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The App Store turns 10
- 1123581321 8y agoI really like the animation at the start of the article. How was that likely created? Edit: I know it’s a gif. I’d like to know what tool(s) Apple likely used to create the gif.
- TremendousJudge 8y agohttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/app-store/Apple_App_Store_10th_anniversary_07102018_big.gif.large_2x.gif https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/app-store/Appl... it's a gif
- valine 8y agoI have no idea what tools Apple used to create this, but it would fairly easy to recreate it in something like Blender (blender.org).
- asadlionpk 8y agoI would like to know this too. Maybe 3d rendered.
- pier25 8y agoWhat animation tools they used? Could be anything, but since there is a lot of 3D my bet would be on Cinema 4D with some cel shaders. See this: http://www.eyedesyn.com/tutorials/using-cel-shader-to-cast-shadows-on-100-luminant-objects/ http://www.eyedesyn.com/tutorials/using-cel-shader-to-cast-s...
- cakebrewery 8y agoYou can probably do this with simple tools. It's all about the layers; If you observe closely, you can see all the objects in the frame have very simple movements. The 3D effect is just an optical illusion coming from all these simple movements in 2D space. Some creativity goes a long way!
- valine 8y agoI disagree. Look at the airplane, it's clearly made in 3D software.
- cakebrewery 8y agoVery possibly. But that would be easily reproducible with layers as well. Look how there is no perspective change on the rising blocks and the shadow underneath. Blocks just move straight up and down and shadow just increases/decreases in size. People movements are just tween animations.
- valine 8y agoIts an orthographic rendering, that's why there are no perspective shifts.
- simongr3dal 8y agoPerhaps they used SceneKit.
- jccalhoun 8y agoOn a semi-related note, can podcasts stop only giving links to itunes and asking me to rate their podcast on itunes? Thanks, an Android user
- zaksoup 8y agoIs there a unified library of podcasts and ratings on Android? As far as I know there's a number of apps that maintain their own libraries but nothing unified across the whole platform and built into the OS like iTunes.
- thesandlord 8y agoGoogle Play Music has podcasts, that might be the closest thing.
- scarface74 8y agoIt seems like everyone just uses Apple's podcast directory through their API. Since Apple doesn't host the podcasts themselves it's relatively easy to use.
- NearAP 8y agoIf you purchase an App from the App store and then change your phone, I assume you should be able to carry over the paid app to your new phone. Does anybody know if the App Store enforces this and what (if anything) they do to vendors who violate this? It seems that there are numerous complaints on the review page of "word with friends" by people who paid for the Ad-free version but when they moved to a new device, they no longer have access to the Ad-free version
- saagarjha 8y agoThe only reason this should happen is if the Ad-free version was pulled from the App Store.
- NearAP 8y agoYour logic sounds right, which takes me back to my original question - is there an App Store policy that Developers have to maintain that Ad-free version or provide some form of compensation to those who paid if the developer decides to pull the Ad-free version
- scarface74 8y agoI’ve only seen that happen once and the app wasn’t pulled just not updated. The originsl version of Tetris that was never updated passed the iPhone 4 and then EA introduced a new ad supported version.
- sillyquiet 8y agoThis can happen, when non-scrupulous devs 'deprecate' an older version of their app in favor of the 'new' version. e.g., you buy 'CoolApp' and in-app purchase features for it. But oh no, 'CoolApp2' has come out and 'CoolApp' is no longer updated for newer devices, so sorry. Otherwise, an app, and its in-app purchase set remain available via a user's iTunes account indefinitely as far as I can tell.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
- sillyquiet 8y agoThe App Store is great, but the App Store interface sucks. It was bad enough even when there were only a couple thousand apps in the store, but 10 years and hundreds of thousands of apps later and discoverability is abysmal. Unless you are a big player can advertise your app otherwise, having an app 'hit' is about a scientific a process as making viral videos.
- scarface74 8y agoIt's no different than any other type of marketplace whether it be for music, books, video, etc.
- wmeredith 8y agoI strongly disagree. Finding a product on Amazon is significantly easier than finding something in the App Store. Sometimes even if you know the exact name of the app you literally cannot access it unless you have the URL. Their search is awful and forget browsing with the amount of content.
- CodeCube 8y agoCan confirm this experience
- mrkstu 8y agoWell, unless you're talking about the Kindle Fire App Store- which is magnitudes worse than the App Store. The Play Store (other than the horrific naming) strikes a decent balance, but isn't particularly great either. Don't know why app stores seem to be so challenging for all the players in the space.
- toasterlovin 8y agoProbably because for apps there isn't a rich interconnected web of linked content to tell an algorithm what it needs to know in order to provide a good search experience. Google kinda got lucky in the sense that the discussion about the web happens on the web.
