4 ms·

Also no push notifications which at this point is the only reason to bother with native iOS apps as everything else is off limits anyway.

jdrc 5y ago
That seems like another shot in the foot though. Apple and google are gatekeepers of notifications. Email is still the most robust choice for infrequent notifications. I wish email had been extended to implement temporary notifications
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
  The problem with email on iOS is that there's no way to do instantaneous notifications without paying Apple at least $100/year for a custom app with a certificate to do push. The mail app only does polling (no IMAP IDLE) so the latency on notifications is very high there. The consequences of the iPhone on the internet are extreme and I don't think most of the people involved in internet protocol design have fully realized just how bad it is.
shagie 5y ago
If push notifications are an important value add, which go through Apple's servers is it reasonable for Apple to have companies that make money using there services subsidize the free ones? Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"? There's a question of "How does Apple pay for services?" Yes, it is currently quite profitable. If moving to a 3rd party payment processor with no associated fee causes the App Store to become unprofitable, what steps is Apple allowed to take to return it to a profit center?
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
  Why do they have to go through apple’s servers? Why can’t users select an alternative push provider? Why can’t apps be allowed to just maintain their own socket if the user is ok with the battery impact?
  - shagie 5y ago
    There are alternatives. They're not free. https://ios.libhunt.com/categories/1351-push-notification-providers https://ios.libhunt.com/categories/1351-push-notification-pr... Another part to this is that people have been highly critical of Apple when their battery performance is poor, not realizing that its an app that is consuming the battery. That has been mitigated some by Apple showing which apps are consuming the battery the most, but people tend to blame the OS rather than the application when something goes wrong. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... > The most impressive things to read on Raymond’s weblog are the stories of the incredible efforts the Windows team has made over the years to support backwards compatibility: >> Look at the scenario from the customer’s standpoint. You bought programs X, Y and Z. You then upgraded to Windows XP. Your computer now crashes randomly, and program Z doesn’t work at all. You’re going to tell your friends, “Don’t upgrade to Windows XP. It crashes randomly, and it’s not compatible with program Z.” Are you going to debug your system to determine that program X is causing the crashes, and that program Z doesn’t work because it is using undocumented window messages? Of course not. You’re going to return the Windows XP box for a refund. (You bought programs X, Y, and Z some months ago. The 30-day return policy no longer applies to them. The only thing you can return is Windows XP.) While Apple doesn't go that far to preserve backwards compatibility, they're still the ones that take the heat when a popular app is excessively battery consuming as its the battery indicator that's going down.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  They are an important value add only because iOS restricts background processes and forces developers to rely on push notifications. You may do without push notifications on Linux, or Windows, but on iOS certain classes of apps are impossible to implement without them.
- enragedcacti 5y ago
  > Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"? I think this has been a missing piece of the conversation for the most part. Apple needs to pay for servers, upkeep, development, etc. and deserve to make (some) profit. Why is the conversation about whether Apple can charge 30% or 0% or somewhere in between per transaction rather than based on actual usages and costs associated with operating the platform? AWS offers similar features and technologies but we don't see them charging based on your product's revenue. Why should Apple? Price setting is obviously a problem though if Apple continues to be the only company allowed to provide a service like "App Review" or "10k push notifications".
  - extropy 5y ago
    Fair question. If apple charged for the actual costs it would be a non issue. Instead they charge 10x the industry fees for credit card transactions and gives the rest for "free". And that puts any app that has considerable running costs at disadvantage. And gives competitive disadvantage to Apple's own products that get to pay for the actual costs.
  - shagie 5y ago
    Amazon sends a bill rather than having it be part of the "you're making money, we're taking a bit of it." https://smarthomestarter.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-create-an-alexa-skill/ https://smarthomestarter.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-create... > The determining factor of the pricing structure for creating Skills depends primarily on their complexity. > In other words, the more complicated the request being processed (and therefore, more cloud services required), the more it will cost to publish the Skill. With that model, free skills cost their developers money. ... Though, I'm still going to point out - https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/in-skill-purchase/isp-payments.html https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/in-skill-purch... > Amazon pays developers 70% of the marketplace list price for all sales. So, not only do you pay to have AWS crunch your data, but if you're charing for that with some in skill purchase, Amazon is taking a 30% cut.
heleninboodler 5y ago
And I've led a very rich dating-app life with all push notifications turned off anyway. It's not healthy to be a slave to dating apps. I would 100% welcome web-based versions of them.
- verst 5y ago
  Bumble, Tinder and OkCupid certainly still have web clients. Never tried any of these on mobile web though.
  - heleninboodler 5y ago
    Oh, nice. Back when I was using them, Bumble and Tinder definitely didn't, although I did find one kinda hacky Tinder web-based thing that was a result of reverse-engineering their APIs. Glad to hear they're making progress, and I hope they are mobile-friendly. It should be very easy to implement the basic functionality on mobile. As pointed out, messaging will take a lot of work, but it's doable. I wouldn't trust OKCupid to be able to do a decent mobile web UI, because they can't really be trusted to do either a regular web UI or a decent mobile app. :D Their entire UX was always just so full of jank and they were constantly tweaking it with the apparent goal of making nobody understand how anything works or is supposed to work.

