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Comment by mooism2 | Hacker News Reader

He's happy basically because Apple has raised barriers to entry against some of his (potential) competitors.

Exactly this - the points he makes in the article are all correct, but they're all related to monopoly. His point is merely 'Anything that prevents others making better products is good for me'. That may be, but it's bad for the consumer.

It's like if Microsoft made it harder to write Office software for Windows, it would be good for sales of MS Office, but wouldn't be good for the consumer if it prevented people developing competing, better software.

What about the case where a large amount of apps are in the store. This is bad for both the consumer and the seller.

How is that bad for the consumer? Lots of apps means lots of supply, which means lower prices for the consumer.

The lowest price is already mandated by Apple. There is no lower price possible. Lots of apps means a big discovery problem by the consumer. They can't find the good apps then.

So prices stay the same and the customer does not find what he wants.

Firstly, what do you mean, they can't find the good apps? There are already tens (hundreds?) of thousands of apps, and people seem to do OK with the store rankings, ratings, and with word of mouth.

Secondly, I'm curious where you found a magic oracle to tell you how to eliminate all the bad apps from the store, but keep all the good ones. I don't think that "(eq language objective-c)" is that oracle.

Apple promotes good apps, right? And then there's various ways of advertising and word of mouth. Has anyone actually said "I can't find the apps I want?" Is this a reported problem, or are you guessing? It sounds to me like you're rationalizing something that benefits you as a single developer also benefits the consumers.

When the only market available for you to distribute your app gets saturated by zillions of other apps with similar characteristics and similar ratings, the expected RoI on the development of an app is reduced. This, in turn, leads to a decreased investment by the developers and, thus, to a high number of lower quality apps fueled by the new entrants in the market.

That argument doesn't hold water. The web is a completely open platform with zillions of websites "with similar characteristics". And sure there are crappy ones, but there are tons of great ones too.

The web is not a walled garden you have to ask for permission to offer your products in.

Of course, now you're begging the question: if there are already zillions of apps in the store and you're not providing anything they don't, does the world need you to develop it?

On the other hand, if the market does get flooded with low-quality apps, it should be pretty easy for developers to make money by simply making good apps.

> does the world need you to develop it?

Possibly not, but you can't distinguish a moderately superior offering in an environment that saturated.

That's the current situation, without the new clause and where Apple "reviews" every app.

Control brings certain benefits, but there's a trade-off. The trade-off is less innovation on your platform in the long term. I think Apple made this choice deliberately. They'd rather have more control over image and UX and let everyone else "innovate" features in software, then follow with their own slick version.

They remind me of the old Mercedes in this regard.

I don't know the author of this blog, but am I the only one here who thinks his post was satiric?

The author of this blog is someone I know of only through HN, and I respect him because he has created a viable business selling iPhone apps. Also, it appears he is mentoring others to follow his franchise strategy.

> I sell apps on the app store. A lot of small cheap apps. Revenue is hitting $1000 per day on the weekends (Here is the graph: http://imgur.com/T0z5p.png).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060019

OT: Max, what are your thoughts on the Federal Bureau of Apps? I'm amused and perplexed. They have a Cell Phone Locator app that is consistently in the top App Store revenue lists and has thousands of reviews (around 2 star average rating). How much if this developer's success and what part is pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain strategy and marketing?

I don't mean to disrespect him at all, regardless of whether he's being sartiric. But I sense that there might be a bit of satire/humor in some of his arguments and I'm wondering if we're missing it. Apologies if I'm wrong.

I never even heard of this company, but seems okay. If their product works, then what's wrong with it?

Ironically I'm sure he would be happy if somebody came out with a cross compiler that would let him build his iPhone applications and have them run natively on Android devices.

Come to think of it... why hasn't anyone done this yet?

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