6 ms·

We Are the App Store

192 points by sstarr 16y ago

ableal 16y ago
Apropos RefinedPixel's comment (in the post's page) about webapps, the other day I accidentally found http://www.apple.com/webapps/ http://www.apple.com/webapps/ However, the current 'most recent' entries are dated December 3rd of last year. The small print does say "Apple is providing links to these applications as a courtesy [...]"
- alexyoung 16y ago
  I remember this from when the iPhone launched, it was actually how they said we could build apps before the App Store existed.
thefrod 16y ago
A very salient point. Whether Apple will notice through the haze of Havana smoke while polishing their monocle is another matter.
leon_ 16y ago
for every dev who leaves the app store there are 100 waiting to join. that's the main problem - you can't pressure apple as long as there are masses of devs willing to play by apple's rules.
- guelo 16y ago
  The level of effort required to create a high-quality professional app is more than many dev teams are capable of. Despite the numbers you hear about 100s of thousands of apps the truly valuable apps are few and far between, Apple squanders those at their peril.
  - zoul 16y ago
    While that's true, it's hard to imagine a platform with millions of users willing to pay for apps and shortage of good developers. With the recent events it looks like Apple is mistreating all iOS developers, but in practice I think that most of them really don't have that much to complain about.
- saturdaysaint 16y ago
  I disagree - I think that Apple's %30 cut will make a lot paid web services unattractive business propositions. Too costly for consumers, too uncertain for developers. Deep, sophisticated web services do not pop up overnight. I think that Apple will feel pressure when their web store is completely overrun with $.99 games and low value apps... and Android users enjoy a comparatively deep pool of high quality services and publications.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    I think that Apple will feel pressure when their web store is completely overrun with $.99 games and low value apps This argument makes no sense to me. Apple's 30% cut is too high, and therefore app developers are going to tend to cut their prices? What sense does that make? I thought the whole "problem" here was that the 30% cut was going to force publishers to raise their prices (across the board) to cover the additional distribution cost. And to sell product at those higher prices they will need to provide more value. Perhaps more value than they can provide.
    - schwabacher 16y ago
      Apple hasn't raised their price, the problem is that they are requiring companies that sell a subscription or content outside of the app store to also sell the same thing in the app store and give apple a 30% cut. This is going to prevent a lot of good web services from having apps in the app store. Low quality apps like $.99 games won't be effected.
    - enjo 16y ago
      The argument, I would assume, is something more along the lines that high-quality applications strain under the load of 30% royalties paid to Apple. This is definitely true in some cases. Ebooks spring to mind as the most obvious example as most publishers don't have 30% in their margins to give. I'm not sure I completely agree with the premise. I do think that as Apple continues to push against the developer community you'll see a continuing downward trend in average app quality. The de-facto culture of the .99 app has already driven much of that, but at some point more sophisticated developers are going to be looking for greener pastures away from Apples control. The question is: how hard can Apple squeeze before that happens? I'm seeing some of it now. The better developers have seemed to only make half-hearted attempts at Android ports thus far. Their attention has been so focused on the Apple cash machine that it's made it difficult to shift focus. So you see a lot of inferior ports dotting the Android market. With the uncertainty that Apple is creating in the development community, I'm betting that you'll see more and more developers hedging their bets and building out much higher quality applications on Android. I'm sure Google is doing everything possible to court that. In the end Android benefits not because everyone wholesale leaves the iOs ecosystem, but rather because they start putting some of those iOS dollars to work making things better on Android. That's how Apple loses in the end. Android has a huge distribution advantage. These decisions serve to erode the iOS app advantage. Once Android has achieved level pegging in apps I see nothing stopping it from taking over the world.
