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We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

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Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#61

Post by Mathnerd314 »

Article has some weird writing/typos, "updates, bu" and "we where actually". Some of it might be because the company is in Germany, but still... the company doesn't seem particularly professional or well-managed. It's hard to tell from the website but it looks like it's run by one person with occasional help from others.

And the software is kind of weird, scanners always come Windows drivers/software so there's no issue using it there. Linux support is less guaranteed but you can check the compatibility lists (http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html). So it's exploiting a niche in driver support between Apple and the manufacturers.

I'm not saying the author is a nutcase, but this seems like one rare data point and I'd prefer to see more companies pulling their stuff off the app store before drawing any real conclusions.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#62

Post by mkl »

millstone wrote: post #57
pojntfx wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I want my system to use containerization for me to not worry about where I get my apps from. You know, like Flatpak does it. This isn't really an argument for modern OSes such as desktop Linux anymore.

apt-get and yum and pacman and the rest do not enforce containerization.

No, but they get their software from a trusted central authority (unless you choose to trust a third party repo and add it manually).

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#63

Post by dchest »

millstone wrote: post #52
dchest wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about paying for compatibility with the latest macOS? Of course, no user would like to pay for that, but the reality of Apple universe is that developers have to spend a lot of time fixing compatibility issues caused by Apple.

What example do you have in mind? Compatibility updates ought to be free point releases.

Apple constantly deprecates and removes APIs and features. Some significant examples that require rewriting and retesting a lot of code: Objective-C garbage collection, QTKit, WebView.

Dealing with all that in many cases takes more resources than introducing new features, but, just like you, people expect free compatibility updates.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#64

Post by u02sgb »

millstone wrote: post #52
dchest wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about paying for compatibility with the latest macOS? Of course, no user would like to pay for that, but the reality of Apple universe is that developers have to spend a lot of time fixing compatibility issues caused by Apple.

What example do you have in mind? Compatibility updates ought to be free point releases.

Forever?

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#65

Post by echelon »

The fact that we have to have humans look at our software before we can go to market in 2019 is absurd. I had high hopes for the future as a teen growing up with Napster, Bittorrent, IRC, Trillian/Pidgin, and an explosive WWW. Look at what a pinheaded mess everything has become.

Greed destroyed the open and experimental Internet.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#66

Post by millstone »

jdnenej wrote: post #55
dijit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get hung up on apple having a 30% entrance fee, but that didn't come out of nowhere. I work in the video games industry and access to steam or other first parties (Sony/Microsoft) is 30%, no negotiations. You could argue that first parties such as sony/microsoft have subtle costs involved such as printing of disks, but that's paid for before market by the publisher. The thing you pay for is: content distributi…

The amount of value steam provides on top of payment processing and distribution is immense. Valve basically single handedly created Linux gaming. Their client is so many years ahead of everything else with the forums, workshop, broadcast streaming, streaming to your tv, gamepad support and gamepad virtualisation as well as a mountain of developer side APIs for things like inviting friends to games. Apples 30% would…

Linux gaming? Seriously?

Apple created THE smartphone. Every phone is an iPhone - Apple proved it and everyone else copied it. And Apple springboarded off their first-mover advantage into a platform that users really like, and keep coming back to.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#67

Post by perlpimp »

sschueller wrote: post #33
perlpimp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially that they keep the 30% if someone refunds your app. If it would be 15% or less okay, but 30% and keep the proceeds? Seems to be sort of straddling the legality line.

Apple Does not refund the fee? That's insane! On top of that I need to pay apple $100 per year to keep my app in the store. Even PayPal has been refunding the transaction fees (at least until recently).

Yes full refund price comes out of your pocket. So 10$ app you get 7$ - then if refunded you are refunding 10$ which makes your account -3$ (owing 3$). which I suspect why developers don't publish apps to less advantaged markets - because of refund rates.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#68

Post by millstone »

u02sgb wrote: post #64
millstone wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What example do you have in mind? Compatibility updates ought to be free point releases.

Forever?

For as long as the product is actively maintained. It's reasonable to have a free 2.x.1 release for (say) Catalina compatibility, offered simultaneously with a 3.0 release that includes new features.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#69

Post by viraptor »

dchest wrote: post #20
viraptor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And dont get me started on paying for updates! I think this really depends on implementation. Paying for bugfixes? No, thanks. Paying for a major version bump like new ms office where you don't really need to upgrade and will be supported anyway? Sure.

What about paying for compatibility with the latest macOS? Of course, no user would like to pay for that, but the reality of Apple universe is that developers have to spend a lot of time fixing compatibility issues caused by Apple.

Honestly... I don't mind new versions to cost extra for compatibility with new MacOS. It's a stupid environment. If you choose it, you've got money to spend on app refresh every other year. You can always stay on previous major version of the OS for a long time as well.

Windows 10 will likely support your apps for at least a decade. There's choice.

(I'm using Mac for work. I'm likely migrating to another system instead of Catalina)

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#70

Post by lilyball »

echelon wrote: post #65

The fact that we have to have humans look at our software before we can go to market in 2019 is absurd. I had high hopes for the future as a teen growing up with Napster, Bittorrent, IRC, Trillian/Pidgin, and an explosive WWW. Look at what a pinheaded mess everything has become. Greed destroyed the open and experimental Internet.

Painting this as "greed" is really quite ridiculous. Apple's 30% cut is completely orthogonal to their human review. The human review is to try and protect users and keep the app store a safe and trustworthy place to buy software. As with all human curation, there are problems, but on the whole it does keep the app store a remarkably safe place to acquire software.

> I had high hopes for the future as a teen growing up with Napster, Bittorrent

In light of the above, this is pretty funny, because Napster and Bittorrent were great way to get viruses.

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