12 ms·

An iOS Developer’s Wishlist

52 points by treskot 13y ago

ckoglmeier 13y ago
Some good ones on that list. I'd definitely add A/B testing support built into the ecosystem (and controlled remotely) as well as alpha/beta release support for new releases.
milk3422 13y ago
I have to agree, my largest gripe with the app store is searching for an app. When I look for a decent app, I currently google for app reviews, then go back to the app store find it by name and download it.
- MBCook 13y ago
  Searching in the App store is a disaster. If you search for "Twitter", you'll get the official app (which I expect was hardcoded) and... a bunch of garbage. No Tweetbot or Twitterific. The fact that developers get to pick categories and that's not reviewed is a disaster. Let's look at the top board games: 3. Doodle Kingdom, some kind of puzzle game 8. Phase 10, a card game 9. Doodle God, another puzzle game 12. Skip-Bo, a card game Other categories are worse. Minecraft (and it's clones) are near the top of most categories. It's basically impossible to find anything if you don't know the name ahead of time.
akramhussein 13y ago
Xcode could do with auto-creating the stubs for methods required by protocol interface. My 2 cents.
- sosborn 13y ago
  This might help: http://nshipster.com/xcode-snippets/ http://nshipster.com/xcode-snippets/
berzniz 13y ago
Love this wish list! Some great points you got there. About videos: I rather if they'll allow animated gifs instead. Indie developers just don't have enough money to spend on videos and we'll lose to the bigger companies.
xamlhacker 13y ago
I don't develop for iOS so this one surprised me: "How many downloads on iPad, iPhone, iPod separately". Does Apple really not tell you the device breakup?
- dan1234 13y ago
  No, the built in sales reporting is very basic. You need to build in analytics if you want a device or OS breakdown.
ja27 13y ago
Give me a way to (optionally) provide separate packages for retina / non-retina and iPad / iPhone / iPhone 5. Sucks to have iPad retina assets sitting an iPhone.
- jinushaun 13y ago
  Yes! Multi-targeted IPAs! Don't force iPhone 3GS users to download retina iPad assets from store. Have xcode produce multiple IPA files. Android and Play Store already does this.
- grey-area 13y ago
  Or better yet, provide a way to provide resolution-independent assets for app interfaces in a format like svg or pdf, instead of providing bitmaps for 7 zillion different sizes. It sucks to have retina assets full stop and it's only going to get worse as screen sizes change gradually and we end up with a huge number of legacy sizes. Now that ios7 is all about flat design, they could look at moving developers away from producing bitmaps which fit the screen and towards using repeated patterns for grounds and resolution independent artwork on top.
  - gress 13y ago
    Resolution independent assets do not work. http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-sizes/ http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-sizes/
    - grey-area 13y ago
      As screens get more and more detailed, trying to adjust pixels individually on say icons for each size the OS requires is pointless (I believe the count is 15 and rising). You need to design the icon with the usage in mind, and make sure it doesn't have too much detail which will matter when it is scaled. See the twitter icon for a good example of one which works at any size and could be scaled without losing its impact. IMO all icons on ios should be like that - simple and iconic. Same goes for icons in toolbars etc. The vast majority of developers simply scale down icons and other assets to fit the various sizes Apple requires, so in practice the retina approach just means the same assets being scaled resized and cropped lots of times by developers to jump through the hoops Apple requires, and the problem is only going to get worse. So I respectfully disagree, there are no easy solutions in this area, however I think resolution independence has better possible solutions than designing something as vector, then manually producing scaled rasters at every possible display size. At the very least Xcode should take care of that, but I'd prefer if iOS did, and accepted vector images within apps to start with - it could easily cache bitmap representations as it needs them, and then it could change those on the fly when screen sizes/resolutions change instead of requiring new binaries.
abvdasker 13y ago
How about not coding in Objective-C amirite?
- sdegutis 13y ago
  I'd really love to see Julia start being used for this sort of thing. You can trade off between performance and abstraction within the same language. No more bouncing between C and Objective-C, with all the difficulties that can involve, especially due to C's runtime limitations.
  - stephencanon 13y ago
    You literally cannot "bounce between C and Objective-C”, since all valid C is valid Objective-C. You’re just “writing Objective-C”.
    - sdegutis 13y ago
      That's a bit naive. Consider writing a program that's mostly Objective-C but needs to build up some C data structures for performance. A lot of that code for building it up, and the representation, will be written in C. Interfacing between the two will require careful design, in order to maintain performance and safety. This is especially true in the days of ARC, where you can't just store Objective-C types in C structs.
      - stephencanon 13y ago
        > A lot of that code for building it up, and the representation, will be written without using the dynamic-disptach and reference-counting features of Objective-C. Fixed. > require careful design, in order to maintain performance and safety. In my experience, providing both performance and safety always requires careful design, regardless of the language being used. People who insist otherwise usually turn out not to have a very clear understanding of the state of the art with regard to either “performance” or “safety” or both. This is especially true in the days of ARC, where you can't just store Objective-C types in C structs. If it hurts when you do it, don’t do it. Some things need to be Obj-C objects. Many things don’t. I realize that this is glib, but it is absolutely possible to efficiently combine low-level “C-style” and high-level "message-passing/collections/object-style" Objective-C. It requires some attention to detail, but so do most things worth doing. As you build up good habits and idioms, it gets easier and easier.
yojo 13y ago
Tried to read this on my phone, but 20% of the page was locked in a non-dismissable banner. Fire your marketing team.
acdha 13y ago
#13 should be even more generic: not just “Set default apps in iOS” but introducing something like the desktop OS X services, Android intents, etc. which would allow an app to start an operation with a type of data (i.e. a URL, an email address, a picture, etc.) and allow the user to send it to an arbitrary app. You should be able to send a URL to Instapaper or send a picture in Dropbox/Facebook/etc. without making either one your default "browser", "photo viewer", etc.
