I don't know if I can agree with this essay. I've found the App Store review process has helped me as a software developer, and has helped my customers.
I've learned to take the rejections positively, and in many cases it has improved the quality of my software. Two cases specifically come to mind:
- Apple rejected an app for not putting in battery usage warnings when the app made use of background location
- Apple rejected an app for including placeholder artwork for in-game achievements
In the cases where I felt I was right, I have almost always been able to argue my point with the reviewer and was allowed through. This has been the case both for policy issues and software design.
That said, there have been moments of pain. Like when I was involved in a trademark dispute and was required to rename my app. Apple delayed the process a lot, causing the other party to become concerned (eventually Apple approved the update but it caused some tension). I think Apple has since improved their review mechanism to handle cases like this (e.g., now including the option "Is this update being submitted for legal reasons, such as copyright or trademark infringement?")
It sometimes feels like software developers think they should be above judgment; that they should be treated as first-class citizens and not their customers. I personally prefer Apple's approach. Though I'm glad there are platforms which cater to both sides.
The review process can be great. But it can also suck. I'm sure you've read the horror stories. I won't reiterate them, but will say that I've been involved in some personally.
I don't think it's worth the tradeoff.
I'm glad there are platforms which cater to both sides, but I wish the all did. There is no reason iOS couldn't have the curated, reviewed, controlled App Store and the ability to sideload whatever apps you wanted, for those of us who don't want Apple deciding what we can or cannot run on our own hardware.
I wonder about being able to sideload β because I sell a relatively expensive app on the App Store (at least, expensive in App Store terms: $10).
If sideloading were possible I wonder if it would increase the piracy rate for my app, on which I make a living.
Personally, I would love to do away with the certificates and signing and be able to run whatever. But I wonder if it would hurt my business. I realise that piracy is already possible, but I suspect any form of sideloading makes it a far more accessible option.
Edit: as I said, I'm pretty aware of the sucky bits. My review process (expedited!) went on for months while the trademark dispute played out. It was an incredibly anxious time.
Allow apps to bypass review. These apps will be hosted on Apple and charged the 30% fee, but they will not be indexed and not be displayed in any way on iTunes. You will have to have a direct link to buy them and download them.
As is typical with software developers, you ask the wrong question.
It doesn't matter if it increases the piracy rate. What matters is whether it decreases your purchase rate.
It's possible that sideloading would decrease your purchase rate. I don't think so, but I wouldn't rule it out. Even then, I think people's freedom to do what they want on their own hardware overrules potential harm to your business, to the extent that I find it incredibly weird to propose it.
Four years and change later the central thesis that developers will abandon Apple en masse because the App Store is a great crime against programmers rings hollow. iOS is still the first target for many developers and for those where it isn't, they're more likely following the enormous Android userbase most of which Apple doesn't even compete for. I'm sure it has cost them some developers but the short list of big time Android first apps tells you the score.
At the end of the day hot dog vendors sell hot dogs in highly regulated NYC because people in NYC buy hot dogs. Companies sell their goods to Wal-Mart and Neiman Marcus instead of at the flea market because that's what keeps the lights on. Small publishers work with Amazon despite horrible terms because it puts steak on the dinner table.
One thing this article reminds us of it that pg has the not uncommon HN blind spot for Google who he claims has "remained true to their founding principles". I guess stabbing a close partner in the back by releasing a clone of their flagship product is not being evil. I wonder if he's also a fan of the Samwer brothers?
> I guess stabbing a close partner in the back by releasing a clone of their flagship product is not being evil
1. All these companies "stab each other in the back" and engage in cut throat competition for everything, including (notoriously now) employees and customers.
2. Of all the things google has done, or is doing, or might do releasing Android was one of the more benevolent. At least the "victim" was a giant corporation not defenseless employees, factory workers, developers or customers.
3. Evil is what Sergey says is evil.
I'm a huge fan of Apple products, but "benevolent" is certainly not a word you might use to describe them as a company. In many cases (not all), the opposite can be said of Google.
I guess that's what OP was referring to but how is it surprising that a major tech company was getting into the mobile device business? Even Amazon created a tablet.
