The App Store turns 10 • Hacker News Board

Re: The App Store turns 10

#71

Post by noxToken » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

sxg wrote: post #59

noxToken wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a realistic scenario. I pay for CoolApp. It works fine even though CoolApp2 is live on the store. I get a new phone. I go to download CoolApp, but it's no longer available. If I want to use CoolApp, I must use CoolApp2. I'm not expecting CoolApp to be forever supported. CoolApp works fine for my use case, so I planned on continually using CoolApp until it made sense for me to upgrade. But now that CoolApp2 is…

But that's not the case (at least not on iOS). Even if CoolApp has been removed from sale, you can download it on your new phone from your purchase history. The only exceptions to this are technical limitations on the old app that render it incompatible with the new phone such as 32 vs 64 bit, deprecated APIs, etc.

I have never owned an iPhone, thus I didn't know if that was possible. I suppose there's nothing to worry about.

Re: The App Store turns 10

#72

Post by oblio » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #62

duxup wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much. My how things have changed ... and still haven't caught up. Granted as another user says, Apple has no reason to push apps off the store to the web now considering the insane cash flow.

Most of the apps on the app store that make money are in app purchases for games and to a lesser extent the streaming media apps. I doubt that either of these categories would go web anytime soon. There are no in app purchases for most of the apps that people are claiming that could be PWA's

Flash games were absolutely huge. Web games on mobiles could absolutely work.

Platform owners don’t want that for obvious rea$on$.

Re: The App Store turns 10

#73

Post by kitsunesoba » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #69

Oh man, that takes me back. I remember Cro-mag rally and Super Monkey Ball so well. I wonder if they're still around... Quick edit: Cro-mag is still alive and kicking, looks like it just got iPhone x support too. Crazy.

Cro-mag’s developer Pangea Software has been an excellent Apple platform developer for a long time now. If you ever played Mighty Mike/Power Pete, Nanosaur, Bugdom, or Otto-Matic on the Mac that’s them as well.

Re: The App Store turns 10

#74

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #72

scarface74 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the apps on the app store that make money are in app purchases for games and to a lesser extent the streaming media apps. I doubt that either of these categories would go web anytime soon. There are no in app purchases for most of the apps that people are claiming that could be PWA's

Flash games were absolutely huge. Web games on mobiles could absolutely work. Platform owners don’t want that for obvious rea$on$.

Flash games weren't using standard HTML technology. They were basically running in a cross platform VM that worked horribly on mobile. Adobe claimed back in 2007 that they could get Flash working well on the original iPhone if Apple would have allowed it. The original iPhone had a 400Mhz processor and 128MB of RAM. When Adobe finally brought Flash to Android it required a 1Ghz processor and I believe 512MB - 1GB RAM. That didn't become standard on the iPhone until the iPhone 5 in 2011.

Besides, what was the monetization strategy? People weren't going to give their credit card information out to dozens of websites.

Re: The App Store turns 10

#75

Post by pwinnski » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #65

I'm still curious, where can one get a comprehensive list of Apps published in the app store, date uploaded, number of downloads, etc?

They don't publish an API for that, and companies that have created one (like AppAnnie) seem to reserve that info for paying customers, AFAIK.

That said, they do offer a search API which should be (slowly) crawlable over time: https://itunes.apple.com/search?country=us&entity=software&t...

Re: The App Store turns 10

#76

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

sxg wrote: post #59

noxToken wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a realistic scenario. I pay for CoolApp. It works fine even though CoolApp2 is live on the store. I get a new phone. I go to download CoolApp, but it's no longer available. If I want to use CoolApp, I must use CoolApp2. I'm not expecting CoolApp to be forever supported. CoolApp works fine for my use case, so I planned on continually using CoolApp until it made sense for me to upgrade. But now that CoolApp2 is…

But that's not the case (at least not on iOS). Even if CoolApp has been removed from sale, you can download it on your new phone from your purchase history. The only exceptions to this are technical limitations on the old app that render it incompatible with the new phone such as 32 vs 64 bit, deprecated APIs, etc.

Even better if CoolApp 1.0 has been continuously updated for new OS’s and the newest version isn’t compatible with a device stuck on an older OS, you can download the “last compatible version”. I was able to download and use Netflix, Crackle, Plex, Hulu, Spotify and Google Drive on my 2010 first gen iPad that was officially abandoned in 2012.

I reset it and downloaded older versions of apps last year.

Re: The App Store turns 10

#77

Post by victor106 » Thu, Jul 05, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

waivek wrote: post #33

Whenever I get a new Windows laptop, the first four or five hours are spent reinstalling software that I use on a daily basis. I can just leave a new phone next to the router. With windows, I have to sit and monitor a lot of things for those four hours along with hunting down the most updated executables and setup files. I feel that mobile got software distribution correct. Thanks a ton, Scott Forstall.

Can someone here explain how Forstall was critical to getting this correct?

Re: The App Store turns 10

#78

Post by duxup » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #68

duxup wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much. My how things have changed ... and still haven't caught up. Granted as another user says, Apple has no reason to push apps off the store to the web now considering the insane cash flow.

Also the fact is that mobile web apps are still terrible. In almost all cases they still resemble HTML pages rather than feeling like a native app.

I'll stick my neck out and say we're REALLY close to getting web apps ... close, at least for productivity (not so much pretty graphics) apps.

But People thought that not long ago too... ;)

Re: The App Store turns 10

#79

Post by duxup » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #72

scarface74 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the apps on the app store that make money are in app purchases for games and to a lesser extent the streaming media apps. I doubt that either of these categories would go web anytime soon. There are no in app purchases for most of the apps that people are claiming that could be PWA's

Flash games were absolutely huge. Web games on mobiles could absolutely work. Platform owners don’t want that for obvious rea$on$.

Flash was always wonky though, on mobile and even desktop at times....

Maybe it could have been made to work but I wasn't sad to see it go...

Re: The App Store turns 10

#80

Post by tonyarkles » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 5:06 AM UTC

ISL wrote: post #50

waivek wrote: post #33

Whenever I get a new Windows laptop, the first four or five hours are spent reinstalling software that I use on a daily basis. I can just leave a new phone next to the router. With windows, I have to sit and monitor a lot of things for those four hours along with hunting down the most updated executables and setup files. I feel that mobile got software distribution correct. Thanks a ton, Scott Forstall.

Apt also gets package distribution right, and it predates the app store by many years. When I get a new Debian box, I just sudo apt-get install a list of my most-common programs and I'm off to the races.

Apt is so close. So close! The one feature that would make it so much better is to be able to export the list of packages that I’ve directly asked for (maybe you can do that?). On the other side, apt install could consume that. Being able to take a new machine running, say, Ubuntu 18.04 and get all of the stuff installed that I had on my old 14.04 box in a really easy way would be deadly.