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Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

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Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#461

Post by regularfry »

pjc50 wrote: post #361
regularfry wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely is Microsoft's... well, not fault, exactly, but the way the ecosystem has evolved has been driven largely by choices they've made. If the ecosystem allows for buggy hardware driver releases to screw things up for customers, it's because MS made the choice, possibly by default, not to run an Apple-like ecosystem. The reason I don't blame MS entirely for this is because it's clearly a trade-off. In return…

Microsoft were not initially in control of the ecosystem; it was IBM's PC cloned by Compaq and then a horde of others. At one point there were competing desktop environments - Desqview, OS/2. They then faced the upgrade problem: at any point, restrictive control over drivers would mean that hardware that ran Windows N-1 would not run Windows N. There is also the antitrust argument: control over the OEMs restricts the…

> Microsoft were not initially in control of the ecosystem; it was IBM's PC cloned by Compaq and then a horde of others. At one point there were competing desktop environments - Desqview, OS/2.

...

> There is also the antitrust argument: control over the OEMs restricts the possibilities for competing software.

Which of these arguments would you like to keep? You can't have both; or at least, they don't refer to overlapping time periods. And I'd take issue with either: in the first case, MS always had the option early on of carving a controlled niche rather than trying for wide appeal. That's exactly what early Apple did, and I'd argue that MS could have done precisely the same on PC hardware, if they'd chosen to. As regards the anti-trust argument, why don't we see that being levelled at Apple? An MS which chose to drive a more closed ecosystem probably wouldn't have been so utterly dominant as to run the risk of antitrust accusations, and again, that was their choice.

> They then faced the upgrade problem: at any point, restrictive control over drivers would mean that hardware that ran Windows N-1 would not run Windows N.

Again, that was their choice.

> And there's a limit to what they can do. My latest driver/hardware bug was discovering that my Crucial MX100 has some horrible interaction with write caching and link power management such that it can vanish from underneath the operating system.

I'd argue that this sort of problem affects either sort of ecosystem.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#462

Post by kbenson »

eridius wrote: post #214
kbenson wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was fairly self evident that I used flashlight apps as a stand in for any specific segment you want to isolate in the app store. That said, here's something to think about: I myself have paid real money for a flashlight application for my smartphone. Why? Because I wanted a flashlight app that didn't take three screens and button presses to get to light, and I also was a little leery of what the ad suppo…

I can readily acknowledge that some people made some amount of money on flashlight apps. I expect that research would indicate that it was in fact "very few people" and "very little money" (relatively speaking, at least; I'm sure it's so cheap to develop a flashlight app that practically any money would offset the cost). As for your original point, I'll grant that you have a point, but I don't necessarily agree with…

I think you're right about the revenue curve, I think our whole discussion has been about whether the slope has changed over time. I've heard a lot here from developers that mention that it's harder now than it was, but that's obviously not a rigorous way to go about figuring the truth of the matter.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#463

Post by ubernostrum »

vkjv wrote: post #432
nske wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be easier if you have to use it infrequently, however accents with deadkeys are much faster if you type. Can't imagine typing even a paragraph while having to pause, even for a second, on every accented character (mind you, in some languages such as greek, almost every word has an accented vowel, sometimes two).

I'm barely monolingual let alone bilingual, so I'm honestly curious: how does spell check do here? Are you able to type most words without the accents and let an auto-correct tool auto-magically correct things?

Somewhat on topic: a while back I turned on international keyboard support on my iPhone. When I need to write something in French on the phone, I tap the globe icon on the keyboard, it swaps to AZERTY, and the autocorrect features start picking up French and correcting accents into the text for me. Is useful :)

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#464

Post by snuxoll »

emodendroket wrote: post #448
Zarel wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like living in a web browser and a platform neutral IDE (I use IntelliJ for Clojure, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby) make OS platform less impactful on using a computer. Really? I'd think this would make the remaining things matter more. Things like: - International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, e (or the now even easier: hold down e and choose é from the menu). In Windows, é is alt+0233 or s…

On the other hand, OS X comes with a terrible Japanese IME. The Google one that's available on OS X and Windows makes things better but until that came out Windows was just unquestionably way better for Japanese text input.