Their early versions looked closer to a blackberry. The general Jobs assertion is that Google switched to full touch screen after seeing the prototypes.
He is talking about the way that Google released a full touch-screen based phone to directly compete with the iPhone after becoming familiar with the project due to their board connections.
There were board connections but primarily Apple partnered closely with Google starting with the iphone because Maps and Search were great services that Apple wanted to build right into the core of the device and really the whiz bangness of the iphone intro to me was when Steve searched for a shop, brought it up on maps, touched the number and the companies phone was ringing.
When Eric got onstage at the iphone keynote [1] and joked about Apple and Google being such great partners that they should merge, it got an honest laugh at the time but watching the same moment in retrospect is absolutely jarring.
Here's Steve, who had some experience losing a big market to a close partner, demonstrating the betrayal he felt from Google:
We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake teams at Google want to kill the iPhone. We wonβt let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but thereβs no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. "Don't be evil is a load of crap"
Now Apple is in the Maps business today and is slowly entering corners of the Search business as well but imo they didn't want to be and they aren't particularly good at it and know it. But the battle lines that were drawn in 2009 made it clear they had to abandon any ideas of partnering with Google for longer than they absolutely needed to.
I dont think Google are at all interested in killing the iPhone. Unlike Microsoft circa 2013-14 they know what type of company they are - an advertising funded services company. They would be more or less as happy if everyone was using Google Search and Google Apps on iOS as if everyone went out nd brought Android products.
Android was a straegic ploy to avoid being shut out of the next computing platform by a dominant/monopolistic competitor. From some accounts, at the time Android was first planned, they believed that would be Microsoft - a much more natural competitor than Apple. The Apple/Google rift is a strange thing that had as much to do with Jobsβ personal emotions as anything else. While alive he set in motion a lot of Anti-Google initiatives such as Apple Maps, an army of lawsuits etc but i thik things will gradually cool off betwen the two as time passes.
Still, given what amazing companies they are, its sad that things will never go back to the "best budsβ period that you mention here...
I agree with much that you said; but I don't think you can minimize the boost android got by having eric on apple's board during a very critical formative point in the iPhone development. Google completely abandoned their earlier prototypes once they saw what apple had brewing. http://bgr.com/2013/12/19/original-iphone-android-story/
Also, the book that article is sourced from hashes out how the Google mobile software team working on iOS which was lead by Gundotra was a different body all together from Rubin's Android unit (who were actually gunning for Android to be shut down since they couldn't see the point of it).
It's worth a read.
I think he is referring to Apple and Google. Eric Schmidt sat on Apple's board at the time the iPhone was in development. There was an impression (with Apple) that the two companies were friendly, and that Google would not compete against Apple on devices. Then Android happened, and then this:
2009 seems like yesterday, it's crazy how different the world was merely 5 years ago.
Since then, Android has certainly grown into an viable competitor to the iPhone, though it's still far behind in many ways, particularly developer adoption and the high end of the market (which is by far more profitable).
Apple has also gotten a bit better and faster in app approval from what my friends say. Still, the iPhone is a lot less hackable than especially the nexus phones. It's still bewilderingly hard to test an app with real people (I'm writing my first iOS app right now and so wish I could just email an apk to even 5 friends). I know many get around this surreptitiously using the "enterprise" program (my hunch is Apple knows but quietly lets it slide knowing that a lot of the best developers do this).
Compared with rooting an android, jail breaking an iPhone seems more risky and less effective. And Apple seems to have succumbed to carriers wrt banning tethering apps not only from the app store, but also in code (from what I hear, haven't had the chance to see if it's possible yet).
However, there are a lot of reasons startups still start with iOS and leave android as a second thought:
1. iOS users actually buy apps, use them, and spend money in them which is extremely rare amongst android users
2. A lot more iOS users have the latest OS and enough also the latest hardware, which means you can do the coolest stuff the platform allows and (at least initially) not have to worry about deprecating well for legacy devices/OS.
3. the devices themselves are (as pg wrote) just too much better designed compared to to even the best android phones. I have a nexus 5 and iPhone 5s and slowly over time I pretty much only use the iPhone except when developing for android. It's little things that cause this behavior, like being able to plug in the iPhone's power cord in the dark (since it's symmetric).
