Wrong About the App Store
For almost 16 years now, tweet after tweet, blog post after blog post, I’ve implored Apple to do better by developers and App Store customers in a million different ways. And implied (if not said directly) that if they didn’t, the impact would, over time, lead to dire consequences. From developers abandoning the platform to regulation destroying it.
But quarter after quarter, year after year, services revenue grows. And that growth has added hundreds of billions if not a trillion plus to Apple’s market cap and given them the breathing room to continue building some of the best hardware and software (and more recently video content) on the planet.
Apple is doing exactly what Apple is supposed to do: create value for shareholders.
I think those of us who’ve been around for a while were so used to Apple being near death that we didn’t appreciate how durable its duopoly position actually was. We should have, because we were there for Microsoft’s bad behavior, poor products, and antitrust scrutiny and saw how it remained incredibly influential and profitable. Yet our commentating was not really about telling Apple how to maximize shareholder value. We expect more of the company. It says it’s about creating great products and being a good corporate citizen and has a history of doing so in many respects. It’s still worth thinking about how to do that and imagining how the world could be better, even if it seems like no one’s listening.
I’m not even sure anymore if the reputational damage I perceive actually matters. Sure there are grumpy developers, who, like me, are especially loud here on Twitter, but for every one of those there’s another teenager excitedly building their first app. Power users, pundits, and those terminally online might agitate here and there, but it’s not like they are leaving for Android in droves. And I don’t get the impression the average iPhone user knows or cares.
Part of me does still feel like this is the classic story of a company on the way to decline. More focused on profits than user/developer experience and building great products.
Where would we [developers] have gone to? We have no other viable options to have the people use our creations.
And the fact that it’s increasingly harder for users to switch platforms isn’t going to make this any better in the future.
Gripping the app world in a vice makes sense for Apple. Monopolies are super-profitable.
It doesn’t make sense for society which is why we need government regulation.
I didn’t say I was wrong about the potential for my suggestions to make the App Store a better experience for users and developers. I said Apple did a great job maximizing shareholder value, while still making some improvements to the App Store.
I didn’t say Apple shouldn’t be regulated. I said that the threat of regulation, which I have cited over and over, seems unlikely to have much of an impact given how masterfully they are maneuvering around regulation now that it’s actually happening. Though we’ll see how that plays out.
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I’m going to keep advocating for App Store changes that I think will better serve both users and developers over the long haul. Apple cares more about their App Store revenue than I do, so of course they aren’t going to do many of the things I suggest, but that’s not going to stop me from making noise.
As I said in a follow up tweet, this was about me making some level of peace with the facts on the ground, not saying it’s the state of the world I prefer.
Yep. I just find it sad, budging an irrelevant amount for them would be massive for the world. When is the time to budge a little – only once they reach the most valuable comp...? oh wait.
What should Apple’s gross margin be? During their golden age (the return of Steve through the iPad) it was about 28%. For most of the Tim Cook era it was more like 38%, but since COVID it’s jumped up to closer to 48%. With Apple’s product price inflation at an all-time high (especially re. RAM & SSD), and given they apparently can’t find anything better to do with all that profit than just buy their own shares, why don’t they just lower their prices and have more & happier customers?
These new Pixel phones and the Gemini features look very tempting. If I weren’t this stuck in the Apple ecosystem I might have gone full Android for a year. But there’s just too much stuff I’m sharing with my wife: Find My, Shared Photos Library, Airtags, calendars & reminders …
It should give Apple executives pause that a once die-hard Apple fanboy has pivoted so much. Of course it won’t–they are too busy counting the money they’ve extorted from devs and creators. But in a couple of years we may remember this time as the beginning of the end of the once mighty Apple. I’m beginning to lose hope they’ll be able to turn this around.
As much as I enjoy doing it, Apple has gotten to the point where writing an app for their platforms is increasingly bad for our businesses. I’ve spoken with many potential users of my app who are on Android, and refuse to buy an Apple device due to how Apple portrays itself. Apple is doing itself no favors burning the bridge of the last few supporters of the company, which are likely the developers that helped propel it to where it is today.