- abhiminator 8y agoThe article was a trip down the memory lane. Cannot believe how quickly a decade has passed since the debut of the first-gen iPhone and subsequent launch of the App store. I still have faint memories of watching a recap of the launch event keynote by Mr. Jobs on a local news channel (though my preteen brain didn't grasp its significance), while being completely oblivious (not that I was unique) to the revolution it was about to unleash in the lives of MILLIONS of developers in every nook and cranny of the planet -- with Google following suit, of course. Think of the innumerable industries that have been born, millions (billions?) of lives that have been changed, trillions of dollars of value generated, all as a result of this tectonic shift in software distribution.
- nailer 8y agoGoogle followed, but Android and Andy Rubin have their roots at Danger, who created very popular white label Internet smartphones for teenagers like the Sidekick years before the iPhone.
- duxup 8y agoI heard once that Steve and Co. early on envisioned the iPhone to work mostly with web apps through the browser, but when it became clear the tech wasn't going to be there they went the app store route? Anyone have anything that backs that up or hear the same thing? It's interesting that 10 years later we're still there ;)
- mankash666 8y agoDespite initial plans, that ship has long sailed. Apple's all about exerting control over the app store, and purposefully breaking the open web on their platform, to drive users and devs to the app store. Non exhaustive list of web APIs broken on iOS Safari: 1. WebRTC Data channel 2. WebGl 2 3. Limiting WebApp storage to 50MB, just because. Oh, and purging it at random, just because 4. Web push notifications 5. Disallowing 3rd party browser engines (Every browser on iOS is a wrapper around iOS's WebKit) ......
- duxup 8y agoOh I don't doubt it, they're not interested in going back. I just thought it was an interesting fact if true about their perspective early on. Heck I'm just getting into web development and honestly... web apps seem to be JUST barely now getting there when it comes to app quality, polish.
- mankash666 8y ago> web apps seem to be JUST barely now getting there when it comes to app quality, polish. True. And this is the time for Apple to support and reach parity with other browser vendors on emerging Web features. Unless their true intent is to unfairly drive devs and users to the app store,
- darpa_escapee 8y agoThis was at the height of the Web 2.0 phase and many platforms were preparing to go the HTML/JS/CSS route for applications. At the time, it seemed like the trajectory application development was heading. Palm's WebOS put web technology first on its platform, and sought to compete with the existing mobile platforms.
- waivek 8y agoWhenever I get a new Windows laptop, the first four or five hours are spent reinstalling software that I use on a daily basis. I can just leave a new phone next to the router. With windows, I have to sit and monitor a lot of things for those four hours along with hunting down the most updated executables and setup files. I feel that mobile got software distribution correct. Thanks a ton, Scott Forstall.
- abhiminator 8y ago>I feel that mobile got software distribution correct. It's more like mobile got package management right. Windows is terrible as an example to use for installing/removing software as it has extremely crude (almost non-existent) package management system (referring to Windows Installer here -- .msi files). [0] I like to think of the App store (and equivalent) as a Linux command-line beautified by a GUI shell in a mobile form-factor. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer
- nailer 8y agoThis is what 'Click n run' was - one of the first app stores, created on the (ugly named) 'Lindows' Linux distribution.
- waivek 8y agoWith Linux desktops I have to know command line stuff and risk having to debug initial wifi issues myself.
- abhiminator 8y ago>debug initial wifi issues myself. But doesn't that make you better at troubleshooting and fixing problems in Linux -- a useful skill to have?
- waivek 8y agoI don't use Linux.
- segmondy 8y agoI'm still curious, where can one get a comprehensive list of Apps published in the app store, date uploaded, number of downloads, etc?
- pwinnski 8y agoThey don't publish an API for that, and companies that have created one (like AppAnnie) seem to reserve that info for paying customers, AFAIK. That said, they do offer a search API which should be (slowly) crawlable over time: https://itunes.apple.com/search?country=us&entity=software&term=WHATEVER https://itunes.apple.com/search?country=us&entity=software&t...
- dawnerd 8y agoOh man, that takes me back. I remember Cro-mag rally and Super Monkey Ball so well. I wonder if they're still around... Quick edit: Cro-mag is still alive and kicking, looks like it just got iPhone x support too. Crazy.
- kitsunesoba 8y agoCro-mag’s developer Pangea Software has been an excellent Apple platform developer for a long time now. If you ever played Mighty Mike/Power Pete, Nanosaur, Bugdom, or Otto-Matic on the Mac that’s them as well.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI wish they offered a proper rental model in the App Store, I know you can do it with in-app purchase but that all feels a little underhand, I'd rather use something baked into the store.
- rakibtg 8y agoCongrats Apple! Also, I have been struggling uploading my first iOS app to Apple store since last 10 days!
- zubairq 8y agoNice thread, I'm trying to build a poor man's app store for the web at appshare.co , but true , you can't beat mobile apps for performance and native integration with your phone