Comment by shimfish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shimfish | Hacker News Reader

While I agree with the basic thrust of the article (Apple is not your friend, is often vindictive in response to criticism and could do more to help developers), I always feel when reading App Store articles that there's quite an odd underlying assumption, namely that Apple somehow owes all developers a living and has it within its power to achieve this if only it wanted.

Please correct me if my history is wrong but I don't think being an independent software developer has been anything but a high risk and/or low profit endeavor. It's not like everything was just great for indies until Apple came along and devalued software. On the contrary, I feel the App Store has done more to level the playing field for indies than anything before it.

Discoverability is not a solved problem for any product or service apart from massive advertising expenditure, which is why "big labels" come to exist. It's not like Apple is holding back on a solution out of spite. Is it supposed to routinely feature each of the million apps on the store?

In a short space of time, the App Store has become a mature market of too many people chasing after too little money. This isn't some kind of outlier in capitalism. It's an entirely predictable pattern of consolidation that we've seen time and time again.

The only unusual thing is that the independent developers got invited the party in the first place without having to worry about payment or delivery infrastructure.

I don't think there is (always) this assumption. For example, the author in this article tries to focus on the objective issues with the App Store, rather than who owes whom what. Perhaps not perfectly, but, afai can see, he tries.

Sure, Apple being the gatekeeper, it's easy to take criticism of the App Store as criticism of Apple. It's also easy to slip into criticizing Apple while criticizing the App Store. Fundamentally, however, while similar, the two are not the same. It depends on what conclusion you draw. Which is it: "Boo Apple, fix your store," or "Boo developers, boycott iOS until they fix the store!"

However, boycotting becomes less realistic the longer the feedback loop gets. I can stop buying some kind of milk brand tomorrow, and pick up the day after. Deciding what platform to publish apps on is an entirely different ball game. In that light, the unviability of any "free market" alternatives we as devs have to combat Apple on this makes it look very much like a monopoly, and that holds weight as an argument against Apple (not just against the App Store).

Yeah, they technically don't owe us anything, but no, the playing field is too uneven for that to just be the end of the story.

My point is that it seems entirely probable that there is no fix. What exactly are you suggesting that Apple could do to level the playing field any more?

Not me in particular, but there have been many suggestions:

* Allow competing stores (like Android)

* Allow customers to install raw packages (like Android)

* Improve their search engine to "not be completely useless"

* Fairer algorithm for featured apps

Etc. This is not my list, it's just some of the common suggestions I hear for improving the App Store.

* That assumes other stores are better. They are not.

* That would basically open the door to insanely easy piracy. Like on Android.

* A fairly nebulous and meaningful requirement

* I don't think it is an algorithm.

> * That would basically open the door to insanely easy piracy. Like on Android.

This is an awful argument.

Those who are going to pirate apps have the means and skills to do so. Even on the precious iPhone. Yes, you are able to pirate Android apps quite easily as a lay person.

An intermediate approach would be a system where binaries distributed exclusively via the App Store could (enforced using the same kind of signature system presently used) only be installed via the App Store.

Give developers a choice rather than making it for them.

* It doesn't matter if other stores are better, only that they exist and competition is possible.

* Even the Copyright Office has implemented DMCA exceptions for 'jailbreaking' to run legally owned/leased software which may not be available on, or restricted by, the 'official' sources. So even the curators of the DMCA recognize this requirement.

* Many times you cannot even successfully search for an App BY ITS UNIQUE NAME. That's just entirely and incompetently broken. Know who gets search right? Torrent sites and eMule. I can sooner find what I'm looking for there than on either Apple's, Google's, or Microsoft's App stores. And if these channels can do it, so can the majors.

No, it's obvious the majors all consider their App stores 'good enough', and since they can lock users into their services and out of others (both through technical barriers and unenforceable claims), there's no incentive for improvement. In fact, things have and (I suspect) will continue to get WORSE.

There are a lot of ideas out there (and in the article) Apple could implement. Here's a few I remember off the top of my head:

* Improve App Store search results

* Remove the top lists and blunt the 'rich getting richer' effect the lists amplify

* Put their share of App sales on sliding scale, so you only start giving Apple the full 30% after you've reached $X in sales

* Improve how? Isn't that the whole discussion?

* That will just amplify the effect of featured apps and then you lose all meaningful organic app discovery and a large chunk of the meritocracy of the store.

* Great but that will probably not make a huge difference.

1) Relevance to the search term seems too low. I just did a search for "twitter" on the iPhone app store and six of the top 10 results had nothing to do with Twitter.

2) Maybe you're right, I'd still like to see Apple try it.

3) It doesn't have to be a huge difference for it be worth doing. A lot of little positive changes will add up.

If Apple's engineers have no other ideas, I'm sure they could improve search by scraping the result of the Google (or even Bing, I suppose) search:

<terms> site:itunes.apple.com

and then using that to drive their app search results.

Also improve the review system. It's almost certain that if you don't beg for reviews using Appirater, you will get practically none.

And if you update the app, the reviews reset -- which gives developers an extreme disincentive to keep their app updated, especially during the long tail period.

I agree, at least in this article, it is distracting how many times the author implies that bad economics inherently incriminate Apple, and that developers should not have to worry about marketing, being profitable while keeping prices low, or the other concerns that routinely accompany running a business. It would be a better article if it acknowledged the role of the developer and tried to draw a sharper line between cultural and economic forces and where Apple is involved, or should be more involved.

Also, bloggers prefacing criticism with, "I love Apple, but..." is human nature, and not necessarily evidence of a conspiracy. Plenty of people criticized iOS 7's design -- the articles went on for days. There are some good points in the article, but the overarching narrative is pretty thin.

Prior to mobile becoming popular, the two ecosystem models were desktop computers and gaming consoles.

On the desktop there are no gate keepers. There may be aggregators and bundlers, but no one prevents you from installing anything you want on a Windows, Linux, or Mac computer.

On the consoles developers were beholden to Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega, etc.

The question was whether mobile would follow the desktop model or the console model. Clearly, they have gone the way of the console. Even though there are alternative app stores on Android, they haven't caught on much.

I agree that Apple doesn't "owe" the ISVs anything, but I think it's bad for our the progress of tech as a whole that Apple has an incentive to commoditize their compliments AND has control of the only real way to distribute apps on iOS.

> Clearly, they have gone the way of the console.

With one minor difference.

You actually OWNED the disk/cartridge the game was on, and it came with a warranty.

...two, TWO minor differences.

On other words, there was legally enforceable accountability on the part of the manufacturer. These days not so much, because you don't own anything to hold as leverage, and software has always been full of warranty and liability disclaimers (even though I suspect many of them would not hold in a court of law).

I don't believe this article was implying that Apple owed anything in particular to developers, but rather, laying out all the issues on the table for Apple developers to digest. Self-censorship of criticism against Apple really only contributes to information asymmetry. Conversely, feeling free to publish criticisms helps developers make informed decisions about what platforms to target.

Indeed, there is a section of the article where he quotes Arment on the possibility of Apple's hostility towards developers driving some of them to the Android platform.

That said, I think the rest of your comments are on the mark. In the long-run of a sufficiently competitive market, firm profits fall to 0. The App Store lets any indie dev compete, but there is a reason some of the biggest firms don't like competition and indie developers should understand that it's only going to get harder to make a killing in apps.

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