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The Subtle Developer Exodus From the Mac App Store
An anonymous reader writes: Milen Dzhumerov, a software developer for OS X and iOS, has posted a concise breakdown of the problems with the Mac App Store. He says the lack of support for trial software and upgrades drives developers away by preventing them from making a living. Forced sandboxing kills many applications before they get started, and the review system isn't helpful to anyone. Dzhumerov says all of these factors, and Apple's unwillingness to address them, are leading to the slow but steady erosion of quality software in the Mac App Store.
"The relationship between consumers and developers is symbiotic, one cannot exist without the other. If the Mac App Store is a hostile environment for developers, we are going to end up in a situation where, either software will not be supported anymore or even worse, won't be made at all. And the result is the same the other way around – if there are no consumers, businesses would go bankrupt and no software will be made. The Mac App Store can be work in ways that's beneficial to both developers and consumers alike, it doesn't have to be one or the other. If the MAS is harmful to either developers or consumers, in the long term, it will be inevitably harmful to both."
"The relationship between consumers and developers is symbiotic, one cannot exist without the other. If the Mac App Store is a hostile environment for developers, we are going to end up in a situation where, either software will not be supported anymore or even worse, won't be made at all. And the result is the same the other way around – if there are no consumers, businesses would go bankrupt and no software will be made. The Mac App Store can be work in ways that's beneficial to both developers and consumers alike, it doesn't have to be one or the other. If the MAS is harmful to either developers or consumers, in the long term, it will be inevitably harmful to both."
The author forgot the biggest one: money. I did a lot of iOS development in the early days and earned enough to buy a nice car (not super nice, just a mere mortal nice car). I'm now experiencing the long tail of the cycle. I get about $200-300 a month of sales. I wrote straight sale apps, not in app purchase type apps.
The biggest reason I don't do iOS development anymore (other than here and there) is because it's too damn crowded. I now have to invest in marketing and advertisement. I'd spend 3 months developing a really nice piece of solid software just to get a few downloads. It's not worth it for me. I've moved on.
The author has some gripes, and I have some more, but they are just gripes.When people were making good money on it, those gripes were farts in the wind. Now that most people are making no money, those gripes are still farts in the wind.
You're coding it wrong.
But there are no clear guidelines for coding it "right". Apps are often rejected for unclear reasons, with just a vague and terse comment from the rejecter. I have had apps rejected, then resubmitted them a few days later, with no changes, and had them accepted.
The Apple app store is flooded with lots of similar apps, and they no longer highlight new apps. So it is very hard for a new developer to get started. I know a team of developers that worked for nearly a year to create their app. They put it on the app store for a price point of $4.99. A week later they had sold five copies. The following week, three more. After a month, they had less than $100 in revenue for a year of work. Back in 2010 and 2011, it was easy to make money selling apps. Unless you already have a customer base, those days are gone.
I'm seeing a lot of comments about iOS, smartphones, Android, etc. This article is about the Mac app store (for OSX, NOT iOS).
I think he has some good points here, but as an IT (support) guy, I see other problems with the App Store that are completely unrelated. One of the biggest is the issue of "volume licensing". I don't know if Apple has sorted it all out recently, but last I looked into it, it was a confusing mess of a program with little administrative control. IIRC, at one point Apple was advising businesses to gift employees with applications that would then be bound to the employee AppleID, which is completely stupid, without the ability to withdraw the license and reuse it.
It's also pretty frustrating that you need to put in an Apple ID to install or update any application, even if it's free. For example, if the iWork/iLife apps are pre-installed on the system and there's a new update available, even though Apple detects that the apps are already installed, and Apple knows that the upgrades are free, it still won't install the updates until you sign in with an Apple ID. That might not seem like such a big deal, but when you're administering a few hundred Macs, it means that you either need to make every user create their own AppleID, or you need to provide them access to a company Apple ID which you then lose control over. Failing to come up with a solution means that your users are going to be bugged to update applications that they can't update.
