Why Amazon got out of the Apple App Store tax and other developers won’t
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One of the many silly rejections we had was due to the images on our influencers profiles being too sexy despite being linked through the Instagram API. After explaining they were the same as you can find in the Instagram app we were told we had to actively censor them anyway. Shame on us for not being as big as Instagram, right?
After a year of making less margin from our own business than Apple they concluded paid chat was no longer appropriate for the app store and decided to just put us out of business one morning. Meanwhile, tons of other apps with the same functionality and far more sexualized are alive and doing well.
It can't be easy making every developer happy while curating the tidal wave of apps coming in each day, but it was a really soul crushing experience for us.
not discounting apple's hand in all this, but that's mostly an instance of the caveat emptor problem (and paradox of choice too)--how do you know who to trust in a market?
not that it's always right, but apple and many consumers use size as a proxy for quality, a good enough, but probably not optimal, result in most cases. conversely, it's hard to evaluate small developers with no reputation. then you bring in reviews and review sites, and the additional trust issues around that.
any curation is bound to be imperfect (because humans and our systems are imperfect) but no curation at all is often even worse (paradox of choice and all). the path to a better system is not trying to get it exactly right the first time but having swift and visible procedures when it's wrong.
it was that way for windows desktops 10+ years ago, when i last really used a vnc client.
That was amusing; ran it for weeks. There were a few desktops and such, but the majority was camera monitoring systems from shops, kiosks, office buildings, streets and what not, some manufacturer clearly didn't do their due diligence... Found a whole bunch of industrial equipment HMI systems, although we could never figure out what it was, something with hot pipes... Some stuff looked like astronomy, some like fishing, a lot we just had no clue.
I wonder what it would look like if repeated today... ?
Charging that much is also a way to reduce support costs since anyone who will fork over that much for a VNC viewer probably knows what they’re doing or has an IT department.
(Totally agree with your take though—I have this problem with many categories of apps)
It works for desktop software where users know what is the best software for their particular needs.
I don't need to be told what should I use. I am doing that research myself, because I know my needs better than anyone else.
All the apps I see on the app store are major corporations. There is hardly anything by indie or single devs anymore.
Overcast is the most popular third party podcast player on iOS and it is written by one person. David Smith has made a living on the App Store for years as a solo developer.
But how is the power law that you see in the App Store any different than in music, books, podcasts or on the web?
Like Firefox and other proper browsers (not just Safari reskins)? ;-)
And other stuff like emulators and on-device development environments, software under GPLv3 and others.
It’s not exactly winning over hearts and minds on the other platforms where it’s available - Windows, Macs, or Android.
And “successful” as in “makes decent money”.
It’s the authors choice to use a license that’s its incompatible with Apple’s policies. You are free to have open source software and publish it on github and run it on iOS.
Also if you are the legal rights holder of the emulated system, you are free to distribute your emulator with games - see Sega.
So basically you'll just be moving the goalposts until you prove Apple is the only innovative company around? Right.
Even if you are just looking for ubiquity and not looking for profitability, Firefox doesn’t exactly win there either.
You should be able to find one worldwide or at least nationwide mass market success that is successful on Android that isn’t available on Apple.
iOS has about the same marketshare in mobile that Macs have in the PC market. You can find plenty of Windows only successful software that is massively profitable. Where is the same software for Android?
Or do you think that when someone uses Firefox on iOS that doesn’t count as far as monetization?
I’ve also been “told” that Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions outside of the App Store. That clearly isn’t the case.
The software that is Windows-only isn't the most successful stuff that everybody has heard of (e.g. Office, Adobe, Chrome), that's the stuff available for both because it has enough demand to justify development even for smaller platforms.
The Windows-only applications are the ones with a niche. It's the control application for some piece of industrial equipment, or some line-of-business application, and then you need Windows because you have that equipment or you're in that line of business. And it's the same thing for Android. They can only justify development for one platform so they choose the most popular one. They're just not apps you'll have heard of if you aren't in that niche.
It's even moreso for Android because many types of applications are prohibited by Apple. Like what's the best BitTorrent app for iPhone? File manager? Remote desktop? Screen recording?
Even the popular apps that exist on both platforms aren't as good on iOS. Firefox has to use Safari under the hood. Maybe that doesn't matter to you. Until the "Firefox" you want to run is Tor Browser, which is designed to resist client fingerprinting in ways that Safari isn't, and then the inability to use that on iOS compromises your security. Similarly, the way Signal does backups on Android (i.e. with its characteristically diligent security properties) isn't allowed on iOS, so it doesn't support backups on iOS at all. So even for apps that exist on both, on iOS they're not as good.
There are plenty of Remote Desktop apps for the iPhone. There are also screen recording apps for the iPhone - there is an API for it. It’s used by Zoom.
What policies are in place that don’t allow Signal to do backups using its own service - something that other apps do?
And seeing how Signal does “backups”. It’s not exactly user friendly (https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...)
And you’re worried about “security” but you want a File Browser to have unfettered access to your data? It’s a feature that third party apps can only access files outside of their own sandbox that you explicitly give them permission to.
