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Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

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Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#11

Post by intopieces »

gonehome wrote: post #2

Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious. Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam). It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people…

Apple should wind down their ads system (iAd) entirely. Advertisements are antithetical to what Apple stands for - privacy, premium experience, doing the right thing for users. They should lower their cut to 10% (not to 20, as the article states) and start offering curated experience bundles like they do with AppleTV.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#12

Post by sixothree »

gonehome wrote: post #2

Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious. Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam). It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people…

I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure I really used the right search term and that the result is actually a first party app.

If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results.

There has to be a better way.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#13

Post by howon92 »

Interesting points. I disagree with one of the points that argues Apple should favor the “real apps,” which I assume refer to native iOS apps. Users don’t care what stack developers use as long as the product does its job and developers for sure want to reach as many users as possible regardless of what platform they are on. Also, companies with more resources will be better positioned than indie developers to make native apps for multiple platforms, so it wouldn’t benefit the author too. So who really benefits from this?

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#14

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

One nit to pick, Slack on iOS is apparently fully native: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/931599784137363459

I think this shows, in my opinion, how little native vs. web/electron actually matters to overall quality. You can generally make a smooth, fast, bug-free app on any platform. Or not...

I used to use the Android version and I was never quite sure whether it was native or not. I couldn't think of a way to tell.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#15

Post by davidajackson »

>Lower the cut you take from 30% to 20%

I agree with this. I think there are probably a lot of app ideas where the margin is small enough that 30% probably prevents them from even being started.

Also fix app review. It's so arbitrary, it's like playing a game of darts.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#16

Post by unix_fan »

mod50ack wrote: post #7
lancewiggs wrote: post #3

A great list. Also: Capping in-app payments (I’m targeting games here) at a certain multiple of cost price, or a fixed amount for free apps, would fix the absurd gaming mechanisms aimed only at extracting more money rather than great gameplay.

It's a bit sad. I feel like mobile gaming is in large part dead because of these stupid pay-to-play games. Back in the early days of the iPhone, even the iPhone games were one-time $2 games (and good for that!), while you had the DS where games were $20+ (often more). Now mobile games of quality are mostly dead.

unfortunately, the market isn’t willing to pay for high-quality games.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#17

Post by saagarjha »

intopieces wrote: post #11
gonehome wrote: post #2

Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious. Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam). It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people…

Apple should wind down their ads system (iAd) entirely. Advertisements are antithetical to what Apple stands for - privacy, premium experience, doing the right thing for users. They should lower their cut to 10% (not to 20, as the article states) and start offering curated experience bundles like they do with AppleTV.

iAd is dead. These are search ads.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#18

Post by fastball »

howon92 wrote: post #13

Interesting points. I disagree with one of the points that argues Apple should favor the “real apps,” which I assume refer to native iOS apps. Users don’t care what stack developers use as long as the product does its job and developers for sure want to reach as many users as possible regardless of what platform they are on. Also, companies with more resources will be better positioned than indie developers to make n…

Also worth noting that Steve Jobs' original plan for the iPhone involved making web-apps first class citizens, with access to system notifications, etc.

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#19

Post by saagarjha »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #14

One nit to pick, Slack on iOS is apparently fully native: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/931599784137363459 I think this shows, in my opinion, how little native vs. web/electron actually matters to overall quality. You can generally make a smooth, fast, bug-free app on any platform. Or not... I used to use the Android version and I was never quite sure whether it was native or not. I couldn't think of a way to te…

Slack on macOS is Electron. Slack on iOS is native, and their app wasn't actually all that bad until they redesigned it a couple months ago and made it really, really bad :(

Re: Every year I fill out this survey from Apple, for Apple developers

#20

Post by MintelIE »

I have simply stopped buying "apps" even though I am still an iOS user. Quite a few of my purchases have just disappeared over time. I moved to a newer device and they couldn't be installed. I'm not happy with Apple and I got rid of my modern Macs (still have 1/2 dozen SE/30s) completely, now I use Debian or OpenBSD.

Apple is extremely tight lipped on what they're doing and where they're going, they will support and then drop some technology on an apparent whim. I've had serious issues when they dropped WebObjects, Java as a first class Cocoa development language, and now moving to Swift seems like a message that all my work in Objective C will be thrown away by Apple. The promise of ZFS on OS X made me buy a Mac Pro, and then several months later they just dropped all mention of ZFS on OS X.

I'm not going to stick with a company which is so secretive about what they are going to do, failing to even publish roadmaps for their customers and developers. Mindshare among the tech geeks is how OS X took off. Now they're losing it - many developers I know are moving away from the platform too.

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