People like me are too deep into the Apple ecosystem to ever reasonably leave. Until/unless they fully neuter macOS, I’m here for life. And I’ll realistically never use Android. But the next generation of users might use an iPhone, but they also rely on the web and services from other companies. They use Chromebooks. They don’t have a reason to “root” for Apple the same way I did as a kid. And that’s how platforms change and ecosystems fall off.
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Already we see how these sorts of policies play out poorly for Apple: the Apple Vision Pro is so far, an expensive flop that has very few apps and has made its devs very little money (I’ve talked to many. Only a few have done “well”) and most are wholly unwilling to even build an app for it. These policies and decisions have downstream effects. There are consequences. Apple might not “see” them b/c they still print money, but they exist.
Microsoft has spent the better part of the 15 years trying to win back developers and users post Vista. Sometimes succeeding (VS Code, which is just good software), sometimes failing (Bing), often fumbling with bad decisions (Recall), but despite being THE platform for games, people use Steam, not the Microsoft Store. People buy PS5s more than Xbox (and I love Xbox but it’s true). When vibes shift, users find alternatives. And they find them fast. Winning people back takes much longer.
Well, there is another thing where developers were wrong: the native stack doesn’t matter.
Users don’t care which tech stack is used as long as your product works. They won’t ditch your app or service because you are using react or flutter or it’s a web wrapper.
You can’t change Apple but you can change your tech stack and make Apple platforms just another target.
Previously:
- Apple Going After Patreon
- DMA Compliance: Initial Acquisition and Store Services Fees
- Apple’s Q3 2024 Results
- Elegy for the Native Mac App
- Shaping the App Store
Update (2024-08-14): Louie Mantia:
Endless growth isn’t achievable, yet every step they take toward increasing profits does two things. It makes them less likable and more monopolistic. Apple was a better company when they were an underdog.
[…]
But since 2008, the services they provide in exchange for those recurring fees and percentage cut haven’t improved much. You’d think with all that services revenue, they’d invest it into making the developer program better.
So I thought about what kept me in the iOS ecosystem. Watch out - long post ahead!
Update (2024-08-17): Matt Birchler (Hacker News):
At first, it was fun and exciting to see the company that had been struggling finally showing everyone that they were legit, but somewhere along the way it stopped being as fun. Record revenues and profits felt like a form of validation for all of us for a while, but today they feel less like something to cheer about.
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No single action makes them the bad guy, but put together, they certainly aren’t acting like a company that is trying to make their enthusiast fans happy. In fact, it seems Apple is testing them to see how much they can get away with.
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And to be super clear, I think the vast majority of folks at Apple are amazing people doing amazing work, especially those in product, design, and development. There’s a reason that I use their products and there’s a reason I care enough to even comment on all this in the first place. The problems all stem from the business end of the company and I don’t know how to convince them that reputation matters.
[…]
It’s a pretty dark place to be when Apple’s biggest, long-time fans are hoping that the US government will step in to stop them from doing multiple things that they’re doing today.
Update (2024-08-19): Federico Viticci:
On the latest Connected, I argued that it almost feels like there are two Apples within Apple: the company that designs the hardware products and operating systems I still love using, which I find superior to most alternatives on the market today; and there’s the business entity, which is antagonizing developers, creators, governments, and, in doing so, alienating customers who have been supporting them for years.
I wonder if I have a blind spot by focusing on Apple platform development: does software quality really matter? The more I interrogate the idea, the more I think the answer is no. The iPhone is an all-time global status symbol, which is why we associate its flavor of software with success, not vice versa. Many inefficiencies can be overlooked by following in Apple’s wide wake. It may be a coincidence that the most valuable company is also the one craftspeople identify with.
They also identified with it when it was losing a billion dollars per year. And sometime in between then and now is probably when its software quality was the highest.
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This savagery reminds me of Stratechery’s “Building a business, not an app” https://mjtsai.com/blog/2014/07/31/building-a-business-not-an-app/
Re: "Users don’t care which tech stack is used as long as your product works."
Well, yes and no. Users don't care about the technical details, but they care about the overall experience, even if they're not consciously aware of it. I like to call this the "my phone hates me!" factor.