No company wants to deal with the hassle and legality of bit torrent. Most people aren’t using to “download Linux ISOs”. I’m definitely not.
But before as far as bit torrent, my use case is starting and downloading things on my computer from my phone and adding them to my Plex library. I can do that by pairing my mobile browser to Vuze and going to remote.vuze.com.
There are plenty of Windows only consumer apps - especially games. Even from Microsoft, Access and Publisher are Windows only and are included with Office 365.
counterpoint: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.delphicode...
It seems like Apple’s strategy is working better for consumers and app developers...
What do you think made Chrome so popular?
People have been saying that marketing is the only reason that Apple is successful since the iPod. Are other companies that incompetent that they could figure marketing out in almost 20 years?
Not screen sharing, something equivalent to Windows Remote Desktop Services or X11 forwarding, where your device acts as a thin client for an application running on a remote server. It's expressly prohibited by the Apple guidelines, presumably because any such client would allow someone to compete with the app store by using remote apps. But it's also useful for other things, like keeping all your data on your company's trusted servers instead of on a device that could be lost or stolen.
> What policies are in place that don’t allow Signal to do backups using its own service - something that other apps do?
It doesn't use a service because the entire point is to not have all your data in the hands of a third party service. On Android it stores the backup in the filesystem which you copy off the device via USB.
> And you’re worried about “security” but you want a File Browser to have unfettered access to your data? It’s a feature that third party apps can only access files outside of their own sandbox that you explicitly give them permission to.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"
There should obviously be a permission required to do that, but if the user wants to use the app to view their files, they should be able to use the app to view their files.
This is the problem with Apple deciding everything for everybody. Some people have really stringent security requirements and don't want their data getting uploaded to a service, someone else wants a copy of all the data from every app to be backed up to some third party cloud service. But Apple restricts things to such an extent that you can't choose to do either one. One size fits none.
> No company wants to deal with the hassle and legality of bit torrent. Most people aren’t using to “download Linux ISOs”. I’m definitely not.
BitTorrent is not illegal, that isn't Apple's problem any more than it is with anything else anyway (what if someone pirates movies with Safari?), and "no company wants to deal with that hassle" is exactly the problem with putting the decision of what you can use your device for in the hands of a third party that isn't responsive to your needs.
> But before as far as bit torrent, my use case is starting and downloading things on my computer from my phone and adding them to my Plex library. I can do that by pairing my mobile browser to Vuze and going to remote.vuze.com.
Which is a fully generic counterargument, because you can make any app a web page and then do whatever you want on the web page. That's a total cheat when you're asking for things there are no iOS apps for.
> There are plenty of Windows only consumer apps - especially games.
There are plenty of Android only games, like Doom 3.
Not to mention all of the games that can be played in emulators on Android but not iOS because Apple doesn't allow emulators.
> Even from Microsoft, Access and Publisher are Windows only and are included with Office 365.
You must realize the equivalent to this would be Google apps for Android that don't exist on iOS, which there are several of.
There is are existence proofs that you are wrong.
Microsoft Remote Desktop for iOS.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/remote/remot...
Chrome Remote Desktop.
https://remotedesktop.google.com/
TeamViewer for iOS
https://www.teamviewer.com/en-us/download/ios/
Should I continue?
It doesn't use a service because the entire point is to not have all your data in the hands of a service. On Android it stores the backup in the filesystem which you copy off the device via USB
You know Apple supports standard USB storage devices now right?
There should obviously be a permission required to do that, but if the user wants to use the app to view their files, they should be able to use the app to view their files.
They can. It’s called the “Files” app. It’s built into iOS.
This is the problem with Apple deciding everything for everybody. Some people have really stringent security requirements and don't want their data leaving their device, someone else wants a copy of all the data from every app to be backed up to some third party cloud service. But Apple restricts things to such an extent that you can't choose to do either one.
You mean you can’t attach a standard USB device to iOS and the App Store data on it? You know that feature was added in iOS 13?
Which is a fully generic counterargument, because you can make any app a web page and then do whatever you want on the web page. That's total cheat when you're asking for things there are no iOS apps for
I thought the favorite Anti- Apple talking point was that Apple forced everyone to create apps instead of using the “open web”?
There are plenty of Android only games, like Doom 3.
There is no official port for Android either. There is an unofficial port for iOS and Android....
You must realize the equivalent to this would be Google apps for Android that don't exist on iOS, which there are several of
How is the equivalent of anything? Microsoft has been writing software for Apple platforms since the original AppleSoft Basic in 1980.
You have listed a bunch of screen sharing apps again. They're designed to let you view the screen of your PC or game console from your phone, not to let you run apps designed for phones remotely instead of running them on your phone (so that your data is never stored on your phone).
In theory you could probably use those apps to do that anyway since they use sufficiently generic protocols, but it would be quite risky to rely on the availability of expressly prohibited behavior for a workflow you require to actually continue to work.
In fact, that is a major risk of using an iPhone in general, because they can change the rules at any time and boot any app out of the store even if it's critically important for your workflow.
> They can. It’s called the “Files” app. It’s built into iOS.
No they can't, they have to use the "Files" app instead of the app they actually want to use. If it would do something the "Files" app can't do, now they can't do that.
