There's an old diagram (now a meme) of the points where WWII bombers were hit and survived to have those hits recorded; the underlying theme is that it's the pl

There's an old diagram (now a meme) of the points where WWII bombers were hit and survived to have those hits recorded; the underlying theme is that it's the places where hits weren't recorded that were actually fatal. Looking at whether the App Store was sufficient in its "developer love," and looking at what applications were rejected... paints over what applications might have surfaced if its policies were different, but instead were discouraged before they even began. One of the worst things about the App Store is that there are very few "labors of love" there - very few (if any) quality free-to-play games that don't try to aggressively monetize in-app transactions, very few "shareware" style apps that rival paid subscription apps in quality. There's no real way to quantify what might have existed, but we do know that there were many shareware developers in the early 2000s that wouldn't touch microtransactions with a ten foot pole - where did they go? I think, in part, all this is due to the App Store process being so wildly unpredictable and exhausting. If you develop something useful, it may be rejected on a whim; the only developers who aren't discouraged after that, are the ones whose investors pay them to not be discouraged, may reach out via backchannels to ensure that rejections are escalated, can fund a pivot if necessary, and in turn expect outsized returns. And so every app becomes optimized for monetary return - which, of course, makes Apple extremely profitable. It's a really sad situation.