Any system where users have less of an antagonistic relationship with their device will be preferable to them. And let's note that antagonism now happens on pretty much every popular device -- everyone thinks their phone hates them. And they're not wrong. Part of it is crappy trend-chasing UI design. Another big part is pervasive dark patterns. But another big part is UIs not working consistently across the platform, which is what non-native stacks are so bad at. That's something that ordinary users are going to be totally oblivious of, but it's going to cause a constant low level (if not occasionally acute) frustration the entire time they're using their devices.
Platform lock-in will surely guarantee that no one else could come along with a new OS or produce line or anything that fixes these issues so that it's actually truly "insanely great" to use, and still have it be commercially successful. But I still assert that, if such a thing existed, everyone would recognize the difference after using it for a few days, like they used to when they switched to a mac 15 years ago.
Didn’t Buffet just unload a ton of Apple shares? I don’t think Apple is going anywhere but it’s not crazy to think they are declining under the current leadership and perhaps will be dethroned in a few years.
Trying to collect every quarter they possibly can be seen as a brilliant strategy… but maybe it’s shortsighted and stupid.
@Bri I strongly disagree with the consistent UI idea. It's not all wrong, having familiar inputs be familiar is great.
But.
Look at TikTok, look at Snapchat before that. Or the horrible mess that Facebook was for over a decade. Or Reddit or any number of popular local national haunts across the globe.
Polished and native UI is much less important than the secret sauce that makes services take off.
Heck, I'm using wechat and I can't even read Chinese.
Yes, a polished and familiar UI is great, I just don't think it's near the top of people's properties.
Another thing that puts me off is that Apple now is proud to indulge in what was called racism when I was younger.
@ObjC4Life: Yes, Buffet unloaded Apple stock after saying he'd only do it if "something really extraordinary happens". A looming World War might be such an extraordinary thing, particularly given that Apple assembles its wares in China, and like Japan, Taiwan probably gets its energy from the Persian Gulf which might be about to get shut by an Israeli-Iranian conflict.
Eye-opening post, thanks. I think we should consider ourselves lucky that the Mac App Store never really took off. The Mac feels like the last place in Apple world where the Apple we grew up to love is still recognisable, and I think it is thanks to the Mac App Store being a disappointment for Apple. I hope it won't change to become more like the iOS App Store.
"We expect more of the company"
Why, though? If companies are people, they're sociopaths. They only behave well when they're forced to—often when they're the underdog, or when the government forces them to.
I suspect a lot of us came to Apple during the 90s or 00s, which was a time when Apple was forced to behave well because they were near death. But behaving well wasn't an inherent trait of Apple, it was a necessity imposed on them by the environment in which they operated.
@Plume Perhaps we are irrational, but I think most of the people at Apple believe in the stated mission and are trying to do more. It’s a good question whether the more recent corporate behavior is a product of the environment or different people in leadership.
@Kristoffer I should explain more clearly. I don't mean that consistent UI, or even just competently designed UI, is more important than the core functionality of any app or service. Obviously a Facebook app designed with a great UI that couldn't actually do anything on Facebook wouldn't get very far. This is a sort of "all else being equal" thing. People put up with frustrating apps because they have no alternative, and they want (and often need) to use these services. If there were an actual viable alternative that allowed them to use the same services with consistent, properly designed UI, then they would. They wouldn't be able to explain why it's better, but they'd feel it as they used it. Overall, they'd be *less* likely to say "my phone hates me". That's the whole premise.
The one time I can remember this happening is when people switched to the mac... what was it... fifteen years ago? Suddenly they had a computer that could do all of the things they needed a computer to do (for certain subsets of people that, say, didn't need to use specific platform-locked Windows app or play AAA games) but now it was a computer that was actually designed well and worked with them rather than against them. They just intuitively knew using a mac was better.
Bri — a great example of this is the now defunct Apollo app for Reddit. Due to greed, Reddit basically killed it in favor of the official Reddit app which is terrible in 1,000 different ways. I personally use Reddit infrequently now, probably not even 10 minutes a week, when I used to use it multiple times a day with the Apollo app. Using the official app is just too frustrating to bother.
