Apple’s widened ban on templated apps wiping small businesses from the App Store | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s widened ban on templated apps wiping small businesses from the App Store

techcrunch.com

86 pointssxates94 comments

There are two sides to this:

1. Templated apps that spam the App Store just to increase revenue. For example, games that just swap out some assets and rebrand as an entirely new experience. 2. Templated apps for small organizations such as cities and universities that differ significantly in content, but not in design.

Obviously, it would be advantageous to let through apps of type #2 while blocking #1–the issue is finding a good boundary between them. I feel that the differences in content should be what really sets apps apart, instead of their design.

Why not let the user rating/review system work? If an app lacks value, it will get a poor rating. User's can then avoid low-rated apps.

I guess I just don't understand the Apple mentality in general that removing my choices and capabilities is better for me somehow.

There’s a point where this trade off (let the market decide, effectively) starts to fall over. Discoverability on Google Play has long been an issue for many people I know (sadly I have no formal data on this). Like many things I’m not sure either option is a clear winner.

>If an app lacks value, it will get a poor rating.

Ideally, yeah. The ongoing arms race between apple and review farmers makes that signal less likely to work.

Good point, the validity of reviews can be a big problem. There is a powerful incentive to figure out how to game the system, rather than putting that effort into the app.

The issue here is Apple doesn't want users to have to avoid low-rated apps–it defeats the whole point of having a walled garden and the app review process if bad apps are allowed through.

If I submit ten copies of the same game with different background colors, then all of them would get the same rating, because all of them provide the same value/quality. If the game's not poor, it will not get a poor rating.

Nonetheless, Apple would (rightly) want to ensure that this doesn't happen, since all the duplicates provide negative value, crowding out the competition, harming discoverability. On their own each of them would provide value, the problem is in duplication.

Allow ”hidden” apps which could be only found via direct link.

For the legitimate template apps described in article this should be ok as users are likely dedicated and can find the link to app for example via website.

Yes, I think that's exactly what they should do.

Apple wants to have absolute control of what users are allowed to install on their own devices. Maybe that's justifiable as a way to avoid malware, and maybe it's also reasonable to extend the "evilness" check to cover apps which would drain the battery or interfere with other apps.

Apple also entirely reasonably wants quality control on what apps they're willing to advertise on their "store front".

But I think there's no justification for using the "store front" quality bar to block what users are allowed to install. If an individual or organisation is willing to pay to have an app developed for their own customers/staff/associates/family/whatever, Apple shouldn't be applying more than the "evilness" check before they permit people to install it.

(Alternatively Apple could agree to sign apps which pass the "evilness check" without hosting them, but they'd probably want to be able to remove them if they spot malware later rather than relying on some kind of certificate revocation. They could charge a reasonable fee to cover review and hosting costs.)

You are on a site that has voting but also strong moderation. That strong moderation is the reason the quality is high and there is almost no real trash content, like spam or flamewars.

Yep exactly. App Store is curating an experience (like HN mods are), not hosting an open popularity contest. It’s a subtle difference that results in a different approach.

As template builders get more and more streamlined, we’re getting to the point where people are essentially submitting their webpages to the app store.

> Why not let the user rating/review system work? If an app lacks value, it will get a poor rating.

It'd be nice if that was true, but a few days using either Apple's or Google's app stores proves otherwise.

> If an app lacks value, it will get a poor rating.

Judging by the number of obviously fake reviews on app stores, i don't think they want to bet on this.

> Why not let the user rating/review system work?

Because bad actors will game that system to eliminate their competition.

What "content" is better exposed through an app that works on one platform than just creating a web page that works everywhere?

Seeing that most of the apps in question are just webviews wrapped in an app you get the worse of both worlds. You don't get the experience and speed of a true native app and you also don't get the benefits of a web page - bookmarking, shared bookmarks, discoverability through search engines etc.

Anything that wants push notifications or work offline. (On other platforms you can do both of those with web apps, but of course not on iOS)

How many small businesses like restaurants and churches - the target market for these types of apps have the infrastructure to do push notifications?

As far as offline use, from what I've seen of apps like these still require internet access since they are just web views anyway or are displaying video hosted on YouTube or podcasts - in the case of churches.

But even then if you want to listen to the podcast offline, I've had to tell them how to subscribe to the RSS feed using a podcast player.

It's not just about offline or push. In my experience enterprises pay big to have their app (their website with less things in a webview) in the AppStore. Because they think it is cool. And the network effect is potentially infinite right ?

