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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

#381

Post by api »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #219
teddyh wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only partially. Spam can be filtered, as PG himself was early to point out, and malware can be countered with better security. This could have been fixed, given enough time. The kill shot, instead, has been delivered by ad-sponsored media; clickbait, fake news, mass rage-storms, fake reviews, etc.

Advertising as a business model causes real damage to the open internet: advertisers censor perfectly good sites because they object to something in there. Slowly but surely, a wide spectrum of ideas and self-expression gets reduced to nothing but sanitized advertiser-friendly content. People can and do censor speech they don't like by targeting the advertisers backing the host.

I agree that advertising as a business model incentivizes bad things, but as for censorship the only things I'm aware of advertisers aggressively rejecting are things like Naziism and its relatives.

This is because advertisers don't want to alienate vast populations of people. They don't want stuff like "blacks and women are intellectually inferior, brought to you by Coca Cola!"

I see mainstream ads in "fringe" content of a variety of types, so they don't seem to care much about things being off-beat or strange. They don't seem to care about indirectly sponsoring UFO videos or fringe views of history that aren't transparent efforts to dehumanize people.

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

#382

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

baud147258 wrote: post #351
dijit wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pu…

I think the argument is that without the launcher, if the game is pulled then the customer gets no more updates, has no access to DLC, etc.

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

#383

Post by prepend »

vezycash wrote: post #270
prepend wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true at all. The iPhone had “amazing” features for the time- a real browser, visual voicemail, photo management, music integration, three way calling, contact integration. Almost all were incremental but really made the functions more useful.

And no apps apart from the built-ins. No copy and paste. Just like a feature phone. Apart from the browser and music courtesy ipod, other smart phones had the remaining features and far more robust. They may not have had fancy UI, but they were more powerful at the time. Even the camera megapixel craze was being led by nokia. You're conflating the current dominance of the iphone for the past. At the time, the best th…

The first iPhone lacked many features, but it was the best phone at the time for usability. It had massive hype in the press that was probably overblown. But its features were head and shoulders above others at the time.

The simple act of making a call was so much easier and efficient, even though it lacked cut and paste.

Comparing it to feature phones is really curious because they were completely different markets. I don’t think it’s very useful in describing the iPhone’s success to point out individuals features that were also available in various existing phones.

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

#384

Post by prepend »

dijit wrote: post #250
prepend wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could make a phone call and browse the interest on my gen1 iPhone. I used ATT as my network. Verizon had the limitation you described, but not all carriers. Copy and paste didn’t work, but it didn’t work on any phone at the time. A few attempted it (eg, win mobile, blackberry) but it really sucked. The camera was quite good and the ability to finally save and share photos and video was revolutionary at the time. I…

Multitasking was added iOS 4, the very first iPhone (Gen1) only supported up to "iPhone OS" 3; and even then, with limited functionality. In fact, the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch (2nd Gen) did not support multi-tasking either, even with iOS4. Apple noted performance issues.

Multitasking was in the OS, just not available to web sites and app developers.

Jail broken apps had multitasking like screen sharing, WiFi hot spotting and lots of other stuff.

It’s a big deal for an OS that doesn’t have multitasking vs doesn’t allow app developers to use.

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

#385

Post by Engineering-MD »

fjabre wrote: post #355
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…

It’s more like saying they want to live in a society with rules and regulations which are enforced rather than a Wild West ultra liberal free market economy.

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

#386

Post by r00fus »

fjabre wrote: post #355
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…

> That's basically like saying you prefer to live under a totalitarian regime than a democracy

Horrible analogy - the App Store is not "life" it's business. We deal with demanding, undemocratic platforms in business all the time.

The way forward is the open web. I support that and there's room for both.

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

#387

Post by marcoseliziario »

dijit wrote: post #50
taurath wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple taking 30% of that... for what? Payment processing is a 4% thing. It’s in the app developers interest to make it not have errors. It’s just for access to the market. That is the only value Apple truly brings, outside of the brand and a privacy commitment

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…

Sony and Microsoft sell the consoles at a loss in order to create a huge installed base to sell games for. They make money selling games, but definitely they are bringing way more to the table than apple, that not only don't sell their devices at a loss, but has the highest margins on the hardware business.

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

#388

Post by marcoseliziario »

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #146
pjmlp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, maybe for US citzens. We were already using Symbian, Psion and PocketPC based phones. The first phone with hardware support for OpenGL ES was the Nokia N95 released in September 2006, one year before iPhone, with Asphalt as their show game.

Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple created the first mass-market smartphone which was desired by regular consumers (rather than niche buyers).

In which cave you were living before the iphone launch that you never heard about the blackberry?

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

#389

Post by marcoseliziario »

machello13 wrote: post #293
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…

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…

Man, everybody had blackberrys in the US. It was a huge success. Apple took a risk decision of having a purely touch-based smartphone, and the bet paid awesomely. But by any other aspects, the blackberry was a more useful and powerful device for professionals than the IPhone.

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

#390

Post by song »

I always go out of my way to buy outside of the App Store. Sometimes the app store version is crippled due to constraints from the app store so it just makes sense. Other times, I still do that because I want more of my money to go to the developer.

Oh, and for the few app I installed from the app store (usually because I had no choice), I loathe getting a message saying "Blahblah couldn't be updated because it was open"... It's the worst app updating scheme I've seen.

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