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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

#221

Post by lawik »

gear54rus wrote: post #186
intopieces wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do not stand for any of those things and the fact that you believe it is just another win for their brainwashing machine. They've been known to lick China's boot any time they throw a tantrum ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678 ). That alone proves they only stand for their own greed.

I think it would be naive to think that their stance is more than a marketing strategy. But it does mean they take a stronger stance on user data than others. They at least have incentives to protect user data so they can bash Google about privacy invasion in their marketing.

China and other oppressive regimes tend to be where the marketing gets in conflict with the law and China has a lot of leverage on any major electronics manufacturer.

Still a capitalist business so ideology or ethics don't really factor into it.

I think it is correct that Apple could benefit in amrketing from having no ad systems on their platforms. Not convinced it would be net positive for them though.

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

#222

Post by asiachick »

duskwuff wrote: post #144
californical wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple has control over that, though! They could easily reject applications with overly generic names if that were a concern.

They already do don't they. Only Apple gets "Maps", "Mail", "Messages", etc...

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

#223

Post by the_lucifer »

gonehome wrote: post #10
mod50ack wrote: 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.

Apple Arcade was supposed to fix that - it’d be interesting to read a blog post from a developer in that ecosystem to see if it’s actually working.

The problem with Apple Arcade seems to be stemming from the lack of a deep gameplay experience. The games although devoid of micro-transactions and other predatory practices are often very simplistic and feel like made for gaming sessions in transit.

Another drawback seems to be lack of controllers that make some games hard to play. This is yet another issue to be addressed by Apple-- They did add in DualShock and XBox controller support but that doesn't mean a lot unless users have access to those consoles in the first place, further solidifying Apple Arcade's place as a on-the-go gaming solution.

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

#224

Post by tonyedgecombe »

wilshipley wrote: post #198
valuearb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Charging for upgrades creates perverse incentives as well, Adobe before they switched to subscriptions was a good example of that. Every new release had a ton of features to encourage people to pay for the upgrade. Few of these features were of much value.

At least with a subscription you are incentivised to keep existing users happy.

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

#225

Post by tonyedgecombe »

reeddavid wrote: post #62

I'm not an app developer, but I am equally frustrated as a user on several of Wil Shipley's key points: 1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find w…

Trials would only make sense if the applications were more expensive. My downloadable software gets single digit perentage conversion rates, that wouldn't add up on something that cost a few dollars.

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

#226

Post by the_lucifer »

alwillis wrote: post #184
ddevault wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every comment refers to VSCode, which is... bizzare. VSCode has abysmal performance. I'm a Vim user and every time I've encountered VSCode it's just been awful, awful, awful. There's some kind of brainwashing going on here. Probably something along the lines of "I write webshit, and if webshit is bad, I might be bad by association, so webshit is definitely not bad".

Same. For a long time, every time I tried VS Code, I’d go running back to Vim. VS Code has gotten better—it has a higher ceiling than it used to but there are limitations that’ll always be there as long it’s based on Electron. That ceiling also applies to responsiveness and adherence to the macOS UI/UX guidelines. I’m waiting on Panic’s editor that’s in private beta. I don’t see an Electron app matching the fit, fini…

I have been waiting excitedly for Panic's Nova to be honest. Recently my hopes have been lower because there haven't been any updates since March 2019. https://panic.com/nova/march-2019/

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

#227

Post by the_lucifer »

pier25 wrote: post #169
brutal_boi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf. It really makes me wonder if we are in fact using the same thing at all? Started using couple or three months back for a relatively large C project (with large amounts of lib includes) and so far the experience has been really good. Then switched to remote ssh devel, still really good. What's these slugish/perf issues on vsvode all about? What am I missing?

For me it's because it could never really break the illusion I'm using a browser and that is annoying. I'm reminded of that on every little (or not so little) stutter. I could totally work with VSCode but I just prefer the overall experience of Sublime.

My biggest gripe with Sublime has been the lack of Extensions.

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

#228

Post by syshum »

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.

WOW, that is a gross reversal of the sales model. I thought Apple had a warped sense of their role but here you believe that Apple is entitled to 100% of the sales from the developers apps, and are graciously paying the devs 70% of money Apple is entitled to, instead of the reality that Apple is taking 30% of the revenue from Developers for the "privilege" of access to consumers that already paid apple thousands of dollars.

Apple is a Payment processor, that is the service they provide. a "Fair" amount for a payment process is maybe 5%, not 30%

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

#229

Post by the_lucifer »

wilshipley wrote: post #210
paulvorobyev wrote: post #110

>Apple’s biggest competition right now is the web. More and more “apps” are just thin, non-native veneers on top of web sites (cf Zoom, Slack, Steam, etc). The issue for Apple is, why would anyone choose Apple devices if the exact same apps are available on all devices? Apple should be doing everything it can to support good third-party developers that make the real Apple apps that make Apple devices unique, and prov…

My argument wasn’t for ruining the web. It was saying, look, there are a ton of apps out there that are written (usually using emulation layers) for basically all platforms, and if Apple kills off all its native, independent developers, those are the ONLY apps that will exist. At that point, there won’t be much reason to buy Apple products. Of course, Apple says they have the best products and ecosystem, blah blah bl…

> At that point, there won’t be much reason to buy Apple products. Of course, Apple says they have the best products and ecosystem, blah blah blah. (And it’s an ecosystem I largely like, to be fair.) But Apple should not become so arrogant that they think customers will flock to buy their products based only on the Apple’s own software.

In fact, this exact approach with Safari and Extensions have driven away a lot of users to Firefox and Chrome

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

#230

Post by syshum »

reeddavid wrote: post #62

I'm not an app developer, but I am equally frustrated as a user on several of Wil Shipley's key points: 1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find w…

For #4, I think a Steam Style Refund policy would also work, If you do not have X number of hours/minutes app usage or X days since purchase you should be able to get a full refund
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