7 ms·

App Rot

207 points by tedlee 12y ago

yoodenvranx 12y ago
I really wish there would be a section in all app stores which shows a randomized list of "good" apps. I am not sure about exact criteria, but thede should be a good way to discover good and often downloaded apps which are not in the top 10.
- josefresco 12y ago
  What you're describing are "featured" apps, plucked out of the pile from Apple editors. I do wish there was more of this editorial work, and less reliance on "top lists" for app discovery.
janlukacs 12y ago
I simply hate the appstore - it's so full of useless bad quality apps - don't even get me started on games. i have only oppened it a couple of times in the past two years. They killed discovery for me, i'm not even interested in checking out new apps (still no trials?!).
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  A friend of mine runs a great magazine dedicated to uncovering the best games in the App Store. You might find it valuable: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/app-gamer-magazine-ultimate/id670097598?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/app-gamer-magazine-ultimate/...
andybak 12y ago
It's interesting that the trends Marco says are inevitable: 1. Use platform conventions over custom widgets 2. Favour responsive layouts over layouts tailored for each screen have long been the norm on Android. And since Holo - (1) has been far from a handicap. Apps that stuck to Holo (and now 'Material design') conventions were usually the most attractive. With regard to (2) - the way this has forced Apple's hand in hardware choices has been fascinating. Having to double resolution via retina rather than grow incrementally and the long delayed and slightly painful transition to a new aspect ratio for the iPhone 5.
martinald 12y ago
Really interesting. Anecdotally, I'm seeing people starting to abandon their iPads and go back to laptops (generally macbooks/ultrabooks) in meetings and the like. I think the keyboard is just too useful for most people. Smartphone usage is definitely not following a similar trend, though.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  That is going to change with the new IOS 8 keyboards. Believe me as an Android user it makes a world of difference in regards to how fast you can type.
  - WorldWideWayne 12y ago
    I wonder how useful the keyboard is with iOS software? Windows can be fully operated with just a keyboard and ~90% of OS X is operable via keyboard, but I don't see that being the case with iOS or Android.
- kayoone 12y ago
  Yep, that was always the main problem for me with Tablets. Be it 7" or 10", super thin and light, powerful like a gaming console i always feel crippled when using them. I own an older 2011 11" MBA which is still so much better for "around the house" usage while my main workhorse (13"rMBP) remains on my desk. My girlfriend, who isn't a pro user by any means, also finds the iPad to be very limiting and even uncomfortable to hold in most situations.
justinpaulson 12y ago
I always thought this was an interesting topic. I think it really leaves the door open for developers. I remember thinking a few years ago that most of the app ideas I had were already implemented, but now when I look for those apps I see that a lot of them have grown stagnant and opened the door for new players in the same space. On the OP though, I think it is unfair to bash apple so much. Most of the apps I find are from curated groups like "Best New Apps", "Hot Puzzle Games", etc.
- kayoone 12y ago
  Those apps are abandoned because its increasingly hard to reach any visibility (and thus success) in the App Store, even if you sell for a ridiculously low price. The risk on not even making back what you invested in time to create a really good and polished app is immense when looking at the stats. So yeah, there is room for new guys to find out its not a sustainable business these days, unless you have a superb app and get really lucky.
  - justinpaulson 12y ago
    Well, the problem is too many people think an App is a Business. A really great app can create a business, but most apps are not sustainable businesses, and should not be confused as such. That said, if you redesign each time Apple updates iOS you will probably have a good chance of getting featured in their store. Like I said, anecdotally, most of my purchase come from features and recommendations from friends and blogs, not top lists.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Those apps are abandoned because its increasingly hard to reach any visibility (and thus success) in the App Store, even if you sell for a ridiculously low price. Not necessarily. Lots of very celebrated and nice selling apps are abandoned just as well. This, for example, was a top seller in its day, and was all but left to rot: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/the-best-camera-iphone-app-book-community/ http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/the-best-camera-iph... I have lots more example of similar abandonment. Some developers went in for cashing out, and couldn't bother afterwards.
0x0 12y ago
