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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

#351

Post by baud147258 »

dijit wrote: post #290
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I can assure you that seeing a game requires uPlay means I'm probably not going to buy it, and I'm not alone in that. Of course, I haven't even wanted to play an Ubisoft game since... I honestly can't remember, so I guess I'm not the target audience anyway. > Unless the problem is that you have to have a second launcher? That's a big part of it. I have enough crapware that insists on constantly running on my PC…

So, again, the largest complaint is that we have our own launcher. Given what I mentioned from the parent (Valve arbitrarily pulling down all our games), how do you think I can convince the business to make ourselves more vulnerable to such behaviour?

> the largest complaint is that we have our own launcher.

That sits above Steam's launcher, so I launch the game via Steam, then Uplays pop up (slowly, then updates), I dig up my contact details from an old post-it, then the game launch! I think it makes sense for Ubisoft to have their launcher, but in the case of games sold through Steam, its mandatory use detract from the game. And on Steam, games that have been pulled from the store are still in the game library of buyers, so it's not an argument.

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

#352

Post by p_l »

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #299
p_l wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's the one time cost for purchase outside of contract... For N95. Not for iPhone, at least not for normal people.

The reality in 2008 is that Apple forbid selling iPhone without contract, with contract requiring special extra Apple tax (we already had "unlimited data" for years by then). So you were paying whatever the telco asked you for the phone, then paid extra to Apple as long as you used the "iPhone tariff" (and you couldn't get it otherwise other than ebay).

Since at least in Poland majority bought the phone as part of the contract, the prices were wildly different. I can't find N95, but business oriented E51 cost me under $70. Without significant impact on monthly fees on the contract. And without paying Apple tax on my phone bill.

BTW, regarding visual voicemail... Little known thing about iOS 1-2 is that the network stack was broken and it wasn't capable of redirecting to voicemail like every other phone. Required special buggy software to get any voicemail for people running iPhones, and at least at Era GSM (present day T-Mobile Poland) it took 3 months from providing iPhone on sales and any voicemail working?

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

#353

Post by t0ddbonzalez »

acheron wrote: post #325
t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the iPhone, famously did not meet any of the internal tests at Nokia..." So, Nokia saw it as an inferior product? Perhaps this is a problem in engineer-led companies - thinking that the phone with the most megapixels in its camera, or most wifi bands is the best? Technical brilliance counts for nothing if consumers don't want the product. See also Windows Phone, Betamax, etc

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

And yet here we are...

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

#354

Post by gumby »

kkarakk wrote: post #267
gumby wrote: post #122

I like the App Store because it handles automatic updates pretty well. Then again these days with sparkle, the apps I use do update, so it's not a big advantage for Apple. And how do I know sparkle works so well? Well whenever a dev has an app both in the store and directly downloadable from their site I choose the latter. The price is the same, the functionality is the same (or sometimes more) but the dev gets 30% m…

It doesn't in India. Something is borked about their servers internationally, updates fail on me around 30 percent of the time

I assume you're talking about Apple's Mac App Store and not the individual vendors' download sites?

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

#355

Post by fjabre »

askafriend wrote: post #21

I'm sorry but as a user, I trust my relationship with Apple more than I trust random third party devs. As a user, I want Apple to lock down the system and make things hard for developers. As a developer, I empathize with my perspective as a user and build products that take this into account.

That's basically like saying you prefer to live under a totalitarian regime than a democracy because: security. Humans gladly trade their freedom for security as your comment implies, you are comfortable with that.

The web is, or at least was in part, a democracy. Apple is clearly a dictatorship.

Trust doesn't really come into it. You trust your user data to 3rd parties every single day using apps that very publicly compromise you like FB, Google etc. So to say that you trust your relationship with Apple doesn't mean squat. Sure Apple is good at preventing people from breaking into your iPhones, but it's not good at stopping Facebook from selling your data to 3rd parties which you talk about. Your security is already compromised.

