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The iOS and Mac markets are almost the same size?
- crabl 7y agoI don't know about that... I think the only conclusion you could draw from this might be that the market for iOS and Mac _RSS readers_ are almost the same size. You might even be able to stretch it to say they are the _same_ market.
- oefrha 7y agoI wouldn’t even draw that conclusion. NetNewsWire is very old school with an old fan base, and outside its existing fan base I don’t think it’s particularly relevant today (sorry). I doubt a user new to RSS or new to RSS reader on Apple platforms today would land on NNW. (I’m a longtime Reeder user.)
- jolux 7y agoThe new NNW is a total rewrite which started off as a different app.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoKinda. The original NetNewsWire was made by the same guy behind the current NetNewsWire. It's just that there was a period in between where NetNewsWire was owned and developed by someone else.
- leejoramo 7y agoSame guy. 100% different project. He required the NetNewsWire name well after the start of this new open source RSS reader.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIf it does the same thing and has the same name and creator, is it really a different project? Many software releases are actually complete rewrites under the hood. The only reason what became Net News Wire 5 originally had a different name is because NNW was owned by BlackPixel at that point.
- Fnoord 7y agoIn this case, the major version of the software was increased (ie. NetNewsWire 5.0).
- jolux 7y ago>If it does the same thing and has the same name and creator, is it really a different project? Yes? I don't even understand how this is a question. >The only reason what became Net News Wire 5 originally had a different name is because NNW was owned by BlackPixel at that point. From the post announcing the new name (https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home): >You probably know that I’ve been working on a free and open source reader named Evergreen. Evergreen 1.0 will be renamed NetNewsWire 5.0 — in other words, I’ve been working on NetNewsWire 5.0 all this time without knowing it! There's no evidence there is supposed to be continuity between the projects other than the name changing. You can say it's old school but the entire thing is written in Swift to modern UI standards. Not sure what more you could ask for.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago> Yes? I don't even understand how this is a question. Well that's where we philosophically disagree I guess. To me, version 10 of Mac OS is still the continuation of version 9 of Mac OS, even though they're fundamentally different systems under the hood.
- jolux 7y ago>To me, version 10 of Mac OS is still the continuation of version 9 of Mac OS, even though they're fundamentally different systems under the hood. Sure, and it carries over certain parts and leaves out others. Substantially similar? I'll buy that. Arguably the same thing, ontologically? I think that's a lot harder to prove, which is what the OP I replied to was saying.
- mrzool 7y agoBeing a heavy, long-time RSS user and having tested both the macOS and iOS app of NNW, I think you’re wrong. NNW it’s incredibly well-done, fast and polished, and it’s the best RSS app I’ve ever used, and I’ve used plenty. It’s not unrealistic to think it will become successful and relevant, maybe even contribute to a resurgence of RSS and bring in new users, given enough time.
- liamcardenas 7y agoOr the Mac market is so much smaller that the iOS market that there is practically no competition for an in-demand RSS reader on Mac and barely any space to enter the market on iOS.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoIsn't that weird though? Isn't reading the news the sort of thing you'd do on your phone more often than your computer?
- _jal 7y agoThis was my first thought. Especially as I would guess that Mac users who use RSS readers are extremely likely to have both Macs and iPhones and install their RSS reader on of them. (I fall in to this bucket.)
- anoncareer0212 7y agoApple fan/dev here: he's an old school Mac influencer who got famous for writing the first popular Mac RSS client, and blind to the effects his particular narrative would have on those numbers - it's the same 30,000 people who are hip to Mac blog culture, not independent discovery on two separate platforms
- webwielder2 7y agoThe Venn diagram of people who use BBedit and NetNewswire is roughly a circle.
- oefrha 7y agoPretty sure BBEdit has wider appeal than NetNewsWire. For one thing BBEdit is the only decent text editor on Mac App Store (not that it’s a high bar to clear).
- wkearney99 7y agoIt sucked less. Loved that tag line.
- yborg 7y agoI've switched to CotEditor for lightweight text editing.
- dclusin 7y agoThank you for this. I've been using SublimeText as a text editor but always felt weird since its targeted as a more powerful quasi-ide... This fits the bill nicely for what I want.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoThe only thing that stops me from using CotEditor is the inability to open a directory rather than individual files.
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- larrik 7y ago> Yes, the iOS app has more downloads, and it got there in only a few weeks. But if the iOS market were so much larger than the Mac market, you’d have expected this to happen within a day or two of launch day. Based on what logic? Everything about this article feels like it's based on vague and incorrect assumptions.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI feel like being on Hacker News sometimes warps the context of a personal blog post. If I put out a tweet that said "Huh, my app got about the same number of downloads on iOS and Mac, I think the market's about the same for certain types of apps" would you say my tweet is full of vagaries and incorrect assumptions?
- throwqwerty 7y agothe difference between your hypothetical tweet and this article is that humble qualifier "I think". what I've seen hn (and startup culture in general) distort is people's confidence in their own opinions. this is probably because it is repeated ad nauseum that you cannot start a successful startup without being an iconoclastic innovator. what isn't repeated ad nauseum is that you should save that kind of arrogance for your vc pitch rather than take it on as a mantle.
- addicted44 7y agoOne of the first things I learnt in English 101 is that "I think" is redundant. Your writing something automatically implies that it's what you think. Unless you explicitly say something is a "fact" or quote a 3rd party.