Seems like the centralized app store model with week-long reviews and free-to-play IAP-addiction-reliefs has lead to a proper race to the bottom. When you have to peddle your wares in a crowded spot next to a million clones which are free or $1-2, with no proper way to do trials or paid upgrades, and you also have to take the full risk of development upfront with a chance for being rejected during final review, it seems like everything is conspiring against indies wanting to invest a lot of effort into a project they really care about. It appears you either have to be a AAA megastudio or a cheap copycat to have a chance to make a profit in 99.99% of the cases. Or be someone like Facebook who can invest a bunch of effort into a super polished product like "Paper" just for fun. For example: Imagine spending 6-12 months on your own dime developing a really neat bitcoin wallet app that you'd like to offer for perhaps $20-30. It'd be completely crazy. Who knows if "virtual curriences" are banned or allowed in the app store review process in 12 months?
- walterbell 12y ago
  Why aren't developers choosing to build PC apps instead? Stardock said that their worst-performing PC game earned more revenue than most iOS or Android apps for which they could obtain revenue numbers. On PCs, it is still possible for developers to sell from their own website, without paying a 30% fee to a platform app store. PCs may be a numerically smaller (hundreds of millions vs. billions of devices) market, but customer perceptions of software value are reflected in an order of magnitude difference in price expectations.
  - Ntrails 12y ago
    I don't know what steams cut is, but I suspect most indie developers are willing to pay it for the benefits it can offer in terms of distribution
  - maljx 12y ago
    I think a lot of game devs are actually switching to PC (steam), PS4 and XBox One. I know we are, it feels like a much more stable and safe marketplace.
  - tomjen3 12y ago
baddox 12y ago
I use my iPad at least an hour a day before falling asleep, and I am pretty happy with the apps. The YouTube app seems to be under heavy development, and while they often break little things, they also fix and add stuff quickly. I really enjoy YouTube on the iPad and I spend a lot of time there. Likewise, the Google Maps app is great on the iPad. Most of what I said for YouTube applies to Google Maps. Twitter and Tweetdeck work great. They don't change much, but they don't need to. Twitch seems to be under active development. It works fairly well, and I use it a fair amount. Kindle and Amazon Instant Video don't change much, but they just work.
- walterbell 12y ago
  The economics are a bit different for indie developers rather than billion-dollar corporations. Much of the revenue on app stores and mobile advertising is associated with F2P games. Many big companies have free apps on iOS to avoid sharing 30% with Apple. It may seem that indie devs don't matter, but they create new features that are later copied by the ecosystem, e.g. Reading Lists on iOS. If the economics of iOS apps are closer to that of "content" like music, what does this mean for the users who invest time in learning app workflows and encoding new data? Should users prioritize data export and open-standard formats? Hopefully iOS8 will make it feasible for apps to reuse existing data formats, instead of reinventing the wheel. This could improve the economics for some productivity categories.
- x0x0 12y ago
  do you have an iphone? In my (sample size me, so 1) survey (=P), tablet usage plummeted after I got a nexus 5 and my phone screen wasn't so damn tiny
  - sandyarmstrong 12y ago
    Yes. I don't think I've turned on my Nexus 7 since I got my Nexus 5. The phone is more comfortable to hold and the screen is plenty big for anything from Netflix/Twitch viewing to ebook reading. I always felt the original iPad 2 was too big and heavy to use comfortably for very long, too. 5"-7" seems like the sweet spot.
  - 12y ago
kilian 12y ago
As a user I like the pay-once model, but for apps that provide continuous upgrades, a subscription model would make much more sense and I think Apple & co would do well to start actively supporting that model for apps. The ultimate guitar tablature iPad application does it via an in-app payment and I'm more than happy to pay the yearly fee. I could imagine doing the same for many other apps. The counterpoint here is that, as a user, I would then feel entitled to frequent and substantive updates which would increase the load on an indie even more.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
marban 12y ago
With all the app charts bashing going on, one might think that it's regarded as a developer's right to have their famous 15 days with every product. Did anyone expect or aspire anything else than a development towards a Billboard Top 100 or NYT Best Sellers mentality in a matured market that's a 24/7 popularity contest? The app phenomenon has probably created more one-man army millionaires in a very short time than any other industry, so stop complaining and get creative. Bonus: https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142 https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  I'm already feeling better that someone I never met stroke gold. I'll kick myself, don't bother.
j1z0 12y ago
It's funny, regarding the "indies can't be profitable anymore aspect of the article" I read a very similar article 10 years ago entitled, custom web development is dead... then five years ago entitled 3rd part web design is dead, now it's app development. My guess in a couple years we will be reading iOS extension development is dead... That's just the world we live in. Init? There is no standing still in the IT industry.
tolmasky 12y ago