You as a developer, are paid to do the thing. Where money lies, only solutions exist no problems.

The article isn't referring to major enterprises with budgets. The customers of most of the companies that are being affected are mom and pop shops and churches who don't have big budgets.

But you could make that same argument for other apps: "Why does app XYZ need to be a native app? It does nothing a web app can't do"

If Apple starts asking that question, shouldn't they ask it for all apps regardless of implementation details?

If a restaurant reimplements an app instead of using a template, that doesn't automatically make the app do things a web app can't. It's odd for Apple to rule out things like code reuse. It shouldn't matter whether a restaurant app shares common code with another restaurant's app. Does the app show me information like a map, business hours, a phone number and a menu? Does it let me order online?

Judge the app by its value, not by implementation details.

I don't have a strong opinion either way about Apple's stance, but why do these restaurants need an app at all? You can do online ordering and Apple Pay with a website.

If the companies had tied their fate to the web instead of the App Store they wouldn't have this problem.

I'm usually pro native apps for things I use every day but I'm not going to keep an app on my phone for a restaurant.

Yeah I agree. I hate installing apps on my phone!

Because searching for an App within App Store with Logo shown in restaurant is infinitely easier for majority of users then typing www. whatever this is they couldn't spell.com

QR Code solves this problem by simply having the user scan.

I dont think restaurant needs its own App. But there are definitely some advantage to having a App Entrance to your restaurant.

I think this is a problem worth solving.

I doubt that anyone in the almost 10 years that the Apple App Store has been opened has ever said that searching through it is easier than searching Google.

Apple could provide a way for the app creator to add alternative app-install links which also provide a configuration setting.

So that from Apple's point of view it's like having a single app which starts with a "please select your restaurant from this list" screen, only with better user experience.

I don’t like installing apps either. But some people, customers, do. And the native app UX is less clunky than a web app.

That said, I think there should be a standard way to click a link on a website that results in an icon for the site being placed in your app launcher. (After the OS confirms you granting permission for that)

A native app ux can be less clunky than a web app. But most of the low cost templating apps are just using web views. They are slower and more clunky than either a web page ( who needs a clunky SPA for a restaurant web site) or a native app that someone who has the time and resources to create a true native app.

Why do these small businesses need apps rather than web sites? Reading the description of these templated apps, they seem to to be the low quality kind of web site replacement that doesn't offer any extra functionality over a web site.

IMHO they don't; a website is much better.

However some people (for reasons I don't understand) don't like to use the mobile browser. If there isn't an app, they won't do it. Does not seem to matter if the app is just a piece of crap with a web view.

To clarify, I hate the mobile browser too (I much prefer the laptop/desktop user experience), but if I'm on mobile anyway the browser is better by far than a crappy app.

Discoverability. Almost a form of SEO. Some people just look for an app reflexively. And template apps make sense for very simple applications such as merchant info pages or restaurant menus.

Push notifications require an app, which is likely a big reason for wanting to get users into apps.

> Push notifications require an app

An app isn't required if you use a browser that supports push notifications.

https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/codelabs/push...

On iOS the only way to get a push notification is via an app. Mobile Safari doesn’t support push (or service workers).

I think you might be correct. Until someone else corrects me, I found this in Apple's documentation about website notifications and Safari Push Notifications:

"This document pertains to OS X only. Notifications for websites do not appear on iOS."

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ne...

Although, I'd be hard convinced that people accept the push notification dialog on websites at even 5% of what they do with apps.

Well yeah, but if you were ordering a pizza and the restaurant asked if they can show you push notifications to alert you when your pizza's on the way, you would accept them.

I can guarantee that if the pizza website generator here had an ionic app, that would be the mobile app they would be using

Some of these things require push notifications, location services, or other things that are only available in native apps. From the examples, governments using 311 apps and universities offering directory apps seem to be good examples where an app seems like a better solution that a web site.

Because if some of their customers are prepared to keep a reminder of the restaurant on their home screen, why would they turn that down? And it's a lot easier to tell them to install an app which they understand the concept of and have done many times before than to try to explain how to add a website to their home screen.

This seems to be part of a PR effort on the part of people making the app-creator apps.

Apple is cracking down on spam apps, in which someone creates dozens or hundreds of nearly-identical apps. That's why the notice says "Your app provides the same feature set as many of the other apps you’ve submitted to the App Store, it simply varies in content or language."

