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Agreed: The terrible discovery is the worse problem, it leads to a market of hits, with no long tail. Whereas if you open the play store on an android phone, i

by chubs 12y ago

Agreed: The terrible discovery is the worse problem, it leads to a market of hits, with no long tail. Whereas if you open the play store on an android phone, it suggests apps your friends have, and many other 'discoverable' things. It leads to a better long tail, eg supports indies. I know more indies making a living out of android, and i know far more ios developers, being one myself.

kamilszybalski 12y ago
+1, completely agree. Might as well throw complete itunes connect overhaul into this. It's an absolute nightmare working with itunes connect, managing users, working with beta and internal testers.. the whole process is completely disconnected and really demonstrates the launch of a rushed product.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  > Might as well throw complete itunes connect overhaul into this. Funny considering the current iTunes connect is a complete overhaul, which only came out recently with iOS 8. The new iTunes Connect acts like someone's first attempt at an Angular app (which it is), with a complete disregard from doing things in a performant way.
  - jfaat 12y ago
    > The new iTunes Connect acts like someone's first attempt at an Angular app Huh, it sure is. Is that surprising to anyone else? Also, while it may be Apple's first attempt as a company I'm sure they managed to find a few devs who had shipped an angular app to work on Connect.
    - xgbi 12y ago
      Well, then they chose the wrong ones, or widely failed at defining something that works. Working with this new website (which about 30% of the time still uses old pages... Bug reports anyone?) is a huge chore. I remember being locked out of an important project for an entire week because their buttons for adding people to projects was broken. One day, it started working again, no communication from Apple at all. There's also this usability issue where you have to try to validate your new version of an app and only then being welcomed by an error. No pre-validation of the input fields, hello Apple? There are myriads of small annoying issues like: - can't share 1 email with multiple teams in iTunesConnect and Developer portal. You have to have a unique email in iTunes Connect for each of your projects. This is just ridiculous, especially when you know that on the Developer portal this works fine. I have now tens of myname+theproject@mycompany.com accounts in iTunes connect, and managing passwords is simply... damn.. - can't delete a version of an app when you have created it (but not yet uploaded a binary). WTF? I was trying to test the "beta" service, and was forced to create a new version of the app. Once created, you cannot remove it for any reason. I was stuck there with a version that I deemed was "beta", and couldn't create a new one, or remove this one. - Seemingly random crypto export renewal. Sometimes, when issuing a new version of our app, the website will ask for the crypto documents, whereas they are in their database. Othertimes, they won't be asked. - Once the crypto export documents have been provided, you cannot submit another one. This bit me once, because there was only _one_ "upload" button. So I sent the US Gov. crypto document, and then the page moved on, not letting me upload the French one. Afterwards, impossible to get back to this page, and Apple support kindly told me I was to drop the deployment to the French store if I wanted to continue using the App Store... The correct solution would have been to ZIP the entire set of documents, then upload them as 1 file.. which is not intuitive. Or the Apple team could have asked for the french document through their support interface, which they never did. I got out of this by uploading a dummy binary, then dropping the version entirely, and creating a new one. Bizarrely, the export documents were not asked for the next submission. This website really sucks. I usually brag about how the iOS distribution system is superior to Android's in terms of security and separation of roles, but last month I submitted an app to the Android Play store and I was baffled by the web UI. Drag-and-drop the APK, AJAX-enhanced buttons, very quick, not fiddling with two accounts (developer and iTunes connect), overall ease of use.. Man, Apple seems to have been too busy shoveling the cash.
cageface 12y ago
I know more indies making a living out of android, and i know far more ios developers, being one myself. Really? Can you elaborate on this at all? What kind of apps? I know the Pocketcasts guys have said that they now get the bulk of their revenues from Android but the conventional wisdom is still that iOS is where the money is for indies. As an indie developer with no platform allegiances I'm willing to go wherever the customers are.
- chubs 12y ago
  The two i know of are shifty jelly and some guy who makes a period tracking app.
yaeger 12y ago
I'd rather not have my purchases/interests being broadcast to my "friends", thank you. What are these "friends" anyway? Everyone in your contact list? The last thing when buying an app I want to do is to worry about "What if X sees that I got this app?" My purchases are my business. Not theirs. If I want to recommend an app I can do so through a variety of way in this communication age. I do not need some automated snitch for that.
- crayola 12y ago
  I think it only becomes public if you '+1' the app. Otherwise I would agree with you, of course.
  - Klathmon 12y ago
    And there is an option to turn it off

by chubs 12y ago

kamilszybalski 12y ago

+1, completely agree. Might as well throw complete itunes connect overhaul into this. It's an absolute nightmare working with itunes connect, managing users, working with beta and internal testers.. the whole process is completely disconnected and really demonstrates the launch of a rushed product.