> You know Apple supports standard USB storage devices now right?
How is that supposed to help if the app still can't write to the filesystem?
> I thought the favorite Anti- Apple talking point was that Apple forced everyone to create apps instead of using the “open web”?
I don't want to call this a straw man because I'm sure somebody has said it at some point, but that's a weak argument.
The web is like the lowest common denominator. It's universally available and in principle you can make it do anything (browsers are certainly Turing-complete), but then it's slower and uses ugly languages like javascript and is inherently client-server which is centralizing and terrible for privacy and offline availability etc. etc.
As far as I'm concerned the problem with what Apple is doing is that it makes it harder to have native apps that do what you want them to do which pushes more things to be crummy websites full of ad spam when they ought to be local apps that never contact an external server.
> There is no official port for Android either. There is an unofficial port for iOS and Android....
It's open source. "Official" isn't particularly relevant. What's relevant is that you don't need to be in a developer program to install it on your Android phone.
> How is the equivalent of anything? Microsoft has been writing software for Apple platforms since the original AppleSoft Basic in 1980.
You're asking for apps that are available on Android but not iOS. There are several of them from Google, but that hardly proves anything because Google makes Android. They have an obvious incentive to favor their own platform. Apps made by Microsoft that only run on Windows prove just as little for the same reason.
With more critical services and partnerships depending on Google, we're currently choosing our battles, even though I'd love to take this out in public.
That doesn't take away that Apple still takes the crown. Over the years, we've been revoked for doing some basic app behavior, then for not doing it anymore and lastly for doing it again (sorry that I can't go into specifics).
We're not doing anything remotely shady, just basic item comparison for consumers.
If you're relying on any of the app stores for your business these days, you're screwed. Both major ecosystems are unreliable, inconsistent dictatorships by now.
It's really time to unite as app developers and take out those big anti-trust guns.
If you have to market the whole thing on your own and find your own audience, what value are they providing? Hosting the infrastructure? Fine, let me pay a per download price or a monthly hosting fee. Or better yet, let me host it on my own infrastructure.
Verifying the security of the app? The customers should be paying for that, not the developers.
That's the issue here. They want you to pay a ransom but they don't actually provide any value for that ransom.
I don't know, in theory that's why they get 30%, to figure that out.
> Apple never claimed promotion they claimed access.
From their website [0]: "the all-new Mac App Store beautifully showcases your apps and makes them even easier to find."
> Do physical retail stores actively promote your SKU over the thousands of other products?
They most certainly do. If you've ever worked in retail you'd be familiar with the daily restocking sheet, where we had to move certain products to the eye level shelf and other ones down.
Look at your supermarket. The end caps change all the time. This is a combination of those brands paying for those placements and the store putting high margin popular items up front.
But the point is that stores accept different payments from different vendors for different levels of promotion.
So what platform has 4.5 million products and can showcase them all?
They most certainly do. If you've ever worked in retail you'd be familiar with the daily restocking sheet, where we had to move certain products to the eye level shelf and other ones down.
So some products get showcased and some languish in obscurity. Apple also showcases a few apps....
And those products that get showcased on the end cap pay extra. You can also (sadly) pay extra to run search based ads in the App Store.
Fraud at scale is still fraud. This isn’t a difficult concept.
I agree it's too much. But they do offer something for that 30%.
That's not possible anymore. It's a known fact that the only way to make it on the app store these days is to blow half a million dollars on a burst ad campaign to get a large initial volume of downloads. Other option is to have the number of "App Store Managers", who decide what gets featured, and that option is only really available to top VC firms and large companies.
I'd expect Apple to provide three things in exchange for the 30%:
Access to a huge audience, payment processing, and the administrative/technical stuff like download servers and bandwidth.
Back in the day if I wanted to find a good navigation app I could open up the app store, press on the navigation category and get a list of top navigation apps, determined by usage. Now it's:
open app > press "Apps" tab > scroll 10 pages worth of content down to "Top Categories" > press a small blue text button "See All" > select "Navigation" > scroll past hiking, charging and bike sharing recommended sections > find "Top Free" section > press "See All" > browse top apps
From talking to a lot of users of my app I guarantee you that 90% of people never make it past the hand picked suggestions that Apple decides to show everyone. To make things worse their search is completely broken, I just searched "maps" and got:
0. Paid Ad for Google Maps
1. Apple Maps
2. "Brainstorm and Mind-Map Your Ideas" ("Story")
3. Google Maps
4. Google Photos
5. Facebook Messenger
6. Gmail
7. Waze
A new mapping app has no shot at getting discovered the way Waze did back in the day unless it raises millions of dollars and blows all of it on Apple, Google and Facebook ads.
Marco Arment is a one man shop who saw success with both InstaPaper before he sold it and now Overcast. Overcast is often featured in the App Store.
David “Underscore” Smith is another indie Mac developer who is frequently featured in the iOS App Store and the Watch App Store. Not to mention apps like Carrot Weather and Dark Skies.
On another note what shot does an indie musician have to being successful?
m_ke's point is that you shouldn't have to be hand-picked by Apple like that to be successful. Apps that people rate highly and download more should have the benefit of being on the front page.
