I install far more programs/apps using Homebrew than AppStore or direct links for most things, wish more paid apps where that way.
We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
281–290 of 454 posts
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about the App Store, but I think the parent was talking about steam. Steam does not refund the 30%.
This must be very damaging to companies, especially with the PC gamer culture of abusing things like refund systems as some forms of protest.
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Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Symbian was in trouble in 2008 - two years before Elop became CEO of Nokia. It wasn't user-friendly. Ditto for Blackberry. iOS and Android wiped the floor with Symbian and BB in terms of ease-of-use. "..the inscrutable difficulty of navigating menus on Nokia's Symbian phones": https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/10/10/how-apples-iphone...
This is an infuriating topic to read about because everybody seems to be varying levels of uninformed. I worked at Nokia's R&D facility in Ruoholahti briefly in 2011, so I got inducted into the inner sanctum of history regarding the phones. Symbian was designed for very anemic hardware, there were very tight constraints it's a marvel that the thing ran on what it did. The iPhones first CPU was at least an order of ma…
"the iPhone, famously did not meet any of the internal tests at Nokia..."
So, Nokia saw it as an inferior product?
Perhaps this is a problem in engineer-led companies - thinking that the phone with the most megapixels in its camera, or most wifi bands is the best?
Technical brilliance counts for nothing if consumers don't want the product. See also Windows Phone, Betamax, etc
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about the App Store, but I think the parent was talking about steam. Steam does not refund the 30%.
This must be very damaging to companies, especially with the PC gamer culture of abusing things like refund systems as some forms of protest.
On the contary, gamers are relentlessly abused by shitty marketplaces who proactively defraud their users.
Steam's history = sued by consumer watchdogs in Australia for denying ~20,000 lawful refunds. This went on worldwide for 10+ years of blatent theft and shutting down user accounts for chargebacks, and they got away with it everywhere except Australia - maybe 5% of their users and victims. This is the only reason they offer refunds today, using dark patterns like "refunds are outside of the steam client" to keep the fraudy little flame alive.
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-australia-fine-12...
GOG's refund policy is you must install additional software on your computer so they can prove the game will open so they can deny a refund. This is an illegitimate reason to deny refunds to consumers in many countries. It's a fake refund policy that is "designed to not give refunds" which is exactly the fraud that got Valve in trouble but continuing for years later.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000487189-GOG-C...
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#285Earlier 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…
Why do you not see mobile the same as general purpose computer? What's the difference besides form factor?
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
30% is high but it’s not just payment processing, it’s payment fraud insulation, download bandwidth, and marketplace amplification (people finding your app without knowing they’re looking for your app). Apple also drops subscription costs from the second year on to 15% which is coming back to reality. I personally find the subscription model way more sustainable & less user hostile than the paid versioning upgrade mo…
>marketplace amplification this never happens, if you JUST upload your app to the store and think it will take off coz it has good features then good luck. In reality you have to upload and then pay some app advertisement agency to feed your app to the multiple tech blogs to inorganically promote it. App store is full of inorganically promoted trash nowadays
What would be "organic promotion" in your mind? You're right that you can't just throw something out there and expect it to get popular. Either you've gotta pimp it out to tech blogs and forums in the hopes that people notice it or you pay someone else to handle it.
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 befor…
I believe the cloud icon indicates something that is owned on your account but not downloaded.
At least on iOS the symbol is a cloud with an arrow pointing downward. Not on a Mac to check if the symbol is the same there.
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#288Actually; 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…
Even so I think the real estate could be used much more effectively. The focus on app icons really annoys me because many app icons tell me almost nothing; a single screen shot visible by default in summary views would go a long way. They also have a lot of lists that are almost guaranteed to change rarely, like “top grossing”, which just means every time you come back you see a bunch of stuff you already know about.
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#289They 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…
The last straw for me was that they rejected a minor app update because they claimed my app crashed on a not-yet-released OS update. I literally could not install the OS that had the issue, they would provide me with zero additional information (not even a log), and they would not allow my minor update to get into the store. I deleted it from the store that same afternoon.
Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding a second account; I'm afraid there's very little that can be done on that front, there was account linking added some time ago that meant you didn't need to maintain or continually log-in to uplay, you just create a linked account and forget about it- no second password needed I believe. So at least for usability it should not be any different than normal. If you have other specific complaints about uPlay t…
Well, I can assure you that seeing a game requires uPlay means I'm probably not going to buy it, and I'm not alone in that. Of course, I haven't even wanted to play an Ubisoft game since... I honestly can't remember, so I guess I'm not the target audience anyway. > Unless the problem is that you have to have a second launcher? That's a big part of it. I have enough crapware that insists on constantly running on my PC…
So, again, the largest complaint is that we have our own launcher.
Given what I mentioned from the parent (Valve arbitrarily pulling down all our games), how do you think I can convince the business to make ourselves more vulnerable to such behaviour?