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It sure feels like Apple is getting desperate. Not sure what's going on. I know this is a single data point but just a few days we went to our local Apple store

It sure feels like Apple is getting desperate. Not sure what's going on. I know this is a single data point but just a few days we went to our local Apple store. It wasn't quite empty but it was nowhere near as busy as it was, say, a year ago. No buzz. At my personal level, we have not updated our iPads and iPods for a number of years. Don't plan to. I still have a 4S. I have disliked everything Apple has done since then and so did not upgrade. The device is getting slow over time. This, by itself, is enough to bother me. It used to work fine. Software updates have made it sluggish. This is wrong. I know I will have to upgrade at one point yet I am not looking forward to upgrading to another iPhone. Apple probably has one shot at convincing people like me with iPhone 8. Hint: I am sick and tired of "thinner". I could not care less. "Thinner" ceased to be a benefit a very long time ago. They need to solve real problems. Beyond that, you can only say "beautiful" so many times before it becomes a joke. Beautiful, beyond a basic aesthetic, isn't a solution to any real problem. At least none I have. Past that, we have pulled our last app from the app store. Actually, Apple required an upgrade and I decided not to invest the time and money to do it. Why? Because the app store is useless unless you get lucky, throw money at it or both. App discoverability is impossible. The other thing that is also impossible is to create relationships with your users. Business is about relationships and this walled garden prevents you from creating such relationships. In a way I equate this to groups on Facebook. FB has made it so that you have to pay to reach an audience you worked hard to create. You can have a million person group and only reach a couple thousand or less people per post. If you want to reach more you have to pay. In other words, you don't "own" your audience the same way you would through an opt-in email list. And so, it is goodbye to the App store, it isn't worth our time, money and effort. All of the above leads me to conclude that the Apple era is in jeopardy if they can't come up with enough of a pivot to provide value and get people exited again.

greedo 10y ago
You're complaining about an almost 6 year old smartphone being sluggish with iOS updates. And then complaining because Apple is requiring you to update your app. Ironically, the reason that discoverability in the App Store is so bad is because it's filled with abandonware apps where the devs don't update to fit with the newer versions of iOS. I think that's what my dad used to call chutzpah.
- rebootthesystem 10y ago
  And you are failing to recognize that virtually nothing of value has occurred in the segment during those six years. There's absolutely nothing, zip, nada of real value between an iPhone 4S and the latest greatest. Thinner? Please. Resolution? C'mon. Faster? OK, but to browse Facebook (which is what most people do with them) the prior phones were good enough. Larger? OK, sure. Battery life? I've never had a problem with this. Games? OK, sure, we have more CPU power so a greater segment of our society can waste their lives clicking things on a screen. If you don't have kids you won't have the experience of attending family events and parties where a bunch of kids are completely removed from the social gathering while they have their faces in those screens. Believe me when I tell you it's a terrible thing. We were making educational apps for kids. At least we tried. Storage? Meh Photos? The resolution arms race is a joke. Anyone who knows anything about imaging knows increasing sensor resolution isn't enough to actually capture higher resolution images. Look, most people use these things for photos, SMS, email, GPS and Facebook. Web browsing is a painful experience, even on an iPad. I have serious doubts --based on our analytics from various businesses-- that people are using phones to shop online. When we run AdWords campaigns we EXCLUDE mobile devices because we have proven to ourselves that they don't convert at all. Desktops do. I had great SMS and email going back to Blackberry devices. They also had rudimentary web browsing (not good). A stand-alone GPS or an in-vehicle nav system has always been better than using an iPhone. They are impossible to operate while driving. It's almost like the integrated printer + scanner + fax machines where none of the three are any good. Smart phones were hot many years ago. People were grabbing-up apps and filling their screens with icons. Go as anyone just how many apps they use and how many new apps they look for on a monthly basis. Most people I know haven't installed a new app in years. The interesting Jedi trick Apple benefited from for many years was the mindless frenzy to constantly upgrade for no good reason. I know people who have burned thousands of dollars in upgrades and ended-up with nothing to really show for it. There are those who need to chase after shiny things and those who do not. What's interesting here is that on the computer side of the world nobody would think twice about using a four to six year old computer. Up until very recently my main workstation on my desk was a 2009 machine running Windows Vista 64 bit. Three monitors, lots of memory, half a dozen drives. Ran Solidworks and other engineering software just fine. We upgraded to newer hardware and software because some software vendors started to drop Vista support. Other than that, no issues whatsoever. Why is it that one can't expect a $600 phone to last six or more years? Apple has ruined a previously perfectly good iPhone 4S thought every-more-taxing updates that deliver virtually no additional benefits. In other words, they are breaking their older devices through updates in order to force people to upgrade. As far as our educational apps for kids. There was and there isn't anything whatsoever wrong with them. Not a thing. In fact, our analytics show that kids are still using the apps every day all over the world. Imagine if Microsoft invalidated apps this way, people would go insane. How is it that this is OK on iPhones? Not sure I see it. Why do we have to be forced to upgrade apps when users are happy and there are no problems at all? And, what's the benefit of upgrading anyway? The work to upgrade a dozen apps is non-trivial. In exchange you get no improvement in visibility or discoverability. We are back to the same place: You have to burn more cash than the other guy to become visible. Worst yet, depending on the niche you get to burn $3.00 to make $2.95. The motivation to devote time, money and effort to upgrade evaporates very quickly when that happens. It stops being a business and it becomes a liability. But, wait, I forgot, all corporations are evil except for Apple. > App Store is so bad is because it's filled with abandonware apps No, the App Store is bad because the App Store is bad. It has been a disaster for years. It only serves Apple. The most fundamental issue is that of ownership. If you think you own your users and actually have a "business" in the App Store just wait until Apple decides to remove your apps from the App Store. An App Store business can be a flash in the pan and you have no way of knowing if you are going to wake up next Monday and still have a business. That has nothing whatsoever to do with abandonware.