Really? I thought kotoeri was pretty decent, although I will forever remain an ibus fan when it comes to IME's.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#465

Post by task_queue »

lloeki wrote: post #374
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…

> That is changing Recently I challenged myself to learn more about USB, HID devices and kernel development, so I partially reverse engineered and wrote a driver for the Xbox One controller. This is great and all, but it needs to be signed for people to use it without lowering a level of defense. Turns out you don't just need to be an Apple Developer, you also need to make a special request and regenerate your certif…

I believe this is similar to Microsoft's driver model, where at the end of the day, they decide what's signed or not and thus what can hook into the kernel.

Stallman was prescient.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#466

Post by waynecochran »

jawngee wrote: post #404
waynecochran wrote: post #163

I teach both iOS/UIKit and OS X/AppKit in some of my courses and I have to rewrite my solutions every year. So much is deprecated and so much changes. If you write mildly sophisticated apps for iOS, just prepare to rewrite them every year. Just look at the evolution of memory management from retain/release, to gc, to ARC, throw in properties, etc... Not to mention the API's that are constantly deprecated. Even my mod…

What would you recommend they do then? Not evolve the platform? Retain deprecated methods? I don't get it.

Good retort. They certainly should push it forward. The continual overhaul is tiresome though... Now they have an entire new language! Not only will I rewrite all my solutions next year, I'll have to rewrite my notes from scratch and learn yet another language.

If all I did was develop iOS/OS X apps I would enjoy the continual improvements, but its tough to keep up with when you also have to keep up with a variety of other technologies (like OpenGL! -- which I have used since Iris GL).

The fact remains, rewrite your iOS apps every year.

Of course this pales compared to the crazy ADHD pace of JS frameworks -- that is truly beyond reason.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#467

Post by eddieroger »

lloeki wrote: post #374
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…

> That is changing Recently I challenged myself to learn more about USB, HID devices and kernel development, so I partially reverse engineered and wrote a driver for the Xbox One controller. This is great and all, but it needs to be signed for people to use it without lowering a level of defense. Turns out you don't just need to be an Apple Developer, you also need to make a special request and regenerate your certif…

> does Apple really care about its developers?

Yes, of course, or you wouldn't have the ability to do it at all. But Apple cares more about it's users and the experiences they users have, and things like GateKeeper help them sell users on a safer, walled experience. As an Apple developer (in that I've paid for a license, not Apple-employed) with parents and a grandparent who have a Mac, I much prefer simply telling them to only install stuff from the App Store and not worrying about downloading and running anything from the general Internet.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#468

Post by Lawtonfogle »

mpeg wrote: post #423
aresant wrote: post #31

It is fascinating how much the "micro-transaction" model on the iOS platform continues to bury everything else. Spiderweb throwing in the towel I would guess has a lot more to do with their #1 point "Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level." than the others. The top two grossing games - Clash of Clans and Game of War - receive metacritic scores of 74 and 67 respectively. Whereas the most recent Spi…

Spiderweb can't compete with the likes of Supercell because their games are niche. It's an old-school 2D party-based rpg, it looks dated and they recycle the engine year after year to release more games, as their loyal fanbase is more interested in the new storylines and quests than they are in gameplay updates. I love spiderweb games, but you could spend millions marketing them and they would still be niche, I don't…

Not only are they niche, they are also pretty distinctively not skinner boxes with a nice display. Games at the top often are.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#469

Post by mreiland »

Steko wrote: post #203
seanalltogether wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now to complete the conversational loop and point out the problems of categorizing demos via IAP, I point you right back to my original comment.

How can you possibly reconcile the idea that demos would somehow beat out micro transactions if only they had their own category despite the fact that they fail living side by side with microtransactions?

beat out?

Discoverability is what the person is talking about, and it would indeed improve discoverability.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#470

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Steko wrote: post #197
Mithaldu wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd love to hear the substantial difference between Clash of Clans selling you gems that make your building finish faster and LOL selling you XP boosts?

I have fun with low XP (the game I'm playing is still there to play). I don't have fun watching buildings build themselves.
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