and the core of how it works UX-wise, you'll find a way to make it do what you want it to do even if $perfect_solution isn't available (yet).

There might be things wrong about the iPad Pro, but it's a damn cool device and I'm sure people will get productive with it.

For our company, normal iPad usage has basically fallen to zero. It's unlikely that a sudden surge in iPad Pro users is going to regain our attention.

Also, Apple's sort of told professionals to fuck off for a few years now while it focused on consumers. So I find it hard to trust them to do right by the needs of niche pro users.

Time will tell though, so we shall see!

Not limited to iPad Pro. I've stopped buying apps from App Store after wasting hundreds over the years on stuff that looks good but ends up too buggy and I uninstall a week later (after paying for).

Also rebuying the full 2.0 version of an App because the App store doesn't have an upgrade process.

Seems like these are features that are Apple has gone slightly too far without. Ill be shocked if they dont announce these features finally at WWDC this year.

If the iPad Pro becomes a replacement for laptops (say for children/teenagers), the fallout will affect tinkerers. On a iPad, children don't get a terminal, can't run their own programs, and need to convince their parents to spend $x in order to get a linux machine that has a Von Neumann architecture.

In the worst foreseeable case, desktops/laptops become so rare that they costs tens of thousands of dollars. Children interested in programming will then have a massive barrier to entry.

Really another form of making Stallman's 'Right to Read' a reality; instead of licensing debuggers, you make all mainstream OS's a non-Von Neumann architecture.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-death-of-the-von-neuman...

I don't see how that's a possible forseeable case, even if there is no such thing as a "personal computer" any more: tablets still have SSH software, and "tinkerer-level" cloud VM instances will still exist and cost no more than $5/mo.

> and "tinkerer-level" cloud VM instances will still exist and cost no more than $5/mo.

So you are at someone else's mercy how much and what to tinker with.

No? You could buy your own server rack and stick it in your basement if you wanted. Server hardware isn't going away. But that's usually more expensive than renting a cloud instance—not because server hardware is expensive (you can get used servers on ebay for prices competitive to used gaming PCs)—but because cloud instances are so cheap.

Assuming Apple will always allow programming apps and don't have a change of heart; it's their walled garden.

Even if all you have is the ability to load web pages in Mobile Safari, you can still just set up a websocket SSH gateway on your server and then serve an SSH-over-HTTPS client to the device. You'd have to kill a lot of the modern web to create a device completely incapable of being used (as a thin client/glass terminal) for tinkering.

The whole "iOS thing" fosters consumer culture in the field of computing like nothing else before. You don't start programs, you "launch apps". You don't see files or processes, you see only beautifully polished tiles. The basic granularity of your computing experience becomes the "app".

On top of that, each app lives in its own context and can hardly be "pipelined" with other apps to achieve something creative. It's the death of creative computing.

I think you're right that the appification of computers will have a significant effect on tinkers. I contest that most users never cared about what's going on under the hood, the appliance either works or it doesn't.

Even as a web developer, it boggles the mind to understand why browser context menus have "View Source" on by default, rather than a developer mode switch. This sort of stuff hits me hard. Like dead pause/break keys on laptops, wireless switches on the chassis. Nobody is actually paying attention to what they're building.

Tinkerers will just jailbreak.

depending on a security exploit in order to use a device ?

Sounds like a good plan !

DRM circumvention and the tools to do so are in general illegal. In various countries there are exemptions for non-copyright-infringing purposes. Jailbreaking tablets was illegal in the US before 2015, software helping with jailbreaking may still be illegal and given the climate around DRM and such, I wouldn't count on jailbreaking to remain a legal possibility in the future.

Plus jailbreaking iOS devices really is hard and exposes you to risks such as bricking your device or mallware. You can also lose your warranty, because Apple says so.

> In the worst foreseeable case, desktops/laptops become so rare that they costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Seeing the price of a Raspberry Pi is 25 dollars, what would make the price of a RPi skyrocket to thousands of dollars?

Note that this is looking at 10-30 years into the future (so this might be RPi v30). Most low volume (< 1k units) hardware products are expensive due to development costs. When you need to hire 10 engineers to make a computer, but only have 100 customers, your customers foot the bill.

I don't understand the concerns about the iPad crushing desktop computing, or iOS eating OS X. The tablet market is shrinking, and Macs are still growing. Apple is fighting an uphill battle with the iPad Pro.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-q4-earnings-2015-10?IR=...

This is simply not true. Pythonista is a full-on development environment for the iPad and iPhone, including an interactive terminal. If you prefer Lua there's Coda. There are also graphical programming environments available aimed at younger children. The iPad is a fantastic platform for learning to program.

Using "von-Neumann architecture" to describe the property that most computers have, but iOS devices don't have, that the computer can be used freely and easily to create an app that will run on the computer is probably the most unfortunate choice of words I've come across in months.

Is anyone really using the ipad (pro or not) for producing stuff? I find it great for checking emails or browsing the web, clunky for typing emails (editing a text is where the experience really deteriorates), but I wouldn't use it for anything else. Without a mouse and a keyboard it's hard to be productive.

It's dangerous to bet against apple these days but combined with a small ecosystem of professional authoring apps (compared with MacOS or Windows), I am not very bullish on the pro.

There are lots of quite sophisticated sketching, drawing and painting apps for iOS.

As a software developer it's easy to mistake "producing" and "productive" for "coding", but that's only one niche.

(MS Surface seems to be popular with comic artists, and even though they have a PowerShell at their disposal, I suppose they are using their Surface much like an Apple user can use his iPad.)

The primary use case I have in mind is rather Office, which is also probably the primary use case for most computers.

My experience with spreadsheet softwares on ipad is terrible compared with a desktop experience. And for word/powerpoint we are back to my point on editing something without a mouse and keyboard. There are some case in powerpoint where a stylet would be quite powerful (for drawing shapes) but in most use cases it is hard to beat the keyboard + mouse in term of precision, speed and small amount of effort required.

I can understand how it can be used by artists for sketching but I would think it's more of a niche market.

A lot of people have made games with our iPad app, Codea. Many have published on the App Store. In fact we had the distinction of having released the first game programmed entirely on iPad, it was great fun to work on. Although we used a Bluetooth keyboard most of the time. (Game is "Cargo-Bot")

I also bought an iPad Pro and Pencil. It beats my Wacom Cintiq. Especially because I prefer iOS painting software — Procreate in particular — to Photoshop. Procreate can handle large layered canvases at a smooth 60fps, on far less powerful hardware than Photoshop. It offers most of the same features for painting in a nicer package. It's far cheaper, and they have supported the app for years. I have been a graphics tablet user for over a decade and the iPad Pro + Pencil is the best digital drawing experience I've had.

I also kind of like coding on a software keyboard. Probably not for a big project, but it's what I go to when I want to build interactive prototypes.

"Working Copy" is a neat Git client I have been using on iPad. I use it to read my code base for large projects and to manage my commits and pull requests.

I hear a lot of musicians like the iPad for music production, but I haven't done much outside of GarageBand.

I have no plans to stop using my laptop computer. But the iPad is a great screen for making things, even if you might have to take those things to a laptop later on to "finish" them.

> One of the common complaints made by software developers who spoke to The Verge is that they can’t offer free trials of their apps as part of the App Store download process

How is this an issue? Why not just put an in-app purchase enabling the full features?

Well, you can't give the user a taste of what the full feature set is like when you have an inapp purchase.

What dev want is a way to have a full featured app that expires after a certain amount of time, not a limited version that enables all features over a paywall.

From https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#pur...

> Apps containing content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected, except for specific approved content (e.g. films, television programs, music, books)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com