Apps-> Most popular.
Maybe you and m_ke are using different versions of iOS.
Open App Store. This is what the screen looks like.
Apps
Watch With Family
Disney+
Stream Pixar’s Latest hit
[ Screen shot of Onward]
Popular Apps. [See All]
Today | Games | Apps | Arcade | Search
If you click on Apps, you see “Popular Apps”.
The entire issue with “popular free apps” is that it never gives other apps the opportunity to gain exposure and the same apps stay popular for years at a time. Apps like Facebook would get exposure forever.
I mean at least make App Store Search works would be a great place to start 11 years after App Store was introduced?
Part of me just want Apple to give me a dump of all the Apps Information to shove it inside Elastic Search and see if I get better results by default than the current App Store searching. That is how bad it is. ( To add insult to injury they decided to add top placement bids to App Store )
But history has shown companies like this fall from grace once a critical mass of once devoted customers go elsewhere. I hope I’m wrong and Apple wakes up before this happens.
I thought there was no alternative to the Apple ecosystem that wouldn’t drive me crazy (Windows) or cost me in productivity. But with my 2017 MacBook Pro dead (again) and no access to Apple service due to Pandemic, I took out an old Thinkpad T420 and installed Linux Mint. It installed perfectly, the keyboard is epic compared to MBP and I’m productive.
Now I’m happy because I have an effective alternative to Apple. Once my MBP is fixed I will sell it. And wave goodbye to Apple.
I built a Ryzen desktop a while ago, since there was no way I was paying what they want for an iMac Pro or Mac Pro, and I needed a decent GPU, lots of cores and memory and no thermal throttling.
Switched to Linux with a tiling WM (bspwm), since I’m a backend engineer (Go/Rust), not iOS. I also have Windows 10 installed, and honestly, it’s fine as well with WSL2.
Apple needs to realise Swift is not going anywhere except for the iOS/macOS niche, and consider general developers again, but so far Microsoft is doing a much better job of that, and I don’t hold out much hope, Apple have missed their window and are returning to their closed off locked down comfort zone. Not really sure they left, but it seemed like it for a while.
My MacBook Pro is gathering dust.
I can use whatever hardware I need, I can upgrade the hardware with ease, I can connect almost any periferals with ease.
The downside would be if you prefer OS X way of doing things. For me software I use matters more than the underlying OS, as long as the OS doesn't stay in my way.
That is at least 20M lock in due to iOS. Added to many more developers have their Machine paid by company I wont be surprised if there are many more software developers on Mac platform. ( They dont care about the price of the machine nor how long it takes to repair )
That is one reason why Apple, after years of announcing the Mac User Satisfaction rate is no longer doing so in their latest conference and investor meeting. Their growth of Active Mac User has also slowed down dramatically, and hasn't reported a new Active Mac user number for quite a long time.
What all these suggest is that Apple only took action with the Keyboard and MacBook Pro 16" when they saw the sales were slowing. It wasn't the keyboard were not good enough or customers were unhappy with their Machine that brought them action. It was the sales number that did the talk. No one in Apple now has the product / user mindset whether something is good or not. The only product person is gone. And that was Steve Jobs.
The newest ipad? Copy of Android. The butterfly keys? DOA and they waited until consumers realized they made dud products at absurd prices. New macbook air? WTF kind of innovation is that? You literally are just reusing the brand name. Also 128gb hard drives as a standard? Still?! That is the biggest joke in the world seeing as the newest macbook has a 4k display. 4k files raw files can be like 50gb's at times! Thats half the drive space!
Apple can get bent at this point. The simple fact that I constantly have to tell it I'm okay with installing a third party app outside of the app store goes to show they do not care what I like about computing. They just want to funnel me through a path to make them money. This is why I'm a staunch advocate for OSS and Linux and always will be, even with their faults.
I still prefer their products to anything made by MS (and Linux is not an option for pro media reasons), but buying Apple has become less about delight and more about holding my nose while feeling like I'm being gouged for a product that is likely to have at least a few serious issues.
Developers like Adobe just need to put in the effort, because Linux itself is ready for production.
Linux ready for Production. Sure feels like the perfect time.
One of the principles of competition law is prevent a company from abusing a dominant position or to prevent a company from obtaining a dominant position through abuse. Apple does not have a dominant position.
So, first off, even when this is allowed, the UI experience sucks, as you aren't allowed to help the user make the purchase from the app: the user has to go hunting on Google for the idea they can make an external purchase.
> Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.
But like, while you might think it is allowed--due to the existence of some apps like Netflix and Udemy--those apps are in explicitly exempted content-catalog oriented product categories, such as movies and online education.
> Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.
There are also apps like Office, GSuite, and those from Adobe where you buy your license out of band.
So you're actually proving the point that their review system is neither fair nor consistent with your crusade in here. Also don't forget about survivorship bias. For every app you see that does this thousands of others got forced to use IAP during the review process.
What’s more likely, your interpretation is wrong or reality?
They can't make a phone and simultaneously control the app distribution. Things didn't work like this in the 90s and 00s.
I'm hoping there's a future the web can win. With WASM and full access to native APIs, we can build and distribute truly free apps without being overloarded by these giant monopolies trying to bleed us dry.