So if you're a company creating one app for each of three dozen restaurants, yeah, but that's spam. Solution: each restaurant publishes their app under their own account. Problem solved!

But that would remove lock-in by the spam vendors, so instead they begin a PR effort.

This is exactly it. Apple is simply requiring that apps be published under the proper owner's account rather than under the accounts of the app mills that generate them.

The notice by Apple states ‘Your app provides the same feature set as many of the other apps you’ve submitted to the App Store’.

IE spam

But according to the article it’s against apps creates using a template.

I don’t think you get these notices if you use a template to build one app, just when you submit hundreds of the same apps.

Two viewpoints:

1. I wonder if this could be used to target things like React Native. Is there an incentive for Apple to push devs to use Swift/ObjC/Xcode to keep them on platform? Is RN’s platform agnosticism a threat?

2. Native apps are horrible and mask deficiencies in both web apps and device makers. The web should be good enough. Apps also create a walled garden which is antithetical to an open internet.

Do you have a non trivial example of #1 in React Native that works the same in Android and IOS that doesn't have a 50+ person development team? Just curious about the state of the art, Android was way behind IOS last time I looked.

I don't, as I'm removed from RN development, and I do agree that there is still a delta between platforms. But my point was that a tool like RN could allow a shift to a different platform on a whim, because it is, at its core, an abstraction layer.

Gyrosco.pe i think they are only a couple of guys.

https://gyrosco.pe/app/

> Is there an incentive for Apple to push devs to use Swift/ObjC/Xcode to keep them on platform?

Of course. It creates developer lock-in.

> Native apps are horrible and mask deficiencies in both web apps and device makers. The web should be good enough.

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Web apps (yes, I'm including React Native here) are always inferior to a well-designed native apps. They perform significantly poorer, don't take full advantage of UIKit, and, based on many companies' engineering blogs, require a significant amount of effort to solve issues that just don't occur with native apps.

ReactNative has full access to UIKit. Any particular react native app you especially dislike?

I agree on all your points about web apps vs native apps. I should clarify, native apps are fine, but the requirement for native apps due to poor performance of web apps is horrible. At least give me PWAs.

This does seem unfortunate especially considering the enforcement doesn’t target Apple’s parter IBM which the article says develops similar apps. I guess the answer is that for many of these apps they need to make their own without a template or just encourage use of a mobile website.

They pay the protection money.

They do better than just pay protection money.

https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-s...

screenshot https://screenshots.firefoxusercontent.com/images/db98b0b7-1...

That's a silly response. IBM provides enterprise level apps that are distributed outside of the app store. That doesn't really apply to this situation.

Are the IBM apps in the App Store or just for enterprises?

Anyone have any idea on how this will affect the new Salesforce mobile? They recently unveiled this huge thing where you could rebrand their app and deploy it to app stores through config only. I'm about 50/50 on "this is going to ruin it for them" and "Salesforce can throw money at it to be a silent exception"

Seems that the bigger companies are getting the more they focus on shutting businesses out of economical ways of becoming more efficient where technology is concerned. Many of these smaller businesses are simply developing a means for the convenience of their customers to do what they currently undertake but in a more time consuming manner. Yes, they hope to gain new customers but moreso they are are trying to provide a service to their existing customers. Shutting these smaller businesses out will just make it harder and more expensive for them to ever compete with the big competitors in their respective industries.

I don’t like the spammy apps but I do think there are good smaller businesses who need some of these services. I guess the challenge is finding the balance between helping small businesses and cutting down on the spammers.

Seems like a great opportunity for them to migrate to the web. None of the examples provided seem to require features that aren't available in all major browsers.

The web is open and accessible! I find it incredibly frustrating when random services expect me to install their shitty mobile app. I don't want to use any walled garden if I can avoid it.

I'd view this as a small victory for the web.3

People on a limited data plan for with bad net access may not want to incur the charges of a big fat webpage

it’very possible to have an app with webview only, so absence of app does not neccessarily mean less data traffic.

Glad to see Apple take a stand on all these spammy templated apps.

Winning hearts and minds. I wonder if they considered how this might make small businesses feel about using Apple products.

Well it's "winning hearts and minds" of users who accidentally download these spammy template apps.

There's likely a mix of legitimate ones and spammy ones.

For example, the app needs of small family owned restaurants likely don't vary much. A templated app that does coupons, menus, take out orders, maps, etc, likely works for all. Why build a custom app from scratch?