greedo 10y ago

You're complaining about an almost 6 year old smartphone being sluggish with iOS updates. And then complaining because Apple is requiring you to update your app. Ironically, the reason that discoverability in the App Store is so bad is because it's filled with abandonware apps where the devs don't update to fit with the newer versions of iOS. I think that's what my dad used to call chutzpah.

rebootthesystem 10y ago
And you are failing to recognize that virtually nothing of value has occurred in the segment during those six years. There's absolutely nothing, zip, nada of real value between an iPhone 4S and the latest greatest. Thinner? Please. Resolution? C'mon. Faster? OK, but to browse Facebook (which is what most people do with them) the prior phones were good enough. Larger? OK, sure. Battery life? I've never had a problem with this. Games? OK, sure, we have more CPU power so a greater segment of our society can waste their lives clicking things on a screen. If you don't have kids you won't have the experience of attending family events and parties where a bunch of kids are completely removed from the social gathering while they have their faces in those screens. Believe me when I tell you it's a terrible thing. We were making educational apps for kids. At least we tried. Storage? Meh Photos? The resolution arms race is a joke. Anyone who knows anything about imaging knows increasing sensor resolution isn't enough to actually capture higher resolution images. Look, most people use these things for photos, SMS, email, GPS and Facebook. Web browsing is a painful experience, even on an iPad. I have serious doubts --based on our analytics from various businesses-- that people are using phones to shop online. When we run AdWords campaigns we EXCLUDE mobile devices because we have proven to ourselves that they don't convert at all. Desktops do. I had great SMS and email going back to Blackberry devices. They also had rudimentary web browsing (not good). A stand-alone GPS or an in-vehicle nav system has always been better than using an iPhone. They are impossible to operate while driving. It's almost like the integrated printer + scanner + fax machines where none of the three are any good. Smart phones were hot many years ago. People were grabbing-up apps and filling their screens with icons. Go as anyone just how many apps they use and how many new apps they look for on a monthly basis. Most people I know haven't installed a new app in years. The interesting Jedi trick Apple benefited from for many years was the mindless frenzy to constantly upgrade for no good reason. I know people who have burned thousands of dollars in upgrades and ended-up with nothing to really show for it. There are those who need to chase after shiny things and those who do not. What's interesting here is that on the computer side of the world nobody would think twice about using a four to six year old computer. Up until very recently my main workstation on my desk was a 2009 machine running Windows Vista 64 bit. Three monitors, lots of memory, half a dozen drives. Ran Solidworks and other engineering software just fine. We upgraded to newer hardware and software because some software vendors started to drop Vista support. Other than that, no issues whatsoever. Why is it that one can't expect a $600 phone to last six or more years? Apple has ruined a previously perfectly good iPhone 4S thought every-more-taxing updates that deliver virtually no additional benefits. In other words, they are breaking their older devices through updates in order to force people to upgrade. As far as our educational apps for kids. There was and there isn't anything whatsoever wrong with them. Not a thing. In fact, our analytics show that kids are still using the apps every day all over the world. Imagine if Microsoft invalidated apps this way, people would go insane. How is it that this is OK on iPhones? Not sure I see it. Why do we have to be forced to upgrade apps when users are happy and there are no problems at all? And, what's the benefit of upgrading anyway? The work to upgrade a dozen apps is non-trivial. In exchange you get no improvement in visibility or discoverability. We are back to the same place: You have to burn more cash than the other guy to become visible. Worst yet, depending on the niche you get to burn $3.00 to make $2.95. The motivation to devote time, money and effort to upgrade evaporates very quickly when that happens. It stops being a business and it becomes a liability. But, wait, I forgot, all corporations are evil except for Apple. > App Store is so bad is because it's filled with abandonware apps No, the App Store is bad because the App Store is bad. It has been a disaster for years. It only serves Apple. The most fundamental issue is that of ownership. If you think you own your users and actually have a "business" in the App Store just wait until Apple decides to remove your apps from the App Store. An App Store business can be a flash in the pan and you have no way of knowing if you are going to wake up next Monday and still have a business. That has nothing whatsoever to do with abandonware.