The government should mandate that apps work on all platforms, with the onus being on platform owners to make it work.
I'm hopeful about this too, but it seems Apple is consciously avoiding cannibalizing their developer program by giving too much API access. For example, despite Web Push being a standard for years now and supported by desktop Safari, not only is it not implemented on iOS Safari, other browsers are seemingly prevented from implementing it. Whole classes of PWA are eliminated by not having notification access (e.g. turn-based games).
As far as things didn’t work like this is in the 90s, Atari had its own digital store in the 80s where you could buy games and have them downloaded over cable to a cartridge.
People should be able to run their own distribution. It's the Internet and it's a simple problem. Companies need to stop dipping their fingers in the pie and offering little in recompense.
> Should the console makers not be allowed to have their own store?
There are three major gaming consoles, PC, mobile, self-distribution... lots of platforms with which to gain distribution. There are libraries and frameworks that let you write the game once and publish it to all platforms.
Gaming is a small sector compared to everything we run on our phones. Movies, finance, communication, dating. Apple and Google tax all of the commerce happening there. I'd much rather give that money to the government instead of helping these two build a deeper moat.
> Should physical retail not be allowed to sell their own in house brands?
They do this at a loss to aid negotiations for pricing and ensuring they get enough stock. It's complicated.
So has Amazon stopped people from selling their stuff on their own website?
There are three major gaming consoles, PC, mobile, self-distribution... lots of platforms with which to gain distribution. There are libraries and frameworks that let you write the game once and publish it to all platforms.
There are also frameworks that help you publish to both mobile platforms. But just like cross platform games, you still need to own the development machines for the console or computer.
Movies, finance, communication, dating. Apple and Google tax all of the commerce happening there.
Most commerce happening there is done on the providers website. The client is on the mobile site. Apple nor Google get a cut.
They do this at a loss to aid negotiations for pricing and ensuring they get enough stock. It's complicated.
You really think store brands are sold at a loss and not a higher profit?
> So has Amazon stopped people from selling their stuff on their own website?
Yes, along with google. By monopolizing search. You won't ever be able to find Bob's home store online when they push their own stores and paid ads on top of everything else.
Coming back to Apple, it definitely stopped people from selling their stuff. There is no way to load third-party apps on their platform besides the App Store. There is no way to provide payments (or even mention you sell stuff) without giving up 30% of your revenue.
This shows a severe lack of imagination. Everyone by definition can’t stand out via organic search. Should you really start a business if your only customer acquisition strategy is SEO and organic search? In MBA speak “What's your unfair advantage”?
And once again, there is an existence proof from dozens of companies that force you to pay for the service outside of the store to use the app. They aren’t just big companies. I mentioned before that the smallish B2B company I use to work at had an app on the store that required health systems to sign a six figure a year contract to use and Apple didn’t see a penny of it.
Speaking of which, I’ve worked for four small B2B companies that had sense enough to not put their customer acquisition destiny in Google’s hands. They actually had a sales force, a contact list, went to industry events, published in industry specific journals, made sure they appeared in the upper right of “Gartner’s Magic Quadrant”, etc.
It still amazes me how many excuses people make for not having a realistic customer acquisition strategy.
Even on the consumer side how many B2C companies have become successful by advertising on relevant podcasts?
He didn't claim everyone should stand out, his complaint is that organic search itself is being demoted and replaced.
>You won't ever be able to find Bob's home store online when they push their own stores and paid ads on top of everything else.
No point being successful in marketing if Apple decides to summarily remove your app from the store for no good reason at all.
The whole point is that they should. Why can't I buy iOS apps through Amazon? Or on a USB stick from Walmart or Gamestop like boxed software for Windows? Why can't I get it directly from the developer's website?
The problem isn't that Apple or Google has a store, it's that everybody should be able to have a store, without having to be the size of Apple or Google or Amazon.
So who is stopping you from buying all your apps from the App Store after they've gone through the review process? Why do you need to stop everybody else from choosing to do something different than you and having their iPhone apps reviewed by somebody else?
> But you do realize even physical games you buy for consoles have to be reviewed and approved by the console makers and they still get a cut?
That is indeed the same situation, and consoles should not be restricting competing app distribution methods either.
This is to the detriment of both small companies and general public.
Capitalism answer to this is competition. Which is fine if you are allowed to compete.
With Google owning the web with Chromium, dictating web standards and monopolizing web site discovery trough Google search, that isn't exactly a bright future.
We need open standards, other browser vendors and more rendering engines. MS killed their web engine and Firefox doesn't have a great market share.
Or you could have forced users to subscribe outside of the App Store on your own website.....
There's a lot of amateur porn stars on social media that call themselves models. There's a lot of models that aren't.
I don't know how you create an app where people pay money to chat to models with racy instagram photos and discriminate between who's making pornography and who's not.
