Do you really think every app that doesn't break the 143 sells (the majority) is a crap app? I'm just saying that every app should have a chance at the spotlight, not just the already big apps, and the review process gives them a way to do it.
And did you read the article? The majority FAILS with the $99+30%, only a very very limited number of developers breaks even.
I'm not saying they should do everything for free, but I'd say that the 30% cut should be enough to sustain anything. And you don't pay 99$ for the app store access, you have to pay that to even try your app in a phone. There is a lot of things that could be changed, in my opinion.
No one's saying that all failure stories are apple's fault (even though some might be, for example, the cut on in-app purchases that ruins any book business), but they could also be responsible for more success stories if they simply allowed for more things to reach the front page and not only the apps that already sell like cupcakes and the ones they sponsor.
To be honest, I'd rather have no entrance fee and pay a higher cut (that could go down if you sell a lot) than having to pay upfront for anything. those 99$ are what keeps me away from iOS right now.
Actually, SSL certificates are free if you don't rely on a CA to give you one. And paypal (for example) charges 10 times less of what apple charges for their services.
Well, would if I could, but I can't even test an app on a phone without paying for it. I strongly believe the ecosystem will smother itself someday (and that's true for everyone, not only apple).
And you pay those prices for basic hosting and web domain? No wonder you think 99$ is cheap.
Define "market it well". The top spot is almost next to impossible to get to, no matter what you do. and that's where the real money is, the rest is peanuts unless you're an app that doesn't rely on its sells to make a profit.
You think it is ok to overexpose the top selling apps (that sometimes, all they did, was be made by a big company and/or be bumped upp by people stealing iTunes accounts) and not expose new and good apps?
You should be advertising the novelties, not the tried and tested. That's my opinion. A new app has zero to no chances to make it anywhere unless you're a company with enough money to support it (So any hobbyist is fked).
If I'm not a company and I'm someone trying to distribute something I done on my free time, the 99$, especially in these hard times, are hard to come by.
If you want to pay me for a license I'll love you forever and promise to make good use of it! (:
what % of the apps on the market do you think sells anything near that? Most don't ever come close to that and not everyone works for a company that can spend the 99$ or is even trying to make a living out of the app. I'd say the majority would be students and hobbyists spreading their work and trying not to be on a loosing side...
I develop things on my spare time. I currently am working for example, on a voice dialer that will allow people to circumvent the language barrier (if you don't speak english/french/german/chinese or spanish voice dialing is really hard, especially because local names have strange pronunciations). The Android version is almost complete, and I actually program on a Mac, it'd cost me nothing to port it to iPhone (maybe a week or less in my spare time) since all the logic has been worked out. But I won't. Those 99$ are a hard nut to crack to even try it on an actual phone, so it's no deal for me. But I see people that do try and never even break even (at least it was a learning experience)
I do think my idea has merit, and it is at least as good as the solutions currently on the market, but I'll never risk the app store.
Yes, to a lot of people, the 99$ matter. Even google's one time fee of 25$ matters, but at least I get to try the apps on a phone without having to pay anything.
Do you really think every app is done by a single person stuck in their basement? If you want quality you need at least 2 or 3 people (I'd say a good programmers and a good artist AT LEAST, nevermind sounds and whatnot). Most apps will require a bit more than that. Then, if you're a team, you need a place to be. A place costs money, so does electricity and maintenance. (etc etc)
Then you get your shiny app to the store, where you get no visibility whatsoever and where getting to a top list is almost impossible (and where the same apps and developers seem to be a recurring theme). And there you have to give 30% of every sale to apple.
Do you really think it's easy to get a profit like that? Yes, it's hard to make a profit anywhere, but the appstore is a a harder place to do it. Not impossible, just extremely hard.
The problem is not mediocre apps that get no sells, it's the extremely good apps that cost a lot of money to make and get no visibility anywhere (its really really hard to make it to a top list), making it a big gamble. Unless your app is exceptional and word of mouth makes you rise, you have a very little chance of getting anywhere near a profit. Not all low-selling apps are crap...
This is not unique to Apple's app store, but with the entrance fee (99$/year) and the high margin apple charges (30%) allied to the fact that new apps get almost no visibility, the app store is worse than, lets say, steam (for example).
