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

Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 509 posts

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#181

Post by [deleted] »

serve_yay wrote: post #151
olefoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't necessarily want to solve that problem. Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0]; namely the software, games and media that make their hardware useful. Software in the app store is a viciously competitive low-margin market; just like most other commodity markets. Which is why you need to treat it skeptically and work on building a name outside the app store before you a…

Yeah yeah. But none of that has anything to do with typing an app's entire name in the search bar and getting a ton of garbage unrelated results. Discovery being broken is not really a "commoditize the complements" play, it's just bad UX.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#182

Post by walterbell »

serve_yay wrote: post #151
olefoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't necessarily want to solve that problem. Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0]; namely the software, games and media that make their hardware useful. Software in the app store is a viciously competitive low-margin market; just like most other commodity markets. Which is why you need to treat it skeptically and work on building a name outside the app store before you a…

Yeah yeah. But none of that has anything to do with typing an app's entire name in the search bar and getting a ton of garbage unrelated results. Discovery being broken is not really a "commoditize the complements" play, it's just bad UX.

Dark patterns ("bad UX") and broken discovery are a means to the end of "commoditizing the complements".

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#183

Post by lukeschlather »

api wrote: post #161
mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back: If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure. Windows 10 is looking good.…

I really hate using WinSCP for file transfer between Windows and the guest OS. If Windows shipped with a native sshfs-alike, I'd probably be ok, but I really prefer native Ubuntu development.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#184

Post by grimgrin »

pedalpete wrote: post #162
ryanSrich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until an OS comes along that rivals OSX, I'll stick with Apple. I'm one of the few people I know that really doesn't put a whole lot of thought into hardware. Yes I need my machine to run properly but as long as there's a baseline achievement of performance I'm good. Obviously I'd never be able to give up OSX for work purposes. Pretty much every piece of software I use is tied to OSX only.

What software are you using that is only on Mac? I'm surprised by this, as it seems most development software is available for all platforms these days.

This is from a dev standpoint but at my job we're using MySQL and I develop from Linux. When I want to browse or modify data with a GUI nothing quite matches OS X's Sequel Pro.

The best I've found is DBeaver (or SQuirrel). IntelliJ is working on a thing called 0xDBE, but it feels even worse.

I could easily rattle off a handful of other applications that just feel better, even if slightly, on OS X. DaisyDisk and Transmit come to mind right away.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#185

Post by eridius »

walterbell wrote: post #165
saidajigumi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0] I've heard this argument before, and if it's true, it's suicidal. Apple will have failed to learn a critical lesson from Microsoft's dominance of the early PC era: it's the apps that matter. Even once there was a significant potential market of would-be platform "switchers" who wanted something beyond what Windows was offering, these switche…

Once upon a time, Apple invested to own 19% of Adobe, which went onto become a powerful software anchor of Apple's hardware ecosystem. Perhaps a bit too powerful for Jobs' liking, hence the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS.

> the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS

What modern strategies?

I've seen this theory proposed multiple times, that Apple wants to commoditize software, but I've never seen anyone actually demonstrate ways in which Apple is doing that, just speculation that it would be in Apple's interests.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#186

Post by rodgerd »

eridius wrote: post #111
rodgerd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Relationships? What are you talking about? I can't recall the last time I ever felt I had a "relationship" with a game developer, on _any_ platform. iD/John Carmack, David Braben, Sid Meier, Rockstar, Volition, Gearbox Software... I could keep rattling off names and developers, but those are all examples of companies and individuals who have dedicated followings who follow them from game to game or platform to plat…

Yeah, you can follow companies, but "relationship" generally implies that it's reciprocal. A one-way "relationship" is called "stalking" ;) I don't really see why the App Store affects the ability for customers to choose to follow their favorite developers.

> Yeah, you can follow companies, but "relationship" generally implies that it's reciprocal.

iD and Bungie both have a long history of heavy interaction with their customers. That's rolled off for iD, but Bungie's back-and-forward seems as lively as ever.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#187

Post by _lce0 »

Mithaldu wrote: post #159
Steko wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we pretending PC isnt a platform?

As far as i know free-to-pay stuff never worked even remotely as well as on cellphones, because on average pc gamers are more experienced and recognize more easily when a skill-based difficulty curve morphs into a payment-based difficulty curve. So i didn't think it worth mentioning.

did you noted that you said, free-to-pay, on both comments? nice typo, got me a smile.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#188

Post by walterbell »

eridius wrote: post #185
walterbell wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, Apple invested to own 19% of Adobe, which went onto become a powerful software anchor of Apple's hardware ecosystem. Perhaps a bit too powerful for Jobs' liking, hence the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS.

> the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS What modern strategies? I've seen this theory proposed multiple times, that Apple wants to commoditize software, but I've never seen anyone actually demonstrate ways in which Apple is doing that, just speculation that it would be in Apple's interests.

It's more about what they don't do to help developers make money. A web search will find research papers on software ecosystems, which discuss best practices for mutually-reinforcing, virtuous circle, feedback loops between platforms and developers.

Stardock's 2014 report touches on related topics, http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/Stardock2014.p...

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#189

Post by Mithaldu »

Steko wrote: post #180
Mithaldu wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as i know free-to-pay stuff never worked even remotely as well as on cellphones, because on average pc gamers are more experienced and recognize more easily when a skill-based difficulty curve morphs into a payment-based difficulty curve. So i didn't think it worth mentioning.

League of Legends, TF2, Minecraft, Dota 2, Hearthstone, World of Tanks (etc) are all wildly successful F2P PC titles.

How is minecraft free2play or free2pay?

Also, afaik LOL, TF2 and Dota2 sell content as micro transactions, not consumable cheats. I don't know if the same is true for Hearthstone, and i know this is true for WoT, but its lunch is being eaten by War Thunder, which also only sells content.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#190

Post by drewcrawford »

eridius wrote: post #62
jblow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are massive differences. For example, in the Windows world you are allowed to find out who likes your stuff and build relationships with them.

Relationships? What are you talking about? I can't recall the last time I ever felt I had a "relationship" with a game developer, on _any_ platform. The only way I can meaningfully interpret your claim is by replacing "build relationships with them" to "and market directly to them", i.e. being able to email your customers with marketing messages. And I'm glad Apple doesn't give my email address to everyone I buy an a…

Compare and contrast the experience of buying an iPhone with the experience of buying an iPhone app.

When you buy an app, you are basically looking at sales sheets from people you don't know making claims you can't verify. The only way out is to go find reviews about the apps from blogs you can't trust.

Now think about buying an iPhone. I've owned an iPhone for 8 years. I know intimately the support experience. I know intimately the build quality. Software quality. Product lifecycle. When a new iPhone comes out I have basically all the information I need to make a purchasing decision, without ever laying eyes on the actual product. People who don't have that information can go to a retail store where they can try the product and talk with knowledgeable and friendly people about it, and many of them turn into me in 8 years.

I want to be able to create that kind of experience with my products. Because if smartphones were sold the way that apps are today I don't think many people would buy them.

Post reply on HN