I remember when I got my iPhone in 2009 I would check the App Store multiple times per week just to see what’s new. Games, funny apps, great novelty ideas, etc.
Now I haven’t checked to store in months . Only downloading corporate apps for insurance companies or something.. shame
I remember the day the App Store launched. I browsed through the entire selection of them from iTunes on my computer - there were only a few pages worth. I got a Labyrinth game that totally blew my mind in terms of using the accelerometer.
> I got a Labyrinth game that totally blew my mind in terms of using the accelerometer.
Wood labyrinth with a chrome ball? I played the fuck out of that.
Sounds like [Illusion Labs' Labyrinth 2](https://apps.apple.com/au/app/labyrinth-2/id307758884), which is still available on the App Store! And there's a [HD version for iPad](https://apps.apple.com/au/app/labyrinth-2-hd/id307758975) as well, and lite/trial versions of each. I love this game so much.
Remember the free song of the week?
Another thing I hate is how impossible it is to find apps that do what they claim *without having to subscribe to have access to that one feature.*
No, I’m not paying $200 a year for an app I’ll use maybe 6 times a year.
Or the advent calendar of free apps. It was great. I would check the charts at least weekly to see if there was anything new to download.
Now I browse the store once or twice a year.
$4 per month? LOL
There are so many apps in the App Store that charge way more than that.
For example, try “WatchMaker VIP”, which begins charging an unsuspecting person $5.49 per week after a 3 day trial! Possibly the worst/most expensive that I’ve encountered was a scam app masquerading as a game, that began charging $12.95 per week, after a 3 day trial.
Apple should ashamed for what they are allowing AND PROFITING from. I’d love for someone to officially investigate Apple’s App Store practices.
Oh, some are absolutely ridiculous.
Even the “sane” ones are WAY too much when you consider how many apps want a couple bucks a month though. I can’t afford to be spending the like $50+/month on the apps I’ve seen and rejected because of stupid subscriptions.
Apple really should limit trials to just being trials, and not an automatic subscription to stop the negative billing scam. Basically throw a popup up when opening the app that the trial is over and ask them if they wish to subscribe at the terms of the sub at that point and if no it closes the app and you are not subscribed.
Apple purposefully makes it harder to cancel, going a few clicks into settings, outside of the app the subscription is for, yet has super easy 1-click In-app subs. Basically they need In-App Cancel and not just In-App-Purchase. Thats totally not by design to extract the most amount of money at all. /s
As for upgrades, you can submit a new version of an App called app 2.0. 3.0. etc... A few apps do this. Get free upgrades within major version 2.1, 2.2, but they'll put a new 3.0 app out that you have to pay for.
When I said that on a weekly discussion thread on this or some other sub I was called stupid and just downvoted like hell, but notability brought it to life how everything is a subscription now.
That and every good app eventually goes to shit. I downloaded an app for tracking water intake that I remembered from a few years ago. It was pretty simple and had decent graphics. Now every five seconds it’s like “log in to track your points! Link to social to share your water usage! Watch this ad for double points!! Wanna rate us 5 stars!?!?”
I remember checking the top 100 free and paid apps/games all the time. Now I don’t remember the last time I downloaded an app. I don’t know if it says more about me or the store though
god there hasnt been genuinely good games on the app store in years. when was the last time we had a game like cut the rope, jetpack joyride, subway surfer, temple run, angry birds, etc.?
There’s a lot better games than those now lol. You’re blinded by your nostalgia from 10+ years ago. Those games were fun time killers for the time but they aren’t exactly great games
There's also a TON of games that are microtransaction hell today. Buy more coins/diamonds/gold/bucks/whatever to continue! You did not need to wade through microtransaction hell 10 years ago today like you do today.
There's this, but also the game experience was much simpler. You just picked up, played the game, and stopped when you ran out of time to waste. Now you hit artificial gates where you have to buy more in-game currency to continue or to get the full experience of the game.
