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The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

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Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#31

Post by nottorp »

corindallax wrote: post #21
foobarian wrote: post #6

I kinda still don't see the problem. If you don't like it make your own phone.

Many things about Apple phones annoy me: * App store restrictions. * I want a phone I can use one-handed. 4 inches is the largest screen I could tolerate. * No removable battery? Why is it that no manufacturer will come along and make something better? Every year I look at other options. There are none that meet even one of my requirements. I get that normal people want the app store Apple made. One where draconian r…

Because Apple is too big to bother catering to a 2-3% segment of their customers. Doesn't matter that 3% is still a couple million devices, it's too little for Cook.

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#32

Post by realusername »

TekMol wrote: post #2

I don't understand the situation. If you publish a popular app via an alternative app store and don't pay Apple, Apple can still block/remove your app? Then what is the point of alternative app stores? I thought it's about who controls which apps get blocked and which get onto the phone?

You are right, right now there's no point to it and I doubt that'll be good enough for the EU.

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#33

Post by theyinwhy »

karaterobot wrote: post #14

> 1_000_000$ The way most publications would write that value would be $1,000,000, or just $1MM if you're nasty. Either are acceptable because they are clear and follow widely-used conventions. As to the substance, I think the pricing changes hurts small developers who strike gold, which is bad, but I don't really care how it affects Facebook, or TikTok, or Amazon, or whomever else would hit 1MM downloads. That's a p…

Or perhaps, you know, perhaps they happen to be a French citizen. "In France, the full stop was already in use in printing to make Roman numerals more readable, so the comma was chosen." [1] By using an underscore, they avoid using the English style separator.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#:~:text=In....

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#34

Post by a_wild_dandan »

graemep wrote: post #5
TekMol wrote: post #2

I don't understand the situation. If you publish a popular app via an alternative app store and don't pay Apple, Apple can still block/remove your app? Then what is the point of alternative app stores? I thought it's about who controls which apps get blocked and which get onto the phone?

The point is malicious compliance with EU regulations. They cannot overtly say they are not going to do what they were told to.

How could the EU strongly respond to Apple's malicious compliance here? (Assuming regulators see blatant violation in Apple's new policy.)

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#35

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

AlexandrB wrote: post #26
foobarian wrote: post #6

I kinda still don't see the problem. If you don't like it make your own phone.

Can't wait for Microsoft to start saying this about PCs/Windows. Gonna be a "great" future. We'll look back at the "open" PC era like some kind of fabled golden age. Edit: Actually the more relevant point is that it already is my phone. I paid Apple for it. Why can't I install anything I want on it?

>> the more relevant point is that it already is my phone. I paid Apple for it. Why can't I install anything I want on it?

Because Apple controls your phone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM&t=57s

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#36

Post by ben_w »

kj99 wrote: post #13
ben_w wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "if you don't want to pay taxes, renounce your citizenship and live on a yacht in the ocean". You can, at huge cost, but a lot of stuff you're relying on just doesn't work any more because the people who made them have no interest in servicing you, e.g. your bank accounts. A better option is "use Android", which already does support multiple stores.

The retort makes more sense if you think of it as being addressed to someone like Epic, who frankly could take Android and build it into something more competitive, which would benefit us more than just deciding Apple has won.

Valve perhaps, but I don't think Epic could manage it. Microsoft, despite (or because of) the head-start with windows, managed to fail with their own phone OS, but they do have the XBox+store for games.

Amazon would be my next bet, followed by Samsung… but then, why would either bother starting from scratch when they already have an app store and a phone/tablet platform? Sticking with Android makes it easy to get more apps because developers don't need to learn yet another platform.

Does Epic have their own hardware? Has Epic even managed to make a successful app store of their own on Android, where they wouldn't need their own hardware?

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#37

Post by nmcfarl »

joshstrange wrote: post #17
jeffgreco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also of note, updates count as downloads.

They count as downloads but the count is download/per-user/per-year. Still not going to be cheap but yeah. If you have 2M users and you ship 1 update or 1,000,000 new updates in a year you just pay $0.50/user (for 1M of them, since the first 1M is "free").

However on the flip side a user can be someone who downloads your app, pokes at for 10 minutes and deletes it. Not something I would call a user, but for apples purposes it works.

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#38

Post by Tagbert »

TekMol wrote: post #2

I don't understand the situation. If you publish a popular app via an alternative app store and don't pay Apple, Apple can still block/remove your app? Then what is the point of alternative app stores? I thought it's about who controls which apps get blocked and which get onto the phone?

The removing of the app is not the problem. Apple requires signed apps before they can be installed. They retain the right to remove apps specifically for security violations.

This does not give them the right to block apps based on content or similar factors. You could publish a porn app that Apple would normally disallow. In this program Apple would not try to prevent that from being installed. If it started stealing user credentials, then their security provisions would come into play and the app would be removed.

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#39

Post by ben_w »

corindallax wrote: post #21
foobarian wrote: post #6

I kinda still don't see the problem. If you don't like it make your own phone.

Many things about Apple phones annoy me: * App store restrictions. * I want a phone I can use one-handed. 4 inches is the largest screen I could tolerate. * No removable battery? Why is it that no manufacturer will come along and make something better? Every year I look at other options. There are none that meet even one of my requirements. I get that normal people want the app store Apple made. One where draconian r…

> I want a phone I can use one-handed. 4 inches is the largest screen I could tolerate.

I also prefer smaller phones, but over the last five years I've found it increasingly difficult to find software whose UI are designed with even 4.7 inches in mind, let alone 4.0 — and in at least one occasion that has included the UI design I was given to implement by the design team of the place I was working.

Re: The disastrous communication from Apple to apps developers

#40

Post by newaccount74 »

karaterobot wrote: post #14

> 1_000_000$ The way most publications would write that value would be $1,000,000, or just $1MM if you're nasty. Either are acceptable because they are clear and follow widely-used conventions. As to the substance, I think the pricing changes hurts small developers who strike gold, which is bad, but I don't really care how it affects Facebook, or TikTok, or Amazon, or whomever else would hit 1MM downloads. That's a p…

This is about the EU, and in the EU it would be written 1.000.000. Since that could be confusing for US readers, they used 1_000_000, which happens to be a convention that Swift supports, so many Apple developers would be familiar with it.
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