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Agree. Right now they are aggressively enforcing rules, but the rules are not producing a high quality bar. Apple needs to decide if they want the App Store to

Agree. Right now they are aggressively enforcing rules, but the rules are not producing a high quality bar. Apple needs to decide if they want the App Store to be carefully curated like an Apple retail store, or broad like Amazon.com. Today they're squeezing the quality while ignoring the shit; it's so backwards. It really feels like there's two teams with different priorities.

kbenson 6y ago
It makes perfect sense depending on how you look at it. If you look at it as a question of quality, and Apple wanting to keep a high bar for quality, it looks scatterbrained and ineffective. If you look at it as Apple trying to wring all the money they can out of the market, then it only makes sense for them to focus all their attention on the apps that are good enough to actually make money. If Apple truly cared about keeping the quality high in their walled garden, and it wasn't just about extracting all the money they could, wouldn't they do both?
- millstone 6y ago
  The "wring all the money out of the market" theory explains Hey and Fortnite, but not the many, many apps that receive arbitrary rejections, like this recent HN browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410652 This arbitrary friction of "what if the user searches for covid" is applied to useful software, but not Candy Crush clones. So naturally the store fills with shit. Even in the free app tier! In some weird way, this shows it's not all about the money, since they're fighting to keep out the quality free stuff too.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Well, who wants to pay for something when a good free alternative exists? And if people aren't paying, how is Apple going to get their 30%? Free apps are only in Apple's interest as much as they think it makes people like their platform more. I think they care less about that then they used to, since there's so many different things pulling and pushing people to use iOS already.

kbenson 6y ago

It makes perfect sense depending on how you look at it. If you look at it as a question of quality, and Apple wanting to keep a high bar for quality, it looks scatterbrained and ineffective. If you look at it as Apple trying to wring all the money they can out of the market, then it only makes sense for them to focus all their attention on the apps that are good enough to actually make money. If Apple truly cared about keeping the quality high in their walled garden, and it wasn't just about extracting all the money they could, wouldn't they do both?

millstone 6y ago
The "wring all the money out of the market" theory explains Hey and Fortnite, but not the many, many apps that receive arbitrary rejections, like this recent HN browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410652 This arbitrary friction of "what if the user searches for covid" is applied to useful software, but not Candy Crush clones. So naturally the store fills with shit. Even in the free app tier! In some weird way, this shows it's not all about the money, since they're fighting to keep out the quality free stuff too.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Well, who wants to pay for something when a good free alternative exists? And if people aren't paying, how is Apple going to get their 30%? Free apps are only in Apple's interest as much as they think it makes people like their platform more. I think they care less about that then they used to, since there's so many different things pulling and pushing people to use iOS already.