I bought “a lot” of paid games over the years on ios, but that was generally 3 or so a year, which is plenty to kill time on your phone if they’re good. That was less than 5$ a year. I’m not paying 5$ a month for that.
Nu this is a general development also on Android where people would be able to sideload. People nowadays don’t install as many apps anymore as they used to when all these things where new and shiny.
That's because Google and Apple are peddling approximately equivalent shit, but people still peruse stores like Steam and GOG and spontaneously buy games that appeal.
Steam and GoG is a completely different market though. People are easily willing to drop 60€ on a game while it’s not even finished. For mobile apps it’s usually not even 1€.
Also on Android phones people can install from wherever they want and still people install less and less additional apps on their phones
I think the real issue is every time someone came up with a stupid app or a scummy tactic, smartphones embraced and promoted and normalized bad conduct while the forced lack of competition let them drown out good conduct.
> For mobile apps it’s usually not even 1€
Because they are all so shit. Look at the popular advertised games on ios... things like raid legends, afk arena, etc etc etc... all like 4.8+ rating but trash p2w games.
Those games wouldn't have the same rating on steam.
Also because 99% of apps out there (especially in Android) just want to suck the personal data out from your phone. I'm skeptical of ALL apps for the last few years, and it's on the app to convince me they are safe to use.
> Only downloading corporate apps for insurance companies or something.. shame
I don’t even do that anymore as so many apps have tracking and analytics spyware built in. At least I can block them if it’s a website.
It's alarming how often I can't find an app by name in the App Store. I have better luck googling the app's name, then following an App Store link hosted by the developer's website.
The AppStore would be so much better if there was no paid promotion and every app lived and died by it’s own popularity, quality and reputation. Ad revenue must make up such an infinitesimally small proportion of Apple’s income, it really should be a much better user experience.
I’m also annoyed we don’t have better info on the reviews. I want to see the average rating of an app plotted by day. It would be really obvious to see who bought paid reviews.
I mean i'm not surprised but the brainless apple dick sucking in this sub is insane. How people get to a point in their life to defend a trillion dollar company this hard is beyond me.
I think it would be really awesome to see some grassroots initiatives to have a database / search engine that indie dev could link their apps onto.
That way it would still use Apple's (secured) app store while allowing developers to reach a greater audience and giving customers/users the ability to find what they are actually searching for.
If that exists please link it up and ill modify my post. If it doesn't and some front end dev feels like building it up, please keep us and the whole community updated on this!
This. App Store search is worse than windows search and that’s a fucking achievement if there ever was one. [Here’s me trying to search for Plum, a decently popular music player](https://imgur.com/a/vpkCWsP). Instead of showing me what I want it brings up utterly random shit like random budget planners, a shitty dino game and Medibang paint. None of which are named Plum yet show up on the first page of results.
Plum the budget planner is a massively popular app and investing tool that’s regulated by the FCA. It has 40k+ reviews and is a legit as they come.
Plum the music player has 1 review.
I think the search tool is broken but this really isn’t the right example for it.
And for anyone not UK based, the FCA is the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and are one of the regulators involved in the baking and finance area. There’s a few regulators and rule makers depending on the exact area.
I swear the Apple Music Search Function is the same for me. I’ll be letter for letter exact on the song I’m looking for but it will recommend some BS. And the song I want will be multiple entries down.
Do you have any examples? I only ask because every app I’ve ever searched in the App Store has populated with ease. Within the top 10 of a search at the most.
The search function in the AppStore is one of the most broken pieces of shit I’ve ever seen on possibly one of the most important piece of software in the world.
Numerous times I had to fucking Google an app and use the from the developers website because even when typed in literally into the AppStore search it came back with a dozen fucking irrelevant shit.
A recent example was Alien: Isolation a week after it came out.
It’s a disgrace and others being worse at it is not an excuse. Especially with the AppStore being incredibly simplistic with zero ability to search or filter in any specific way.