Its interesting that it seems Apple has really shied away from doing the bare minimum to improve things on the app store (until recently with videos and bundles). Not having the store be significant revenue is a double edged sword. I think there are some really interesting hacks that would have been better for consumers AND developers. In another comment (years ago I think...) I mentioned how I wish the top charts wouldn't show me apps I already own. There were years where Angry Birds, for me someone who already owned it, represented the top 10 being an effective top 9. It knows I've already bought it, there's nothing I can do with that being there - even Rovio is only indirectly helped by this since I can't go and buy it again, it just serves as some weird hypothetical billboard on my phone for "other people". If instead I got a custom top 10 that was the top 10 apps I don't own I would be very much incentivized to buy more apps. This is of course not even entering into the actually interesting domain of suggesting better purchases for me. App Store revenue not being Apple's bread and butter is a double edged sword. My point here is not that the above idea would "save" the app business, but to notice that the app store today is effectively the same as it was 6 years ago. Experimentation in that space doesn't seem to be in their DNA.
- bruceboughton 12y ago
  What would your list look like with apps you owned removed? 8. FartApp 10. Flashlight or 8. FartApp 9. Flashlight In the first, with 9. Angry Birds removed, it looks like the data hasn't loaded properly. In the second, Flashlight has been promoted from number 10 to number 9, falsely inflating its ranking. You could solve this by leaving a gap or indicator where 9. Angry Birds should have been but then the user's wondering "what isn't it showing me in that gap?". So maybe you should just call the Top 10, "Your Personalized Top 10". But then it's not personalized really, all they've done is remove apps you already own. The user thinks, "Why are Apple showing me fart apps? Don't they think I have taste? Can't they see I only download Twitter clients and podcast apps?". For the marginal benefit of not showing apps you already own, which are indicated as such, you are opening a whole can of UI worms.
  - phloxicon 12y ago
    It could just show the ten best selling apps that don't include the one you already have installed. So instead of 1, 3, 4, it would push 3 up to 2 and 4 up to 3. I'd also like if the store didn't keep showing things it's shown me a dozen times before. If I haven't downloaded them after seeing them advertised this many times, I'm never going to download them.
fleitz 12y ago
Top lists are also free marketing, every time someone makes millions on the app store, it makes headlines. Those stories reinforce the message: develop for the app store and be a millionaire, attracting both more developers and more customers to the platform. Apple has little incentive to change.
nl 12y ago
This is interesting and it begs the question: is now (finally) the time where HTML5 app development makes sense - at least for some applications? The technology is pretty good, and the single code base for iPhone, iPad, Android and Web makes it as tempting as it ever has. More importantly, now it lets you diversify your sources of revenue. That wasn't important when it was easy to make money in the AppStore, but - maybe - now it is?
- tomjen3 12y ago
  I make HTML5 gambling apps for a living. You can certainly do that but be prepared to write special code on each platform to handle some things. Like IOS < 8 doesn't do WebGl and without WebGL you are not going to get very much smooth graphics. Also forget supporting the earlier models, forget retina graphics (at least pre webGL). If you are just making games go with Unity and develop for all the platforms.
- coldtea 12y ago
  For some applications, maybe. Mostly apps that are glorified web views. For anything that needs to tap to the full power of the CPU / sensors, etc, that's a non starter. >The technology is pretty good, and the single code base for iPhone, iPad, Android and Web makes it as tempting as it ever has. Unless if we're talking about an established service, like Facebook etc, it's not like anybody made much (or any) money on the web version of their apps. If you're a startup you might even hurt yourself from offering a subpar (non native) Android and iOS experience.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Assuming that you don't have a hot on your hands even tripling[0] the profit doesn't make you that much. If you do get a hit you can get it properly ported or spend the time to do that. That means that if the chances of getting a hit product are at all assisted by going native it is probably the right move. Having said that for puzzle games and things the HTML route may be the best and if your experience is JS that may be a reason to go that way too. [0] Suspect truth is lower.
- tonyedgecombe 12y ago
  It isn't really a technology problem.
coldtea 12y ago
TL;DR; 1) In a store with close to 1 million apps, a lot of them aren't actively developed anymore or updated to the latest iOS. (DUH!) 2) Hard work and effort are not automagically rewarded with large sales. (DUH!) 3) Not all hundrends of thousands or millions of app programmers competing with each other can live by their app income alone. In fact, few can. (DUH!)
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  > 3) Not all hundrends of thousands or millions of app programmers competing with each other can live by their app income alone. In fact, few can. (DUH!) This doesn't deserve your "DUH!". It reflects the fact that making these apps is easy. If it were so difficult or time-consuming that hobbyists starved trying to get an app done, everyone in the app store would be living on their app income.
