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We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

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

#221

Post by snazz »

nogridbag wrote: post #188
cytzol wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I used the OSX App Store for the first time in years a few days ago. For the life of me I could not figure out how to download a simple free app. I had to ask my SO, who usually comes to me for tech questions, how to use it. Keep in mind I've been using computers for decades and have an above average understanding of UI design. 1. Upon clicking the App Store icon and entering my apple ID and password I get a 500 erro…

How it should work is that you search for an app, press GET, and it appears on your machine. I’m not sure what issue #1 and #2 are caused by (they’re certainly not common on a factory install with a normal iCloud account). I’m also not sure why the cloud icon appeared instead of downloading it straight to your machine. That’s also definitely a bug.

For #3, here’s how I’d explain it to someone who hasn’t used it before (you may know this already): your Apple ID is tied to the “purchases” you make across the App Store, iTunes Store, Books, etc., so that you can access what you’ve bought on a different machine. If you buy a paid app, it gets added to your Purchases list so that you can download it on another Mac without buying it again. This ties into Family Sharing so that up to five other people living in your household can use it too. Free apps also get added to the purchases for syncing purposes across all your devices. The cloud icon indicates that you’ve purchased an app and are eligible to download it for free.

TL;DR: you got a strange series of bugs that probably haven’t been seen by anyone else all together

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

#222

Post by dijit »

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…

Hi,

> Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate

I get the general impression that you're either in a much better bargaining position than I am, or you're not in the industry.

I still make AAA games, the latest of which came out this year[0] I can tell you concretely that we pay 30% of every purchase to the first party.

(except on PC, because we sell on uPlay and the Epic store, which has lower fees -- one of steams conditions is that you cant offer the game cheaper elsewhere, so we could never apply discounts on uplay)

> we know for a fact Valve offers a lower cut to big studios now

Valve has been openly hostile to my publisher for many years, perhaps this is the problem? Frequently unlisting our games.[1] We as a publisher do not officially respond to these things because they have better customer relations and a higher sentiment than we do, we would lose a PR battle, so we accept it and move on. This happens in negotiations too.

> I would be shocked if the Playstation or XBox business wings were unwilling to negotiate a cut down in order to land a big, million-selling title

They have almost all the power in those negotiations. The only bargaining power we have is if we have a very strongly rated title that we threaten to make exclusive. But in those cases we would lose more from _not_ selling on the platform than we would make back in the first-party cut. So it's lose-lose.

30% applies to in-game consumables too, anything processed by them as a payment provider.

What games company do you work for? :)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division_2

[1]: https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-165567...

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

#223

Post by mcphage »

jen729w wrote: post #42
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’ve also stopped “check[ing] weekly for new things”, but that’s because I don’t need any new things! Do you? I don’t have Instagram but I imagine it’s a bit like the App Store. I’m waiting somewhere. I’m bored. I know, I’ll check for a shiny thing. Oh, no shiny thing. That was disappointing. To compare, do you go to the internet regularly and check for new things? I don’t think this is the App Store’s fault. It’s no…

> To compare, do you go to the internet regularly and check for new things?

Isn't that what this site is?

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

#224

Post by Razengan »

Illniyar wrote: post #60

They kind of bury the lead here. They can't have their app on the appstore because: " While we still updated our applications in time, Apple did not review them for the AppStore, and instead rejected them first for a crash (sigh!), and later for requiring UI changes, including showing a Save As panel for each generated file. Now this may not sound like much, this is a serious issue for a document scan application whi…

> instead rejected them first for a crash (sigh!)

As a user, I'm glad Apple did that.

As a developer, the one thing that I do dislike about Apple, is the dismal state of their documentation on how to actually take advantage of all their platforms' features. I have to begrudgingly admit that their nemesis Microsoft has always been way ahead in that department.

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

#226

Post by prepend »

Marazan wrote: post #166
ahbyb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I could make a phone call and browse the interest on my gen1 iPhone. I used ATT as my network. Verizon had the limitation you described, but not all carriers.

Copy and paste didn’t work, but it didn’t work on any phone at the time. A few attempted it (eg, win mobile, blackberry) but it really sucked.

The camera was quite good and the ability to finally save and share photos and video was revolutionary at the time. I always thought it was funny how much it sucked at the time to try to store and send photos from my BlackJack or Blackberry.

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

#227

Post by Illniyar »

Razengan wrote: post #224
Illniyar wrote: post #60

They kind of bury the lead here. They can't have their app on the appstore because: " While we still updated our applications in time, Apple did not review them for the AppStore, and instead rejected them first for a crash (sigh!), and later for requiring UI changes, including showing a Save As panel for each generated file. Now this may not sound like much, this is a serious issue for a document scan application whi…

> instead rejected them first for a crash (sigh!) As a user, I'm glad Apple did that. As a developer, the one thing that I do dislike about Apple, is the dismal state of their documentation on how to actually take advantage of all their platforms' features. I have to begrudgingly admit that their nemesis Microsoft has always been way ahead in that department.

I think their point was that the crash was because of the fact that: 1. Catalina had a lot of breaking changes, bugs and crashes that caused the apps to crash - which required special attention just for Catalina 2. They were given only 4 days to fix the mess that Catalina resulted in.

At least in this case.

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

#228

Post by prepend »

vezycash wrote: post #162
ahbyb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not true at all. The iPhone had “amazing” features for the time- a real browser, visual voicemail, photo management, music integration, three way calling, contact integration. Almost all were incremental but really made the functions more useful.

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

#229

Post by Razengan »

taurath wrote: post #26
epse wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for updates has been the standard software model for ages, and with good reason. It still takes money to update and add new features. It still takes time. To some extent new users can pay for this, but then developers have to severely limit the time spent on updates in order to nod spend too much, or they risk not even making a profit on the first version. That is why most "big" software packages these days ar…

And Apple taking 30% of that... for what? Payment processing is a 4% thing. It’s in the app developers interest to make it not have errors. It’s just for access to the market. That is the only value Apple truly brings, outside of the brand and a privacy commitment

> And Apple taking 30% of that... for what? Payment processing

uhhh.. hosting and bandwidth for potentially millions of downloads and updates and your videos and screenshots?

Covering user refunds?

A reviews and feedback system?

Crash logs?

Showing you in user searches?

The Editor's Choice and Featured Apps lottery?

Invitations to develop for yet-to-be announced platforms?

Giving your users peace of mind that your app is sandboxed and cannot indulge in hanky panky?

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

#230

Post by irrational »

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…

The App Store used to have a Free App of the Day (or was it of the week?) that got me to go and check it out. I've often look around at other apps at the same time. Ever since they dropped that and revamped the store I only visit on the very rare occasions when I read about a particular app somewhere else and go search for it. I'd guess I visit the app store maybe twice a year now.
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