We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by fit2rule » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

I have about 500 apps on my various iDevices. I stopped buying apps years ago - when Apple removed the ability to do so on MacOS.

Its just so cumbersome to manage apps on the iDevices themselves .. so I just stopped. I've got enough apps for everything I need (music-making, mostly). Sure, if someone recommends something amazing, I'll check it out - but for the most part I have reached the saturation point, and I really abhor going to the App Store, for any reason whatsoever.

I still have a much, much better user experience on my Ubuntu workstation, and now even on Windows with chocolatey. It feels so backwards and quaint to have to rely on Apple to review an app - much better to just have an open public repo and let the community deal with quality review. I'm yet to be bitten by a repo - I can't count the number of times I've had my life quality reduced to smithereens because I've had to pass multiple App Store reviews to get my apps out there, or found that an App I needed in order to do my work was no longer available because Apple changed something and broke it.

Repositories are simply a far superior technology.

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

#82

Post by fit2rule » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:19 AM UTC

nxpnsv wrote: post #24

etchalon wrote: post #16

I completely understand why developers would find the restrictions of the App Store ridiculous, time consuming, expensive, and frustrating. But as a user, whenever I need an application, I always check to see if it's available on the App Store first. Because I can trust the App Store.

I first check brew...

Yeah, this. MacOS is unusable without home-brew, especially cask. There is no greater feeling than knowing you can blow away your system disk, come back and re-install it, then add a "brew cask install .." stage to get all your apps installed automatically.

If I had brew on iOS, I'd be more than happy. Alas, I don't want to jailbreak though ..

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

#83

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:21 AM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #74

lilyball wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the human review is the reason for the 30% cut why not charge a flat fee per review? I doubt that's the reason for their cut.

lilyball said it’s orthogonal, meaning there is no relation between the 30% fee and the cost of human review.

The price a seller charges is what a buyer is willing to pay.

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

#84

Post by xg15 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #70

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…

> 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.

Yes, that touches the old but increasingly pressing question of how the internet should be governed.

So far the discussed answers seem to be "anarchy" or "corpocracy" which honestly sound both equally sucky. Maybe we could come up with some additional options to discuss at some point.

However, back to Apple's point, of course there are problems - as everywhere - however, Apple does not seem interested in fixing them, as described in the article. (Not that other app stores would be better here probably)

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

#85

Post by dreamcompiler » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:22 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

In the past when I looked for a new app I went to the app store. But now since I'm on an older version of MacOS and very few app store apps run on any but the latest release of MacOS, I don't bother. I find the apps I need by googling.

Edit: This implies there are a lot of great apps that don't get my money because they only sell on the app store. Looking at you Pixelmator.

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

#86

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:26 AM UTC

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…

People don’t sell their labor to employers at a “fair” price, they sell at whatever the can get. Same concept for any other transaction, sellers will sell for the highest price buyers will pay.

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

#87

Post by fiblye » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:27 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

I’ve only ever opened the App Store when there’s one particular tool I need to use. I’ve tried casually browsing maybe 3 times in 10 years (because it seems most people do this often) and it just seemed like endless fluff and garbage. I’ve never downloaded anything that I didn’t go in thinking “I need this.”

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

#88

Post by csunbird » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:28 AM UTC

mkl wrote: post #62

millstone wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Just like Apple Store ? (except the part where you can add 3rd party stores)

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

#89

Post by dwaite » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

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.

However, that developer investment is required if they plan to keep selling their application - hardly anyone will buy an app outright without modern platform support.

If you are growing your market, you can make your app a flat charge. If you are maintaining and and expanding an app for an existing user base, subscription is a better way to go (and something Apple does support well).

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

#90

Post by millstone » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:29 AM UTC

dchest wrote: post #63

millstone wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the churn rate is super-low. GC was introduced ten years ago and finally killed this year. QTKit was introduced sixteen years ago and also killed this year. WebView I believe still works!

The deprecation cycle is a decade or more, and in every case there's a paved migration path (GC->ARC, QTKit->AV Foundation, WebView is trickier but for good technical reasons). This strategy and timeframe seems eminently responsible.