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    And yet not a single person proficient in Brainfuck lives off that knowledge.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      You're missing the point. Doing something hard doesn't automatically bring you income. But if making apps required so much that you couldn't support yourself on the side, everyone who wasn't supporting themselves in the app store would leave.
      - JetSpiegel 12y ago
        I was only half-making a joke, but I agree with with you, in a way. The model you are proposing is the J2ME that Nokia had, and the result was an utter flop.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >This doesn't deserve your "DUH!". It reflects the fact that making these apps is easy. If it were so difficult or time-consuming that hobbyists starved trying to get an app done, everyone in the app store would be living on their app income. It just reflects the fact that there are too many of them. How hard something is is not a predictor of there being any market for it. Deep scholarly knowledge in dead languages literatures is hard too, but hardly a career. Same with Brainfuck the other guy mentioned. Or, to give an even more specific example: there are apps in the app store that are very difficult to make, and took extreme expertise, and still they make far less money that some fart apps or dize-a-dozen platformer games (some doesn't even break even).
golergka 12y ago
> Top lists reward apps that get people to download them, regardless of quality or long-term use, so that’s what most developers optimize for. Actually, that's where the in-app purchases come in. As every free2play game developer will tell you, the key to good monetization is updating your app and engage the community. Produce new content, throw seasonal promotions and sales, fix bugs, keep the game alive. That's exactly because you care about the overall LTV of the user, not the download event — and, as free2play developer, my task is not to lure the user to pay $1 to download it, but to convince the user to pay while he's already in it. There are developers that buy installs for $10 a piece from a certain sources, and they make a great profit out of it — just because once the user gets there, he'll pay more. Not because anyone will force him to; it's impossible to force the user to do anything, we don't a gun to his head — but because he wants to. May be the app developers, too, will finally go to the same route?
pi-err 12y ago
The article is not about the growing share of obsolete apps in the App Store (as I thought). It's about the coming of age of the iOS app market - ie: more contenders, more competition, lower exposure. And the lack of perceived value of ipad development (says the author). I understand this as: people are leaving our craftsman market in city center to stop by the big retailers in suburbia and are happy with it. And the craftsmen can't make their shops attractive enough vs big retailers. I find Marco is pessimistic here (ad hom: as often). 1/ even matured and commoditized, the App Store is the largest money transfer to software vendors _ever_ , with a favorable cut going to indies/small makers. Even if less affluent, the small city center is still getting tons of attention. 2/ still on the craftsman metaphor: city centers are actually thriving again _along_ big suburbia retail thanks to a very intimate, qualitative experience. There's an exploding market fed by a better information flow. So yes, x% buyers are currently buying from an App Store "top list" - what about all other sources of traffic towards an app? Pretty sure you've lost if you bet on a top list from the start (just like buying a sign off an highway for an artisan). There are other leverages as well. And 3/ from a consumer perspective, software is so different than devs imagine. In my mind, real people see 3 very different types of app: - give me fun (news, games, many social apps) - improve me and help me (smart home, smart features, assistants, productivity, work etc) - talk to people (many social apps) The "fun" and "talk" apps are totally commoditized. Freemium at best. Yes, that's were the attention is, so what? The "improve" market is just starting. It's harder to crack because people want a perfect experience with it- it's intimate. That's why I see it as a perfect opportunity for indie app makers. Actually that's why I hope to launch an app studio next year to make it easier for EU devs to build and integrate their apps. Side note, hopefully Apple also removes soon enough the thousands of apps left unattended for >3y. I don't thing Apple needs to hold that much to the total app figures by now, can remove 50% of the old crust.
rokhayakebe 12y ago
There is a lot of trash on paper(magazines, USWeekly, Celebrities,...), on tv (Jerry Springer, TMZ, etc...) online (websites, web apps), on desktop (software), why did we think mobile was going to be different?
josefresco 12y ago
This blog post, and those referenced are mostly about (the lack of) marketing. You can't expect to hole up in your apartment for 12 months, build an app and then have it take off or even sustain you. Replace the word "app" with business and it all makes more sense. Everyone wants to be a "founder" or "start-up ceo" but besides writing code, there's a whole ton of good old business stuff that contributes to a successful, profitable business. It's not Apple's job to promote your app, they simply run the marketplace.