In the days even before the web we had many programs from independent 3rd parties that have now turned into household names today.

I refuse to believe that Apple's incredibly convoluted App store is the way forward. I ultimately believe Apple will fail here and have to make major changes, indeed I hope it does.

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

#356

Post by sanitycheck »

dijit wrote: post #256
baud147258 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your games on Steam would be better received if they didn't force the buyer to also install a crapware like Uplay on top of Steam and forcing to create another user account to play a game the buyer has just paid for (perhaps it has changed, I haven't bought an Ubi game in years).

Regarding a second account; I'm afraid there's very little that can be done on that front, there was account linking added some time ago that meant you didn't need to maintain or continually log-in to uplay, you just create a linked account and forget about it- no second password needed I believe. So at least for usability it should not be any different than normal. If you have other specific complaints about uPlay t…

Just another data point: I also will not buy any game which uses uPlay, I spent too many hours trying to make the damn thing even work which I intended to spend playing games. (Not compatible with Steam Link either, in my experience.)

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

#357

Post by baud147258 »

dijit wrote: post #256
baud147258 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your games on Steam would be better received if they didn't force the buyer to also install a crapware like Uplay on top of Steam and forcing to create another user account to play a game the buyer has just paid for (perhaps it has changed, I haven't bought an Ubi game in years).

Regarding a second account; I'm afraid there's very little that can be done on that front, there was account linking added some time ago that meant you didn't need to maintain or continually log-in to uplay, you just create a linked account and forget about it- no second password needed I believe. So at least for usability it should not be any different than normal. If you have other specific complaints about uPlay t…

I don't have any recent criticism of Uplay, I'm pretty sure I haven't launched an Ubisoft game with Uplay since maybe 2017 (more or less) (played all the 3d PoP though).

I commend you for offering to receive feedback.

I also understand that Uplay is a good business idea.

The issue was being _forced_ to use it in addition to Steam and having to create an account, since apparently at the time (2015?) the account linking didn't exist. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to have to launch two launcher just to play a game (perhaps it has changed since last time though).

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

#358

Post by ninju »

jen729w wrote: post #42
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 also stopped “check[ing] weekly for new things”, but that’s because I don’t need any new things! Do you? I don’t have Instagram but I imagine it’s a bit like the App Store. I’m waiting somewhere. I’m bored. I know, I’ll check for a shiny thing. Oh, no shiny thing. That was disappointing. To compare, do you go to the internet regularly and check for new things? I don’t think this is the App Store’s fault. It’s no…

> (~== Not necessarily equal to. Did I just invent that?)

Yeah... in most programming languages it would be

shiny + new a good App Store

OR

shiny + new != a good App Store

The ~= (single equals) is used to for equal to with a regular expression on right side

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

#359

Post by wastedhours »

pohl wrote: post #345
wastedhours wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Greed destroyed the open and experimental Internet. Did it? Or did it expand the open and experimental internet to also include profit-making ventures? This meme crops up a lot on HN, but I can't see what's stopping the same internet thriving - there's still self hosting, there's still an open public internet (apart from some newer restrictions around copyright which were inevitable), there's still P2P for those le…

> Or did it expand the open and experimental internet to also include profit-making ventures? Why not both?

If it wasn't clear, that's kinda my point. We used to have one strand of the internet, now we have two. They can seemingly coexist, it's just the majority of people have a preference to the one that isn't the older one.

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

#360

Post by pier25 »

Another problem for the user of all Apple stores (iOS, macOS, books, iTunes) are refunds.

In Android you get an automatic refund when you uninstall a recently purchased app. No questions asked.

In Steam you can ask for a refund if you have played less than 2 hours and you bought the game less than 2 weeks ago. I've done this dozens of times and in fact being able to refund a game that I don't like gives me confidence in trying new games. Again, no questions asked.

Epic also has a similar refund policy as Steam. I only used it once though.

With Apple you might or not get a refund and much like App Store reviews there is nothing you can do about it.

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