- jberryman 16y ago
  Even the devs who get screwed by Apple's policies seem to do no more than write an angry blog post, usually ending with something like "but if apple would like to pretty, pretty please make an exception or reconsider their policy we would love to re-submit our app". I don't see any serious pressure coming from anywhere to be honest.
geekosky 16y ago
Until we have viable alternatives, it seems rather fruitless to complain about the power that Apple has in terms of dictating App Store policies. I'm a fan of the HTML5 developments, but it doesn't offer anywhere near the level of sophistication available to native apps on iOS. To get developers like myself to abandon the investment we've made in terms of mastering Objective-C and iOS, a web-based alternative must at least offer comparable functionality.
- cageface 16y ago
  Depending on what kinds of apps you write, this may never happen. How long do you think it will take, for example, for something like the Accelerate framework to be available in a usable form in a web api? It's hard enough to get something relatively simple like local storage standardized. Unfortunately most of the apps that can be realized as web apps are just more of the glorified paperwork UIs I burned out on writing as a web dev in the first place.
  - bad_user 16y ago
    Oh, if glorified paperwork UIs would be possible on the iPhone's Safari. Unfortunately they're disabling the freakin' Upload inputs, so file uploads aren't possible without native hooks.
rodh257 16y ago
"Both Apple and Google have demonstrated that they want to be the only source of commercial apps for their platform." Have Google really done this? Isn't there soon to be Playstation app store among others? And you can always download files away from the Market?
- alexyoung 16y ago
  The example in my mind was Kongregate being removed from the Market. It got back on, but the comments from Kongregate referenced "competing app stores".
  - NickPollard 16y ago
    Kongregate was removed from Google Market, but that does not prevent it from being distributed separately (On Android you can download apps directly from the web and install them, without using the app store).
    - lukeschlather 16y ago
      Unless you're on AT&T. Suddenly I'm sensing a pattern...
      - warfangle 16y ago
        That's funky. I just downloaded an apk and installed it on my phone. On, uh, AT&T.
        lukeschlather 16y ago
        So you're using a custom rom or you're rooted. I thought it was obvious I was referring to stock. You can also run whatever you want on an iPhone if you root.
        warfangle 16y ago
EnderMB 16y ago
As bad as this sounds, I think that those who wish to get in bed with Apple deserve what they get. There are plenty of other platforms that can make money, and after my post on the lack HN thread regarding why people don't move over to Android produced few answers. It is also a topic of much discussion on the Readability blog post; a topic the author has yet to address. The App Store can be very good for those who work with it, but in the same way that using Adsense can be good for those who use it. There are other options; they may not be the industry leaders, but they are viable options and you'd be a fool to turn down a platform with 100 users just because a tough platform with 110 users is better known. In the same way that some men are attracted to insane girls, it seems that some developers simply cannot get enough of Apple's tough, kinky, anti-trust-bound love.
- cageface 16y ago
  My sympathies are 100% with Android but until the underlying audio & media APIs are much more mature I just can't implement the kinds of apps I'm interested in on Android. I'm keeping an eye on it though.
  - EnderMB 16y ago
    Absolutely. In a way the most shocking aspect of all this is that Google hasn't jumped at the opportunity to bring established app developers over to their platform. If Google continues to wait around and not refine their tools I can see Microsoft moving in to establish themselves as the underdog and as a strong developers choice.
  - TillE 16y ago
    What kind of apps? As of Gingerbread, the NDK supports OpenSL ES, which seems like a perfectly decent API for games and other low-latency audio applications.
    - cageface 16y ago