207 points by tedlee 12y ago

I really wish there would be a section in all app stores which shows a randomized list of "good" apps. I am not sure about exact criteria, but thede should be a good way to discover good and often downloaded apps which are not in the top 10.

josefresco 12y ago
What you're describing are "featured" apps, plucked out of the pile from Apple editors. I do wish there was more of this editorial work, and less reliance on "top lists" for app discovery.

janlukacs 12y ago

I simply hate the appstore - it's so full of useless bad quality apps - don't even get me started on games. i have only oppened it a couple of times in the past two years. They killed discovery for me, i'm not even interested in checking out new apps (still no trials?!).

notduncansmith 12y ago
A friend of mine runs a great magazine dedicated to uncovering the best games in the App Store. You might find it valuable: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/app-gamer-magazine-ultimate/id670097598?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/app-gamer-magazine-ultimate/...

andybak 12y ago

It's interesting that the trends Marco says are inevitable: 1. Use platform conventions over custom widgets 2. Favour responsive layouts over layouts tailored for each screen have long been the norm on Android. And since Holo - (1) has been far from a handicap. Apps that stuck to Holo (and now 'Material design') conventions were usually the most attractive. With regard to (2) - the way this has forced Apple's hand in hardware choices has been fascinating. Having to double resolution via retina rather than grow incrementally and the long delayed and slightly painful transition to a new aspect ratio for the iPhone 5.

martinald 12y ago

Really interesting. Anecdotally, I'm seeing people starting to abandon their iPads and go back to laptops (generally macbooks/ultrabooks) in meetings and the like. I think the keyboard is just too useful for most people. Smartphone usage is definitely not following a similar trend, though.

tomjen3 12y ago
That is going to change with the new IOS 8 keyboards. Believe me as an Android user it makes a world of difference in regards to how fast you can type.
- WorldWideWayne 12y ago
  I wonder how useful the keyboard is with iOS software? Windows can be fully operated with just a keyboard and ~90% of OS X is operable via keyboard, but I don't see that being the case with iOS or Android.
kayoone 12y ago
Yep, that was always the main problem for me with Tablets. Be it 7" or 10", super thin and light, powerful like a gaming console i always feel crippled when using them. I own an older 2011 11" MBA which is still so much better for "around the house" usage while my main workhorse (13"rMBP) remains on my desk. My girlfriend, who isn't a pro user by any means, also finds the iPad to be very limiting and even uncomfortable to hold in most situations.

justinpaulson 12y ago

I always thought this was an interesting topic. I think it really leaves the door open for developers. I remember thinking a few years ago that most of the app ideas I had were already implemented, but now when I look for those apps I see that a lot of them have grown stagnant and opened the door for new players in the same space. On the OP though, I think it is unfair to bash apple so much. Most of the apps I find are from curated groups like "Best New Apps", "Hot Puzzle Games", etc.

kayoone 12y ago
Those apps are abandoned because its increasingly hard to reach any visibility (and thus success) in the App Store, even if you sell for a ridiculously low price. The risk on not even making back what you invested in time to create a really good and polished app is immense when looking at the stats. So yeah, there is room for new guys to find out its not a sustainable business these days, unless you have a superb app and get really lucky.
- justinpaulson 12y ago
  Well, the problem is too many people think an App is a Business. A really great app can create a business, but most apps are not sustainable businesses, and should not be confused as such. That said, if you redesign each time Apple updates iOS you will probably have a good chance of getting featured in their store. Like I said, anecdotally, most of my purchase come from features and recommendations from friends and blogs, not top lists.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Those apps are abandoned because its increasingly hard to reach any visibility (and thus success) in the App Store, even if you sell for a ridiculously low price. Not necessarily. Lots of very celebrated and nice selling apps are abandoned just as well. This, for example, was a top seller in its day, and was all but left to rot: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/the-best-camera-iphone-app-book-community/ http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/09/the-best-camera-iph... I have lots more example of similar abandonment. Some developers went in for cashing out, and couldn't bother afterwards.

