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Is the Apple App Store a Casino?
An anonymous reader writes "Fast Company takes a look at the Apple App Store and concludes that it's a casino where most developers are making tragic losses and a tiny few are striking it filthy rich. The article discusses a new book exposing the App Store millionaires, called 'Appillionaires,' which compares the psychological effects of a hit app on a programmer to a gambler's high. One millionaire programmer explains the intense feeling of being in the top-ten: 'The App Store had established some kind of intravenous connection to my body and was pumping me full of Apple-branded heroin.' But, the piece warns, the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app."
This is how it works. Tiny few become really rich, most barely make a living. Some better, some worse. It's not a casino, and it's not limited to app store.
If John Q. Wallet invents some must-have widget which is easy to manufacture, cheap, and available everywhere; and suddenly sells millions of them, I'll bet he's feeling pretty good about that too. However, if he invents something that is a piece of crap that no one buys, he's going to have just as much of a loss.
This phenomenon is hardly new, and certainly not localized to the iTunes App Store.
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Just because you don't understand why one app succeeds and another fails doesn't mean there is no reason. It is a complicated equation, and usefulness is only one variable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you develop yet another puzzle game, you're up to compete with the Zingas of the world, and chances are you'll hit the wall. On the other hand, if you focus on solving real problems and using the advantages of the platform to improve your customer's life, you might be onto something. Case in point, Appfluence (disclaimer: I co-founded it). We make Priority Matrix, a productivity app for a niche market that highly values time savings and clarity of mind. We're nowhere near top 10 (although we've been close at times), but it's consistent income with a lot of potential.
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the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app
The majority don't lose a lot even if their app fails, unlike a gambler who must constantly bet a lot. Apps can be coded in your spare time, and if a concept becomes popular enough, you can follow it up with something a little more fleshed out the next time and keep iterating until you reach the point of diminishing returns. Then start putting out concepts again until you find your niche, and start iterating again.
Twinstiq, game news
I'm reliably making money from the App Store, $75000 (on the side, in addition to my day job) in the last year and half actually. How? By writing apps for all those people that think they're going to get rich from App Store. I'd say probably 10% of my clients have made any money from their apps. Personally I don't try to feed their notions, I just produce the best product I can for them, and they can worry about making money from it, I'll take my money upfront for the coding thank you very much. I always turn down the projects where they want to do "profit sharing".
I do laugh at the guys that make me sign an NDA before they show me their super secret idea. Dude, ideas are a time a dozen, somebody's probably already thought of whatever idea it is you have.
Yes, it is ridiculous for Apple to charge anything. They are taking care of the distribution system, payment collection system, and maintaining the "store" (that little "walled garden" many on /. bemoan but users seem to be just fine with), and all the little headaches that come from maintaining all these things. That should be something they provide you for free since you are gracing them with your app to sell. Do you think you could provide all these things for yourself for $99?
If you want visibility, market your product. It isn't Apple's job to give every new app top billing in the store.
Of course, for the unsuccessful developers the story is clear. They had a technically superior product that the market would have rushed to if somehow Apple hadn't screwed them.
The idea here isn't to be an Apple fan. The goal is to ask for a bit of honesty. Quit focusing on all that Apple doesn't give you. Your $99 is not without return.
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1) 2007 (2006) is about the switch from PowerPC to X86 processor. That's a one off switch, not one that will happen "every 4 or 5 years".
2) That being said, eventually all developers will want to move on to a new computer because their old one is too slow for recent tools. Whether their development environment is Mac or PC. It's pretty dumb to single Mac out as anything different.
Combine this with a new iPod touch every two years (to depreciate at $150 per year), and we can estimate the total cost of hardware plus certificate at $400 to $500 per year.
Whatever mobile development you develop for you're going to have to buy devices to test on. You're going to have to buy more of them if you're developing for Android as there are far more variants, and the turnover of models is more rapid.
These were the same dorks who pushed the "internet boom" in the 90's, claiming that every new startup, no matter how fucked their business plan was, was a "gold mine". We even had a parody called "F*cked Company" which daily documented all the businesses failing in Silicon Alley (NYC) during the bust period of 2000 to 2002.
They have a lot of nerve to call the App Store a "casino", when they are the lapdogs of the stock market.
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