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Secret iPad

thinkfractional.blog

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Re: Secret iPad

#51

Post by lifeisstillgood »

alasdair_ wrote: post #10
xxpor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no money to be made in the app store, for the most part. OTOH, there's plenty to be made in monthly service revenue (and 30% of it isn't taken by apple in most cases).

The money thing is more a power law thing. There is DEFINITELY money to be made in the app store (I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it) but it’s almost all going to the winners in a specific category.

>>> I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it

uh? Can you indicate what? How many other apps have similar penetration?

Re: Secret iPad

#52

Post by [deleted] »

_bxg1 wrote: post #5

Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…

[deleted]

Re: Secret iPad

#53

Post by edude03 »

cageface wrote: post #48
mortenjorck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, of course, completely unsustainable. Savage Interactive has only been able to sustain this particular price point because it's presumably closely correlated to new iPad purchases. It's the most high-profile iPad visual art app, perennially promoted on the App Store, and so you can model it more or less as a tiny percentage of quarterly iPad revenue. That is a market position, in its vertical, with space for…

Paid upgrades have worked well for other platforms but Apple stubbornly refuses to support this, instead trying to drive users into subscriptions they don't want. I think it's too late now. Apple has taught an entire generation of users that mobile software is not worth paying real money for and effectively killed the ecosystem of apps they need to promote the iPad as a general purpose computing device.

Well, not apple to be fair. Developers are free to set their prices to whatever; it just so happens some developers set their prices to $0.99 and set that as the expectation

Re: Secret iPad

#54

Post by sdrothrock »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #51
alasdair_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money thing is more a power law thing. There is DEFINITELY money to be made in the app store (I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it) but it’s almost all going to the winners in a specific category.

>>> I worked on an app that made a billion in revenue in seven months from a product with only twelve engineers directly working on it uh? Can you indicate what? How many other apps have similar penetration?

He's mentioned working on Pokemon Go before, so I'd guess that.

Re: Secret iPad

#55

Post by bobsil1 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #41
chronogram wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Procreate is the killer app of the Apple pencil and maybe even the iPad Pro. The pricing is indeed strange. There are people paying $999 for a tablet, $129 for the pencil, just to run a $10 app.

This is, of course, completely unsustainable. Savage Interactive has only been able to sustain this particular price point because it's presumably closely correlated to new iPad purchases. It's the most high-profile iPad visual art app, perennially promoted on the App Store, and so you can model it more or less as a tiny percentage of quarterly iPad revenue. That is a market position, in its vertical, with space for…

Unlike Wintel, Apple absorbs the lion’s share of profits in the iOS ecosystem, and seem to want apps to be free complements to their hardware.

Re: Secret iPad

#56

Post by _ph_ »

freehunter wrote: post #8
_bxg1 wrote: post #5

Even now, hearing about this app I think "Wow! That's so novel and cool! ( magical , even)". I've said it before, but I dearly miss the creativity people had in the first few years of iOS. We have much better devices now; we should have better apps! I should be so desensitized by how interesting the new apps are that a skeuomorphic guitar tuner sounds banal and obvious! Instead today's apps are boring. They've been r…

There really is no excuse for the lack of "real" software on the iPad (using "real" as in desktop quality). Only a small amount can be blamed on the system itself, appealing to a very niche audience (like XCode). Arbitrary Javascript code written on the iPad can run, as evidenced by Play.js. Arbitrary Python code written on the iPad can run as evidenced by Pythonista. Arbitrary Swift code can run as evidenced by Swif…

There is a multitude of reasons for this. Beyond some limitations which still limit the ipad, it is the chick and an egg problem. You won't have real software on the iPad until there are users (buyers) for it and you won't have users until the software exists. This is especially important for corporate usage - at my work place I haven't heard of any iPads being provided to the employees, which means, no one can use an iPad and buy/develop software for one.

There are and were limitations preventing desktop class software on the iPad, some have lifted but it also takes quite a long time to take up on that, see also above.

- Keyboard support. For a lot of tasks, you need a keyboard. It took a long time until Apple sold keyboards for the iPad, and it still was quirky. There is a row of keys missing and even when coupling bluetooth keyboards, the extra keys didn't work. What Apple didn't really get was: a lot of people need an Esc key for their work, many would like funktion keys. It is still a struggle to run as simple as an ssh session on the iPad. Also, so far I haven't found a truely good SSH client on the iPad.

- Mouse support - really has been added only with 13.4, we will see how this develops.

Restrictions by Apple:

- For a long time, there was no real file exchange between apps, no joint file spaces. This has been partially fixed, still feels cumbersome and very much depends on the apps to get right.

- There is a ton of stuff that could be done on the iPad, but is banned outright. Termux is great on Android, not allowed on the iPad. The iPad would be great for development, if not mostly disallowed.

- And yes, for a lot of things, the screen is just too small :).