- ambler0 13y ago
  This has been my number 1 request for iOS since the beginning. I'm starting to think it's never going to happen.
  - acdha 13y ago
    Ditto - very odd given that it's both a huge usability improvement and something Apple already had developed. A little time porting the services menu from OS X to a touch equivalent and it'd be done, probably without even needing an API change.
    - gress 13y ago
      It's a usability improvement for power users but a massive increase in complexity for regular users who comprise the vast majority of the user-base. I think they should solve the problem, but I don't think the existing solutions are good enough.
      - acdha 13y ago
        Have you ever seen a normal user have to deal with sharing data between two apps which haven't hard-coded support? Most people just give up and think you can't do it. With a little streamlined support – i.e. default email, browser — and some basic UI thought (e.g. remembering the last / most frequent choices, setting per-app defaults, etc.) the current situation would be a lot less painful.
  - yawz 13y ago
kumarm 13y ago
10 of 13 are provided by Android (Google Play) Today. You might as well ask Apple to make app store like Google Play :)
- EStudley 13y ago
  If it works, why not implement it? Do they have to disregard anything Google does first?
- r00fus 13y ago
  Given the successful features of iOS7 that were really popularized on Android, first (that I mostly love), I say yes. The App Store should take the good parts of the Play Store.
jamesjguthrie 13y ago
I'd like to have: 1) Device testing without a dev account or jailbreaking. 2) Xcode on Windows and Linux. I don't think these are unreasonable!
- nav1 13y ago
  > 1) Device testing without a dev account or jailbreaking. I wish they would let users install their applications without a dev account. I really don't want to pay $90 just to be able to do that. Being able to sell your apps on the App Store would justify the price, but otherwise it's quite unreasonable.
- jarjoura 13y ago
  Well I guess in theory since you could build clang/llvm for Windows and Linux you could build the iOS cross-compiler toolset. The code-signing (not sure if that one is open sourced already for OS X) would need to be ported. App installation could work over https similar to TestFlight. SO yeah, lots of missing pieces in there too I'm sure, but doesn't seem impossible if you're feeling up to the challenge.
  - jevinskie 13y ago
    Yes, build your own clang and extract the SDKs (headers + libraries) from the Xcode DMG. You can use (or at least you used to be able to) maloader [0] to run codesign. [0]: https://github.com/shinh/maloader https://github.com/shinh/maloader
joosters 13y ago
"App deletes/uninstalls – How many users deleted the app and a way of identifying them (an ID or equivalent)" That's none of your damn business, app developers.
- LordIllidan 13y ago
  I agree that identifying them feels like a huge privacy issue - but geographic information would be interesting.
- stinos 13y ago
  came here to post the exact same sentiments. As if it isn't enough Apple decides what can and cannot be installed, now you want an ID on that as well?
patja 13y ago
How about user profiles so a family can share an ipad?
TheMagicHorsey 13y ago
Apple doesn't really treat its developers very well. It focuses on consumers. Some of the things on this list are shockingly bad design decisions from a developers point of view. And they are minor thing to fix. The fact that they haven't been fixed, this many years after the launch of the App store, tells you something about Apple's fondness for developers. Remember, the original iOS device didn't even have an App store. Jobs had to be convinced to let you guys onto the platform. I think that in the long term that attitude is going to come back to haunt Apple. Say what you will, but Microsoft always treated developers like its customers, not as some annoying beggars to be dealt with only under geneva convention standards, and no better.
- jarjoura 13y ago
  I think this is a bit of an unfair comment. Apple has been constantly improving their App Store. When it launched it was literally a direct port of their Music store over with little thought of how Applications and their use cases actually differ. The first set of requests from the OP makes is more general. Plus, I agree, the store really needs better search, but this will benefit both consumers and developers. Though honestly, search is already 100x better than it was just a couple years ago, so I am not worried they are not aware of that. As far as analytics and review data go, MixPanel and Flurry have been amazing at tracking everything I've ever needed from app usage. The only use case I can see from Apple breaking apart iPad/iPhone from downloads becomes useful only when you have users who install apps but never launch them. I really like the App Store now, it feels very organic with very visible editorializing going on.
  - zbowling 13y ago
    Didn't you use to work for Apple though in a past life jarjar? :-) You are entirely correct though. I would still love to be able to reply and do customer support in the comments and reviews like Google Play. Star rating need to go though.
jarjoura 13y ago
My #1 would be Beta testing through the store. We need a way to get an application out to set of people to test in the field. TestFlight requires managing a provisioning profile that has been filling up quickly as the group of testers come in and out of the program. We cannot use the corporate profile as that requires the devices to be company owned and that is just not possible since we want to stay in compliance. Google Play store launched a similar system this past year that has been very helpful to our Android testers. Now I'm just waiting for Apple to follow up with something similar.
applecore 13y ago
Why is app discovery so bad? Searching for an app in the App Store is a disaster.
- adregan 13y ago
  I think it's because of the App Store's roots in iTunes. Searching for media—music, let's say—usually requires you to know the name of the artist, album, or song. How rarely does someone know the name or developer of an app? If I were to search for music in the same way I search for apps, I'd never find anything I was really looking for. The terms are too broad. However, searching for music (even if using overly broad search terms) at least lets you preview a song, so you can judge if you're about to make a good purchase.
treskot 13y ago
A huge thank you for all your comments and feedback. I've updated the blog post with 6 more wishlist items based on your replies.