And speaking of updates, AFAIK there's no command-line utility for the App Store application. This means that I can't control the thing with a script at all. Making it more confusing, there *is* a command-line utility to download and install system updates, which are normally installed through the App Store GUI. This means that if you look at a list of updates available for your system presented in the App Store application, you can write a script to install some of them automatically, but other updates need to be updated through the GUI. What I wouldn't give to be able to update everything with apt-get.
Getting back to the article, I'm not sure I completely agree with him. I understand his frustration with sandboxing, but on the other hand, left to their own devices, developers seem to do some really dumb and annoying things. For example, instead of using an installer or developing their app to be drag-and-drop, they develop a custom application that installs their software, making it difficult and frustrating to push out in an automated fashion. Or they code their application to require an installer, dumping their files all over the system, when it really shouldn't be necessary. I wouldn't be opposed to Apple supporting applications that require installers, so long as they (a) allowed customers to get access to the unaltered installer; and (b) kept tabs on what the installer did and rejected developers who used them unnecessarily. Otherwise, I think you'd see too much dumb crap on the App Store.
Apple behaves in mysterious ways. Perhaps you need to look into your heart and ask yourself if you have truly invited Steve into your heart and are truly following his teachings in your software development. If you do this, and then come back and make true penitence to Apple for this blasphemous post, then Steve will welcome you back into the Kingdom.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In none of the articles could I find evidence of the 'exodus from the app store.'
Maybe the title would be better, "Things that Could Be Improved in the App Store"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I know a team of developers that worked for nearly a year to create their app. They put it on the app store for a price point of $4.99. A week later they had sold five copies. The following week, three more. After a month, they had less than $100 in revenue for a year of work.
Where was their market research? Where was their marketing? Any traditional non-technology startup that forgets do do these things will fail. If you build it they won't necessarily come. One has to sell the right thing, execute well, price it right, and let people know about it. Why expect to be able to not do these things just because one is on the internet? If they didn't already know of 8 people that would buy it, why did they create that software?
We could watch Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and come to the conclusion that it's impossible to make money running restaurants. And indeed it's not easy. Yet there are many successful restaurants as well as many failures. The failure is always in the specifics of a particular restaurant, not the concept of restaurants.
Apps that can't be sandboxed shouldn't be allowed in the store: installation from software not signed and not from the Mac app store triggers a bunch of security hoops, which is exactly what the user should have to see to install software that doesn't exist in a sandbox. Apple's doing the right thing.
There was development before the App Store. People still sell software outside it, and in fact most of my useful software is not in the app store; I only buy little productivity utilities from the store. Office and Photoshop are killer apps that will probably never be in the store, and you don't see them suffering much.
One issue I recall was around 2011, when IAP came along, the fundamental change of apps. Before that, one would buy an app for 99 cents, and it would be playable, people would tell their friends, friends would buy it, and so on.
IAP came along and fundamentally changed the landscape from having a good game that was well engineered from start to finish to games whose sole goal is to get the player stuck so they would throw money at IAP in order to buy extra currency/lives/etc. so they could move on. Games also put deliberate bottlenecks in place where it might take 2-3 weeks to earn enough currency to get some levels, or one could pay $20 and skip that. The fact that the most popular (as in app clones) games changed from tower defense to casino slots also echos this.
People are tired of games that are "free"... but in reality may take $30 to complete. So, user apathy is causing sales to sag in app stores. Candy Crush was the first big game along these lines, but consumers are bored with stuff like that and there won't be another game in that genre which will gross even near that.
Maybe it is time for developers to actually not go for the low and easy road with IAP, but go for something playable that can get a lot of people buying it.
Same problem in the console industry and the PC game industry. DLC used to be for expansions and added levels, not must have content to play the game, or items which make the game not a grueling grind. It is no wonder why game sales are sagging across the board, regardless of platform.