      Realtime, low-latency audiovisual instruments. OpenSL may make this possible, although that's not clear yet: http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/portaudio/2010-December/011148.html http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/portaudio/2010-December/... Contrast this with iOS which provides the robust and featureful CoreAudio api. As far as I can tell there doesn't appear to be anything like the new Accelerate framework introduced in iOS 4 for Android either, so things like native FFT aren't available.
saturdaysaint 16y ago
Well said. I've been using the iPhone since September 2007, but if Apple loses the Kindle app and Netflix app, I'll have no qualms about jumping to Android. Strong support from top tier web services companies (Rdio and Amazon come to mind) is my favorite thing about iOS - Apple underestimates how quickly they could lose that pivotal advantage.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Walled gardens are great when a medium is brand new. Without history and without a critical mass of knowledgeable individuals it's very much more difficult for individuals to find offerings of sufficient quality, and then from there to filter based on individual preferences and needs. Such was the case with mobile apps when the iphone came around. The quality of mobile apps tended to be rather poor at the time and there was a bewildering array of them. The iphone introduced a huge new chunk of people to smartphones, the appstore model was an attempt to raise the quality bar of mobile apps and to make it easier for users to find and buy apps. And it worked spectacularly well, propelling a once questionable development arena to enormous heights of popularity (and in some cases profitability). If you look back on, for example, video game development you can see the problems that can occur without such walled gardens. The home video game market boomed in the late 70s and early 80s, with families buying new games like hotcakes. A lot of game makers jumped on the bandwagon and pumped the market full of low quality games. Whereas in previous years the total number of games for the Atari 2600, for example, had been in the low dozens in 1982/83 this number ballooned to hundreds. Consumers could no longer have much confidence in which games to buy and so they stopped buying, leading to a massive crash of the video game industry in the US that lasted until Nintendo came along with its own walled garden approach. However, the video game industry has matured since then, and walled gardens are no longer very helpful (there are far more than sufficient resources these days to determine which games to buy and which to avoid based on individual preferences). As the mobile app market continues to mature it will strain against its walled garden confines more and more. Increasingly such hand-holding is less necessary and more and more restrictive. Apple has a choice to recognize that the market is changing and to adapt or to ignore the changes and pretend as though it's still 2008 while the world passes them by.
- bryanlarsen 16y ago
  I'm having trouble with your argument. After all, the 2600 was the original walled garden from which all others have sprung. It was also the source of court cases which set precedent for walled gardens. If I remember correctly, Atari ROMs had an image in them that the firmware checked for before allowing the ROM to run. But the image was copyrighted, so you couldn't sell Atari ROMs without giving a cut to Atari. The only exception was Tengen, who had a historical license due to being a spin-off of Atari.
dgwegweg 16y ago
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kristiandupont 16y ago
I don't like the new restriction even though Apple obviously is in their good right. But beneath this there is a deeper concern that is now making me consider choosing the web over learning to develop for iOS: I don't trust Apple. I love my iPhone and iPad, but these frequent and unpredictable changes to the TOS makes it quite a liability for me as a developer. Making a product/startup always involves the what-if-google-does-it risk, but this new what-if-apple-shuts-you-down risk is more disturbing imo.
- brudgers 16y ago