It's still too early to decide whether Apple's tight control is purely a good or bad thing. You could make a decent case either way.
>iOS users actually buy apps, use them, and spend money in them which is extremely rare amongst android users
So do Android users. Over a year ago iOS and Android phone apps were dead even in revenues. [1]
Android tablets are behind the curve still, but for the first time Android tablets are outselling iPads -- Android tablets took 62% of the market in 2013. [2]
It will take a while for that lead to actually cause Android tablet revenues to exceed iPad revenues, but it seems inevitable. So in eventually the Android tablet revenue numbers will match or exceed the iPad's as well.
>the devices themselves are (as pg wrote) just too much better designed compared to to even the best android phones
iPhones are nice, but they totally don't trump the features if that's what you care about. I have the Nexus 5 and I wouldn't give it up for an iPhone; the screen size alone makes a huge difference to me.
The Lightning connector is elegant. But I can buy a micro-USB cable for a dollar; a Lightning cable is at least $9. I can have extra cables everywhere I need one for next to nothing. And yes, getting the polarity wrong sucks, but having a standardized cable that works on ALL the devices I need to charge is even better.
> "Over a year ago iOS and Android phone apps were dead even in revenues. [1]"
From the Forbes article:
"A year ago, that lead shrunk to iPhone users being 50% more valuable β and right now, if the app is designed specifically for Android and some segmentation is considered, the revenue generation potential is the same."
That's a big if, and a qualifier to boot.. I don't think what that article is saying (potential for revenue can be the same in some cases) is the same as "dead even in revenues".
Often good design is what you leave out just as much as what you put in to a product. The biggest reason I resisted the iPhone at first was its late adoption of 4g. At the time I had a galaxy nexus, one of the earlier phones with 4g, but I ended up getting a 4s as well for my startup. Even without 4g, I noticed slowly moving over to the iPhone, because at the time batteries were not good enough for the 4g radio. Even if the speeds were much faster, if I wasn't diligent with charging (which I'm not) I rarely had the opportunity to use 4g (or the phone at all actually). This was by design on Apple's part, as clearly it wasn't technical inability.
I agree that screen size is crucial, but I have an iPad for reading etc. If I had to choose only one device, then screen size would be a bigger deal.
Regarding profit/revenue, what about articles like these (also from last year):
>> iOS users actually buy apps, use them, and spend money in them which is extremely rare amongst android users
> So do Android users. Over a year ago iOS and Android phone apps were dead even in revenues. [1]
That statement was new to me. I'm guessing it is specifically talking about revenue from ads, since the source of the quote works for an ad network. This discounts revenue from sales (which I believe is nearly nonexistent on Android), IAP (which drives major revenue for "free-to-play" games on iOS, but I don't know about Android), and subscriptions (who knows).
I also find the "Android tablets outsold iPads" interesting news. The breakdown of tablet by manufacturer shows Apple clearly winning (36%), Samsung #2 (19%), and everyone else below 6% with a large bucket of "Other" (31%). That's still a strong position for Apple at the high end of the market, and mirrors the smartphone market where Apple & Samsung make all of the profit.
I think Apple has staked out the premium devices, and will continue to be successful there. But, won't most of the growth come from global markets where their products are out of reach for most consumers? Where does that leave them, and can they afford to continue to ignore the rest of the market?
Most of the growth in smartphone adoption will undoubtedly come from low-end devices. However, much of the growth in profit will come from people moving into the segment that buys higher end devices and pay for apps/services.
Doesn't test flight still require you to add those devices somehow, like I couldn't just email something I just hacked together to anyone (and tell them to enable the developer mode).
I submitted this because I just realized it's been half a decade since this was written, so if it's true then we should be able to see some evidence of whether or not Apple actually made a mistake. Has the essay turned out to be true? Mistaken? Or possibly true in the future?
And if Apple made no mistake, then what does that bode for the future of programming?
On the whole, it's tough to say. But parts of it were certainly prophetic. The rise of Android is, at least to a degree, testament to the fact that a lot of developers believe Android is a better platform.
