Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 292 posts

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

#31

Post by andrekandre »

MintelIE wrote: post #20

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…

yes...

all this churn, and what do we get for it, we can loose our old apps, customers can get upset, devs large and small look for shortcuts because thier investment (obj-c, appkit, uikit, swift 1 - 4, 32-bit, etc etc) is obsoleted... it just reduces the number of viable apps... isnt the whole point of apis that they abstract the machine/os underneath so we dont have churn so much?

i know windows isnt the best thing ever, but lots of older apps just work, and i feel apple (and all of us) would be better served if they at least wrote better abstractions to support older apps (32bit runs in compatibility mode, etc)

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

#32

Post by pvg »

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 was shut down years ago. Tracking ads might not align with some of the values Apple espouses but it seems a bit of a stretch to say a company famous for its ads (and often lowbrow-dismissed as 'just marketing' entirely) and advertising are 'antithetical'.

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

#33

Post by frenchie14 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #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…

There's a model for going free -> paid. There's no model for going App V1 -> V2 with payment.

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

#34

Post by danielrhodes »

I was curious about the arguments for not including upgrade pricing on the App Store. Apple maintains that upgrade pricing is a relic of shrink wrapped software and subscriptions are better.

I lean softly towards Apple on this one. A few reasons I can think of for why subscriptions are preferred over upgrade pricing:

- The app developer can keep making money over a longer period of time.

- Generally means somebody can try out software first before committing, whereas upgrade pricing implies you either have to commit before trying it or nothing -- there are no demos on the App Store.

- Subscriptions also mean a developer does not hold out new features or bug fixes for customers unless they upgrade -- it incentivizes developers to keep working on an app and maintain a relationship with customers. This is especially true as the app needs to be updated to be compatible with new devices and OS versions.

- Potentially lets customers choose feature sets in the app. This is a good thing as it means developers can broaden their market to customers who want to pay less for fewer features or more for more features. It doesn't lump everybody into the same bucket.

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

#35

Post by leonidasv »

californical wrote: post #21
sixothree wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're assuming that just looking for the title is everything a search engine does when it's not.

It's easy to create and train a model to distinguish between brands and generic words by counting how many times a single word appears over app descriptions, for example - there are countless ways to do this. This, in turn, can neutralize the effect of naming your app after a generic word when it comes to search ranking.

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

#36

Post by gonehome »

kortilla wrote: post #4
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 also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible. Coming from the android world there is a very high bar for a native app for me. I tend to assume the app is garbage if it could have been done just as easily as a web app.

I find this surprising and it makes me wonder if native android apps are just bad?

The difference between a native iOS app and a fake app that's really just a wrapped web page is obvious. Native apps are a lot faster. It's possible there is some selection bias here and you only notice the web apps when they're bad, but I really don't think this is the case. Native apps just seem categorically better.

If Facebook pouring immense resources into it couldn't get web based mobile applications to be good, it's probably because the technology just can't compete with native.

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

#37

Post by [deleted] »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #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…

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by dceddia »

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…

Pretty much the only time I care about whether an app is “native” or not is when I have to update it.

The CapitalOne app is awful about this. Every month or two (which is roughly how often I open the thing), it requires an update. Not a suggestion. Not coming soon. Refuses to login without updating first.

The download is 375mb. Three Hundred and Seventy-Five Megabytes, for an app to display credit card balances and pay them.

It’s a nice app. Really it is. But forcing a 375mb download every month or two is extremely frustrating when I just wanted to check a balance real quick.

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

#39

Post by Apocryphon »

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…

Exact search results are getting bumped by paid ads

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101

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

#40

Post by jonas21 »

frenchie14 wrote: post #33
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #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…

There's a model for going free -> paid. There's no model for going App V1 -> V2 with payment.

There's nothing stopping you from shipping V2, but keeping the new features locked behind an in-app purchase.
Post reply on HN