So outside Apples wall garden or the great firewall of Apple as you could liken it. I can understand that aspect as it would allow somebody to change the pic on Instagram and that would then come across upon their platform so the potential for something lewd and some media outlet would have the headline "Apple has dildo's showing on an their site accessible to children". So proactive PR management in some way but certainly a scenario that could play out and can appreciate that aspect. Equally, as a developer using public API's, I can totally appreciete the perspective that Instagrams T&C's wouldn't allow anything bad in this instances, and feel that censoring was already done and having to censor an API content when if that was needed then Instagram would alreay have that in place would make any dev grown in angst.
However, does appear that a censoring API setup for some public API's is a market that could be tapped. So whilst it may of seen bad on the face of it, it shows an opportunity awaiting to be tapped and with that - how did that all pan out (how did you solve that issue)?
I bet lots of us would pay $20 to talk to Linus or guido for 5-10 minutes. Or a couple bucks for a quick text chat.
It seems like it’s a business model that doesn’t scale well.
As developers we should all be cheering for the open web and doing what we can to support it.
Not everything can and should be an web app. And I say this as a web developer, having worked in the past on games, mobile apps and desktop software.
We tried distributing the apk and going through Amazon but it was fruitless. So now it’s just iOS and we have to explain why over and over and over again.
Whenever I hear these gripes it makes me wonder why developers feel so entitled. Is it because we all came from a previous world where the PC was a more open platform for distribution? Apple is just a business. Do business with them or don't.
Things that existed before the app store:
* Store performing payment processing (steam, for example)
* Same storefront for purchase and install
* Automated updates
* User reviews
* Content submission and distribution (steam again, along with basically every other app store)
* Code signing
Things that appeared other places around when the app store got them, if not earlier:
* IAP
* Subscriptions
It's totally reasonable for Apple to put all this stuff together and decide it's a good enough package to charge you for it. It's also totally reasonable to think 30% is too much, and to think it's absurd that everyone is required to put up with their arbitrary rule enforcement.
If you're paying Apple for a service it's not "entitlement" to expect it to actually be good.
You list a bunch of inventions here but that isn't want creates value for end users. It costs money to put this technology into the hands of end users which are the costs I highlighted. Apple has a right to capture that value as they see fit.
R&D for an automobile costs a lot, especially if you factor in the decades most manufacturers have spent refining their manufacturing and technology. Does that mean Ford should be able to legally require me to buy all parts and service at authorized dealers only? Because most countries' laws disagree with you for reasons I think should be obvious.
Hardware with bundled software has for whatever reason escaped the realities that apply to physical goods so far, even though it has obvious problems. Now we have tractors that refuse to be repaired without dealer authorization (yay DRM) and we have app store lock-in where anyone who wants to install apps on their phone has to have daddy's permission. If that's the ecosystem you want, so be it, and it's perfectly reasonable for Apple to charge for access, but that doesn't make it good. If you love the free market you should love the idea of a paid product needing to live up to its cost.
Did you develop on those older platforms? Dev kits and licenses were often crazy expensive.
EDIT: for an addressable market that was much smaller in scale.
Steam is the best 1:1 approximation to the App Store and it predates it somewhat. The comparison isn't exact since they don't lock down your PC but they offer most of the same features.
Whether it's Nintendo, Steam or iOS, the value delivered is the same: I give you docs, guides, etc to construct a program against an abstract target. When you are done and press the "ship it" button, an opportunity now exists, in the real world, for people to buy your thing and for you to keep some money.
Regardless of how the platform achieves this, the value is the same. You get to focus on building your product and collecting money. What I can't wrap my head around is why developer's are judging the affordability or fairness of this when the fractional cost may not have changed since the 80s/90s.
I think a closer approximation was actual stores. If you wanted to sell in CompUSA, BestBuy, or CircuitCity, you had to go through a distributer. I think the big one most of them used was called Navaro or something like that? If you were a huge company like Microsoft, they would take a 30% cut of your sales. If you were anyone else, they would take a 50% cut. And you also had physical costs like boxes, printing, manuals, disks (floppy or CD), etc. That you can now do all of this from your own home and pay only 30% is a frickin' miracle!
The Apple TV 4K does 4K (unlike the original PS4), and the iPad Pro runs Fortnite at 120 FPS while the PS4 is stuck at 60 FPS.
However, like all large corporations, Apple is and always has looked out for its own interests only. If you keep this in mind, it's easy to understand why Apple does what they do.
But now in America the thought of not discussing and acting in alignment with money trade is absurd
Ferenginar says hello
You mean this one?
Until developers stop pushing this garbage on the rest of humanity Apple is completely right to make their things as Orwellian as they can.
I'm not laughing.
Amazon has leverage so their negotiation is different. Apple would be a poorly run business and less successful if they didn't negotiate and work deals in a manner consistent with reality. It is not good or bad, it is just the real world.
The thing with Apple though was there were good reasons to believe that their interests were strongly aligned with their users’ and by extension with indie developers.
At a time when the Mac was definitely not the obvious choice, Apple had a very strong interest in promoting high quality indie apps because that was a differentiator for their platform (they were also not as financially strong, so this pushed some of the costs of building differentiators out to Indies).
At a time when Apple made money solely off selling hardware directly to consumers, there was reason to believe their interests once again aligned with those consumers as opposed to MS who largely sold to OEMs and Google, who didn’t even sell their OS but made money off the user data.