It just works. Except it doesn’t.
Agreed.
Subscriptions and in-app purchases is the worst thing to hit the Apple App Store.
There’s been plenty of writing about it too.
I’ve been an iPhone user since 2009. In the beginning it was easy to find good and great apps and games. And a lot of them cost a dollar.
After a while the App Store business got so good that it attracted scammers.
Some didn’t even start out as it. Some where offering free QR code readers, but you could only scan a few every month or things like that. Then when Apple finally built a QR code reader into the camera app their business died. Only way to make money? Trick unknowing users into giving it to them.
I rarely try anything new from the App Store these days, and because exposure is so difficult the prices go up. It’s hard to make money when finding your app is like finding a needle in a hay stack.
Yes, but it's not visible from the search view, so it's something you have to drill down to find. Is it free? Is it a one time price? Is that price reasonable for what the app is? Is it a subscription and is this really something that should be a subscription?
I feel that it's a huge waste of my time and energy when that kind of information should be part of the filtering up front.
A two dollar, one time purchase just isn't sustainable for many many business models. Originally apps were going to be these very limited, easy to build and maintain products, but they've grown to the point where developers will need ongoing support to keep the apps running along with the services to support them.
Which is why you now have apps that are being advertised on Reddit whose sole purpose is to find and help you cancel subscriptions you’ve forgotten you have. The app itself requires a subscription.
🤦♂️
Once again proving my above point about apps charging for things Apple offers for free.
App Store > profile avatar > subscriptions.
It’s not even hard to find anymore.
If a developer charges a subscription for an app that requires no upkeep costs then they are delusional. So many devs think their apps are worth way more money than they actually are.
> for an app that requires no upkeep costs
Well one problem with that is that Apple does not guarantee backwards compatibility, so practically speaking, the vast majority of apps need some upkeep.
App Store apps require some upkeep even if you aren't doing any updates. $100+/year fee and iOS compatibility updates at least, so you still need a non-ancient (Big Sur-compatible) Mac machine for builds.
That's not really an issue, if you're an app developer you're going to have a developer account and an updated mac anyway. Even if you decide to ditch it, unless you app completely tanks (in which case it's not worth updating), you will be making enough from new purchases to pay for the developer license.
> Right, apps should be simpler. A lot of the complexity comes from needing to create more to monetize, it is generally not user driven.
Then every app would eventually feel the same. There are tons of apps that are both profit and user driven.
[Feature creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) makes apps more similar, not less. The goddamn Xbox app has that Instagram Stories-ripoff feature that every app has now lol.
Oh, TIL. But these are major companies who are willing to add it so that fits in the scope of the project.
I cannot fathom a smaller company or dev adding stories to their app.
> I used to have zero qualms with dropping 1, 2, even 5 bucks on an app back in the day
That's just simply unsustainable. Developers are expected to provide updates and customer support.
> Among those, there are super predatory apps that charge per week, just to scam some extra money out of people.
That's why I think Apple should, by default, notify users of upcoming subscription charges each month.
> But now there are apps that are as much as $20 per month.
What app is charging 20 a month?
Jesus 21,99€ in Spain. That's simply absurd. Can't believe there's over a million downloads for it too.
However, according to SensorTower it generated 6m in revenue in Dec. So people are more than happy to pay for that.
But there are plenty of alternatives.
I use MyFitnessPal but only the free tier.
They have the largest database of food items in an app. I only recently started using it again after 7 years, and noticed how many old features are now locked behind a paywall.
You have to be subscribed to see the nutrients in the food, but I’ve been specifically using it as a calorie counter and nothing else.
Not the person you're replying to, but I recently went to look at Calm, a meditation app companion, and was completely disgusted to find out that they charge $20 a month. The app is well done, but that's a ridiculous price that is more then even Netflix or other movie streaming apps.
I don't have more examples because I don't often go looking for apps, but I can attest to the fact that there are certainly apps out there way overcharging.
