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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

#191

Post by Nextgrid »

realusername wrote: post #177
flatiron wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested how you think their WebKit (which they started from KHTML back in the day) implementation has “poor support for modern browser features” I agree with browser lock in though. But I feel that iOS is so successful that they don’t treat the web as a second class citizen. It’s just WebKit...

I'm a web developer, Safari mobile feels honestly on the borderline of being abandoned, every time I look at their new Safari release, there's a least a minimum of 6 to 8 years of lagging behind Chrome and Firefox (and that's just the features we're talking about here, not basic layout, forms & css bugs they still have...). I generally spend as much time to fix Safari mobile as IE11

What kind of features are we talking about though? As a user I don’t see what I really miss out on by using Safari. If anything, the lack of user-hostile features such as push notifications is a good thing.

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

#192

Post by manigandham »

chadlavi wrote: post #127

I agree with all of this, but isn't it possible to charge for updates via an in app purchase?

Possible but poor experience for devs and users.

The app will have to contain the full working functionality for every major release, and seamlessly handle upgrading it internally. This is counter to how almost all applications are actually build and released where you only run the artifacts for the current version.

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

#193

Post by manigandham »

scarface74 wrote: post #166
zadokshi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have laws for this. Look up what “anti trust” is. The real question you should be asking is “why are anti trust rules not functioning properly” or why aren’t they being applied for this generation?

True. Why isn’t anti trust going after a company that is less than 50% of the market.....

Perhaps "anti trust" needs to be revisited as a broader concept. A similar corollary is the "right to repair" which often falls under the same excuse of being able to use a competitor's product but ignores the high price consumers in giving up any control over what they purchased.

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

#194

Post by jackson1442 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #121
whatshisface wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "don't call us, we'll call you" model already exists in the form of game consoles. Nintendo is probably the most restrictive in this way. If you don't have a pile of money for the development equipment, don't bother calling.

I thought a nintendo dev kit was about $100 bucks.

I believe for 3DS it was closer to $1000, definitely at least double the regular console cost, whatever it was.

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

#195

Post by robertoandred »

realusername wrote: post #177
flatiron wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely interested how you think their WebKit (which they started from KHTML back in the day) implementation has “poor support for modern browser features” I agree with browser lock in though. But I feel that iOS is so successful that they don’t treat the web as a second class citizen. It’s just WebKit...

I'm a web developer, Safari mobile feels honestly on the borderline of being abandoned, every time I look at their new Safari release, there's a least a minimum of 6 to 8 years of lagging behind Chrome and Firefox (and that's just the features we're talking about here, not basic layout, forms & css bugs they still have...). I generally spend as much time to fix Safari mobile as IE11

Laughably beyond hyperbole.

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

#196

Post by spencerflem »

valuearb wrote: post #187
kalleboo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, Apple is heavily, heavily pushing us to adopt subscriptions, even for apps where it makes no sense. We get contacted by developer relations folks several times a year, they even dragged us to a seminar to espouse the joys of subscriptions. We do a camera app. All we want is clearly-marked trial versions (not "free apps with in-app purchases", users think that's bait-and-switch and give you 1 star revi…

Subscriptions always make sense because it aligns developers costs with customer usage. Small developers were dying trying to support apps forever on one time purchases. Subscriptions enable developers to be compensated for maintaining and upgrading their apps. Trial versions are a bad user experience. Upgrade pricing would be nice, but fir most apps isn’t really necessary since subscriptions solve the same problem i…

I would be much happier paying to upgrade on my own terms than being held hostage every month with subscription fees. Subscriptions add up fast and for most things if the app is good enough now I don't care too much about continuing support.

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

#197

Post by pjbster »

I have been thinking about an alternative pricing model but it only works for content creation software. It would be enabled by an OpenPGP library which handles signing of files and micropayments.

What if the app itself was free but it charged a small fee the first time a new file was saved? The file format doesn't have to be proprietary - a simple chunk of metadata should be able to identify the creator and the files won't need to be tracked by a central authority because the mere existence of the signature in the file would imply that the one-off payment had already been made.

The canonical example is a rich Markdown editor. You could get the WYSIWYG conveniences à la Word and the resulting .md file would have a signature indicating that the app had saved it.

Subsequent edits by the author wouldn't incur a fee as the signature would match the app instance. But someone else with a copy of the app would incur a fee if they also used it to make changes of their own and their signature would be added to the file.

Someone else could edit the file with their favourite text editor. This wouldn't incur a fee. But the signatures would have to be preserved otherwise the original author(s) wouldn't be able to re-edit the file without incurring another payment.

Perhaps I'm being dumb but I think these files could be safely pushed to Github with the signatures intact. They'd be as secure as any public key.

I can see this working with many file types -- MS Office documents, Adobe Illustrator et al, 3D model files, PDFs, images, movies. The same file could be edited with different apps each saving their own signatures. All that's needed is something which disables the "File/Save" command unless a payment is made.

Is anyone aware of any software which works like this?

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

#198

Post by wilshipley »

valuearb wrote: post #187
kalleboo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, Apple is heavily, heavily pushing us to adopt subscriptions, even for apps where it makes no sense. We get contacted by developer relations folks several times a year, they even dragged us to a seminar to espouse the joys of subscriptions. We do a camera app. All we want is clearly-marked trial versions (not "free apps with in-app purchases", users think that's bait-and-switch and give you 1 star revi…

Subscriptions always make sense because it aligns developers costs with customer usage. Small developers were dying trying to support apps forever on one time purchases. Subscriptions enable developers to be compensated for maintaining and upgrading their apps. Trial versions are a bad user experience. Upgrade pricing would be nice, but fir most apps isn’t really necessary since subscriptions solve the same problem i…

Customers hate subscriptions, and small developers don’t like them much, either, because they create the expectation that the app will be upgraded very regularly.

This expectation is fine for companies like Adobe, who are going to be cranking out a new version on a regular basis. But it’s onerous to a smaller developer.

My understanding is Apple is now discouraging developers from using the subscription model unless their app has periodic new content / updates, but I haven’t confirmed this yet.

-Wil Shipley

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

#199

Post by fouc »

jennyyang wrote: post #70

The only way we effect change is by ORGANIZING. Right now, Apple can do whatever they want because they pick us off one by one, and ignore us. Google does exactly the same thing. If we organize as a large enough group, they have to listen. I firmly believe what Apple does is anti-competitive and they need to be regulated firmly by the government. I also think Google and Facebook need to be firmly regulated by the gov…

I agree about ORGANIZING. If end users formed a large powerful organization then we can effect change more easily.

I think end users should have some rights with how they use computers, how they use software, how the social contract of the web is maintained, etc.

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

#200

Post by wilshipley »

valuearb wrote: post #188
musicale wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like don't develop for iPhone or Android. OP seems to be suggesting that developers organize against the de facto app store duopoly. > Google does exactly the same thing

Apple is paying developers nearly $30B a year, that dwarfs all these minor complaints fir most developers.

That $30B number is meaningless on its own. You don’t know how many people it’s going to or how it’s divided amongst them.

Also, they’re not paying us at all. They’re taking 30% of our gross for the privilege of having an entry on their store, and then they run ads against us.

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