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Secret iPad

thinkfractional.blog

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: Secret iPad

#61
post #59
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a multitude of reasons for this. Beyond some limitations which still limit the ipad, it is the chick and an egg problem. You won't have real software on the iPad until there are users (buyers) for it and you won't have users until the software exists. This is especially important for corporate usage - at my work place I haven't heard of any iPads being provided to the employees, which means, no one can use a…

> Also, so far I haven't found a truely good SSH client on the iPad. It might be worth checking out Prompt - supports some nice edge cases too, like SSH agent forwarding. > - There is a ton of stuff that could be done on the iPad, but is banned outright. Termux is great on Android, not allowed on the iPad. The iPad would be great for development, if not mostly disallowed. Check out iSH (free, available as a testfligh…

I am reasonably happy with blink, that it supports mosh is a big bonus as iPadOS likes to kill background tasks, but the screen refresh is not fast (the output is html based) and it doesn't deal well with split windowing.

I am aware of iSH, but as you say, its requires "using" the testflight system and while that might be ok for enthusiasts, it is nothing for the large audience. Obviously , as testflight is limited to 10k users.

Re: Secret iPad

#62
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can make more money repeatedly selling $0.99 token packs for simple dot puzzle game powerups than one-time $1.99 or even $2.99 whole-app purchases. There are also more people who play silly puzzle games in waiting rooms around the world than people who play guitar. There is still tons of innovation in the App Store. It’s just on Skinner Box mechanics now.

it's also a completely hostile and unnavigable app store. the search is bad, the charts are bad, the recommendations are bad, it's obscured on purpose.

The charts are really bad...

Re: Secret iPad

#63
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid upgrades have worked well for other platforms but Apple stubbornly refuses to support this, instead trying to drive users into subscriptions they don't want. I think it's too late now. Apple has taught an entire generation of users that mobile software is not worth paying real money for and effectively killed the ecosystem of apps they need to promote the iPad as a general purpose computing device.

Well, not apple to be fair. Developers are free to set their prices to whatever; it just so happens some developers set their prices to $0.99 and set that as the expectation

It's a race to the bottom. There's always somebody willing to go lower and the app store doesn't give you much room to stand out. Before I quit I had users complaining my app was overpriced at $1.

Re: Secret iPad

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid upgrades have worked well for other platforms but Apple stubbornly refuses to support this, instead trying to drive users into subscriptions they don't want. I think it's too late now. Apple has taught an entire generation of users that mobile software is not worth paying real money for and effectively killed the ecosystem of apps they need to promote the iPad as a general purpose computing device.

Agenda notes app has elegantly solved this. Pay once and permanently unlock all current features. If a new release has a feature you want, you can purchase again. It's more work for the developer but they did a great write up on how they built this capability: https://medium.com/@drewmccormack/a-cash-cow-is-on-the-agend...

Hmmh, on its own its not enough, I think. Just read through the post, and there is no trial of expensive features in their setup, just a set of free features to begin with. But it seems that Apple allows these days to trial features, as long as your app remains usable and useful without them.

Re: Secret iPad

#66
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have over three decades of evidence in the console market that a game can’t be successful if it requires a non bundled accessory.

The iPad Pro doesn't come with a pen or a keyboard but that doesn't prevent them from flying off the shelves anyway.

How many successful apps require a pen or keyboard?

Re: Secret iPad

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple introduced Apple Arcade because of the horrible state of games on the App Store.

I'm curious how well devs are doing in AA. The potential market is huge but you're also getting a tiny slice of $5/month. I see some of the same games on consoles for $20 each and up.

Apple is paying what amounts to an advance. Game developers are guaranteed a minimum.

https://gameanalytics.com/blog/apple-arcade-mobile-game-deve...

In their latest report, Apple announced that they want to help developers get set up on their service by paying for some of their costs, which should take some pressure off when building your game. How much they’ll contribute is still yet to be revealed, so maybe don’t hold your breath.

Re: Secret iPad

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is simply because people doing serious coding work always want to have a proper permanently attached keyboard. So they would use a MacBook Air with ARM CPU, but not a tablet.

It's definitely not about the hardware, given that the iPad has. mouse/trackpad support now. It's about the software.

Software is written for hardware. So long as most people don't use iPads with a mouse, few iPad apps will bother optimizing UX for it.

Re: Secret iPad

#69
post #5

Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…

You may be looking at things with rose colored glasses. The #1 app in the early days was something called Fart App.

Re: Secret iPad

#70
post #5

Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…

There really is no excuse for the lack of "real" software on the iPad (using "real" as in desktop quality). Only a small amount can be blamed on the system itself, appealing to a very niche audience (like XCode). Arbitrary Javascript code written on the iPad can run, as evidenced by Play.js. Arbitrary Python code written on the iPad can run as evidenced by Pythonista. Arbitrary Swift code can run as evidenced by Swif…

VS Code on desktop can run arbitrary processes, that’s how it can, say, have in integrated terminal. You cannot even remotely do that on iPad. Executing Python and JavaScript in a pre-compiled runtime environment[0], like Pythonista and Play.js do, is an entirely different approach and results in completely different products, ones like... Play.js and Pythonista.

The reason that VS Code is not on iPad is 100%, top to bottom that the framework and App Store restrictions prevent running arbitrary processes.

[0]: VS Code can run any binary on your system, iPad apps can only run binaries that they are compiled with. This distinction is why almost no existing development tools can be ported to iPad, almost all development tools are built on interacting with many binaries that the tool was not necessarily compiled with.

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