52 points by treskot 13y ago

Some good ones on that list. I'd definitely add A/B testing support built into the ecosystem (and controlled remotely) as well as alpha/beta release support for new releases.

milk3422 13y ago

I have to agree, my largest gripe with the app store is searching for an app. When I look for a decent app, I currently google for app reviews, then go back to the app store find it by name and download it.

MBCook 13y ago
Searching in the App store is a disaster. If you search for "Twitter", you'll get the official app (which I expect was hardcoded) and... a bunch of garbage. No Tweetbot or Twitterific. The fact that developers get to pick categories and that's not reviewed is a disaster. Let's look at the top board games: 3. Doodle Kingdom, some kind of puzzle game 8. Phase 10, a card game 9. Doodle God, another puzzle game 12. Skip-Bo, a card game Other categories are worse. Minecraft (and it's clones) are near the top of most categories. It's basically impossible to find anything if you don't know the name ahead of time.

akramhussein 13y ago

Xcode could do with auto-creating the stubs for methods required by protocol interface. My 2 cents.

sosborn 13y ago
This might help: http://nshipster.com/xcode-snippets/ http://nshipster.com/xcode-snippets/

berzniz 13y ago

Love this wish list! Some great points you got there. About videos: I rather if they'll allow animated gifs instead. Indie developers just don't have enough money to spend on videos and we'll lose to the bigger companies.

xamlhacker 13y ago

I don't develop for iOS so this one surprised me: "How many downloads on iPad, iPhone, iPod separately". Does Apple really not tell you the device breakup?

dan1234 13y ago
No, the built in sales reporting is very basic. You need to build in analytics if you want a device or OS breakdown.

ja27 13y ago

Give me a way to (optionally) provide separate packages for retina / non-retina and iPad / iPhone / iPhone 5. Sucks to have iPad retina assets sitting an iPhone.