You don't have to build from scratch. You can build apps quickly using native code that are more performant, secure, and work better, and white label it with custom graphics and features.

But they should actually do things and add value to your business. Most of these banned apps did very little other than display web views and images.

Is the app any better than just loading their webpage in the browser? There are precious few of those custom apps that offer any value over just loading the website in the built-in browser.

You mean like an app for ordering things? Like food?

Yeah, apps are useless for this and provide no value.

There's no reason you couldn't accept food orders in a mobile web app...

You can do that on the website just fine.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but a mobile web site would be a better choice than an app if all it is doing is providing the phone number, address, and simple ordering.

Having every restaurant I frequent having a separate app sounds like a very, very bad thing from the user perspective.

If you're not adding any new functionality, what benefit does having this app give the user? If "A templated app that does coupons, menus, take out orders, maps, etc, likely works for all." then it should be one app on my phone for all such restaurants, not a separate one for each.

Having separate apps is intentionally getting worse user experience just for the sake of restaurant branding/advertising, so the needs of users and restaurant owners conflict here. The whole point of a walled garden is to steer the growth towards something that users want in the end, so if that's your example, then Apple should be putting in work to ensure that we don't get to a future where each small family restaurant has such an app; I'd want Apple to ensure that the needs of users prevail even if that's not what the restaurant owners want.

> The whole point of a walled garden is to steer the growth towards something that users want in the end

That's incredibly naive. The whole point of a walled garden is to steer growth towards something that benefits the owner of the walled garden.

Your response is a bit naive too. Isn't the most beneficial thing for Apple (the owner of the walled garden) for their users to get the information they want easily so that they can spend money there? The better and faster the conversion happens, the better Apple makes out both financially and in repeat business.

Those types of apps wouldn't have a problem as long as the app was being published directly from the restaurant's App Store account. The issue is with companies publishing all of these apps from 1 account where it's just flooding the category.

These "small" businesses whose feelings you are so worried about are in turn hurting other, more creative, more well intentioned small businesses that actually make unique well crafted apps...

If the spammy template makers feel bad about using Apple products, that's fine with me.

Other than AppMakr that's listed in the article, I believe there are many other 'app making' companies that are affected. One of our active app store apps was built using Appery.io but we haven't received a notification like the one shown in the article.

App developers (and their companies) are also affected by template apps, which take away their legit business by offering shitty cheap replacements. So while these destructive spammy companies are being harmed, some more creative hard working app makers would be glad to see the spammers getting shut down... there are two sides to this story.

But for Apple I'm sure it's mostly about the end-user experience. If the template companies can up their game with better, more varied, templates, they should do fine.

If you publish the packaged app under your own account, you wouldn't get the notification. The issue is the companies are flooding the store with these apps that are barely different, even in content.

apple should work on improving their app store search instead of this

Church app company that has successfully pivoted to still service churches within the new rules: https://aware3.com

I do not understand why they do not switch to "progressive web apps". What are their disadvantages compared to native apps?

This is text book antitrust. Apple runs the most profitable app store, not being on it can severely impact the bottom line of businesses. It's abusing app store leadership and picking winners on a whim, while hypocritically campaigning for net neutrality.

FTC, BBB, Justice department - take note

Curating an app store is not antitrust.

Curating would be okay if there was literally any other way to distribute an app...

Apple is not a monopoly on a phone market.

The category here is not "phones", but app stores. Apple is certainly a monopoly there - evidence lies in the averse effects on the bottom line of not on the app store.

Apple owns less than 20% (https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/vendor) of the smartphone market, and you can access site-based services via safari.

It’s a far cry short of monopoly.

Ah, yes, Safari. The only web renderer allowed on the platform.

They may hold 20% marketshare but it's an important 20%. Trusts and anticompetitive practices have multiple forms as well.

Yes, it’s an important 20%. The gap between “important 20%” and “monopoly” is enormous.

Why would a restaurant owner in the US care about Apple's world wide market share?

Even in the US, iOS' market share is only 45%. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

And then you still have to narrow it down even more by your target market. Who's more likely to have more disposable income?

https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Data-Mine/iPhone-Users-Ear...

Ted Liew is always on-the-ball and challenging DC bozos. Props.

So, Apple in it's esteem of for the "rich" people, doesn't care about the SMB next door that isn't a million dollar company?

This is actually quite concerning. What's the motivation behind this? How can SMB's improve ordening if Apple despises the web and bans "niche related" apps?

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