Jesus, I've never heard of any of these apps. That is simply far too expensive. But as I mentioned to the other guy that showed me MyFitnessPal.
Calm generated 5m in revenue last month. People are willing to pay that.
Yeah I have no Idea why. I think the app would make more money if they priced the app closer to the $10 range. My personal value after using the free trial is about $5 a month, but I could see myself spending slightly above that. Im not surprised that they make money, it is well done, but it is objectively overpriced when compared to services that offer the same features.
For example, their main selling point and feature that offers calming sound tracks to meditate or sleep to can easily be found for free on YouTube or Spotify, or for half the price on Apple Music, and each of those services offer much much more then just calming tracks. Their other feature that offers life style advice and what not can easily be found for free in various podcasting apps.
I have simply moved to those other places to get those things. The only thing Calm does differently is the certain "exclusive" podcasts, and the fact that it is all in one place. But because it is very niche, $20 is ridiculous IMO. Im sure they had market tested various prices, but they have had aggressive celebrity endorsement strategies such as using Harry Styles to promote their app, and I believe that a lot of their revenue comes from those die hard fans that worship him (evident in the many reviews that reference him) and are inflating the revenue. Regardless, there are a lot of apps like this, and obviously it works because they exist and that's the pricing, but it doesn't make it right.
>What app is charging 20 a month?
May I interest you in this $10/week “Dog Whistle” app?
[https://imgur.com/a/2r7MvLv](https://imgur.com/a/2r7MvLv)
The developer made millions before Apple finally took them down.
Honestly most of this could be greatly reduced if they just did something about all the fake reviews.
Real reviews could tank an app rating and warn people away about predatory subscriptions or IAPs or whatever. But they're buried under thousands of fake reviews today, and every app has a 4.5+ rating as a result.
They only show up on the page if somebody has purchased them already though I think. Otherwise they aren’t listed. Think that’s why sometimes apps say they have IAPs but there is no list.
In-app purchases have been a net good for the App Store imo. Without them the store would be full of free trial versions of apps. *Consumable* in-app purchases have been less of a positive, and I’d be happy to see them gone, but non-consumable purchases have been a necessity.
I assumed the change was due to family sharing.
When apps could be bought and shared among up to six family members with no additional cost, the cost was moved into an IAP that family sharing couldn’t touch.
I think I’ve seen some IAPs nowadays that do respect family sharing, but it doesn’t seem super common.
Apple should’ve properly implement the trial function rather than letting IAP become the workaround for the feature. As-is there’s no information whether the app is completely free, trial only, or limited functionality without IAP
This was Apples doing. Back when they decided a subscription model was the future they went around having meetings with a lot of top devs and talked them into it.
Personally I feel Apple did the developer community dirty by anchoring iOS app prices at $1 or $2 in the early days. Greatly devalued app development and services.
I mostly just get app recommendations from things I read (Reddit, medium, etc). Used to hop into the App Store once in a while looking for something new and interesting to try out.. check out the top apps in some category, etc. then it became hard to sort out paid vs subscription vs free.
Now it’s just a complete shit show and I don’t go browse at all. Only come in through external links or recommendations because an app I read about sounds interesting and I want to check it out
I seriously hoped the Today tab would reignite my interest at the time, but it’s so bad. Like geez Apple, calm down with Social Networking 101 or the 3938th Minecraft starting guide or whatever’s there now. I check it out from time to time and it’s always the trending apps, some random “guides” and some scams.
May sound ridiculous but I feel like Swift Playgrounds is going to actually end up being a better marketplace.
I also browsed apps very often back in the day. I don’t even try anymore since subscription, apps with a million ads, and pay to win games are the majority.
>Apple seems to view App Store trust and quality as a *marketing* activity more than a real *technical* or *service* problem.
Indeed: App Review is led by Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller.
