Earlier quoted context omitted.
You sound like a pleasant person.
Is his argument wrong, though? It's unclear why we should automatically feel sympathy for the author.
I'm specifically referencing the clear schadenfreude.
We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
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Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#42As an end user, am I happy that Apple took your idea and built it in the OS, stripped of ads, premium features, tracking and analytics, etc? Yes, yes I am.
Socialism!
Just kidding. But it seems that it’s the same mindset that likes the government replacing, say, private insurers, ISPs and other private enterprise.
As for me, I do not consider giant publicly traded corporations “private” any more than cities or states.
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#43Each time I see one of these stories pop up, I'm hoping that the lawyer for the Apple Antitrust case is making a note to include these testimonials as evidence of a problem.
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#44On the flipside, this app looks like it was kind of a hack to get working. "Tunnel all of your traffic through our VPN to get tracking of social media use." It doesn't surprise me that Apple would want to offer first-party support.
Apple could have just offered the app usage API, because it was obvioulsly lacking.
An API for allowing third parties access to your personal information is not a ”feature”.
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#45Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#46As an end user, am I happy that Apple took your idea and built it in the OS, stripped of ads, premium features, tracking and analytics, etc? Yes, yes I am.
I think that's fine. What's not fine is removing the app itself from the app store as it was generating $45k a year, the same week of releasing its competing app. Either you remove it because it's against the TOS, anytime in the 1.5 years that the app existed, or leave it be. Don't 'coincidentally' remove it the same week you release a competing app. That's just nonsense.
It was removed after the feature was announced because that was also when they changed the App Store guidelines. Previously it did not violate the rules.
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#47May I say the title should be taken with a grain of salt. From the article: > A month before being removed from the App Store, the app raked in ~$45,000 in revenue. This means the product was operating at a $500,000 annual run rate. It's an extrapolation, from the first month.
That plus they are talking about extrapolated "revenue". They didn't mention what the server costs were for having to handle the traffic of that many users. Server costs for such would be pretty high. Also other operating costs, development costs etc. Revenue doesn't matter, profit does.
Why would there be server costs for an app that tracks local app usage on the phone?
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#48It's business. Not only that it's stated almost certainly when you get involved with the app store. Wouldn't make sense for Apple to do it any differently.
Apple did this in the 90's with peripherals such as video boards which at the time (80's/90's) were products that you almost always had to buy from a third party. Then Apple built them right into the hardware themselves. There is zero wrong with any company 'business' doing this. If you think there is you are not a business person. (Even if the competitors products are removed from the 'store').
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#49This is some super click bait and borderline deceitful blog. Apps on iOS are sandboxed so you can't access data about other app's launch and usage. These apps were using MDM profiles to get that usage data. This also meant that the user's internet data was going through these third parties which is a pretty big privacy issue. Plus having MDM profiles gave these third parties enormous access to the user's device settings. It would allow all your children's phone data as well as device settings to be accessible to these 3rd parties. That's bad, exploitative of underage kids, against the TOS as well as using MDM profiles for wrong intentions. Using MDM profiles are only intended to be used for controlling employee and VPN access for filtering apps within an organization/company. They are not to be used for this purpose and as per the guidelines not to be used for consumer products. Same reason why Facebook's certificates was blocked because they were abusing the MDM profile for different purposes. This was clearly against Apple's policies and against the terms of developer agreement.
The author claiming it's because Apple is trying to eliminate competition forgot to mention any of the above very important reasons. They also forgot to mention that what they were doing was clearly against the app store guidelines which they had agreed to.
Looks like Apple released this info in a press release. NYT's poor journalism got called out too:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/the-facts-about-paren...
One could argue that Apple should provide an API which lets developers access to this data. Apple might be working on that or maybe they won't because Apple has a strict "privacy" policy and providing such sensitive data can be prone to being used by bad actors.
Re: We launched an app with $500k annual revenue, and then Apple copied it
#50As an end user, am I happy that Apple took your idea and built it in the OS, stripped of ads, premium features, tracking and analytics, etc? Yes, yes I am.
This.
Can’t wait to hear the same complaint from authors of period tracker apps, once iOS 13 is released with the built-in period tracker.