  Apple does not appear to take an interest in third party developers prospering beyond the PR value of "featured apps" and similar PR - they do not view app purchasers as the developer's customers - they assume that all customer's first brand loyalty is Apple above all. In the case of the Kindle app, Apple's attitude is that nobody buys the iPad as an ebook reader selecting it over competing readers - they are pretending that iPad ownership is a necessary condition for an interest in ebooks among iPad owners. Predictability is the bread and butter of B2B relationships, and Apple doesn't get it. Instead Apple treats developers as consumers rather than partners - changing terms to the developer agreement as if they were a specsheet for a piece of consumer electronics.
- roc 16y ago
  > "I don't trust Apple." You shouldn't trust any platform vendor. If you're too small to get a contract stipulating that they can't pull the rug out from under you, you should start developing only after making a careful calculation of risk/reward.
  - marshray 16y ago
    For many many years ISVs made money in "the Microsoft ecosystem". Yes, sometimes MS pulled the rug out from under them and/or directly competed with them with unfair advantage. But not really that often. They certainly never "pulled your app from the store". I'm still having a hard time getting my head around that concept and why anyone would invest development resources into that kind of platform.
nopal 16y ago
It's part of Apple's thinking that if an app can be satisfactorily built as an HTML5 app, there's no need for it to be in the App Store. If an HTML5 app meets consumers' needs, then there's no need for a native app. But the crux of this entire debate is whether users will demand iOS versions of applications. Apple thinks they will, and they think they deserve a cut for it. There are lots of emotional arguments being made right now, but it seems like this is a simple business decision for developers. If a developer doesn't see enough value in iOS (given its development costs), then he shouldn't build an iOS app, end of story.
dpcan 16y ago
A year ago I would have laughed at the final statement that people will dump their iPhones faster than Apple is ready for. Today, after working with Android for a year, I could care less if I had an Android instead of my iPhone. In fact, I find myself carrying around my development device for various apps and usability reasons. I'm over angry birds. I'm tired of seeing all the polished over-done games in the app store. I prefer the simple, indie games of Android, I like the personality of the Android Market, I like the browser on my Galaxy, etc, etc. Side note. My kids do not. They think my Android games are stupid.
- marshray 16y ago
  I play Angry Birds on Android.
  - rtaycher 16y ago
    I play it on my n900 as I curse Nokia(Zen bound demo is cool too, I might buy it).
- frozenflame 16y ago
  Can you recommend some of these games? I've been itching to try some new ones.
- megablast 16y ago
  Despite Android's popularity, people are not buying apps. The google app store is in danger now of getting people relying on free apps, so they may never be willing to buy apps. This is different to iPhone users. Of course, android app store may change as time goes on, and it gets new users, but the majority of apps in the android app store are free. Also, it is not "I could care less", that makes no sense. It is "I couldn't care less".
  - bonch 16y ago
    I believe Google wants the Android Store to be full of free apps...that just happen to be supported by Google ads. Otherwise, Google doesn't get anything out of the Android platform.
AbnormalGun 16y ago
I am currently considering my first smart-phone, and I want really want to go with Apple because I do like the refinement of iOS and the hardware that runs it, but their App Store policies are giving me pause. It seems to me that Apple's greed is getting the better of them. I really hope that Apple will realize that even if they aren't getting a cut of in-App purchases, these Apps do add desirability to the iOS platform.
code_duck 16y ago
This is the same sort of thing I've noticed with sites like eBay and Etsy. Particularly the latter - the administration and a certain brand of users act like all glory and power derives from the establishment, and you need them and should be thanking them for their existence. Another group of people feel that the credit goes to the people who fill empty gray templates with content and bring the site to life. This actually works out to be somewhat similar to politics. Reading forums and blogs, you can observe people's politics in their feelings about companies like this. Conservatives and religious folks often feel you should give respect to the site authority, while liberal people feel the customers deserve more credit and need more power. It's just like unions vs. management.