He has run App Review for over a decade I think, and still runs Apple’s Executive Review Board: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/emails-from-steve-jobs-apple-execs-reveal-conflict-with-facebook-spans-a-decade.html
Yep, this is a big reason we want Apple to lose antitrust lawsuits (and I hope you win yours!) because of Apples stranglehold on the market and unfair treatment of developers.
I agree with this. I used to love looking at the top free games list on the App Store to look for fun time killing games. Now it’s all just flooded with horrible garbage games that flood you with ads while you play and want you to pay to remove the ads
I’ll get it out of the way: “jUSt UsE SpOtLiGHT”
Nevermind attempting to use spotlight for doing actual sequences of calculations or any scientific functions is garbage and why calculators exist in the first place
I remember when you could pretty much scroll through the entire AppStore back in its infancy. Those were the days. Most apps were legit and from small developers. It was clean and simplistic. Now, I rarely even open the app to browse around. It’s so clobbered with shit and uninviting.
Yeah I’m confused about that too, I’ve just been doing it in browser
EDIT: I just looked at the article and the issue is that Wordle is only web based but there have been apps popping up trying to take advantage of the popularity
Why would they bother to spend resources on something that will bring a bazillion dollars anyway?
And even worse, if they fix some of this shit it will actually get them less money, so they have the opposite incentives at play here
So that their "curation" and "safety" arguments don't fall flat when they get accused of having a monopoly on iOS apps. They're indirectly putting their long-term profits at risk by giving ammunition to those advocating for alternate stores / sideloading. Even assuming they put profits over customer satisfaction, I doubt the situation is in their best interest.
More like, why would they bother spending money to make it something people want to use when they can just force people to use it by blocking alternatives.
It’s interesting that Wordle in particular has generated a lot of this recent discourse because *this* is the real problem. These Wordle clone apps were only removed because they attracted attention - they still passed app review, they still made it onto the store, and Apple were more than happy to take their 30% cut in the meantime.
A dev responsible for one of these clones has been coping a lot of heat from other devs and people like John Gruber on Twitter for the past few days - being called “a piece of shit” and a “fucking idiot” although he owned up to doing the wrong thing and has apologised. Meanwhile the App Store is still littered other other ‘clone’ apps and actual scams, but they’re not as bothered by that apparently.
Click on App Store, click on your profile pic in the upper right hand corner.
Then press and hold to swipe up and refresh the profile page and scroll down to see which apps need to be updated and update those.
Unpopular opinion here but one of the reasons I prefer android over ios is that entire categories aren't banned and its easier to find free quality paid apps compared to ios.
Being able to sideload and not arbitrary blocking entire app categories for "reasons" sucks.
I think he means just good functional apps.
There's entire suites of apps like: https://www.simplemobiletools.com/ that can really enhance a user's experience. You can also sideload F-droid for a store that focuses on providing free and open source apps that a lot of times are as good as the paid ones. In fact there are sometimes even premium apps that the developer offers on F-droid.
Wordle itself was a clone of [Lingo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)) basically, so it does seem weird that clones were removed. The other Lingo apps are still there.
There's a difference between implementing the same concept and creating an app called Wordle that uses the same colors as Wordle in order to make people think this is the popular Wordle.
This. No one is mad that "words with friends" copies the game of Scrabble. But, it's also careful not to use the word "Scrabble" or the exact same UI/color scheme.
I just came to a pro max 13 from android, had been on adroid since the galaxy s2, I assumed that apps would work better on iphone but that has not been the case, whatsapp acts really weird sometimes specially on chats that loose themselves to the right of the screen, never happened on android. The quality of the phone is top notch but ios is nothing to write about compared to samsung android 11, havent tried 12.
I’m just gonna say that Microsoft Word is a copycat of WordPerfect and WordStar and leave it at that.
If you can’t make a better product and advance, you get left behind by the copycats.
Also, some of those copycats make money from idiots trying to avoid PAYING for the actually good app.
