Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

21–30 of 292 posts

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

#21
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 whatsoeve…

Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term

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

#22
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.

Push notifications were introduced after the iPhone SDK, weren't they?

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

#23
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.

Yeah I agree (at least on the ads piece, not sure about the rest of your comment) - I think the ads are an unnecessary dilution of their brand.

They can help developers with ad discovery in a bunch of different and better ways that are less hostile for devs and users.

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

#24
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.

Also worth noting that Steve didn't want to make the iPod available on Windows. Sometimes the guy was just dead wrong...

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

#26
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "market" has been designed a certain way and it could be redesigned. Imagine what mobile games would look like if there were no IAPs and no ads.

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

#28
One day it'll dawn on people that we should provide infrastructure that guarantees safety and freedom, not walled gardens that provide safety and freedom only if it also happens to be profitable for somebody.

There seem to be enough people who don't see this as self evident and are motivated to try and create their own walled gardens in the hopes of becoming the next rent seeker overlord.

These types of posts never end - it's as if people refuse to let go of their naive belief that Apple or some other entity is fundamentally good, but just needs to be pleaded with a little more, to begin to act righteously. It reminds me of children who beg their parents into buying them a toy they want. It makes me sad for both the child to be stooping to such a level but even more so for the parent, for letting the child end up in such a situation in the first place.

I don't know, is begging trillion dollar companies to provide basic functionality not in conflict with having an iota of dignity?

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

#29
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People pay for games on console and the PC, mobile didn't have to be this way.

In the early days of the app store getting high download counts was one of the only ways to get visibility. Which pushed the race to the bottom on pricing.

Once the big F2P players established themselves, they sucked all the air out of the ecosystem.

Arcade is, among other things, Apple's attempt to fix this. We will see how it turns out.

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

#30
>Allow us to charge a nominal fee to for major upgrades to our apps. Right now new versions either have to be made into all-new apps, or we have to give away all new versions for free. There’s no way to charge an upgrade free. If I buy a Mac or iPhone from Apple I can trade it in towards a new one when I upgrade, but users can’t do the same thing for software. All the developers I know are suffering right now because Apple has prevented us from offering special upgrade pricing. It’s completely unsustainable to ask developers to continue supporting their apps but also to forbid them from charging for upgrades.

I don't understand. Aren't freemium apps allowed on AppStore? There are lots of apps with in-app purchase upgrades.

Post reply on HN