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

Coming changes to Apple's App Store

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 294 posts

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#151

Post by AlexandrB »

djrogers wrote: post #121
AlexandrB wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's only partially true. While Apple promised that there will be an easy way to manage subscriptions, at least some users will just forget that they've subscribed to something and will continue to be charged regardless of whether they are even using the app. This is especially true if they have a mix of intended subscriptions and small unintended ones. This is part of the time-honored business model for pl…

I get an email every single time I am charged for a subscription, so unless you make it a habit to ignore invoice emails, you won't be likely to forget more than once.

How will this scale to dozens of app subscriptions? If I'm getting invoice emails for 10+ apps every month I doubt I'll be paying really close attention to each one.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#152

Post by acchow »

AlexandrB wrote: post #20

As someone who buys a lot of apps this is very disappointing. Things that would make me buy MORE apps (demos, upgrade pricing, better support) are still not in the app store, meanwhile the one pricing model I detest (subscriptions) is being added. I suspect I'll be buying far fewer apps if there's a mass movement from a purchase model to a subscription model among app developers. I'm perfectly happy to pay $20-30 for…

A subscription keeps the developer's incentives in line. If you buy a piece of software, what incentive is there for the developer to fix bugs and security holes in the older versions?

Anyway, why would a $30 purchased app become $30/year? Nobody prices like this. Photoshop used to cost $585. Now it's $10/month. I think a $30 app would probably become $1/month.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#153

Post by abalone »

AlexandrB wrote: post #145
abalone wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm perfectly happy to pay $20-30 for an app That's where you diverge from the population. Apple needs a solution for the general problem of people not wanting to pay much for iOS apps. It may disappoint those of us who prefer spending more up front for quality, but Apple has surely determined that more people will buy more apps this way. (By the way, you compared paying $X upfront to paying $X per year which of co…

> Apple needs a solution for the general problem of people not wanting to pay much for iOS apps. Yes! And thanks to missing app store features Apple has provided developers no way to set expectations for things like upgrade pricing. Not to mention in-app purchases which were another way to maintain the illusion of "free" apps among users. The fact that subscription pricing is now seen as the solution is really sad be…

That's a good point on gifting. I wonder how that will work, since that is actually already an app store feature.. Will there now be an option to gift a duration?

Also, it's not clear to me that apps will be disabled if you stop subscribing as opposed to just no longer upgraded. So your 5 year old iPod might still work.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#154

Post by sangnoir »

chasing wrote: post #103
bad_user wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't many apps that can save you 1000/year. I keep hearing this, but that's nonsense. If a "service" is not producing money and isn't saving you time allowing you to produce money, then it's not worth paying for. Yes, I have subscriptions for IntelliJ IDEA, for Dropbox, for FastMail and for a DigitalOcean VPS. All these are producing money for me. But the list ends here. Because here's the thing: $5/month her…

I want to address two things, here: 1) You're absolutely right: Pricing matters. If I charge you $10/mo for my app that sends you a text message every time there's a full moon, that would be way too expensive and you'd be well within your rights as a consumer to spend your money on something else. As far as I'm aware, Apple will not force you to subscribe to any apps. 2) "... subscriptions are immoral..." Bullshit. A…

> What is moral is creating a system by which software developers can support themselves by creating products that are useful to the community

Speaking as a developer - what kind of entitled, self-important thinking is this? No one owes developers a decent lifestyle or a liveable income. I can't wait till some idiot sells a subscription to a calculator or flashlight app - I say to them GTFO! The app 'industry' is not the first one to deal with product saturation, but somehow we do not have Dishwasher subscriptions (thank goodness).

> "... subscriptions are immoral..." Bullshit. And you don't "own" software you buy and pay for once. Operating systems change. Companies and developers come and go. If you value a piece of software, then you value the developer and should desire that they maintain and improve the app.

Sadly, all apps 1) non-consumable & non-perishable and 2) most apps are utilitarian and can't really be improved - if they could be, subscriptions wouldn't be necessary as developers would depend on people buying the improved versions as in every other. If Nike sold you an indestructible trainer (including non-wearing sole) that you could buy tomorrow, would you rather buy it outright or pay subscriptions in perpertuity?

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#155

Post by sotojuan »

rimantas wrote: post #130
sotojuan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple supported the latest standards in mobile Safari, you could write web apps that work offline and have push notifications like on Android. That's not in Apple's interest though.