jdrc 5y ago

That seems like another shot in the foot though. Apple and google are gatekeepers of notifications. Email is still the most robust choice for infrequent notifications. I wish email had been extended to implement temporary notifications

pinephoneguy 5y ago
The problem with email on iOS is that there's no way to do instantaneous notifications without paying Apple at least $100/year for a custom app with a certificate to do push. The mail app only does polling (no IMAP IDLE) so the latency on notifications is very high there. The consequences of the iPhone on the internet are extreme and I don't think most of the people involved in internet protocol design have fully realized just how bad it is.

shagie 5y ago

If push notifications are an important value add, which go through Apple's servers is it reasonable for Apple to have companies that make money using there services subsidize the free ones? Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"? There's a question of "How does Apple pay for services?" Yes, it is currently quite profitable. If moving to a 3rd party payment processor with no associated fee causes the App Store to become unprofitable, what steps is Apple allowed to take to return it to a profit center?

pinephoneguy 5y ago
Why do they have to go through apple’s servers? Why can’t users select an alternative push provider? Why can’t apps be allowed to just maintain their own socket if the user is ok with the battery impact?
- shagie 5y ago
  There are alternatives. They're not free. https://ios.libhunt.com/categories/1351-push-notification-providers https://ios.libhunt.com/categories/1351-push-notification-pr... Another part to this is that people have been highly critical of Apple when their battery performance is poor, not realizing that its an app that is consuming the battery. That has been mitigated some by Apple showing which apps are consuming the battery the most, but people tend to blame the OS rather than the application when something goes wrong. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... > The most impressive things to read on Raymond’s weblog are the stories of the incredible efforts the Windows team has made over the years to support backwards compatibility: >> Look at the scenario from the customer’s standpoint. You bought programs X, Y and Z. You then upgraded to Windows XP. Your computer now crashes randomly, and program Z doesn’t work at all. You’re going to tell your friends, “Don’t upgrade to Windows XP. It crashes randomly, and it’s not compatible with program Z.” Are you going to debug your system to determine that program X is causing the crashes, and that program Z doesn’t work because it is using undocumented window messages? Of course not. You’re going to return the Windows XP box for a refund. (You bought programs X, Y, and Z some months ago. The 30-day return policy no longer applies to them. The only thing you can return is Windows XP.) While Apple doesn't go that far to preserve backwards compatibility, they're still the ones that take the heat when a popular app is excessively battery consuming as its the battery indicator that's going down.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
They are an important value add only because iOS restricts background processes and forces developers to rely on push notifications. You may do without push notifications on Linux, or Windows, but on iOS certain classes of apps are impossible to implement without them.
enragedcacti 5y ago
> Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"? I think this has been a missing piece of the conversation for the most part. Apple needs to pay for servers, upkeep, development, etc. and deserve to make (some) profit. Why is the conversation about whether Apple can charge 30% or 0% or somewhere in between per transaction rather than based on actual usages and costs associated with operating the platform? AWS offers similar features and technologies but we don't see them charging based on your product's revenue. Why should Apple? Price setting is obviously a problem though if Apple continues to be the only company allowed to provide a service like "App Review" or "10k push notifications".
- extropy 5y ago
  Fair question. If apple charged for the actual costs it would be a non issue. Instead they charge 10x the industry fees for credit card transactions and gives the rest for "free". And that puts any app that has considerable running costs at disadvantage. And gives competitive disadvantage to Apple's own products that get to pay for the actual costs.
- shagie 5y ago
  Amazon sends a bill rather than having it be part of the "you're making money, we're taking a bit of it." https://smarthomestarter.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-create-an-alexa-skill/ https://smarthomestarter.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-create... > The determining factor of the pricing structure for creating Skills depends primarily on their complexity. > In other words, the more complicated the request being processed (and therefore, more cloud services required), the more it will cost to publish the Skill. With that model, free skills cost their developers money. ... Though, I'm still going to point out - https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/in-skill-purchase/isp-payments.html https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/in-skill-purch... > Amazon pays developers 70% of the marketplace list price for all sales. So, not only do you pay to have AWS crunch your data, but if you're charing for that with some in skill purchase, Amazon is taking a 30% cut.

heleninboodler 5y ago

And I've led a very rich dating-app life with all push notifications turned off anyway. It's not healthy to be a slave to dating apps. I would 100% welcome web-based versions of them.

verst 5y ago
Bumble, Tinder and OkCupid certainly still have web clients. Never tried any of these on mobile web though.
- heleninboodler 5y ago
  Oh, nice. Back when I was using them, Bumble and Tinder definitely didn't, although I did find one kinda hacky Tinder web-based thing that was a result of reverse-engineering their APIs. Glad to hear they're making progress, and I hope they are mobile-friendly. It should be very easy to implement the basic functionality on mobile. As pointed out, messaging will take a lot of work, but it's doable. I wouldn't trust OKCupid to be able to do a decent mobile web UI, because they can't really be trusted to do either a regular web UI or a decent mobile app. :D Their entire UX was always just so full of jank and they were constantly tweaking it with the apparent goal of making nobody understand how anything works or is supposed to work.