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Fed Up With Apple's Policies, App Developers Form a 'Union' (wired.com)
Even as Apple has addressed some of the concerns outlined by iOS developers in the recent years, many say it's not enough. As the iOS App Store approaches its tenth anniversary, some app developers are still arguing for better App Store policies, ones that they say will allow them to make a better living as independent app makers. On Friday, a small group of developers, including one who recently made a feature-length film about the App Store and app culture, are forming a union to lobby for just that. From a report: In an open letter to Apple that published this morning, a group identifying themselves as The Developers Union wrote that "it's been difficult for developers to earn a living by writing software" built on Apple's existing values. The group then asked Apple to allow free trials for apps, which would give customers "the chance to experience our work for themselves, before they have to commit to making a purchase."
The grassroots effort is being lead by Jake Schumacher, the director of App: The Human Story; software developer Roger Ogden and product designer Loren Morris, who both worked for a timesheet app that was acquired last year; and Brent Simmons, a veteran developer who has made apps like NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, and Vesper, which he co-created with respected Apple blogger John Gruber.
The grassroots effort is being lead by Jake Schumacher, the director of App: The Human Story; software developer Roger Ogden and product designer Loren Morris, who both worked for a timesheet app that was acquired last year; and Brent Simmons, a veteran developer who has made apps like NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, and Vesper, which he co-created with respected Apple blogger John Gruber.
A free trial *is not* "the return of shareware".
Almost every piece of software in the enterprise and consumer world has free 30 day trials now, most of them delivered via cloud. Consumers don't want to invest a ton of money into something that won't work for their use case. If you're talking about a $0.99 game that is one thing, but some productivity apps can cost $8 and up. Paying $8 for something that turns out to not be useful at all, that stings.
Google figured this out forever ago - the play store has had free trials since inception. They used to be 24 hours, now just 4 hours - however 4 hours is plenty long enough to install an app, set it up, and try it out before deciding if it is worth actually paying for.
The Google store used to do this. They'd allow you to uninstall an application within, I think it was an hour or two, and you'd be refunded for it.
When I think about it, I was more willing to try paid applications at that time. I don't mind paying a buck or two for something that's going to serve me well, but I do mind paying a buck or two for a steaming pile, or even for something that works okay but isn't really to my taste.
I don't know why they quit doing that. I'm a lot more willing to try something out if I can kick the tires a bit before I'm committed to paying for it. I hardly think I'm the only one.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
No, a free trial has full functionality with limited time. Shareware has limited functionality but unlimited time.
There were many kinds of shareware: limited time, limited functionality, nagware, and guiltware, just to name a few. The early BBS says lacked the monetization sophistication of modern apps, but they did try quite a few approaches.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
has to target the last 4 major version of Android
Google's adding requirements that apps need to be targeted to the last major release (e.g., as of October (?) this year they need to target Oreo). It's just for updates and new apps for now but they know this problem and are working on it.
If I understand things correctly that change does not really address this problem. Many of those phones cannot upgrade, this includes phones currently sold. Last I checked a few months ago an inexpensive pay-as-you-go phone at Walmart could be stuck at Android 4.4 KitKat. Plus this change is only addressing the lazy developers that just targeted 4.4 KitKat and use an ancient SDK and libraries and rely on that running everywhere. While google may require that apps target the current major release and use a current SDK and libraries they will still allow compatibility with the old versions. The developer will have to target Android 8 Oreo and add conditionals as necessary to support deprecated and other 4.4 targeting code. Google is not making anyone drop support for old versions. If they did that many phones would become unreachable to developers. I believe google is just requiring that developers use current SDKs and libraries, and at least indirectly have better "native" support for the current Android version. Yes "native" is a somewhat overloaded term here but I hope you get my meaning, current SDK/libs better support for current Android. And I'm sure that google also hopes developers will be a little less lazy and perhaps support some feature only offered in the current OS. There are probably also newer things that developers will be forced to support, for example newer security models.