Latest standards are getting rid of that "work offline". Not to mention that it never really worked.

? I'm talking about ServiceWorker.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#156

Post by adamselby »

abalone wrote: post #150

I wonder if Apple is taking more than a 50% haircut on this post year one. Credit card fees come out of their share and those could very well account for the bulk of the 15%. Even if Apple pays nothing in payment processor markup, there is a fixed minimum "interchange" cost that everyone has to pay (even Walmart). For "ecommerce" it's:[1] Credit: $0.10 + 1.8-2.4% Debit: $0.21 + 0.05% Those 10-21 cent minimums make a…

Doesn't Apple bundle multiple purchases? Assuming someone has more than $0.99 in purchases via any of Apple's stores they can save on card fees.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#157

Post by sotojuan »

overcast wrote: post #132
sotojuan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple supported the latest standards in mobile Safari, you could write web apps that work offline and have push notifications like on Android. That's not in Apple's interest though.

Serious question, why do we need apps that work offline? Finding it hard to imagine what you can do on a computer theses days without an internet connection, besides maybe an old single player game devoid of any patches.

It's not so much that you can use it offline (though that's one benefit) but rather that it caches your assets so if there's very, very slow connection you can still use and read content. If it's something that requires the Internet to work, it can show a "no connection available" message but it still load, similar to a native app.

The goal is to avoid the "white screen of death" you get when a web app won't load.

Here's the canonical example: http://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-...

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#158

Post by sangnoir »

slededit wrote: post #110
_delirium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems change, and companies/developers come and go, but not all software really needs ongoing maintenance, and some of it really can work indefinitely. I still have DOS games I legally purchased in the 1990s that run fine today. Why shouldn't that be true of mobile games? If the company stops updating the game, fine, but I should still be able to play it in 5 years if I bought it. Or at least, legally be…

Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot. A lot of them stopped working with win95/98, and the rest are gone with 64-bit windows. DOS Box can help but there was a period of time when computers were too slow to emulate a DOS machine quickly enough.

> Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot

The other option is bit-rot and some form of DRM (the only way to enforce subscription) which would make playing the games an impossibility, even with emulators. It's clear to me the non-subscription/non-DRM option is the better one: even with subscriptions, no publisher will last forever.

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#159

Post by khedoros »

slededit wrote: post #110
_delirium wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems change, and companies/developers come and go, but not all software really needs ongoing maintenance, and some of it really can work indefinitely. I still have DOS games I legally purchased in the 1990s that run fine today. Why shouldn't that be true of mobile games? If the company stops updating the game, fine, but I should still be able to play it in 5 years if I bought it. Or at least, legally be…

Funny you mention DOS games, which are one of my earliest examples of bit-rot. A lot of them stopped working with win95/98, and the rest are gone with 64-bit windows. DOS Box can help but there was a period of time when computers were too slow to emulate a DOS machine quickly enough.

Most of my DOS software ran fine on a Windows XP laptop in 2003 (sometimes with the addition of VDMSound to handle FM synthesis emulation). That same laptop will run most of the remainder quickly enough in Dosbox.

I've also got a desktop with tech mostly circa 2000. It's got DOS and Windows 98 on it. Among my collection, I haven't found anything that I can't get to run.

The hole that I see is during the time shortly after Dosbox's release when its compatibility with software would've been low and before they optimized for speed. It'd be closed up somewhat if we could send the current Dosbox source code back to 2002 ;-)

Re: Coming changes to Apple's App Store

#160

Post by AlexandrB »

overcast wrote: post #132
sotojuan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple supported the latest standards in mobile Safari, you could write web apps that work offline and have push notifications like on Android. That's not in Apple's interest though.

Serious question, why do we need apps that work offline? Finding it hard to imagine what you can do on a computer theses days without an internet connection, besides maybe an old single player game devoid of any patches.

Travel. I can still look at my ToDos, email, note, saved stories (Instapaper) on a plane thanks to offline apps. I can use it as a clock/alarm/calendar while in another country. My phone can even be used as a GPS when offline thanks to apps like GPS Nav that allow navigation using saved map data.

Always-online is a luxury of spending all your time in certain parts of the world. Baking that assumption into all apps diminishes their utility greatly.

Post reply on HN