Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by makecheck | Hacker News Reader

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It’s such a “perfect” circle of non-communication that benefits only the fruit company, isn’t it?

- Can I update my app inside your store? Fruit company: No.

- Can I find out why? Fruit company: No.

- Can I find out who or what makes this decision? Fruit company: No.

- Can I update my app outside your store? Fruit company: No.

- Can I contact my customers? Fruit company: No.

- Can I even identify my customers in order to help them? Fruit company: No.

- Can I directly give my own customers a refund? Fruit company: No.

- Can I be removed from your list of featured apps? Fruit company: No.

- Can customers prevent this one app from being auto-updated into brokenness? Fruit company: No.

- Can you tell customers that this new brokenness is your fault and not the developer’s? Fruit company: No.

And on, and on, and on, and on.

This is a completely absurd system that has never, ever, ever benefited customers or developers nearly as much as fruit companies.

Congress can’t act soon enough.

It's such a nasty side effect of demand aggregation platforms which is what everyone has been trying to build for the last decade+. It's a real prisoner's dilemma too. Earlier adopting developers get to be "fart app millionaires", but there's a definite tipping point where the supply side becomes commoditized.

I think Ballmer got unfairly criticized for laughing at the iPhone. I always thought he looked at it and thought it was such a ridiculously bad deal for both developers and users that no one would adopt it. His biggest mistake was underestimating the ability for people to act in their own long term self interest.

That's a very charitable take on Ballmer's reaction. The Windows mobile platform may have been more hackable, but from an end user's perspective it was pretty awful.

Windows Phone is still the best mobile OS. I really miss it.

Windows Phone came three years after the iPhone. At the time of Balmers rant it was Windows CE, which was crap.

OH ok in that case I agree.

> but from an end user's perspective it was pretty awful.

Wasn’t it more that it never reached critical mass? Every time I read or hear about Windows Mobile, users seem to have loved it.

> I always thought he looked at it and thought it was such a ridiculously bad deal for both developers and users that no one would adopt it.

That famous video of him laughing on TV was from the first announcement when there were no plans for an app store at all.

If we’re thinking of the same interview, he laughed at the iPhone because it lacked a physical keyboard and cost $500 fully subsidized.

There was no App Store or any indication of a developer platform.

Please tell me which option we had that was “in our interest”.

Blackberry started smartphones with the user having root by default. iphone changed that and people were perfectly ok with a sudden paradigm shift.

Blackberry really gave you root? Huh. Symbian S60, which was an attempt at a Blackberry clone as far as I understand it, had a mandatory app signing policy (but no app repository or review, just a rent on developers).

Don’t forget - can I use common PWA features to build my app on the web instead? No because Apple doesn’t allow that either.

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5675

seems to be relevant

I think I need to point out, it isn't your customer. Apple have been very explicit in all of their public communication and in court. They are Apple's customers. Apple's customer are trusting Apple and App Store to use your App. And Apple is sharing 70% of revenue to you and they only keep 30%.

While I have lots of things I disagree with DHH, his point on App Store were spot on. It wasn't just about the commission, It was the company Basecamp has no relationship with its customers signing up via iOS. It only has it with Apple. And that is not how a business should work.

- Can my users become customers of mine? Fruit company: No

And yet people keep buying it. It's not like there aren't alternatives. I just don't get it.

The alternatives aren't very good. Was recently looking at Android options, and of the three things I care about, and which I don't feel are a particularly high bar (1. Non-huge phone. 2. Close-to-stock OS. 3. Good update policy.), as of the next set of Pixel devices (which are all growing bigger), it looks like a "pick two" situation. (ZenFone 8 is small and close-to stock, Pixel 6 is stock with good updates, Galaxy S21 is small with good updates.)

> Close-to-stock OS, Good update policy.

Also look at phones with Android One. Although in 2021 only Nokia is delivering phones for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One#2021

My current daily driver is actually a G7 One from 2018 - it's still getting updates, but probably not for much longer. Sadly, it looks like any Android One phone from 2020 or 2021 would be both slower and larger than my G7 One.

Most of issues are developer only. Maybe that's why?

As an user I'd prefer to interact with larger company that is not going anywhere rather than each developer separately. This has downsides as described in grandparent post but also increases trust a bit for unknown developers.

And yet people (with some exceptions) don't stop developing for it. And that's because iOS is still where the money is - iOS users are much more willing to pay for an app than Android users.

For a user, the typical interaction with a large company is a nightmare of emails with stock replies that don't have anything to do with what you were asking, or hours spent on the phone; while interacting with individual developers (especially as a paying customer) is typically much less of a hassle.

another possible reason might be due to iMessage being de facto messaging platform in the US, amplified by the societal pressure to not have "green bubbles".

add to this the fact that video recording on Android has a horrible rep for being blurry and blocky, staining the reputation further.

the time has come for legal action against Apple. this is textbook early-2000s MS behavior.

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