We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems • Hacker News Board

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#161

Post by amelius » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

I always thought of the App store as a lottery. Better to make a few millionaires than to make everyone happy. The point is that this pattern plays out well for Apple because it shapes the image that you can become a millionaire too by developing for the App store.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#162

Post by vezycash » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:02 AM UTC

ahbyb wrote: post #131

pjmlp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From whose point of view?

I had an N70. It was slow, slow, slow. I had a 5800. It was as slow as the N70 and the resistive screen made me want to cry. I never had the original iPhone but I guess it wasn't as bad.

hardware from that era would be slow. If you used an iphone 3 right now it'll be slow guaranteed. Also the first iphones were shiny toys, underpowered and featureless compared to Nseries and Win mobile. If they were that good, Microsoft would have responded immediately.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#163

Post by Marazan » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:03 AM UTC

t0ddbonzalez wrote: post #146

pjmlp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, maybe for US citzens. We were already using Symbian, Psion and PocketPC based phones. The first phone with hardware support for OpenGL ES was the Nokia N95 released in September 2006, one year before iPhone, with Asphalt as their show game.

Sure, you could go back to 1996 and say the Nokia Communicator was the first smartphone. I think what he meant by "Apple created THE smartphone" is that Apple created the first mass-market smartphone which was desired by regular consumers (rather than niche buyers).

The N95 sold more units than the original iPhone.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#164

Post by realusername » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

close04 wrote: post #156

realusername wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason developers pay the 30% is probably because there's no other channel that offers access to such a huge market for free, and mostly because they still profit. Because there's no choice you mean? When the developers have choice, on the Mac or on Windows, they generally avoid the store. The AppStore still works on mobile because they force it.

> on the Mac or on Windows Let's look at something closer to this situation rather than general purpose computers. Mobiles work with different paradigms all around, especially when compared to Windows (or Linux). There are free alternatives to Google's Play Store and yet developers still choose to pay Google's cut to have access to it. This tells me whatever benefits the "official" app store provides on each platform…

> There are free alternatives to Google's Play Store and yet developers still choose to pay Google's cut to have access to it. This tells me whatever benefits the "official" app store provides on each platform outweigh the disadvantages (costs) even when free alternatives are available.

That's only because it's pretty hard for the casual user to install third-party apps on Android and even with those artificial barriers, some popular apps are available outside of it, I could mention Fortnite.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#165

Post by amelius » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #139

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

I'm not too familiar with the App Store, but a big issue with all of these stores is that they have limited screen estate for promoting apps from their catalog. So you get a ridiculously tiny subset of apps that is featured on the storefront itself and thus gets the attention and sales. If you have a product for sale through such a store front, the best way is to not play the game of getting to the front pages or at…

I don't think screen space is the problem because a store can easily randomize the offerings, so each visitor sees different apps.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#166

Post by Marazan » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:07 AM UTC

ahbyb wrote: post #131

pjmlp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From whose point of view?

I had an N70. It was slow, slow, slow. I had a 5800. It was as slow as the N70 and the resistive screen made me want to cry. I never had the original iPhone but I guess it wasn't as bad.

You couldn't make a call and browse the Internet at the same time on an iPhone.

You couldn't copy and paste text on an iPhone.

The camera was worse than any contemporary mid range camera phone.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#167

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #123

dijit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get hung up on apple having a 30% entrance fee, but that didn't come out of nowhere. I work in the video games industry and access to steam or other first parties (Sony/Microsoft) is 30%, no negotiations. You could argue that first parties such as sony/microsoft have subtle costs involved such as printing of disks, but that's paid for before market by the publisher. The thing you pay for is: content distributi…

Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate. It might have been that way the last time you were involved in negotiations (if ever) but it's questionable whether that's still true - we know for a fact Valve offers a lower cut to big studios now. There's basically no guarantee that it's not possible to negotiate anymore, and I would be shocked if the Playsta…

I won’t lose sleep over f2p apps that profit by getting whales to spend money on in app consumables. I hope Apple Arcade cuts even more into those types of apps.

As far as subscriptions, the answer is simple - don’t allow subscriptions through the App Store. Netflix, Spotify, Linux Academy, AT&T Now, Sling, etc force you to pay for subscriptions outside of the App Store. You can subscribe to Hulu in the App Store but not Hulu Live.

As far as the 30%, all of the rumors are that none of the big players like Netflix (before they stopped allowing in app subscriptions), Hulu, or HBO ever paid more than 15%.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#168

Post by cytzol » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #7

Actually; now that I think about it, from a user perspective I also really dislike the App Store. I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things, maybe there was some new shiny (often beautiful) program to do something really well. The experience was on the 'better than passable' side, nobodies favourite interface maybe, but certainly not terrible. But I actually avoid the App Store these days, both on MacO…

> I also really dislike the App Store. [...] I used to _love_ it, I would check weekly for new things

I used to do this too, and like you, I've now grown to really dislike it. My reason is different, though: the App Store app has _plummeted_ in quality. It's now so hard to use, I don't bother using it.

1. The UI is all over the place. Some UI controls cause pages to swipe up from the bottom. Some cause pages to swipe in from the right. Some cause modals. Whenever I click something, I have no idea what it's going to do. Here are some examples: https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P

2. It's full of bugs. I have witnessed the App Store lose track of whether an app is bought or not, downloaded or not, or installing or not. Another example: https://grumpy.website/post/0SU9WNFXB

3. It makes the rest of my system worse. Every week or so, I get a message like "Fantastical cannot be updated because it is open". I didn't set it to update. I had no idea it was even updating. I just get an obnoxious dialog interrupting my work.

The App Store used to be like a shopping mall — I'd browse the shelves, see what was new, and maybe buy a small app I liked the look of once in a while. But now it's become so hard to browse, I don't bother paying. Everyone loses out.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#169

Post by Crinus » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

heyoni wrote: post #155

pjmlp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Europeans and Asians using Symbian, J2ME and Docomo handsets weren't regular consumers?

Why are you pretending you don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Those aren’t phones most people have heard of, and when they did exist, living without them was easy.

Growing up everyone had a Nokia phone. The Nokia 6600 specifically (which had a multitasking, internet enabled OS with IMO the best J2ME implementation and also allowed you to install arbitrary native programs either from a PC or download them from the Internet) was a very popular device.

To anyone who used this phone, smartphones were already a thing long before iPhone was introduced. Of course iPhone changed things a lot, though IMO many were for the worse (for example i really liked using the tiny joystick on my 6600 for playing games).

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#170

Post by braythwayt » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

jdnenej wrote: post #80

lilyball wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple meanwhile created the entire OS and all of the developer APIs that your apps rely on, including things like Metal that games rely on. And Apple gives this all away for free.

That should be included in device cost. It is unacceptable that they prevent users who paid for the device from installing programs outside of apples walled garden

If we find Apple extracting rent from apps unacceptable, we look no further than a mirror for the cause. We the public don’t want to pay full freight for hardware.

Microsoft used to boast that they made more money from Apple systems than Apple did. Google does that to Android device makers today.

If platform makers don’t extract rent, or compete with the developers they court, they will look for other sources of revenue to stay profitable. I would be aghast if Apple hardware came loaded with the kind of Junkware I recall from the years I bought Windows hardware.