jinushaun 13y ago
Yes! Multi-targeted IPAs! Don't force iPhone 3GS users to download retina iPad assets from store. Have xcode produce multiple IPA files. Android and Play Store already does this.
grey-area 13y ago
Or better yet, provide a way to provide resolution-independent assets for app interfaces in a format like svg or pdf, instead of providing bitmaps for 7 zillion different sizes. It sucks to have retina assets full stop and it's only going to get worse as screen sizes change gradually and we end up with a huge number of legacy sizes. Now that ios7 is all about flat design, they could look at moving developers away from producing bitmaps which fit the screen and towards using repeated patterns for grounds and resolution independent artwork on top.
- gress 13y ago
  Resolution independent assets do not work. http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-sizes/ http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-sizes/
  - grey-area 13y ago
    As screens get more and more detailed, trying to adjust pixels individually on say icons for each size the OS requires is pointless (I believe the count is 15 and rising). You need to design the icon with the usage in mind, and make sure it doesn't have too much detail which will matter when it is scaled. See the twitter icon for a good example of one which works at any size and could be scaled without losing its impact. IMO all icons on ios should be like that - simple and iconic. Same goes for icons in toolbars etc. The vast majority of developers simply scale down icons and other assets to fit the various sizes Apple requires, so in practice the retina approach just means the same assets being scaled resized and cropped lots of times by developers to jump through the hoops Apple requires, and the problem is only going to get worse. So I respectfully disagree, there are no easy solutions in this area, however I think resolution independence has better possible solutions than designing something as vector, then manually producing scaled rasters at every possible display size. At the very least Xcode should take care of that, but I'd prefer if iOS did, and accepted vector images within apps to start with - it could easily cache bitmap representations as it needs them, and then it could change those on the fly when screen sizes/resolutions change instead of requiring new binaries.

abvdasker 13y ago

How about not coding in Objective-C amirite?

sdegutis 13y ago
I'd really love to see Julia start being used for this sort of thing. You can trade off between performance and abstraction within the same language. No more bouncing between C and Objective-C, with all the difficulties that can involve, especially due to C's runtime limitations.
- stephencanon 13y ago
  You literally cannot "bounce between C and Objective-C”, since all valid C is valid Objective-C. You’re just “writing Objective-C”.
  - sdegutis 13y ago
    That's a bit naive. Consider writing a program that's mostly Objective-C but needs to build up some C data structures for performance. A lot of that code for building it up, and the representation, will be written in C. Interfacing between the two will require careful design, in order to maintain performance and safety. This is especially true in the days of ARC, where you can't just store Objective-C types in C structs.
    - stephencanon 13y ago
      > A lot of that code for building it up, and the representation, will be written without using the dynamic-disptach and reference-counting features of Objective-C. Fixed. > require careful design, in order to maintain performance and safety. In my experience, providing both performance and safety always requires careful design, regardless of the language being used. People who insist otherwise usually turn out not to have a very clear understanding of the state of the art with regard to either “performance” or “safety” or both. This is especially true in the days of ARC, where you can't just store Objective-C types in C structs. If it hurts when you do it, don’t do it. Some things need to be Obj-C objects. Many things don’t. I realize that this is glib, but it is absolutely possible to efficiently combine low-level “C-style” and high-level "message-passing/collections/object-style" Objective-C. It requires some attention to detail, but so do most things worth doing. As you build up good habits and idioms, it gets easier and easier.

yojo 13y ago

Tried to read this on my phone, but 20% of the page was locked in a non-dismissable banner. Fire your marketing team.

acdha 13y ago

#13 should be even more generic: not just “Set default apps in iOS” but introducing something like the desktop OS X services, Android intents, etc. which would allow an app to start an operation with a type of data (i.e. a URL, an email address, a picture, etc.) and allow the user to send it to an arbitrary app. You should be able to send a URL to Instapaper or send a picture in Dropbox/Facebook/etc. without making either one your default "browser", "photo viewer", etc.

ambler0 13y ago
This has been my number 1 request for iOS since the beginning. I'm starting to think it's never going to happen.
- acdha 13y ago
  Ditto - very odd given that it's both a huge usability improvement and something Apple already had developed. A little time porting the services menu from OS X to a touch equivalent and it'd be done, probably without even needing an API change.
  - gress 13y ago
    It's a usability improvement for power users but a massive increase in complexity for regular users who comprise the vast majority of the user-base. I think they should solve the problem, but I don't think the existing solutions are good enough.
    - acdha 13y ago
      Have you ever seen a normal user have to deal with sharing data between two apps which haven't hard-coded support? Most people just give up and think you can't do it. With a little streamlined support – i.e. default email, browser — and some basic UI thought (e.g. remembering the last / most frequent choices, setting per-app defaults, etc.) the current situation would be a lot less painful.
- yawz 13y ago

kumarm 13y ago

10 of 13 are provided by Android (Google Play) Today. You might as well ask Apple to make app store like Google Play :)

