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Apple's App Store Celebrates 10th Anniversary (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: People sometimes forget that when the first-ever iPhone launched in 2007, there was no App Store. Believe it or not, Apple's smartphone was limited to the apps with which it came. In fact, Steve Jobs famously didn't want third-party apps on the iPhone at all. Ultimately, the App Store was added in 2008 despite Jobs' initial push against it. This move changed the computer industry forever.
This month, the Apple App Store reaches an impressive milestone -- its 10th Birthday. This day is important for three groups -- Apple (of course), but more importantly, consumers and developers. Apple has made billions of dollars from the App Store, but third party developers have as well -- the company has literally transformed some devs into millionaires. Consumers have benefited from high-quality applications too.
Regardless of your feelings about Apple, the world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store. It inspired other companies, such as Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows 8/10, to adopt the same app concepts. It really did change everything.
This month, the Apple App Store reaches an impressive milestone -- its 10th Birthday. This day is important for three groups -- Apple (of course), but more importantly, consumers and developers. Apple has made billions of dollars from the App Store, but third party developers have as well -- the company has literally transformed some devs into millionaires. Consumers have benefited from high-quality applications too.
Regardless of your feelings about Apple, the world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store. It inspired other companies, such as Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows 8/10, to adopt the same app concepts. It really did change everything.
Not only is this revisionist, in that Apple is far from the first device or operating system to have its own app store, its also a terrible thing for users and developers.
>> world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store
And a bigger "thank you" for jailbreaking. App stores are for luddites.
many Apps, especially on iOS are not that "quality", and also assuming software was already sold before, Apple managed to snitch in an extra 30% of all software sales, effectively taking from what developer would have earned anyway. Plus preventing some Apps, competition, as well as still not having a clear update path, except creating a new v2 app, or charging for subscription, ...
Changed things for a very small value of forever.
Regardless of your feelings about Apple, the world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store. It inspired other companies, such as Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows 8/10, to adopt the same app concepts.
"Inspired" them to develop their own vendor lock in methods you mean.
When Apple introduced iTunes it became just another company trying to separate you from your dollar. Before that time it truly was about innovation and creativity. The app store was just another gimmick to squeeze money out of its popularity. Any other company trying to impose a 30% tariff on access to its platform would have been laughable. And their "No you can't put that app in our store because it would allow you to run other apps without our consent" is just precious. Once I saw the direction Apple was headed I did a 180 and stopped advocating for them. I'm glad I did. They've become the epitome of everything Jobs hated.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
While I can appreciate the quantity of apps on the App Store it seems somewhere along the lines we lost quality.
i.e.
I don't care all the Free-to-Play (F2P) race-to-the-bottom-of-the-barrel with shitty Micro-Transactions (MTX) and Hurry-Up-and-Wait gaming.
At least we still have SOME good games left like:
* Fortnite (only has cosmetic MTX)
* Hocus
* The Room
* The Witness
etc.
The world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store. It inspired other companies, such as Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows 8/10, to adopt the same app concepts.
Yes, Microsoft owes Apple a big huge thanks, because until the App Store, Microsoft had never ever previously considered creating an operating system architecture that allowed end-users to download and install their own applications onto it.
Gather around, kids, it's time to hear about the good ol' days from your grand-pappy. Before apps, we had something else called an application. They were kinda like apps, but they ran on these big old things called personal computers, you had to go to this thing called a store to buy them, and they came on these things called floppy disks. Then Apple invented the iPhone and App Store, and we all could finally emerge from our caves.
The Dirty Truth about AppStores is that they are 100% gamed. EVERYONE buys downloads and ratings. All those things at the top of the markets are placed there by paid for marketing. You pay a bot to buy and rate and comment (sometimes using markov chains, in the case of Flappy Birds), in order to get your shit to the top.
Then, the "journalists" praise the pieces of shit (like Flappy Birds) that get to the top rather than expose how gamed the market places are, and the filthy casual consumers just go along with the media narrative -- "Huh, I hate it, but it must just hit a sweet spot of gameplay simplicity, like the articles on Polygon & Kotaku said".
It's not just games. ALL APPS IN THE TOP OF ALL APP STORES = Put there thanks to buying fake downloads. The stores don't care because they still get their cut if devs are going to pay for downloads as part of their marketing (devs get back the ~70%, marketeer takes their cut [sometimes off the top], and Apple keeps the ~30% in case of mass paid app purchase via Apple's App Store).
Just search "pay for downloads" or "app marketing". Eventually you'll get to the seedy underbelly where 3rd world shithole workers manually purchase, rate, and run your app for X minutes at a desk with 50 other phones for a few bucks a day... That's right: App Stores promote e-Sweat Shops.
Regardless of your feelings about Apple, the world owes it a collective thank you for its App Store. It inspired other companies, such as Google with Android and Microsoft with Windows 8/10, to adopt the same app concepts. It really did change everything.
Uh, there were "apps" (we used to call them programs) on Windows CE, Symbian, and Blackberry well before 2008. And there were STORES too, where you could buy those programs. Apple simply made it Kindergarten-level difficult for consumers and sold lock-down and restrictions as a benefit, rather than a curse.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Er, OK; thanks for the walled gardens, especially on Windows. It sure was terrible having control of our own machines (I'm sure that loophole will be closed soon on desktops thanks to how inspiring this all is).
(Yes, I know, Grandma should root her devices, sideload, etc. so I should shut up.)
GNU/Linux and *BSD repositories contain mostly free software. It's slightly less dishonest to claim that Apple popularized the repository of proprietary software, though it's still not completely honest because of Xbox Live Arcade that preceded it.
Exactly. The world owes nothing to apple. It has been a vile cancer in the tech industry for years.
Amazing it still took off without that key feature. Youtube was already huge at that point. Many competitors' phones did record video.
The real point is how the AI learned to play (without instructions and through visual input). The win stats are only significant in that they "prove" that the AI truly learned how to play the game and wasn't just wandering around doing random whatever.
Just because the App store is 10 years old doesn't make it a milestone. A Milestone is an achievement or progress or a checkpoint. Making it to 10 years in it's own walled garden ecosystem where it's own policies dictates its existence is not a milestone.
that's m$.