- The app store. Great and bad at the same time. The issues are probably best seen on macOS, because on macOS the app store is not mandatory. A lost of applications only exists outside the app store. While I liked the convenience of the app store and the fact that I don't have to deal with license keys and was free to use the app I bought across all my devices, the perpetual updates for free are condemning most longterm development. Paid upgrades were the life blood of the software industry for decades. They mean a regular revenue stream from power users like subscriptions, but didn't force the casual user to constantly pay, only when that user wanted the features of the newer versions. Subscriptions currently seem to be the only way, how a actively developed application can survive in that universe, but limits the user base.

- In app purchases. In principle a good idea, it lead to a reality where apps are flooding the app store which constantly try to extort money from the user. That games are allowed to charge in total more than lets say 2x what an AAA title would cost, is scandaleous. A model where an app could offer a free trial and then is purchased normally would be much more supportive of quality app development.

Many of this can be worked around, but unfortunately that is rather the exception. There are still great apps around which are a joy to use, but the whole ecosystem is drowned by all the bad stuff.

Re: Secret iPad

#57

Post by keybits »

cageface wrote: post #48
mortenjorck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, of course, completely unsustainable. Savage Interactive has only been able to sustain this particular price point because it's presumably closely correlated to new iPad purchases. It's the most high-profile iPad visual art app, perennially promoted on the App Store, and so you can model it more or less as a tiny percentage of quarterly iPad revenue. That is a market position, in its vertical, with space for…

Paid upgrades have worked well for other platforms but Apple stubbornly refuses to support this, instead trying to drive users into subscriptions they don't want. I think it's too late now. Apple has taught an entire generation of users that mobile software is not worth paying real money for and effectively killed the ecosystem of apps they need to promote the iPad as a general purpose computing device.

Agenda notes app has elegantly solved this. Pay once and permanently unlock all current features. If a new release has a feature you want, you can purchase again.

It's more work for the developer but they did a great write up on how they built this capability: https://medium.com/@drewmccormack/a-cash-cow-is-on-the-agend...

Re: Secret iPad

#58

Post by Strom »

scarface74 wrote: post #39
rchaud wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamepads have been available for the iPad since at least 2013.

We have over three decades of evidence in the console market that a game can’t be successful if it requires a non bundled accessory.

Guitar Hero [1] and Rock Band [2] were hugely successful [3] and required bigger and more expensive accessories than a simple gamepad.

--

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band

[3] Guitar Hero III was the first game to reach $1 billion in sales https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/01/guitar-hero-iii-first...

Re: Secret iPad

#59

Post by g_p »

_ph_ wrote: post #56
freehunter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really is no excuse for the lack of "real" software on the iPad (using "real" as in desktop quality). Only a small amount can be blamed on the system itself, appealing to a very niche audience (like XCode). Arbitrary Javascript code written on the iPad can run, as evidenced by Play.js. Arbitrary Python code written on the iPad can run as evidenced by Pythonista. Arbitrary Swift code can run as evidenced by Swif…

There is a multitude of reasons for this. Beyond some limitations which still limit the ipad, it is the chick and an egg problem. You won't have real software on the iPad until there are users (buyers) for it and you won't have users until the software exists. This is especially important for corporate usage - at my work place I haven't heard of any iPads being provided to the employees, which means, no one can use a…

> Also, so far I haven't found a truely good SSH client on the iPad.

It might be worth checking out Prompt - supports some nice edge cases too, like SSH agent forwarding.

> - There is a ton of stuff that could be done on the iPad, but is banned outright. Termux is great on Android, not allowed on the iPad. The iPad would be great for development, if not mostly disallowed.

Check out iSH (free, available as a testflight, but also open source on GitHub) - https://github.com/tbodt/ish It's a full user mode x86 emulator, letting you run alpine Linux in a nice terminal, and install packages from it. I don't know to what extent iSH would address your desire for something like Termux.

Re: Secret iPad

#60

Post by dvdkon »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #38
chronogram wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Procreate is the killer app of the Apple pencil and maybe even the iPad Pro. The pricing is indeed strange. There are people paying $999 for a tablet, $129 for the pencil, just to run a $10 app.

When you put it like that, yeah, mobile app pricing is messed up. Compare that to desktop programs like Adobe Creative Cloud, which costs more than $500 a year. Or console games, where the console costs about $300 (Switch Lite) and a single game costs almost $100. (All priced CAD, rounded.)

It all depends on perspective. From my point of view, Adobe's pricing is definitely messed up and I know a few people who are still using pre-CC versions because they don't want to pay for a subscription, especially if they only use Photoshop occasionaly.

On a similar note, I pay on average 5USD per (PC) game by tracking sales and would only consider paying more than 10USD for new games that I want to play really badly (e.g. DOOM Eternal). Console game pricing always seemed way too high to me, I'd spend what I saved on not building a PC in just a few AAA titles.

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