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Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

dessant 7y ago
Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme. Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389
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yoz-y 7y ago
That is a non starter for many apps that one uses rarely but provide high value. For example delivery tracking, sftp apps, vpn apps (only used while traveling). How would widgets work? Are they on all the time or never. Ideal app to make would be a launcher because you must use that all the time, but then do they deserve more than the app you use to do your job? I don't think that any financial model can fit all usages. Except, of course, paid up front with paid upgrades (and a subscription if there is a cloud component). But that ship has sailed.
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matwood 7y ago
That is effectively what Apple introduced with the Apple Arcade and what Google followed up with.
mattnewton 7y ago
Smartphones aren't Netflix though- I use my phone primarily to get things done and not just entertain myself. I don't want app developers to get paid more of my share if their app takes longer to perform a task, or my browser to get more money for pushing feed like "engagement features" encouraging a Reddit habit over performance changes that could cost them money but make my experience better.

Flat subscription of $10 a month for the app store. Once a month, your phone tells the store what percentage of time you spend in apps from that store. Firefox has 40% of your time? They get $4.

dessant 7y ago

Wouldn't that encourage developers to create more addictive apps, add longer UI animations, and apply other tricks to increase usage time? Valuable apps that require only short interactions would certainly suffer under this scheme. Just letting developers get paid without taking a 30 percent cut, or not banning open source apps for including a Patreon link [1] would be a great start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389

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yoz-y 7y ago

That is a non starter for many apps that one uses rarely but provide high value. For example delivery tracking, sftp apps, vpn apps (only used while traveling). How would widgets work? Are they on all the time or never. Ideal app to make would be a launcher because you must use that all the time, but then do they deserve more than the app you use to do your job? I don't think that any financial model can fit all usages. Except, of course, paid up front with paid upgrades (and a subscription if there is a cloud component). But that ship has sailed.

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matwood 7y ago

That is effectively what Apple introduced with the Apple Arcade and what Google followed up with.

mattnewton 7y ago

Smartphones aren't Netflix though- I use my phone primarily to get things done and not just entertain myself. I don't want app developers to get paid more of my share if their app takes longer to perform a task, or my browser to get more money for pushing feed like "engagement features" encouraging a Reddit habit over performance changes that could cost them money but make my experience better.