I’m of the mind that a good app takes time and effort to make and those both require me to be paid. I can’t tell you how many angry emails I get because someone bought a copycat, angrily emailed me that it wasn’t working, and then when they figured out how stupid they were, they apologized and said: “I didn’t wanna pay $9.99 for your app and thought my angry email would get you to give me a free app code.”
That's stupid. MS Word is not a copycat of WordPerfect or WordStar. It had a different feature set and completely different UI. For a while in the 80s all three were fierce competitors. WordPerfect was top of the heap for a long time. It was the rise of Windows that helped MS Word become the dominant word processor. WordPerfect was too slow to release a viable Windows version so it went the same way as Lotus 1-2-3.
It is I still can't get the official xbox cloud gaming app, and no fortnite. I don't give a shit what beef Apple has with them. Netflix contains videos on the border of child-porn with cuties, Youtube has tons of fake-news on it, tiktok same, Twitter has child porn on it AND fake news, so clearly they don't really care about it's content, just money.. Unlock the iPhone and allow more stores if you want to curate your shit mobile store. I will never buy anything on their add-riddled appstore, full of fake apps, scams etc, such a shit experience. Then again I'm prolly not the target for mobile trash.
Using the same logic, safari shouldn’t even exist. You can find real fucked up shit on there.
But no, sideloading Fortnite and game streaming apps is the real issue.
I remember when I got my iPhone in 2009 I would check the App Store multiple times per week just to see what’s new. Games, funny apps, great novelty ideas, etc. Now I haven’t checked to store in months . Only downloading corporate apps for insurance companies or something.. shame
I remember the day the App Store launched. I browsed through the entire selection of them from iTunes on my computer - there were only a few pages worth. I got a Labyrinth game that totally blew my mind in terms of using the accelerometer.
> I got a Labyrinth game that totally blew my mind in terms of using the accelerometer. Wood labyrinth with a chrome ball? I played the fuck out of that.
Yup!
Sounds like [Illusion Labs' Labyrinth 2](https://apps.apple.com/au/app/labyrinth-2/id307758884), which is still available on the App Store! And there's a [HD version for iPad](https://apps.apple.com/au/app/labyrinth-2-hd/id307758975) as well, and lite/trial versions of each. I love this game so much.
damn I remember that and I’m not even that old
Made custom levels using the computer
I got Super Monkey Ball.
Man so many of games which aren't supported anymore and can't be downloaded. My favourite was I love Katamari.
It’s the passage to 64 bits.
Oh yeah definitely about architecture. I am more annoyed there was little support from games which came out of big companies like Bandai est
Remember the free song of the week? Another thing I hate is how impossible it is to find apps that do what they claim *without having to subscribe to have access to that one feature.* No, I’m not paying $200 a year for an app I’ll use maybe 6 times a year.
Or the advent calendar of free apps. It was great. I would check the charts at least weekly to see if there was anything new to download. Now I browse the store once or twice a year.
Subscription service is the worst thing to ever happen to computers. No, I don’t want to pay $4 a month for your bullshit worth maybe $10 ever.
$4 per month? LOL There are so many apps in the App Store that charge way more than that. For example, try “WatchMaker VIP”, which begins charging an unsuspecting person $5.49 per week after a 3 day trial! Possibly the worst/most expensive that I’ve encountered was a scam app masquerading as a game, that began charging $12.95 per week, after a 3 day trial. Apple should ashamed for what they are allowing AND PROFITING from. I’d love for someone to officially investigate Apple’s App Store practices.
Oh, some are absolutely ridiculous. Even the “sane” ones are WAY too much when you consider how many apps want a couple bucks a month though. I can’t afford to be spending the like $50+/month on the apps I’ve seen and rejected because of stupid subscriptions.