Do not compare this to other software distributors. The 99$ tag that you HAVE to pay per year to have your app in the appstore make it extremely hard for anyone to be able to make a profit (especially when apple will take 30% of anything they sell). I won't go into the top-app lists that are most likelly rigged or anything like that, but if I make a software, host it on github and publicize it on facebook, I won't be loosing anything other than my time...
In this case people loose actual money. And the "filthy rich" also raised the bar on what has to be done in order to sell, requiring each time bigger teams to do an acceptable game or application, while the price tag is still expected to be low.
The whole ecosystem is flawed, and the only way to fix it would be for Apple (or any other distributor) to publicize good unknown apps. For Apple it'll be really easy, if they have to review every app, then they use every app. Having a ranking of the best apps they reviewed daily (or weekly) would give those with talent but without money a fighting chance. Steam tries to do this, but unfortunately Valve seems to be the exception and not the rule.:\
Red Hat has been making a LOT of money with their system, so the premise to the whole statement is flawed.
There have always been free linux distros, if it was not CentOS it could be Fedora (or even a LTS release of Ubuntu). I was under the impression that the only real advantage of CentOS would be running Oracle extremely well - but if you're going for free, why not dump Oracle altogether and go postgresql?
This is genius! He now has the perfect defense! "You see, mr judge, I have my whole life on-line, anyone could have used it to frame me. I call reasonable doubt!" (:
The price they are paying for the licenses (1.16 M euros per year) is enough to train a whole bunch of people to fix things.
Hell, a whole side of my colleges Masters Degree is management a security in linux systems. There are trained people that will cost less than microsoft licenses.
I'm quite sure that the 1.16M per year they were paying in licenses would be enough to train and pay a whole buch of people to take care of these systems. It's a win-win situation, you'd be offering Jobs and getting rid of a recurring fee for a one time lifetime subscription.
Actually, they were paying 1.16M euros per year for all the licenses for those old computers (the new ones have a lifetime one). For that price they could revamp the whole system if they simply installed free software.
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I don't. I wish I could, but without, at least, not having the feeling that i'll be sending the 99$ out the window, I'll never do it.
Do you really think every app that doesn't break the 143 sells (the majority) is a crap app? I'm just saying that every app should have a chance at the spotlight, not just the already big apps, and the review process gives them a way to do it.
And did you read the article? The majority FAILS with the $99+30%, only a very very limited number of developers breaks even.
I'm not saying they should do everything for free, but I'd say that the 30% cut should be enough to sustain anything. And you don't pay 99$ for the app store access, you have to pay that to even try your app in a phone. There is a lot of things that could be changed, in my opinion.
No one's saying that all failure stories are apple's fault (even though some might be, for example, the cut on in-app purchases that ruins any book business), but they could also be responsible for more success stories if they simply allowed for more things to reach the front page and not only the apps that already sell like cupcakes and the ones they sponsor.
To be honest, I'd rather have no entrance fee and pay a higher cut (that could go down if you sell a lot) than having to pay upfront for anything. those 99$ are what keeps me away from iOS right now.
it's not only the 99$ (which is hard for someone that isn't a company), it's the whole ecosystem that makes it extremely hard to release anything
Actually, SSL certificates are free if you don't rely on a CA to give you one. And paypal (for example) charges 10 times less of what apple charges for their services.
Well, would if I could, but I can't even test an app on a phone without paying for it. I strongly believe the ecosystem will smother itself someday (and that's true for everyone, not only apple).
And you pay those prices for basic hosting and web domain? No wonder you think 99$ is cheap.
Because everyone is a company with 10 employees, not a student working on its free time, for example.
Define "market it well". The top spot is almost next to impossible to get to, no matter what you do. and that's where the real money is, the rest is peanuts unless you're an app that doesn't rely on its sells to make a profit.
I don't drink Mountain Dew nor do I eat Cheetos.
You think it is ok to overexpose the top selling apps (that sometimes, all they did, was be made by a big company and/or be bumped upp by people stealing iTunes accounts) and not expose new and good apps?
You should be advertising the novelties, not the tried and tested. That's my opinion. A new app has zero to no chances to make it anywhere unless you're a company with enough money to support it (So any hobbyist is fked).
If I'm not a company and I'm someone trying to distribute something I done on my free time, the 99$, especially in these hard times, are hard to come by.
If you want to pay me for a license I'll love you forever and promise to make good use of it! (:
what % of the apps on the market do you think sells anything near that? Most don't ever come close to that and not everyone works for a company that can spend the 99$ or is even trying to make a living out of the app. I'd say the majority would be students and hobbyists spreading their work and trying not to be on a loosing side...