madeofpalk 12y ago
> Might as well throw complete itunes connect overhaul into this. Funny considering the current iTunes connect is a complete overhaul, which only came out recently with iOS 8. The new iTunes Connect acts like someone's first attempt at an Angular app (which it is), with a complete disregard from doing things in a performant way.
- jfaat 12y ago
  > The new iTunes Connect acts like someone's first attempt at an Angular app Huh, it sure is. Is that surprising to anyone else? Also, while it may be Apple's first attempt as a company I'm sure they managed to find a few devs who had shipped an angular app to work on Connect.
  - xgbi 12y ago
    Well, then they chose the wrong ones, or widely failed at defining something that works. Working with this new website (which about 30% of the time still uses old pages... Bug reports anyone?) is a huge chore. I remember being locked out of an important project for an entire week because their buttons for adding people to projects was broken. One day, it started working again, no communication from Apple at all. There's also this usability issue where you have to try to validate your new version of an app and only then being welcomed by an error. No pre-validation of the input fields, hello Apple? There are myriads of small annoying issues like: - can't share 1 email with multiple teams in iTunesConnect and Developer portal. You have to have a unique email in iTunes Connect for each of your projects. This is just ridiculous, especially when you know that on the Developer portal this works fine. I have now tens of myname+theproject@mycompany.com accounts in iTunes connect, and managing passwords is simply... damn.. - can't delete a version of an app when you have created it (but not yet uploaded a binary). WTF? I was trying to test the "beta" service, and was forced to create a new version of the app. Once created, you cannot remove it for any reason. I was stuck there with a version that I deemed was "beta", and couldn't create a new one, or remove this one. - Seemingly random crypto export renewal. Sometimes, when issuing a new version of our app, the website will ask for the crypto documents, whereas they are in their database. Othertimes, they won't be asked. - Once the crypto export documents have been provided, you cannot submit another one. This bit me once, because there was only _one_ "upload" button. So I sent the US Gov. crypto document, and then the page moved on, not letting me upload the French one. Afterwards, impossible to get back to this page, and Apple support kindly told me I was to drop the deployment to the French store if I wanted to continue using the App Store... The correct solution would have been to ZIP the entire set of documents, then upload them as 1 file.. which is not intuitive. Or the Apple team could have asked for the french document through their support interface, which they never did. I got out of this by uploading a dummy binary, then dropping the version entirely, and creating a new one. Bizarrely, the export documents were not asked for the next submission. This website really sucks. I usually brag about how the iOS distribution system is superior to Android's in terms of security and separation of roles, but last month I submitted an app to the Android Play store and I was baffled by the web UI. Drag-and-drop the APK, AJAX-enhanced buttons, very quick, not fiddling with two accounts (developer and iTunes connect), overall ease of use.. Man, Apple seems to have been too busy shoveling the cash.

cageface 12y ago

I know more indies making a living out of android, and i know far more ios developers, being one myself. Really? Can you elaborate on this at all? What kind of apps? I know the Pocketcasts guys have said that they now get the bulk of their revenues from Android but the conventional wisdom is still that iOS is where the money is for indies. As an indie developer with no platform allegiances I'm willing to go wherever the customers are.

chubs 12y ago
The two i know of are shifty jelly and some guy who makes a period tracking app.

yaeger 12y ago

I'd rather not have my purchases/interests being broadcast to my "friends", thank you. What are these "friends" anyway? Everyone in your contact list? The last thing when buying an app I want to do is to worry about "What if X sees that I got this app?" My purchases are my business. Not theirs. If I want to recommend an app I can do so through a variety of way in this communication age. I do not need some automated snitch for that.

crayola 12y ago
I think it only becomes public if you '+1' the app. Otherwise I would agree with you, of course.
- Klathmon 12y ago
  And there is an option to turn it off