But as Apple’s hardware growth is beginning to stall, it appears they’ve decided they must continue to grow financially, and the only way they can do so is by wringing more money out of their existing base. As a result it’s become more about doing stuff that was earlier being done by 3rd parties themselves. And that means indies are screwed becUse Apple can crush them in a way it couldn’t an Amazon or a Netflix, not that it’s not trying.
There were good reasons at one time, yes, for the reasons you give.
But there aren't good reasons now, because circumstances have changed.
Something similar happened in the 1990s with Microsoft and Windows. In the early days of Windows, MS encouraged third-party developers to code to it, because it helped to speed up the expansion of the user base. All kinds of good third-party Windows apps sprung up and thrived for a while.
But once the market was pretty much saturated with Windows, a lot of those third-party developers discovered that they were now basically doing market research for MS: whenever they hit on a killer app or feature, MS would simply duplicate it, ship it as part of Windows, and destroy the third party dev's market.
1. Itself
2. Customers
3. Developers
How it should be.
iOS 13 now throws a dialog asking you to confirm that you want an app to be using your location data in the background. Mobile user data resellers noted a massive worldwide drop in sellable location data when this feature was released. Is this benefit for Apple actual, Apple's users, and/or Apple's developers?
It's not for developers, because the developers either used the appropriate location permissions anyways, or are now discovering that their crappy ad frameworks are angering their userbase.
It's unclear whether it's for Apple actual, because there's no financial revenue gain when they institute this, only a drowning of the swamp of data reselling (without any corresponding monetary uptick anywhere). There's probably some indirect possibilities, but I can't construct a significant and plausible case. Perhaps someone else can.
It's absolutely clear that it's for Apple's users, because those are who is concerned about and harmed by data resale. It offers a free benefit at no cost to the user, requiring neither purchase nor subscription.
So it's essential to consider each of these aspects when assessing who's interests Apple is looking out for. Yes, it's easier to argue that Apple is selfish, because it's less work than considering the three-pronged reality of apple/users/developer. It's still worth the effort to do so.
Source: literally every word written about Apple and developer relations and developer strategies over the last 20 years.
I'm not saying this to be critical of Apple, everyone has their own strategies and priorities. Rather, my mind is actually blown that you know anyone who thinks Apple is perceived as some sort of generous patron to developers, and even more that you know enough people like that to anecdotally think it's a widespread assumption.
It was very simple, displaying camera output, a cross hair - and when you pressed the button a blood splash appeared along with a gunshot sound. Tasteless, yes, but this was in the era of "More Cowbell" and other low-effort-leads-to-instant-retirement-apps.
Apple rejected the app. It upset me, but I figured - ok fair enough. I knew the risks. However I didn't feel the same when the next week one of the top 10 apps was EXACTLY THE SAME except they called it Paintball.
I had more than one conspiracy theory surrounding this ;-)
For them, I need a device that lets them Facetime and WhatsApp and browse the internet and takes photos and videos of their grandkids. They are never going to create anything, and iOS is perfect for them.
It’s very nice that I can hand a device to my non tech literate relatives and have it just work. I can also like an open Internet for my own purposes.
With Android, at least you can download an APK.
I've got half a dozen personal apps on my old phone and a couple more on my new one.
Would you just go along with it happily if Apple (or any other company for that matter) blocked access to Hacker News because it didn't meet their standards? Or vice versa, if Hacker News refused to serve you simply because you're using an Apple device?
Sure. I’m smart enough to dig through the bargain bin of Google Play apps to find the ones that work with my device, don’t have ads, and have the appropriate level of functionality and polish. I just don’t want to. I’d rather pay a premium for a company to do it for me.
Same goes for the Internet.
Indeed. If you want to use their hardware, then you've no choice in the matter.
To be clear, I have absolutely zero issue with you choosing to be their customer. They make fantastic hardware, there are an enormous amount of pros to being an Apple customer. It's perfectly reasonable to look at these pros and cons and choose to be an Apple customer.
However, taking one of those cons and trying to sell it as a pro requires a fair bit of doublethink.
You could be using an Apple device and choosing Apple as your app curator. Lack of choice is not a feature.
Some people want to make as few choices as possible. That’s me. I don’t want to look at two or more app stores to find what I want. The lack of choice, for me, is a feature.
I understand that I’m a special type of narrow minded on this point. And I’m glad Android exists — I have a few Android devices myself, for hobbies and such - they’re just not what I would use for my daily driver.
It absolutely is. Choice is happiness poison.
omg i miss that term so much!
a few days ago, i looked up hamburger buns recipe in google search and got very frustrated by the websites i got back.
one page immediately triggered my laptop fan and pushed my CPU to the max. it was playing a video completely unrelated to the recipe i came for. one page showed so much ads that there was a tiny little space left for the recipe. one another page, scrolling was broken by an ad and i had to turn off javascript and images to make that page function at all.
all that time, i was thinking about the non tech-savvy person who was just looking for a recipe. these shenanigans are extreme against that group of people because we hackers would immediately raise strong voices.
that, made me feel bad.
And I've recently came across a lot of "free" apps with good reviews that are only free to download but requires you to pay the moment you start using them... and pay for a subscription. They seem to wait for the app to get good ratings and then push an update that essentially turns it into a paid app in disguise.