This is a crucial passage:
"But Android is an orphan; Google doesn't really care about it, not the way Apple cares about the iPhone. Apple cares about the iPhone the way Google cares about search."
Google ended up caring a great deal about Android. Maybe it didn't in 2009. Maybe it did, and it was just taking time to figure things out. But it's hard to argue now that Google doesn't take Android seriously. And now Android is a big threat to iOS.
In any event, I wouldn't say PG was wrong about this point. Rather, I'd say that hindsight is 20/20. Android was in its infancy when PG wrote the essay, and he was correct in calling it out as a viable threat to iOS.
I don't necessarily agree with the "why" of it, though. Android's rise isn't really the result of arrogance on Apple's part. It's largely the result of two factors: 1) its distribution as a decentralized platform; 2) the price-competitiveness of Android devices. To the extent a lot of developers prefer Android to iOS, it's an opportunistic preference -- not a moral or philosophical one. Developers will go where the users are. More and more users are on Android. A secondary factor is that Android is an easier testing and deployment environment.
Android isn't a threat to Apple, Android just replaced the incumbents Blackberry and Nokia. There is no Android OEM that can go head to head with Apple in the market they compete in but Samsung (high-end phones), and even there Samsung is losing ground to Apple. Market share is only an important statistic because it may influence developers to focus on one platform or the other. But Apple had great developers and apps on OSX on smaller market share and a smaller install base, so there's no way iOS is going to stop being a developer focus. As for what concerns Apple and their business, as long as they keep selling more iOS devices every year than they did the last year, they don't really care how small their market share is.
Market share could get so tiny that developers decide to switch to Android-first, but as of now iOS still holds the crown. Without other metrics like user engagement turning against Apple, developers have no reason to be Android-first.
"Android isn't a threat to Apple, Android just replaced the incumbents Blackberry and Nokia."
I'd say it's entirely too early to call the ball here. The long game for both Apple and Google isn't limited to phones and tablets; it's to gain platform ubiquity across all devices, across all aspects of your daily life. Both platforms have a very strong horse in that race, and I'd have a tough time betting on one or the other right now.
In a way, I think Google really did orphan "Android," the open source project. Key parts of the current Android experience (Google Now, Google launcher, music player, Hangouts/Messaging, etc.) are now closed source and only available to OEM parnters who sign with Google (http://www.tested.com/tech/android/458759-android-44-kitkat-...). The AOSP equivalent components are painfully ancient.
This has happened over the last few years as Google began exercising more control over the platform and secure a better experience; now - there's Android, the somewhat orphaned OSS, and Android, the Google experience OS.
No, the rise of Android has everything to do with the fact that it's free, and supports many vendors, etc. It was pretty obvious in 2008 when I was telling everyone that Android was going to be big:
"No, the rise of Android has everything to do with the fact that it's free, and supports many vendors, etc."
As I said in my post: "its distribution as a decentralized platform." You and I are not in disagreement here.
I didn't say Android was a "better" platform. I said that a lot of developers consider it to be. And I went on to qualify what I meant by that, i.e., that it's got wide distribution and can be used to deploy and test rapidly. As I mentioned, it's an "opportunistic preference." I don't think developers have been alienated by Apple the way PG predicted they would be.
Why do they consider it to be better? I've done Android and iOS and iOS is a lot easier to develop software. Android is improving but Apple still wins.
Anyway, that doesn't really matter either. Which market currently provides the best possibility for real income? I'll put in the extra work on Android if there are more paying customers. From a business point of view, one should be following the money and not playing "think like a geek" and rationalize it through technical issues.
The rise of Android has nothing to do with developers choosing Android over iOS. This is true most obviously because developers haven't chosen Android over iOS.
exactly. The rise of Android is due to the consumers choosing Android over iOS. If anything, developers have only slowed the growth of Android by committing in many cases only to iOS.
I don't know what it's like in the US, but the rise of Android in Australia is overwhelmingly because the telcos and phone stores are pushing Android over iOS. Sure, they have the marketing posters in the shop window and the inkjet printed signs confirming they have stock of iPhone 5S in gold. But walk in the store, and it's a completely different story: Android everywhere, and salespeople that seem to universally push alternatives.