EStudley 13y ago
If it works, why not implement it? Do they have to disregard anything Google does first?
r00fus 13y ago
Given the successful features of iOS7 that were really popularized on Android, first (that I mostly love), I say yes. The App Store should take the good parts of the Play Store.

jamesjguthrie 13y ago

I'd like to have: 1) Device testing without a dev account or jailbreaking. 2) Xcode on Windows and Linux. I don't think these are unreasonable!

nav1 13y ago
> 1) Device testing without a dev account or jailbreaking. I wish they would let users install their applications without a dev account. I really don't want to pay $90 just to be able to do that. Being able to sell your apps on the App Store would justify the price, but otherwise it's quite unreasonable.
jarjoura 13y ago
Well I guess in theory since you could build clang/llvm for Windows and Linux you could build the iOS cross-compiler toolset. The code-signing (not sure if that one is open sourced already for OS X) would need to be ported. App installation could work over https similar to TestFlight. SO yeah, lots of missing pieces in there too I'm sure, but doesn't seem impossible if you're feeling up to the challenge.
- jevinskie 13y ago
  Yes, build your own clang and extract the SDKs (headers + libraries) from the Xcode DMG. You can use (or at least you used to be able to) maloader [0] to run codesign. [0]: https://github.com/shinh/maloader https://github.com/shinh/maloader

joosters 13y ago

"App deletes/uninstalls – How many users deleted the app and a way of identifying them (an ID or equivalent)" That's none of your damn business, app developers.

LordIllidan 13y ago
I agree that identifying them feels like a huge privacy issue - but geographic information would be interesting.
stinos 13y ago
came here to post the exact same sentiments. As if it isn't enough Apple decides what can and cannot be installed, now you want an ID on that as well?

patja 13y ago

How about user profiles so a family can share an ipad?

TheMagicHorsey 13y ago

Apple doesn't really treat its developers very well. It focuses on consumers. Some of the things on this list are shockingly bad design decisions from a developers point of view. And they are minor thing to fix. The fact that they haven't been fixed, this many years after the launch of the App store, tells you something about Apple's fondness for developers. Remember, the original iOS device didn't even have an App store. Jobs had to be convinced to let you guys onto the platform. I think that in the long term that attitude is going to come back to haunt Apple. Say what you will, but Microsoft always treated developers like its customers, not as some annoying beggars to be dealt with only under geneva convention standards, and no better.

jarjoura 13y ago
I think this is a bit of an unfair comment. Apple has been constantly improving their App Store. When it launched it was literally a direct port of their Music store over with little thought of how Applications and their use cases actually differ. The first set of requests from the OP makes is more general. Plus, I agree, the store really needs better search, but this will benefit both consumers and developers. Though honestly, search is already 100x better than it was just a couple years ago, so I am not worried they are not aware of that. As far as analytics and review data go, MixPanel and Flurry have been amazing at tracking everything I've ever needed from app usage. The only use case I can see from Apple breaking apart iPad/iPhone from downloads becomes useful only when you have users who install apps but never launch them. I really like the App Store now, it feels very organic with very visible editorializing going on.
- zbowling 13y ago
  Didn't you use to work for Apple though in a past life jarjar? :-) You are entirely correct though. I would still love to be able to reply and do customer support in the comments and reviews like Google Play. Star rating need to go though.

jarjoura 13y ago

My #1 would be Beta testing through the store. We need a way to get an application out to set of people to test in the field. TestFlight requires managing a provisioning profile that has been filling up quickly as the group of testers come in and out of the program. We cannot use the corporate profile as that requires the devices to be company owned and that is just not possible since we want to stay in compliance. Google Play store launched a similar system this past year that has been very helpful to our Android testers. Now I'm just waiting for Apple to follow up with something similar.

applecore 13y ago

Why is app discovery so bad? Searching for an app in the App Store is a disaster.

adregan 13y ago
I think it's because of the App Store's roots in iTunes. Searching for media—music, let's say—usually requires you to know the name of the artist, album, or song. How rarely does someone know the name or developer of an app? If I were to search for music in the same way I search for apps, I'd never find anything I was really looking for. The terms are too broad. However, searching for music (even if using overly broad search terms) at least lets you preview a song, so you can judge if you're about to make a good purchase.

treskot 13y ago

A huge thank you for all your comments and feedback. I've updated the blog post with 6 more wishlist items based on your replies.