@ Old Unix Geek
“ Another thing that puts me off is that Apple now is proud to indulge in what was called racism to when I was younger.”
Uh, what? No, it was called “affirmative action” back then, and it’s a good thing Apple’s doing it today.
@Someone else: We will have to agree to disagree. I believe in giving support to people based on their lack of means, not based on their immutable characteristics. In my experience, it is the lack of means, or poor cultural family environment, which prevents capable people from reaching their full potential. Not helping them wastes their ability, harming both their prospects for themselves, and how much they can benefit society. Gauss for instance was very poor, yet was helped and became the prince of Mathematics. Without his contribution, much of modern mathematics would not exist. At work, I found a lot of doubt/dismissiveness on the part of my colleagues as to the abilities of those typically supported by "affirmative action" programs. Since these programs result in more judgements based on people's immutable characteristics (aka racism, etc), I do not consider them to be "good" in practice, however well-intentioned those who created them were.
Moving on to a different topic, I found this discussion interesting but disturbing as to the effects of phones and social media on Gen Z.
> Apple is doing exactly what Apple is supposed to do: create value for shareholders.
> I said Apple did a great job maximizing shareholder value, while still making some improvements to the App Store.
Ah, yes, the 1970/80s free market libertarians are still around:
> The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman which holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.[1] This shareholder primacy approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy
This is generally the model that Boeing has been operating over the last decade or two: focus on shareholder returns. How's that going for them so far?
As opposed to, say:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory
* https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/
Also: no, shareholders are not owners of a company:
* https://www.pqmagazine.com/the-myth-of-shareholder-ownership/
* https://edwardslaw.ca/blog/shareholders-agreements-in-canada-corporate-law/
@Old Unix Geek
The podcast If Books Could Kill did an excellent episode on "The Anxious Generation" well worth my time.
SPOTIFY link follows.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3cxPqxsF6WjYBS6Cta7IqY?si=tLqFB1-tT8KwVGlfS5Afiw
@ Old Unix Geek, not looking at what others suffered to get you where you are today — the ones who built the infrastructure that you sit atop — and then not repaying that societal debt… tracks with your thinking that Apple deserves 0%.
Yes, never forget the pain and suffering Apple went through to bring us the App Store. We need to make sure there's a memorial day for all the developers we left behind on the battlefield.
@Someone Else:
It must be nice to be so omniscient that you know history so perfectly and that you have me, a person you've never met, so well figured out. It's quite extraordinary, particularly given that you don't even know my ancestry, that you can judge me to be so unworthy. I also appreciated the way you ignored my reasoning so condescendingly. So, thanks for the slurs and the libel, but the character on whom they reflect is yours, not mine, since you apparently consider emoting to be a valid form of argument.
If ever you decide to learn some history, I'd refer you to the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but it might pop your bubble.
@ Old Unix Geek, is what I wrote about you true? If yes, it’s not libel. What part did I get wrong?
I’m just connecting some obvious dots of information you’ve shared about yourself over these past few weeks.
If you’re insulted or ashamed by how I or others perceive you because of your words and actions… that’s… well, that not really my problem, is it? Perhaps you should look inward.
> Users don’t care which tech stack is used as long as your product works. They won’t ditch your app or service because you are using react or flutter or it’s a web wrapper.
>
> You can’t change Apple but you can change your tech stack and make Apple platforms just another target.
So true. I ended up mostly liking flutter as a solution for mobile dev. The Cupertino widgets are pretty nice, and there were some recent additions/improvements that moved the bar a little more. Performance is much smoother than I've ever seen react native. Users seem pleased and impressed with what I've been able to assemble with it, and I'm so glad I don't have to pick up jetpack compose to serve android users. I'm also so glad that yeah, I'm treating iOS as "another target."
Why not all the developers(especially in this thread) stop charging for their creations and just give it away to the society for free. It’s a win-win situation. Apple won’t be able to take any cut and it’d be good for people.
> Applications are now open for female,* Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Indigenous founders and developers.
Honestly, I don't think this is legal. Looks like blatant discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and potentially national origin.