- kranner 7y agoIt is not always redundant. It can be used to politely signal that you may be wrong about something you are asserting, even when you are sure about it and everyone knows you are sure. This is especially helpful when you have visible authority over the other parties in the discussion.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ilikehurdles 7y agoAny iOS app has a ton of competition within its category for a many-times larger audience. Any macOS app has very little competition for a tiny audience. 36k downloads can mean that you've captured a larger audience on one platform than the other, and that seems more reasonable than the conclusion that the audience sizes are the same.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago> And, given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days, a Mac app could be more profitable than an iOS app. And you can charge more for a Mac app.
- monadic2 7y agoMarkets for RSS app developers^
- obarthelemy 7y agoActually, when Apple launched the Airbuds, I computed that it was very likely the AirBuds would generate more profit for Apple than Mac hardware. IIRC assuming 70% profit on the Airbuds and 30% on the Mac (because lots more R&D, lots more support, lots more warranty, lots more dev...), a 30% attach rate made the Airbuds more profitable.
- jurmous 7y agoAirPods
- ksec 7y agoUm, what has this got to do with this article? Let's just assume AirPods did make 3x more Net profits than Mac. AirPod ASP is roughly ~$169, Mac ASP is roughly ~$1300, AirPods would still need to sell roughly 2.6 times more for it to be more profitable than Mac. That is 46M to 50M AirPod per year. Even the most optimistic estimate of AirPod sales fall far below that number.
- mattl 7y ago# Air Bud * Budget $3 million * Box office $27,771,629 # Air Bud: Golden Receiver * Budget $11 million * Box office $10,224,116 Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch and Air Bud: Spikes Back are direct-to-DVD movies, so we don't know about their box office performance, sadly.
- obarthelemy 7y agoRSS readers are a very specialized market. Around me, only techies and nerds have heard of it. Mobile Natives haven't and are using FB/I/Twitter instead (sad !). So this boils down to th enerd market on iOS and MacOS is the same size. I'd go one step furter: it's probably not only the same size, but, simply, the exact same.
- ipqk 7y agoYou gotta control here for variables, hon.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoDiscoverability is horrible on the iOS App Store. I have looked for a good RSS reader on there in the past and only been served shovelware. I found out about NNW from DF the other day. Even after using and installing it, it is nowhere to be seen when I search for RSS. Apples broken App Store system surfaces cheap crappy apps. Apple wants users to make impulse purchases so they can skim 30% off the top. It’s a bad experience and is doing tremendous long term damage. Steve Jobs would be pissed.
- quesera 7y ago> Steve Jobs would be pissed Discoverability on the App Store has always been horrible. That, and App Store performance (search, page load, etc) are high on the list of things that baffle me most about Apple. These are not hard problems to fix. There is no incentive to not fix them. Customers are suffering. FTFAS.
- arvinsim 7y ago> There is no incentive to not fix them. I think there is an incentive not to. If you buy Apple hardware, you are stuck with these stores. They know you will complain but ultimately comply and accept.
- leadingthenet 7y agoThat makes no sense. Wouldn't Apple want you to download as many apps / spend as much money on new shiny things as possible? I think it's just incompetence.
- abdulmuhaimin 7y agoyou mentioned zero incentive. no incentive to fix =/= incentive to not fix
- lonelappde 7y agoI can't even remember where App Store hides the search button every time I look for an app (which I have to do because iOS provides no other way to search for an app already installed on my device)
- pier25 7y ago> given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days Do you agree HN?
- gnachman 7y agoI write both: iOS during the day and macOS at night. iOS is significantly less buggy and has less legacy baggage than macOS. iOS has some features that macOS doesn't, so there is more to learn. I spend a lot less time working around platform brokenness on iOS than on macOS. macOS lets you do a lot more than iOS in ways that are unmaintainable (e.g., private APIs), which helps you create accidental complexity for yourself. Both platforms have a long tail of little-known behaviors (such as accessibility features) that make it hard to create well behaved applications. But iOS mostly just works (once you know which features are toxic and avoid them), while macOS's brokenness has completely metastasized.
- hellofunk 7y agoI’m curious which features you would advise a dev to avoid in iOS, because their problems, i.e. toxicity. I’m getting more into iOS programming and it would be great to know some pitfalls on the roadmap.
- gnachman 7y agoAnything added after iOS 6 is the cheeky answer, but it’s not totally wrong either. Auto layout is incredibly hard to debug; it’s great when it works right, though, fwiw. The audio APIs are a garbage fire (equally on both platforms, at least!) Mapkit has a lot of sharp edges if you try to do anything more than Apple envisioned, which is true of a lot of iOS and macOS APIs. View controller transitions are a mess, but they may have fixed the bugs by now—I’ve stayed away since being traumatized by them five years back. The Metal shader compiler is an absolute shit show of bugs on the Mac, but is better on iOS. Core Bluetooth has caused me pain (just doesn’t work sometimes). Stringly types objective c-isms like KVO. In app purchases are a mess (I’m told, haven’t used it myself). CoreData might look like a good idea but you will live to regret it if it’s an important part of your app. UITableView is really powerful but also gets complex fast, with legacy baggage showing up when you try to get fancy (like auto layout and dynamic row height). The security API is hard to use correctly, also on both platforms. Mostly though Xcode is the worst piece of software I’ve ever used, besides Wind River’s IDE and Windows ME.
- ksec 7y ago>News reading is probably more of an iOS thing than a Mac thing in general I think that is where the assumption gone wrong. News Reading /= RSS. I mostly consume Social Media on my Mobile. Or easy to read, digest, bite-size information. Easily hoping on and off in the timeline. My RSS feed is none of that, for me it tends to require more focus and longer time to digest. Hence I never do any RSS reading on mobile.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- supernes 7y agoThe way I understand it is that you can reach roughly the same amount of users on both marketplaces, which goes to show just how horrible discoverability is on the iOS store.