0x0 12y ago

Seems like the centralized app store model with week-long reviews and free-to-play IAP-addiction-reliefs has lead to a proper race to the bottom. When you have to peddle your wares in a crowded spot next to a million clones which are free or $1-2, with no proper way to do trials or paid upgrades, and you also have to take the full risk of development upfront with a chance for being rejected during final review, it seems like everything is conspiring against indies wanting to invest a lot of effort into a project they really care about. It appears you either have to be a AAA megastudio or a cheap copycat to have a chance to make a profit in 99.99% of the cases. Or be someone like Facebook who can invest a bunch of effort into a super polished product like "Paper" just for fun. For example: Imagine spending 6-12 months on your own dime developing a really neat bitcoin wallet app that you'd like to offer for perhaps $20-30. It'd be completely crazy. Who knows if "virtual curriences" are banned or allowed in the app store review process in 12 months?

walterbell 12y ago
Why aren't developers choosing to build PC apps instead? Stardock said that their worst-performing PC game earned more revenue than most iOS or Android apps for which they could obtain revenue numbers. On PCs, it is still possible for developers to sell from their own website, without paying a 30% fee to a platform app store. PCs may be a numerically smaller (hundreds of millions vs. billions of devices) market, but customer perceptions of software value are reflected in an order of magnitude difference in price expectations.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  I don't know what steams cut is, but I suspect most indie developers are willing to pay it for the benefits it can offer in terms of distribution
- maljx 12y ago
  I think a lot of game devs are actually switching to PC (steam), PS4 and XBox One. I know we are, it feels like a much more stable and safe marketplace.
- tomjen3 12y ago

baddox 12y ago

I use my iPad at least an hour a day before falling asleep, and I am pretty happy with the apps. The YouTube app seems to be under heavy development, and while they often break little things, they also fix and add stuff quickly. I really enjoy YouTube on the iPad and I spend a lot of time there. Likewise, the Google Maps app is great on the iPad. Most of what I said for YouTube applies to Google Maps. Twitter and Tweetdeck work great. They don't change much, but they don't need to. Twitch seems to be under active development. It works fairly well, and I use it a fair amount. Kindle and Amazon Instant Video don't change much, but they just work.

walterbell 12y ago
The economics are a bit different for indie developers rather than billion-dollar corporations. Much of the revenue on app stores and mobile advertising is associated with F2P games. Many big companies have free apps on iOS to avoid sharing 30% with Apple. It may seem that indie devs don't matter, but they create new features that are later copied by the ecosystem, e.g. Reading Lists on iOS. If the economics of iOS apps are closer to that of "content" like music, what does this mean for the users who invest time in learning app workflows and encoding new data? Should users prioritize data export and open-standard formats? Hopefully iOS8 will make it feasible for apps to reuse existing data formats, instead of reinventing the wheel. This could improve the economics for some productivity categories.
x0x0 12y ago
do you have an iphone? In my (sample size me, so 1) survey (=P), tablet usage plummeted after I got a nexus 5 and my phone screen wasn't so damn tiny
- sandyarmstrong 12y ago
  Yes. I don't think I've turned on my Nexus 7 since I got my Nexus 5. The phone is more comfortable to hold and the screen is plenty big for anything from Netflix/Twitch viewing to ebook reading. I always felt the original iPad 2 was too big and heavy to use comfortably for very long, too. 5"-7" seems like the sweet spot.
- 12y ago

kilian 12y ago

As a user I like the pay-once model, but for apps that provide continuous upgrades, a subscription model would make much more sense and I think Apple & co would do well to start actively supporting that model for apps. The ultimate guitar tablature iPad application does it via an in-app payment and I'm more than happy to pay the yearly fee. I could imagine doing the same for many other apps. The counterpoint here is that, as a user, I would then feel entitled to frequent and substantive updates which would increase the load on an indie even more.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

marban 12y ago

With all the app charts bashing going on, one might think that it's regarded as a developer's right to have their famous 15 days with every product. Did anyone expect or aspire anything else than a development towards a Billboard Top 100 or NYT Best Sellers mentality in a matured market that's a 24/7 popularity contest? The app phenomenon has probably created more one-man army millionaires in a very short time than any other industry, so stop complaining and get creative. Bonus: https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142 https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142

JetSpiegel 12y ago
I'm already feeling better that someone I never met stroke gold. I'll kick myself, don't bother.

j1z0 12y ago

It's funny, regarding the "indies can't be profitable anymore aspect of the article" I read a very similar article 10 years ago entitled, custom web development is dead... then five years ago entitled 3rd part web design is dead, now it's app development. My guess in a couple years we will be reading iOS extension development is dead... That's just the world we live in. Init? There is no standing still in the IT industry.

