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

#291

Post by ttcbj » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

I really wonder where Apple and specifically Tim Cook is in all this. I feel like I see posts on HN almost daily that would warrant one of Jeff Bezos's famous 'question mark emails'[1] from Tim Cook to someone within Apple. But I see no evidence of this. I see no evidence of panic within apple that they have lost the ability to delight customers and anticipate their needs effectively.

How often do I see a similar level customer or developer pain (anguish really, from supportive customers) regarding Amazon? How often do I see it regarding Google? All these companies have so many resources, but Apple is the only one that doesn't seem to be able to convert those resources into customer focus. It's painful to watch. Where is Apple's board? It's really discouraging!

[1] https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/5-years-later-jeff-bezos-...

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

#292

Post by makecheck » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

mlang23 wrote: post #13

As a user, I am pretty happy about most of the negative points listed in this article. Yes, manual reviews are my firewall against too much scamming. I dont want app providers to notify me about their upcoming company party. It is already fishy enough that some app providers use their own notification system to push ads. And dont get me started on paying for updates! What comes next, paying for firmware updates for d…

I’m not sure you and I are looking at the same stores. The Mac App Store alone is chock full of scams, and many of them are quite obvious (just search for the name of any popular package but there are many more). Apple does an absolutely terrible job of finding these. Meanwhile, Apple is really good at finding the most annoying reasons to reject updates from legitimate developers.

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

#293

Post by machello13 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #233

heyoni wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.

When iPhone arrived in Europe it was disappointment for people who used smartphones. It had few things going for it (better web browser than default IE Mobile on PDAs, better screen than many), and long list of "works worse". Starting with the basic things that everyone who invested in smartphones at the time wanted, i.e. email, going through hilariously high cost (the reason behind it known only to insiders - Apple…

What is this weird narrative that pre-iPhone smartphones didn't exist in the US, and somehow only Europe and Asia had these "advanced" devices? We had smartphones too. All the negatives you mentioned (no physical keyboard, copy & paste, etc.) were brought up by lots of people when the iPhone was first released. Ultimately it didn't matter, and the iPhone was a breakout hit and every single smartphone on sale today is based on its core design.

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

#294

Post by jagged-chisel » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

anoncake wrote: post #215

amelius wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality App Stores are bad, too much enforced centralization. This holds for any kind of store, from supermarkets to Amazon.

What's the alternative?

Competition.

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

#295

Post by ProAm » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

ttcbj wrote: post #291

I really wonder where Apple and specifically Tim Cook is in all this. I feel like I see posts on HN almost daily that would warrant one of Jeff Bezos's famous 'question mark emails'[1] from Tim Cook to someone within Apple. But I see no evidence of this. I see no evidence of panic within apple that they have lost the ability to delight customers and anticipate their needs effectively. How often do I see a similar lev…

When you have billions in cash in the bank, and your future revenue is tied to subscriptions Tim Cook simply doesn't care about this, its minutiae to your bottom line. They can screw up for YEARS and still be a largely profitable company.

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

#296

Post by sifar » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #218

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Symbian was in trouble in 2008 - two years before Elop became CEO of Nokia. It wasn't user-friendly. Ditto for Blackberry. iOS and Android wiped the floor with Symbian and BB in terms of ease-of-use. "..the inscrutable difficulty of navigating menus on Nokia's Symbian phones": https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone...

This is an infuriating topic to read about because everybody seems to be varying levels of uninformed. I worked at Nokia's R&D facility in Ruoholahti briefly in 2011, so I got inducted into the inner sanctum of history regarding the phones. Symbian was designed for very anemic hardware, there were very tight constraints it's a marvel that the thing ran on what it did. The iPhones first CPU was at least an order of ma…

Yeah, I had Nokia N9. Best phone I ever used. Only wish it had a replaceable battery. Elop killed it before it arrived by announcing the move to windows. That was one of the key event for Nokia in particular and the smartphone industry in general.

Imagine if Nokia had continued investing in a linux phone, android wouldn't be what it is today.

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

#297

Post by htfu » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #242

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docomo phones were(are?) a Japan-only irrelevance. Granted - Symbian was a thing back then, but can you buy a Symbian phone today? Consumers voted with their money, and they wanted iPhones, not Nokias. Fast forward to 2019, Nokia is nothing more than a trademark - making generic Android phones on one hand, and cashing in on nostalgia with their feature phones on the other hand.

That doesn't change the fact that Apple did NOT create the smartphone.

But they wrote "Apple created THE smartphone.", not "Apple CREATED the smartphone." To me those mean entirely different things.

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

#298

Post by jhasse » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #182

Marazan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N95 sold more units than the original iPhone.

And the iPhone is still around, whereas Symbian isn't. Possibly proving that iOS (and the hardware it runs on) was what consumers wanted in the mid-2000's and onward?

So if Android would take over in 20 years, that would mean Google created the smartphone? No.

Yes, the iPhone is the better smartphone than Symbian-based phones. But it wasn't the first, despite the market share today.

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

#299

Post by t0ddbonzalez » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #233

heyoni wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.

When iPhone arrived in Europe it was disappointment for people who used smartphones. It had few things going for it (better web browser than default IE Mobile on PDAs, better screen than many), and long list of "works worse". Starting with the basic things that everyone who invested in smartphones at the time wanted, i.e. email, going through hilariously high cost (the reason behind it known only to insiders - Apple…

"...hilariously high cost..."

In 2007, the Nokia N95 cost $795 while the iPhone cost $600.

Sauce: https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/practical-gadgetry/two-wee...

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

#300

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:08 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #176

pjmlp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to sell them on Catalina and newer devices they surely need to follow similar steps anyway, while paying for infrastructure themselves. https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

You don’t have to have a paid developer account for app signing, your app is never reviewed by a human, and Apple doesn’t get a cut of your app sales. So how is it “similar”?

[deleted]