Oh, but you miss my point entirely.
I develop things on my spare time. I currently am working for example, on a voice dialer that will allow people to circumvent the language barrier (if you don't speak english/french/german/chinese or spanish voice dialing is really hard, especially because local names have strange pronunciations). The Android version is almost complete, and I actually program on a Mac, it'd cost me nothing to port it to iPhone (maybe a week or less in my spare time) since all the logic has been worked out. But I won't. Those 99$ are a hard nut to crack to even try it on an actual phone, so it's no deal for me. But I see people that do try and never even break even (at least it was a learning experience)
I do think my idea has merit, and it is at least as good as the solutions currently on the market, but I'll never risk the app store.
Yes, to a lot of people, the 99$ matter. Even google's one time fee of 25$ matters, but at least I get to try the apps on a phone without having to pay anything.
Do you really think every app is done by a single person stuck in their basement? If you want quality you need at least 2 or 3 people (I'd say a good programmers and a good artist AT LEAST, nevermind sounds and whatnot). Most apps will require a bit more than that. Then, if you're a team, you need a place to be. A place costs money, so does electricity and maintenance. (etc etc)
Then you get your shiny app to the store, where you get no visibility whatsoever and where getting to a top list is almost impossible (and where the same apps and developers seem to be a recurring theme). And there you have to give 30% of every sale to apple.
Do you really think it's easy to get a profit like that? Yes, it's hard to make a profit anywhere, but the appstore is a a harder place to do it. Not impossible, just extremely hard.
The problem is not mediocre apps that get no sells, it's the extremely good apps that cost a lot of money to make and get no visibility anywhere (its really really hard to make it to a top list), making it a big gamble. Unless your app is exceptional and word of mouth makes you rise, you have a very little chance of getting anywhere near a profit. Not all low-selling apps are crap...
This is not unique to Apple's app store, but with the entrance fee (99$/year) and the high margin apple charges (30%) allied to the fact that new apps get almost no visibility, the app store is worse than, lets say, steam (for example).
Do not compare this to other software distributors. The 99$ tag that you HAVE to pay per year to have your app in the appstore make it extremely hard for anyone to be able to make a profit (especially when apple will take 30% of anything they sell). I won't go into the top-app lists that are most likelly rigged or anything like that, but if I make a software, host it on github and publicize it on facebook, I won't be loosing anything other than my time...
In this case people loose actual money. And the "filthy rich" also raised the bar on what has to be done in order to sell, requiring each time bigger teams to do an acceptable game or application, while the price tag is still expected to be low.
The whole ecosystem is flawed, and the only way to fix it would be for Apple (or any other distributor) to publicize good unknown apps. For Apple it'll be really easy, if they have to review every app, then they use every app. Having a ranking of the best apps they reviewed daily (or weekly) would give those with talent but without money a fighting chance. Steam tries to do this, but unfortunately Valve seems to be the exception and not the rule. :\
Red Hat has been making a LOT of money with their system, so the premise to the whole statement is flawed.
There have always been free linux distros, if it was not CentOS it could be Fedora (or even a LTS release of Ubuntu). I was under the impression that the only real advantage of CentOS would be running Oracle extremely well - but if you're going for free, why not dump Oracle altogether and go postgresql?
you still need to pay for licenses for old microsfot software (and most isn't even supported or sold anymore)
This is genius! He now has the perfect defense! "You see, mr judge, I have my whole life on-line, anyone could have used it to frame me. I call reasonable doubt!" (:
But if a suspect fellow is giving them access to everything he's supposedly doing I'd be trying real hard to find what he was trying to hide?
Flash already uses this since minor versions ago.
The price they are paying for the licenses (1.16 M euros per year) is enough to train a whole bunch of people to fix things.
Hell, a whole side of my colleges Masters Degree is management a security in linux systems. There are trained people that will cost less than microsoft licenses.
I'm quite sure that the 1.16M per year they were paying in licenses would be enough to train and pay a whole buch of people to take care of these systems. It's a win-win situation, you'd be offering Jobs and getting rid of a recurring fee for a one time lifetime subscription.
Actually, they were paying 1.16M euros per year for all the licenses for those old computers (the new ones have a lifetime one). For that price they could revamp the whole system if they simply installed free software.