tolmasky 12y ago

Its interesting that it seems Apple has really shied away from doing the bare minimum to improve things on the app store (until recently with videos and bundles). Not having the store be significant revenue is a double edged sword. I think there are some really interesting hacks that would have been better for consumers AND developers. In another comment (years ago I think...) I mentioned how I wish the top charts wouldn't show me apps I already own. There were years where Angry Birds, for me someone who already owned it, represented the top 10 being an effective top 9. It knows I've already bought it, there's nothing I can do with that being there - even Rovio is only indirectly helped by this since I can't go and buy it again, it just serves as some weird hypothetical billboard on my phone for "other people". If instead I got a custom top 10 that was the top 10 apps I don't own I would be very much incentivized to buy more apps. This is of course not even entering into the actually interesting domain of suggesting better purchases for me. App Store revenue not being Apple's bread and butter is a double edged sword. My point here is not that the above idea would "save" the app business, but to notice that the app store today is effectively the same as it was 6 years ago. Experimentation in that space doesn't seem to be in their DNA.

bruceboughton 12y ago
What would your list look like with apps you owned removed? 8. FartApp 10. Flashlight or 8. FartApp 9. Flashlight In the first, with 9. Angry Birds removed, it looks like the data hasn't loaded properly. In the second, Flashlight has been promoted from number 10 to number 9, falsely inflating its ranking. You could solve this by leaving a gap or indicator where 9. Angry Birds should have been but then the user's wondering "what isn't it showing me in that gap?". So maybe you should just call the Top 10, "Your Personalized Top 10". But then it's not personalized really, all they've done is remove apps you already own. The user thinks, "Why are Apple showing me fart apps? Don't they think I have taste? Can't they see I only download Twitter clients and podcast apps?". For the marginal benefit of not showing apps you already own, which are indicated as such, you are opening a whole can of UI worms.
- phloxicon 12y ago
  It could just show the ten best selling apps that don't include the one you already have installed. So instead of 1, 3, 4, it would push 3 up to 2 and 4 up to 3. I'd also like if the store didn't keep showing things it's shown me a dozen times before. If I haven't downloaded them after seeing them advertised this many times, I'm never going to download them.

fleitz 12y ago

Top lists are also free marketing, every time someone makes millions on the app store, it makes headlines. Those stories reinforce the message: develop for the app store and be a millionaire, attracting both more developers and more customers to the platform. Apple has little incentive to change.

nl 12y ago

This is interesting and it begs the question: is now (finally) the time where HTML5 app development makes sense - at least for some applications? The technology is pretty good, and the single code base for iPhone, iPad, Android and Web makes it as tempting as it ever has. More importantly, now it lets you diversify your sources of revenue. That wasn't important when it was easy to make money in the AppStore, but - maybe - now it is?

tomjen3 12y ago
I make HTML5 gambling apps for a living. You can certainly do that but be prepared to write special code on each platform to handle some things. Like IOS < 8 doesn't do WebGl and without WebGL you are not going to get very much smooth graphics. Also forget supporting the earlier models, forget retina graphics (at least pre webGL). If you are just making games go with Unity and develop for all the platforms.
coldtea 12y ago
For some applications, maybe. Mostly apps that are glorified web views. For anything that needs to tap to the full power of the CPU / sensors, etc, that's a non starter. >The technology is pretty good, and the single code base for iPhone, iPad, Android and Web makes it as tempting as it ever has. Unless if we're talking about an established service, like Facebook etc, it's not like anybody made much (or any) money on the web version of their apps. If you're a startup you might even hurt yourself from offering a subpar (non native) Android and iOS experience.
josephlord 12y ago
Assuming that you don't have a hot on your hands even tripling[0] the profit doesn't make you that much. If you do get a hit you can get it properly ported or spend the time to do that. That means that if the chances of getting a hit product are at all assisted by going native it is probably the right move. Having said that for puzzle games and things the HTML route may be the best and if your experience is JS that may be a reason to go that way too. [0] Suspect truth is lower.
tonyedgecombe 12y ago
It isn't really a technology problem.

coldtea 12y ago

TL;DR; 1) In a store with close to 1 million apps, a lot of them aren't actively developed anymore or updated to the latest iOS. (DUH!) 2) Hard work and effort are not automagically rewarded with large sales. (DUH!) 3) Not all hundrends of thousands or millions of app programmers competing with each other can live by their app income alone. In fact, few can. (DUH!)