The layout and the UI of the app store itself are just horrendous too imo. Having android and apple devices I always prefer using the google play store, because at least the UI is usable.
past the verification process.
In other words the censors didn't realize that the entire game is built on obscenities.
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Plenty of explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
(Submitted title was "Apple's treatment of developers is neither fair nor consistent")
And on top of that a 30% fee from in app purchases during the first year.
They do things that are only tolerated, frankly, because developers have no choice. 90% of App Review seems damned arbitrary, and since I can regularly find examples of clear scams their “review” isn’t even effective.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/clb-percentage-rent....
> The percent that’s applied is usually an industry standard (7% on every dollar) and isn’t subject to much negotiation.
Which is still much less than the 30% of Apple.
[1]
Aside from this issues, I wish Apple maintain the 30% cut on Games, ( Since Games even has its whole own section in App Store anyway ) and lowered the cuts to 20% for everything else. I think that would be a fairer approach to every body.
30% Cuts for all other Apps is just insanely expensive.
Make a toaster? Apple gets 30% of that.
This is not new stuff. What Apple is doing is essentially anticompetitive.
Similarly, Google uses it's dominance in search to take over other categories.
I don't see a single politician who seems to understand the issue well enough, and 90% of them seem to have no clue. But I think that possibly Elizabeth Warren would actually be useful if she didn't overreach. (FYI this is absolutely not a political point, I'm not supporting left/right/Dem/Rep or any view and not even supporting someone's candidacy - I'm saying she's one of the few candidates that seems to be interested in this, and maybe has a grasp of it).
We have to be really careful with regulation, but I think there are a handful of anticompetitive, labour, and privacy regulations that would make America an even better and more competitive landscape.
By the way - the unspoken elephant is China dumping on tech landscape as well. There is a reason that trade agreements have an issue with government subsidies of businesses. Dumping is more obvious with commodities, but it's the same thing with other companies, i.e. Huawei, and it will creep into others (Zoom?). It needs to be at least looked at.
An I supposed to be surprised?
When you start dealing with Apple you should be expecting to be exploited, both as a user and as a developer.
Lastly, users are much more prone to drop 1 star reviews for little reason other than getting dev attention. Most of my stars are 5 star or 1 star, seems off.
Further, consumer expectations ruined the "App Store" when users began to expect high-quality, continuously updated apps for a one-time spend of $1.
I kind of like the PC model where you can get the app straight from developer.
Amazon's Appstore https://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011
Huawei's App Gallery https://consumer.huawei.com/en/mobileservices/appgallery/
Samsung's Galaxy Store https://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/apps/galaxy-store/
F-Droid https://f-droid.org
If you prefer getting your apps straight from the developer's website, you can have that too. E.g.: http://www.lonelycatgames.com
As long as people keep using Apple's products and platforms, they will do what they do.
This is tired “advice” and does nothing to help developers, who have little control over what their users use.
No, as I just mentioned.
Legally, no, they cannot. Apple owns 100% of the platform and the developers own 0%. I would not bank on this changing any time soon.
Except that it isn't. While it's also technically true that we could all decide to live in the forest tomorrow and refuse to be part of the world, what do you think is the likelihood of that?
Real problems require real solutions, not back of the hand pontificating about how all choices are 100% free and just choose not to you lazy bastard.
A real argument would recognize the complexity rather than act like it doesn't exist.
The post that kicked off this chain made the point that you can choose not to develop on Apple platforms. I think it’s a mistake to conflate “first-world” decisions like which platforms or languages to use, or market segmentation or where we can make the most money the quickest with hockey stick growth to please our VC investors, with “third-world” lifestyles or asceticism.
As though if one doesn’t develop on Apple tech, they may as well wander off into the woods? We should check our privilege here.
Even if mostly ineffective, there's some value in protesting a corporations inconsiderate actions. At the very least, it reveals a potential market opportunity for an eventual competitor (as hard as it'd be for anyone else to unseat Apple and Google at this point.)
Note that you're not allowed to use something like opensource Firefox on that platform either.
Apart from long term storage, what restrictions have been added?
In reality a company like Apple depend on tomes of rules and government enforcement to defend its fortune. Rules that are themselves an artificial construct that it and its peers have championed and lobbied for. Rules that give legal backing and physical force to its contracts, relationships with suppliers, IP, that together allow an artificially restricted system like the App Store to even exist.
To suggest that individuals then cannot petition to have some additional restrictions put in to provide some balance is disingenuous and will only maintain and encourage systems like this in the future.
And of course it’s not 100% apple only, apple themselves have invested a lot in swift on linux, and others are working on swift for windows and webassembly. You couldn’t be more wrong actually.
There's context to consider with Apple in the 90s, which was weeks from bankruptcy. Here's SJ's rather famous response at WWDC 97 to why OpenDoc was killed, and a little later on he describes his opinion of Newton [1]. Hard to disagree with the sentiments.
Killing OpenDoc and Newton was a way to keep the company alive and prepare for the next big thing. 4 years later, out pops the iPod. 10 years later, the iPhone.