Commoditized Complements and Fear of Apple

Michael Burford:

So for iPhone Productivity apps, any app that is out of the top 200 is selling single digit copies a day at best. So of the thousands and thousands of productivity apps, most are making virtually nothing. With a very large percent making absolutely nothing.

But the lucky 10 or so at the top are likely selling hundreds or thousands of copies a day.

Eli Schiff (Hacker News, Slashdot):

Arment understood then why the session went this way, and why still to this day close to nothing has been done to make the App Store more hospitable to developers—Apple has not perceived any incentive make it so: “Apple thinks this is good enough. And that’s the scariest part of all.”

[…]

According to reporting, “1.6 percent of developers earn more than the other 98.4 percent combined. And the bottom 47 percent of engineers earn less than $100 per month.” Yet somehow, independent app development has often been described as a ‘gold rush’ despite it being quietly understood by developers, even as early as 2009, that this was hardly the case.

[…]

It is clear that the recent influx of independent app developers into larger organizations and venture-backed startups coincides with independent development for the App Store being ever more exposed as an unprofitable venture. Developers who would otherwise be quite comfortable coding apps on their own now feel compelled to turn to large organizations in order to find gainful work.

[…]

The reason for the obscurity of most independent apps is that Apple’s rejections and consistent featuring of free and cheap apps have incentivized a race to the bottom that makes developing for the App Store an unsustainable venture. It is not only indie developers feeling this squeeze, large companies also feel they have to appease Apple. They recognize that if they do not get featured by Apple, they will get buried.

[…]

For developers today, there is actually disincentive to providing support for their apps in order to make them dependable. Every time a developer release bug fixes in an app update, prior reviews are wiped and the reviews are left blank for the new version. Instead the best option for developers is to create ‘free’ viral apps with casino-like in-app purchases.

[…]

Things went south In 2012, when Ivanovic launched a new version of the Pocket Casts app on the Android Play Store first, rather than Apple’s App Store. The launch was a real success, and he publicly shared the good news. Before he knew it, his Apple Developer Relations representative stopped all contact. The representative would not even answer his emails. Ivanovic had been completely shut out.

makeofpalk:

We recently had our iOS Developer Program terminated, for what I can only assume was a gross misunderstanding on Apple’s behalf. And I can only assume because Apple won’t actually tell us why they terminated our account. We just got a standard form reply with zero detail. Whenever we call Developer Support, they can’t/won’t tell us anything. We have absolutely zero information on why they permanently expelled us from the App Store.

Update (2015-03-25): Responses from Marco Arment, Russell Ivanovic, Matthew Drayton, and Daniel Jalkut.

Update (2015-03-28): Follow-up from Eli Schiff and a response from Nick Heer.

Update (2015-04-03): Allen Pike (via iOS Dev Weekly):

A critical article about some Apple technology or policy is like a kind of thought virus. If you make a compelling argument, you can seed it on the open internet, and by its nature the article will spread among people who care about Apple and its success or failure. Naturally, this includes Apple employees. While it may be impossible from the outside to discern who is responsible for a particular iOS 8 usability issue, a thoughtful critique of the problem has a decent chance of making its way to that team and driving change for the better.

App Store Apple Business iOS

Fantastical 2 for Mac

Fantastical 2 (App Store) is a big update, though the change list doesn’t seem to be documented yet.

• It’s now a full calendar application, with a main window rather than just the Mini Window that comes down from the menu bar. As expected, I am finding it more friction-free than Apple’s interface. I also prefer it to BusyCal’s.
• The left side of the Full Calendar Window window shows the list of upcoming events, which is much more useful than the sidebar in Apple’s Calendar application.
• Instead of sidebar checkboxes to toggle the visibility of individual calendars, there’s now a pop-up menu with keyboard shortcuts to toggle calendar sets. This is probably my second-favorite new feature, and it’s essential because the Full Calendar Window and the Mini Window always show the same set of calendars. I had been used to seeing an abbreviated set in Fantastical 1’s Mini Window and a more complete set in Apple Calendar’s big window.
• My favorite new feature is that the natural language engine can now create alerts, e.g. type “alert 15” or “alert 1d” to create an alert 15 minutes or 1 day before the event. Now I can really create most events without any clicking.
• I was initially disappointed that the Mini Window has lower data density than before, but it’s possible to restore the old font size in the preferences.
• The Mini Window and Full Calendar Window are part of the same application. That is, there’s no separate helper/background application for running the menu bar status item. This is taking some time to get used to because my instinct is to quit to close the Full Calendar Window, but I want the status item to keep running. Also, it feels weird to have an active icon in the Dock with no windows open, but I don’t want to hide the Dock icon, either, because then the Full Calendar Window would have no Dock icon or menu bar.
• Apple Calendar is still needed to create and manage calendars and their sharing options.
• There’s no support, as far as I can tell, for shared calendar notifications. This is actually kind of nice because I like to receive change notifications via e-mail. Apple Calendar offers no way to turn off the in-app notifications that I’ve already read in Mail. The best I can do is Option-click to dismiss them all at once. So it’s nice that Fantastical doesn’t have a notification inbox that needs constant servicing.
• The bigger window comes with a big price increase. I bought version 1.x for $10 in 2012. Version 2 is $50, currently on sale for $40. There is no special upgrade discount. Since Apple still hasn’t gotten its act together, I think it’s worth it, but I could see people who only want to use the Mini Window being disappointed.

Update (2015-03-25): It looks like Fantastical 2 uses YapDatabase and SQLite’s FTS module for searching. I expect this means it will be immune to the many searching problems that I experienced with Apple Calendar, which I think relied on Spotlight. It also now supports axis searches, e.g. “title:foo location:bar notes:baz”.

Update (2015-03-28): Joe Cieplinski:

I always watch Michael Simmons very closely when he’s launching a new product. The guy never fails to get great press coverage. And it’s not by chance.

[…]

It’s brilliant. And it obviously works. But only because it’s genuine. And only because he’s willing to put in that time. That incredible amount of time. Not coding. Not designing. (That’s all getting done, too.) But good old-fashioned marketing.

Business BusyCal CalDAV Calendar Fantastical Full-Text Search Mac Mac App Marketing Spotlight SQLite YapDatabase