192 points by sstarr 16y ago

Apropos RefinedPixel's comment (in the post's page) about webapps, the other day I accidentally found http://www.apple.com/webapps/ http://www.apple.com/webapps/ However, the current 'most recent' entries are dated December 3rd of last year. The small print does say "Apple is providing links to these applications as a courtesy [...]"

alexyoung 16y ago
I remember this from when the iPhone launched, it was actually how they said we could build apps before the App Store existed.

thefrod 16y ago

A very salient point. Whether Apple will notice through the haze of Havana smoke while polishing their monocle is another matter.

leon_ 16y ago

for every dev who leaves the app store there are 100 waiting to join. that's the main problem - you can't pressure apple as long as there are masses of devs willing to play by apple's rules.

guelo 16y ago
The level of effort required to create a high-quality professional app is more than many dev teams are capable of. Despite the numbers you hear about 100s of thousands of apps the truly valuable apps are few and far between, Apple squanders those at their peril.
- zoul 16y ago
  While that's true, it's hard to imagine a platform with millions of users willing to pay for apps and shortage of good developers. With the recent events it looks like Apple is mistreating all iOS developers, but in practice I think that most of them really don't have that much to complain about.
saturdaysaint 16y ago
I disagree - I think that Apple's %30 cut will make a lot paid web services unattractive business propositions. Too costly for consumers, too uncertain for developers. Deep, sophisticated web services do not pop up overnight. I think that Apple will feel pressure when their web store is completely overrun with $.99 games and low value apps... and Android users enjoy a comparatively deep pool of high quality services and publications.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  I think that Apple will feel pressure when their web store is completely overrun with $.99 games and low value apps This argument makes no sense to me. Apple's 30% cut is too high, and therefore app developers are going to tend to cut their prices? What sense does that make? I thought the whole "problem" here was that the 30% cut was going to force publishers to raise their prices (across the board) to cover the additional distribution cost. And to sell product at those higher prices they will need to provide more value. Perhaps more value than they can provide.
  - schwabacher 16y ago
    Apple hasn't raised their price, the problem is that they are requiring companies that sell a subscription or content outside of the app store to also sell the same thing in the app store and give apple a 30% cut. This is going to prevent a lot of good web services from having apps in the app store. Low quality apps like $.99 games won't be effected.
  - enjo 16y ago
    The argument, I would assume, is something more along the lines that high-quality applications strain under the load of 30% royalties paid to Apple. This is definitely true in some cases. Ebooks spring to mind as the most obvious example as most publishers don't have 30% in their margins to give. I'm not sure I completely agree with the premise. I do think that as Apple continues to push against the developer community you'll see a continuing downward trend in average app quality. The de-facto culture of the .99 app has already driven much of that, but at some point more sophisticated developers are going to be looking for greener pastures away from Apples control. The question is: how hard can Apple squeeze before that happens? I'm seeing some of it now. The better developers have seemed to only make half-hearted attempts at Android ports thus far. Their attention has been so focused on the Apple cash machine that it's made it difficult to shift focus. So you see a lot of inferior ports dotting the Android market. With the uncertainty that Apple is creating in the development community, I'm betting that you'll see more and more developers hedging their bets and building out much higher quality applications on Android. I'm sure Google is doing everything possible to court that. In the end Android benefits not because everyone wholesale leaves the iOs ecosystem, but rather because they start putting some of those iOS dollars to work making things better on Android. That's how Apple loses in the end. Android has a huge distribution advantage. These decisions serve to erode the iOS app advantage. Once Android has achieved level pegging in apps I see nothing stopping it from taking over the world.
jberryman 16y ago
Even the devs who get screwed by Apple's policies seem to do no more than write an angry blog post, usually ending with something like "but if apple would like to pretty, pretty please make an exception or reconsider their policy we would love to re-submit our app". I don't see any serious pressure coming from anywhere to be honest.

geekosky 16y ago

Until we have viable alternatives, it seems rather fruitless to complain about the power that Apple has in terms of dictating App Store policies. I'm a fan of the HTML5 developments, but it doesn't offer anywhere near the level of sophistication available to native apps on iOS. To get developers like myself to abandon the investment we've made in terms of mastering Objective-C and iOS, a web-based alternative must at least offer comparable functionality.

cageface 16y ago
Depending on what kinds of apps you write, this may never happen. How long do you think it will take, for example, for something like the Accelerate framework to be available in a usable form in a web api? It's hard enough to get something relatively simple like local storage standardized. Unfortunately most of the apps that can be realized as web apps are just more of the glorified paperwork UIs I burned out on writing as a web dev in the first place.
- bad_user 16y ago
  Oh, if glorified paperwork UIs would be possible on the iPhone's Safari. Unfortunately they're disabling the freakin' Upload inputs, so file uploads aren't possible without native hooks.

rodh257 16y ago

"Both Apple and Google have demonstrated that they want to be the only source of commercial apps for their platform." Have Google really done this? Isn't there soon to be Playstation app store among others? And you can always download files away from the Market?

alexyoung 16y ago
The example in my mind was Kongregate being removed from the Market. It got back on, but the comments from Kongregate referenced "competing app stores".
- NickPollard 16y ago
  Kongregate was removed from Google Market, but that does not prevent it from being distributed separately (On Android you can download apps directly from the web and install them, without using the app store).
  - lukeschlather 16y ago
    Unless you're on AT&T. Suddenly I'm sensing a pattern...
    - warfangle 16y ago
      That's funky. I just downloaded an apk and installed it on my phone. On, uh, AT&T.
      - lukeschlather 16y ago
        So you're using a custom rom or you're rooted. I thought it was obvious I was referring to stock. You can also run whatever you want on an iPhone if you root.
        warfangle 16y ago

