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

Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 336 posts

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#31

Post by eyesee »

webmobdev wrote: post #5

Developers of ios (and soon macOS) platform have no one to blame but themselves for situations like this. Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. It i…

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app.

I'm not sure where the "suddenly" comes from. It's not as if there was a time before the fee where developers could ship apps for iOS. There's been a developer program as long as there has been an App Store. For that matter, there was a much more expensive developer programs for the Mac before iOS was even a thing. I remember paying somewhere between $1500 and $3000 when we were writing Mac software in the early aughts.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#32

Post by GeekyBear »

webmobdev wrote: post #30
GeekyBear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Promoting the use of iCloud The Files app transfers files back and forth between SMB shares, local flash drives, and any of the major cloud services. iCloud is not required at all. Try again.

If you are ignorant about it, iCloud support is integrated into the Files App and is the most promoted on its support documents too - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 and https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 ... If you use DropBox app, you are obviously going to prefer DropBox cloud service over iCloud - that not only means a potential loss of revenue in the future but also the fact that they aren't tied…

> If you are ignorant about it

I'm apparently not the person who is ignorant of the fact that iCloud is not required in any way to use Files.

Any SMB share, Flash drive, or major cloud service will work with it just fine.

If you are trying to come up with a profit motive as large as Google, where they sell search results on other people's product names, you aren't making a compelling case.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#33

Post by abhorrence »

gruez wrote: post #13
mikestew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps?

>You mean the grocery stores that have many competitors who also sell groceries? google? >How would you extend that analogy to the iOS App Store, which has no competitors whatsoever who sell iOS apps? By that logic costco has no competitors whatsoever that sell kirkland signature products.

I think if we took the reverse analogy, this would be like a situation where depending on the model of car you owned you could only shop at a specific grocery store.

Bought a Honda? Only Kroger for you. Ford? You get Albertsons.

There's a sizable purchase with phones and computers that creates a cost to switching stores. There's no cost to me to go to Kroger one week and Albertsons the next.

Something like Amazon is more comparable to grocery stores, but I think there's a "trust" cost that makes them not directly comparable.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#34

Post by Rubayo »

codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

Yet given all this, for a substantial cohort of customers, the Apple brand is still bought as a badge of "coolness".

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#35

Post by bberenberg »

codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

I spend more for mac apps every year than the year before. And I do out it outside of the app store (mostly). Obviously HN crowd isn't representative of the general populace but this is my limited anecdotal experience.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#36

Post by codesternews »

bberenberg wrote: post #35
codesternews wrote: post #28

Apple has made life of small developers hard. Mac software and app industry has died. Even after notarising apps they show malicious popup to users. Same practices has adapted by apple like search ad etc etc. They make competing services and steal ideas of developers and those app dies. For eg screen time for Moments app. They have unfair advantage and small developers could not complete. Only handful of indie develo…

I spend more for mac apps every year than the year before. And I do out it outside of the app store (mostly). Obviously HN crowd isn't representative of the general populace but this is my limited anecdotal experience.

I am developer of mac app which rely on system events. From mojave each time I request for permission user see popup this app wants to control etc etc. I got it but every time? It killed lots of apps.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#38

Post by Rubayo »

codesternews wrote: post #36
bberenberg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend more for mac apps every year than the year before. And I do out it outside of the app store (mostly). Obviously HN crowd isn't representative of the general populace but this is my limited anecdotal experience.

I am developer of mac app which rely on system events. From mojave each time I request for permission user see popup this app wants to control etc etc. I got it but every time? It killed lots of apps.

>>It killed lots of apps.

how?

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#39

Post by kadoban »

GeekyBear wrote: post #32
webmobdev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are ignorant about it, iCloud support is integrated into the Files App and is the most promoted on its support documents too - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203052 and https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT206481 ... If you use DropBox app, you are obviously going to prefer DropBox cloud service over iCloud - that not only means a potential loss of revenue in the future but also the fact that they aren't tied…

> If you are ignorant about it I'm apparently not the person who is ignorant of the fact that iCloud is not required in any way to use Files. Any SMB share, Flash drive, or major cloud service will work with it just fine. If you are trying to come up with a profit motive as large as Google, where they sell search results on other people's product names, you aren't making a compelling case.

Why is this a competition? They can both be wrong.

Re: Apple admits it ranked its Files app ahead of competitor Dropbox

#40

Post by webmobdev »

eyesee wrote: post #31
webmobdev wrote: post #5

Developers of ios (and soon macOS) platform have no one to blame but themselves for situations like this. Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. It i…

> Alarm bells should have been raised among us developers when Apple suddenly asked everyone to shell out $99 for the "privilege" of making an app available on the "App Store", and treated it as something normal. And later, more so, when Apple demanded a percentage cut too on every sale you make from your app. I'm not sure where the "suddenly" comes from. It's not as if there was a time before the fee where developer…

The "suddenly" is in the context of this new practice of charging all developers (big or small) annual fees and demanding a recurring cut of their profit. Before this unnatural practice became prevalent, any computer user and / or Linux / Windows / Mac / Android developer could create and distribute software on the respective platforms for free without any such financial consideration.

My point is let's not normalise this practice in any manner - in the past too we used to pay huge fees for developer tools, but today the computing environment is totally different and that's why even the tech giants are adopting and pushing for free open source developer tools or providing their developer tools for free. Let's not regress to something worse.

Post reply on HN