It's understandable. Whenever a new model is released, Apple's constrained supply means these store's daily profits are dictated by whatever supply Apple decides to give them. They're likely getting much smaller margins than other brands, and therefore limited in their ability to lure customers with discounts.
--
As far as I can tell, Android owners fall into these categories:
1. Educated customers that genuinely want an Android-only advantage (e.g. oversized screen)
2. Uneducated customers who bought whatever the salesperson recommended.
3. People with tight budgets or low expectations that might otherwise have purchased a feature-phone.
4. Counter-trend hipsters who think Apple is too mainstream. Seriously. I know quite a few people who fit this category.
5. Stupid Google fanboys who are convinced Android is amazing open source nirvana, and probably haven't ever owned an iPhone anyway... because they're not an stupid Apple fanboy.
In most cases the consumers aren't even choosing Android over iOS. Apple doesn't even have a product for the bottom 50%+ of the market -- that part of the market was just defaulted to Android because MS dropped the ball for several years. Secondly, in many other cases the carriers naturally need alternatives that give them some leverage against Apple and have higher margins for them. There are no spiffs for salespeople for selling iphones.
I started out pretty neutral about the approval process, but have come to think it was the best decision they could have made.
In Android world, rejections happen after something bad happens. That means some person who trusted an app got screwed, and enough have to get screwed, for Google to take down the offending app.
It doesn't always make life fun; we're submitting an app update tomorrow that is totally benign but will take 5-6 days to get approved. But on the other side of that is a customer base that installs updates from us without worry, and that's very valuable to us.
There are horror stories about terrible approval process decisions and being stuck in limbo. But for each one of those, thousands of developers see their apps approved or rejected in a pretty reasonable way. That ratio doesn't excuse bad decisions, but the approval process has made the iOS platform what it is for developers and customers today.
I run a small game development studio in San Francisco. This still resonates with us. So much so that our most recent game is Google Play only, at least to begin with.
We can iterate on the product at near web-speed on Android. Our last game started on iOS first and at one point it had an update take 22 days to go through Apple's approval process. It was a complete black box to us - there was no reason given why it was taking so long and there was no one to contact regarding why. After not being able to submit a critical bug fix for 22 days to our players we decided that it wasn't the right place for us to launch on in the future.
So far I've been very happy with our decision to focus initially on Google Play. Launching first on that platform has allowed us to iterate on our latest game quickly, improving the experience continuously for players. Our players appreciate the quick improvements, and I'm not just talking about bug fixes here; we're also adding features to address player requests.
Once the rate of change slows we'll port it back to iOS.
My impression of this is that Apple and Android still cannot 100% guarantee that your personal information is safe from apps, or that content is used as licensed.
Apple's mitigation for this is aggressive curation of the Appstore, while Google attempts to automate this (there is a delay of a few hours), which is far more developer friendly.
Hopefully over time Android and iOS will improve further and reduce information leaks in the platform, make granting permissions optional (no take it all or leave it), and perhaps add an ARM version of Intel's software guard extensions (SGX) so we can have mutual distrust between apps and the platform, and have the platforms be far more open by default.
The number of independent iOS Developers that are out there, who make a great living building a few apps and supporting their users grows everyday. They didn't alienate Apple, they reaped the benefits of a well thought out system that works for everyone.
I've learned to take the rejections positively, and in many cases it has improved the quality of my software. Two cases specifically come to mind:
- Apple rejected an app for not putting in battery usage warnings when the app made use of background location
- Apple rejected an app for including placeholder artwork for in-game achievements
In the cases where I felt I was right, I have almost always been able to argue my point with the reviewer and was allowed through. This has been the case both for policy issues and software design.
That said, there have been moments of pain. Like when I was involved in a trademark dispute and was required to rename my app. Apple delayed the process a lot, causing the other party to become concerned (eventually Apple approved the update but it caused some tension). I think Apple has since improved their review mechanism to handle cases like this (e.g., now including the option "Is this update being submitted for legal reasons, such as copyright or trademark infringement?")
It sometimes feels like software developers think they should be above judgment; that they should be treated as first-class citizens and not their customers. I personally prefer Apple's approach. Though I'm glad there are platforms which cater to both sides.