EnderMB 16y ago

As bad as this sounds, I think that those who wish to get in bed with Apple deserve what they get. There are plenty of other platforms that can make money, and after my post on the lack HN thread regarding why people don't move over to Android produced few answers. It is also a topic of much discussion on the Readability blog post; a topic the author has yet to address. The App Store can be very good for those who work with it, but in the same way that using Adsense can be good for those who use it. There are other options; they may not be the industry leaders, but they are viable options and you'd be a fool to turn down a platform with 100 users just because a tough platform with 110 users is better known. In the same way that some men are attracted to insane girls, it seems that some developers simply cannot get enough of Apple's tough, kinky, anti-trust-bound love.

cageface 16y ago
My sympathies are 100% with Android but until the underlying audio & media APIs are much more mature I just can't implement the kinds of apps I'm interested in on Android. I'm keeping an eye on it though.
- EnderMB 16y ago
  Absolutely. In a way the most shocking aspect of all this is that Google hasn't jumped at the opportunity to bring established app developers over to their platform. If Google continues to wait around and not refine their tools I can see Microsoft moving in to establish themselves as the underdog and as a strong developers choice.
- TillE 16y ago
  What kind of apps? As of Gingerbread, the NDK supports OpenSL ES, which seems like a perfectly decent API for games and other low-latency audio applications.
  - cageface 16y ago
    Realtime, low-latency audiovisual instruments. OpenSL may make this possible, although that's not clear yet: http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/portaudio/2010-December/011148.html http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/portaudio/2010-December/... Contrast this with iOS which provides the robust and featureful CoreAudio api. As far as I can tell there doesn't appear to be anything like the new Accelerate framework introduced in iOS 4 for Android either, so things like native FFT aren't available.

saturdaysaint 16y ago

Well said. I've been using the iPhone since September 2007, but if Apple loses the Kindle app and Netflix app, I'll have no qualms about jumping to Android. Strong support from top tier web services companies (Rdio and Amazon come to mind) is my favorite thing about iOS - Apple underestimates how quickly they could lose that pivotal advantage.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Walled gardens are great when a medium is brand new. Without history and without a critical mass of knowledgeable individuals it's very much more difficult for individuals to find offerings of sufficient quality, and then from there to filter based on individual preferences and needs. Such was the case with mobile apps when the iphone came around. The quality of mobile apps tended to be rather poor at the time and there was a bewildering array of them. The iphone introduced a huge new chunk of people to smartphones, the appstore model was an attempt to raise the quality bar of mobile apps and to make it easier for users to find and buy apps. And it worked spectacularly well, propelling a once questionable development arena to enormous heights of popularity (and in some cases profitability). If you look back on, for example, video game development you can see the problems that can occur without such walled gardens. The home video game market boomed in the late 70s and early 80s, with families buying new games like hotcakes. A lot of game makers jumped on the bandwagon and pumped the market full of low quality games. Whereas in previous years the total number of games for the Atari 2600, for example, had been in the low dozens in 1982/83 this number ballooned to hundreds. Consumers could no longer have much confidence in which games to buy and so they stopped buying, leading to a massive crash of the video game industry in the US that lasted until Nintendo came along with its own walled garden approach. However, the video game industry has matured since then, and walled gardens are no longer very helpful (there are far more than sufficient resources these days to determine which games to buy and which to avoid based on individual preferences). As the mobile app market continues to mature it will strain against its walled garden confines more and more. Increasingly such hand-holding is less necessary and more and more restrictive. Apple has a choice to recognize that the market is changing and to adapt or to ignore the changes and pretend as though it's still 2008 while the world passes them by.

bryanlarsen 16y ago
I'm having trouble with your argument. After all, the 2600 was the original walled garden from which all others have sprung. It was also the source of court cases which set precedent for walled gardens. If I remember correctly, Atari ROMs had an image in them that the firmware checked for before allowing the ROM to run. But the image was copyrighted, so you couldn't sell Atari ROMs without giving a cut to Atari. The only exception was Tengen, who had a historical license due to being a spin-off of Atari.

dgwegweg 16y ago

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kristiandupont 16y ago

I don't like the new restriction even though Apple obviously is in their good right. But beneath this there is a deeper concern that is now making me consider choosing the web over learning to develop for iOS: I don't trust Apple. I love my iPhone and iPad, but these frequent and unpredictable changes to the TOS makes it quite a liability for me as a developer. Making a product/startup always involves the what-if-google-does-it risk, but this new what-if-apple-shuts-you-down risk is more disturbing imo.

