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Earlier quoted context omitted.
First law of Hacker News: taking the “pro app store fee” argument in any thread comment results in “k” karma points, where “k” <= 0.
As frustrating as it may be to receive downvotes for seemingly no reason, getting salty about it simply invites further downvotes.
Despite selling less than 20% [1] of smartphones across the world, its App Store accounts for over 64% [2] of app revenue. Apple and its developers somehow built an App Store that people are willing to spend more money on.
If it's purely thanks to developers, why isn't there more revenue on Google's Play Store?
[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...
[2] https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-q1-20...
I'm wondering if webapps are achieving parity with native apps. My intuition says that most of the use cases today could transfer over if they really wanted to. Does anyone have any insight into the major differences between native and web app in 2021? The biggest disparity between webapp and native used to be Notifications - but with Twilio, it appears trivial to make an arguably better notifications user flow throu…
Write once, run everywhere has a cost, and one that is largely borne by users.
> Without our apps, the iPhone has little value to most of its customers today. Looking at my iPhone I see no 3rd party apps. I use safari to access websites and eschew any service that wants me to "use our app" and doesn't have a web version.
iPad? Oh hell no. I'd not bother with one, at all, without third-party apps. With them it's amazing, probably my single favorite computer platform for anything that's not programming. Without them it's just a huge, worse (there's not even a calculator!) iPhone.
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App Store should be just the start. Mobile web for more than 50% of the US users is also restricted to Apple's whims. They should be forced to allow competing browser engines(not just skins on Safari engine) on the platform. If Microsoft couldn't even bundle IE on Windows, it should be possible to make an alternative browser(along with engines) for iOS.
Be careful what you wish for. Safari's forced presence on the most lucrative mobile platform is the reason we don't, for all practical purposes, have only one browser engine, period , now. Which is something only nerds like us care about on a technical level, so I don't think the typical user is harmed or bothered by all browsers on iOS sharing an engine, but the social harm of Google 100% owning the Web would reach…
- Apple holds the gateway to both App Store and Web(through standard support). Having worked on web apps in the past, I truly admire the amazing distribution capability the web provides. I can spin up an obscure Linux distro and my web app works on it as long as a browser with good standard support is available. This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. I would want most apps to be just web apps.
- If Apple's marketshare keeps on increasing like it has been, we might run into a situation where just one company controls your hardware, OS, services and even web. This is way more scary.
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> The biggest disparity between webapp and native used to be Notifications - but with Twilio, it appears trivial to make an arguably better notifications user flow through SMS and direct link to user content. Oh god please no. I can turn off app-level notifications. I don't want to have to deal with app-level texts instead.
> I can turn off app-level notifications. I don't want to have to deal with app-level texts instead. Ha!! See, I think SMS notifications are still stellar! Because right when the offender steps in, in the height of righteous anger, you can yell (text) "STOP" and by law it must bug off!! Not to mention the cool new commands that could emerge like, "give me a week" or other conversational ways to interact with your not…
Is that the law everywhere in the world?
> Not to mention the cool new (…) conversational ways to interact with your notifications
Which you could achieve by allowing replies from within the notification itself, like Messages on macOS.
And SMSs cost money. It doesn’t matter how cool your conversational interactions are, no one would be happy being charged for international text messages to respond to a bot, especially when the norm today is automated assistants barely understand what you mean.
"The “way” is already paid by the hardware — but Apple uses their position of power to double-dip." I understand the optics of this don't look good, but is it wrong to have multiple sources of revenue derived from the "way"? 1. what happens if supply chain dynamics and smartphone market competition negatively impact the hardware margins? What happens when consumer appetite for innovation in the phone stagnates and ma…
First law of Hacker News: taking the “pro app store fee” argument in any thread comment results in “k” karma points, where “k” <= 0.
We're humans after all, and having opposable thumbs is one of the driving pillars of our progress and civilization, if not the one pillar.
It's a two-way street. Despite selling less than 20% [1] of smartphones across the world, its App Store accounts for over 64% [2] of app revenue. Apple and its developers somehow built an App Store that people are willing to spend more money on. If it's purely thanks to developers, why isn't there more revenue on Google's Play Store? [1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share... [2] https://sens…
Most of the sales of Android phones are at a lower price bracket which might indicate the purchasing power of customers, so they would naturally have less purchasing power than ones on iOS. People with more purchasing power would spend more on even apps and this reflects in the App Store revenue.
There are certainly people who buy Android flagships because they prefer the platform/device but this might not be true for lower end Android phones. iPhone has an aspirational value in many parts of the world.
"The “way” is already paid by the hardware — but Apple uses their position of power to double-dip." I understand the optics of this don't look good, but is it wrong to have multiple sources of revenue derived from the "way"? 1. what happens if supply chain dynamics and smartphone market competition negatively impact the hardware margins? What happens when consumer appetite for innovation in the phone stagnates and ma…