thaumasiotes 12y ago
> 3) Not all hundrends of thousands or millions of app programmers competing with each other can live by their app income alone. In fact, few can. (DUH!) This doesn't deserve your "DUH!". It reflects the fact that making these apps is easy. If it were so difficult or time-consuming that hobbyists starved trying to get an app done, everyone in the app store would be living on their app income.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  And yet not a single person proficient in Brainfuck lives off that knowledge.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    You're missing the point. Doing something hard doesn't automatically bring you income. But if making apps required so much that you couldn't support yourself on the side, everyone who wasn't supporting themselves in the app store would leave.
    - JetSpiegel 12y ago
      I was only half-making a joke, but I agree with with you, in a way. The model you are proposing is the J2ME that Nokia had, and the result was an utter flop.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >This doesn't deserve your "DUH!". It reflects the fact that making these apps is easy. If it were so difficult or time-consuming that hobbyists starved trying to get an app done, everyone in the app store would be living on their app income. It just reflects the fact that there are too many of them. How hard something is is not a predictor of there being any market for it. Deep scholarly knowledge in dead languages literatures is hard too, but hardly a career. Same with Brainfuck the other guy mentioned. Or, to give an even more specific example: there are apps in the app store that are very difficult to make, and took extreme expertise, and still they make far less money that some fart apps or dize-a-dozen platformer games (some doesn't even break even).

golergka 12y ago

> Top lists reward apps that get people to download them, regardless of quality or long-term use, so that’s what most developers optimize for. Actually, that's where the in-app purchases come in. As every free2play game developer will tell you, the key to good monetization is updating your app and engage the community. Produce new content, throw seasonal promotions and sales, fix bugs, keep the game alive. That's exactly because you care about the overall LTV of the user, not the download event — and, as free2play developer, my task is not to lure the user to pay $1 to download it, but to convince the user to pay while he's already in it. There are developers that buy installs for $10 a piece from a certain sources, and they make a great profit out of it — just because once the user gets there, he'll pay more. Not because anyone will force him to; it's impossible to force the user to do anything, we don't a gun to his head — but because he wants to. May be the app developers, too, will finally go to the same route?

pi-err 12y ago

The article is not about the growing share of obsolete apps in the App Store (as I thought). It's about the coming of age of the iOS app market - ie: more contenders, more competition, lower exposure. And the lack of perceived value of ipad development (says the author). I understand this as: people are leaving our craftsman market in city center to stop by the big retailers in suburbia and are happy with it. And the craftsmen can't make their shops attractive enough vs big retailers. I find Marco is pessimistic here (ad hom: as often). 1/ even matured and commoditized, the App Store is the largest money transfer to software vendors _ever_ , with a favorable cut going to indies/small makers. Even if less affluent, the small city center is still getting tons of attention. 2/ still on the craftsman metaphor: city centers are actually thriving again _along_ big suburbia retail thanks to a very intimate, qualitative experience. There's an exploding market fed by a better information flow. So yes, x% buyers are currently buying from an App Store "top list" - what about all other sources of traffic towards an app? Pretty sure you've lost if you bet on a top list from the start (just like buying a sign off an highway for an artisan). There are other leverages as well. And 3/ from a consumer perspective, software is so different than devs imagine. In my mind, real people see 3 very different types of app: - give me fun (news, games, many social apps) - improve me and help me (smart home, smart features, assistants, productivity, work etc) - talk to people (many social apps) The "fun" and "talk" apps are totally commoditized. Freemium at best. Yes, that's were the attention is, so what? The "improve" market is just starting. It's harder to crack because people want a perfect experience with it- it's intimate. That's why I see it as a perfect opportunity for indie app makers. Actually that's why I hope to launch an app studio next year to make it easier for EU devs to build and integrate their apps. Side note, hopefully Apple also removes soon enough the thousands of apps left unattended for >3y. I don't thing Apple needs to hold that much to the total app figures by now, can remove 50% of the old crust.

rokhayakebe 12y ago

There is a lot of trash on paper(magazines, USWeekly, Celebrities,...), on tv (Jerry Springer, TMZ, etc...) online (websites, web apps), on desktop (software), why did we think mobile was going to be different?

josefresco 12y ago

This blog post, and those referenced are mostly about (the lack of) marketing. You can't expect to hole up in your apartment for 12 months, build an app and then have it take off or even sustain you. Replace the word "app" with business and it all makes more sense. Everyone wants to be a "founder" or "start-up ceo" but besides writing code, there's a whole ton of good old business stuff that contributes to a successful, profitable business. It's not Apple's job to promote your app, they simply run the marketplace.