brudgers 16y ago
Apple does not appear to take an interest in third party developers prospering beyond the PR value of "featured apps" and similar PR - they do not view app purchasers as the developer's customers - they assume that all customer's first brand loyalty is Apple above all. In the case of the Kindle app, Apple's attitude is that nobody buys the iPad as an ebook reader selecting it over competing readers - they are pretending that iPad ownership is a necessary condition for an interest in ebooks among iPad owners. Predictability is the bread and butter of B2B relationships, and Apple doesn't get it. Instead Apple treats developers as consumers rather than partners - changing terms to the developer agreement as if they were a specsheet for a piece of consumer electronics.
roc 16y ago
> "I don't trust Apple." You shouldn't trust any platform vendor. If you're too small to get a contract stipulating that they can't pull the rug out from under you, you should start developing only after making a careful calculation of risk/reward.
- marshray 16y ago
  For many many years ISVs made money in "the Microsoft ecosystem". Yes, sometimes MS pulled the rug out from under them and/or directly competed with them with unfair advantage. But not really that often. They certainly never "pulled your app from the store". I'm still having a hard time getting my head around that concept and why anyone would invest development resources into that kind of platform.

nopal 16y ago

It's part of Apple's thinking that if an app can be satisfactorily built as an HTML5 app, there's no need for it to be in the App Store. If an HTML5 app meets consumers' needs, then there's no need for a native app. But the crux of this entire debate is whether users will demand iOS versions of applications. Apple thinks they will, and they think they deserve a cut for it. There are lots of emotional arguments being made right now, but it seems like this is a simple business decision for developers. If a developer doesn't see enough value in iOS (given its development costs), then he shouldn't build an iOS app, end of story.

dpcan 16y ago

A year ago I would have laughed at the final statement that people will dump their iPhones faster than Apple is ready for. Today, after working with Android for a year, I could care less if I had an Android instead of my iPhone. In fact, I find myself carrying around my development device for various apps and usability reasons. I'm over angry birds. I'm tired of seeing all the polished over-done games in the app store. I prefer the simple, indie games of Android, I like the personality of the Android Market, I like the browser on my Galaxy, etc, etc. Side note. My kids do not. They think my Android games are stupid.

marshray 16y ago
I play Angry Birds on Android.
- rtaycher 16y ago
  I play it on my n900 as I curse Nokia(Zen bound demo is cool too, I might buy it).
frozenflame 16y ago
Can you recommend some of these games? I've been itching to try some new ones.
megablast 16y ago
Despite Android's popularity, people are not buying apps. The google app store is in danger now of getting people relying on free apps, so they may never be willing to buy apps. This is different to iPhone users. Of course, android app store may change as time goes on, and it gets new users, but the majority of apps in the android app store are free. Also, it is not "I could care less", that makes no sense. It is "I couldn't care less".
- bonch 16y ago
  I believe Google wants the Android Store to be full of free apps...that just happen to be supported by Google ads. Otherwise, Google doesn't get anything out of the Android platform.

AbnormalGun 16y ago

I am currently considering my first smart-phone, and I want really want to go with Apple because I do like the refinement of iOS and the hardware that runs it, but their App Store policies are giving me pause. It seems to me that Apple's greed is getting the better of them. I really hope that Apple will realize that even if they aren't getting a cut of in-App purchases, these Apps do add desirability to the iOS platform.

code_duck 16y ago

This is the same sort of thing I've noticed with sites like eBay and Etsy. Particularly the latter - the administration and a certain brand of users act like all glory and power derives from the establishment, and you need them and should be thanking them for their existence. Another group of people feel that the credit goes to the people who fill empty gray templates with content and bring the site to life. This actually works out to be somewhat similar to politics. Reading forums and blogs, you can observe people's politics in their feelings about companies like this. Conservatives and religious folks often feel you should give respect to the site authority, while liberal people feel the customers deserve more credit and need more power. It's just like unions vs. management.