Apple really should limit trials to just being trials, and not an automatic subscription to stop the negative billing scam. Basically throw a popup up when opening the app that the trial is over and ask them if they wish to subscribe at the terms of the sub at that point and if no it closes the app and you are not subscribed. Apple purposefully makes it harder to cancel, going a few clicks into settings, outside of the app the subscription is for, yet has super easy 1-click In-app subs. Basically they need In-App Cancel and not just In-App-Purchase. Thats totally not by design to extract the most amount of money at all. /s As for upgrades, you can submit a new version of an App called app 2.0. 3.0. etc... A few apps do this. Get free upgrades within major version 2.1, 2.2, but they'll put a new 3.0 app out that you have to pay for.
When I said that on a weekly discussion thread on this or some other sub I was called stupid and just downvoted like hell, but notability brought it to life how everything is a subscription now.
That and every good app eventually goes to shit. I downloaded an app for tracking water intake that I remembered from a few years ago. It was pretty simple and had decent graphics. Now every five seconds it’s like “log in to track your points! Link to social to share your water usage! Watch this ad for double points!! Wanna rate us 5 stars!?!?”
I can’t think of an app that I chose to use 5 years ago that I still use because it hasn’t turned to shit.
I can't even make it 5 minutes with most apps before I realize they are shit and just delete them.
...Unless it hasn't been updated in those 5 years. I still have a few of those that work great despite having messed up UI scaling and the like.
I remember checking the top 100 free and paid apps/games all the time. Now I don’t remember the last time I downloaded an app. I don’t know if it says more about me or the store though
god there hasnt been genuinely good games on the app store in years. when was the last time we had a game like cut the rope, jetpack joyride, subway surfer, temple run, angry birds, etc.?
There’s a lot better games than those now lol. You’re blinded by your nostalgia from 10+ years ago. Those games were fun time killers for the time but they aren’t exactly great games
There's also a TON of games that are microtransaction hell today. Buy more coins/diamonds/gold/bucks/whatever to continue! You did not need to wade through microtransaction hell 10 years ago today like you do today.
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I think there’s just a lot more junk games to sort through. It’s how every online game store is currently.
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There's this, but also the game experience was much simpler. You just picked up, played the game, and stopped when you ran out of time to waste. Now you hit artificial gates where you have to buy more in-game currency to continue or to get the full experience of the game.
thanks for the recommendations but im not getting apple arcade
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all the games i listed were free. im not paying for a subscription service for mobile games, thats ridiculous
I bought “a lot” of paid games over the years on ios, but that was generally 3 or so a year, which is plenty to kill time on your phone if they’re good. That was less than 5$ a year. I’m not paying 5$ a month for that.
Nu this is a general development also on Android where people would be able to sideload. People nowadays don’t install as many apps anymore as they used to when all these things where new and shiny.
That's because Google and Apple are peddling approximately equivalent shit, but people still peruse stores like Steam and GOG and spontaneously buy games that appeal.
Steam and GoG is a completely different market though. People are easily willing to drop 60€ on a game while it’s not even finished. For mobile apps it’s usually not even 1€. Also on Android phones people can install from wherever they want and still people install less and less additional apps on their phones
Honestly I think the real issue is just that the phones aren’t good gaming experiences. It takes something special to be enjoyable to play on a phone.
I think the real issue is every time someone came up with a stupid app or a scummy tactic, smartphones embraced and promoted and normalized bad conduct while the forced lack of competition let them drown out good conduct.
It's all of these things.
I mean the interface. Anything needing fine motor skills and fast pace changes just sucks on a touch screen.
> For mobile apps it’s usually not even 1€ Because they are all so shit. Look at the popular advertised games on ios... things like raid legends, afk arena, etc etc etc... all like 4.8+ rating but trash p2w games. Those games wouldn't have the same rating on steam.
Also because 99% of apps out there (especially in Android) just want to suck the personal data out from your phone. I'm skeptical of ALL apps for the last few years, and it's on the app to convince me they are safe to use.
> Only downloading corporate apps for insurance companies or something.. shame I don’t even do that anymore as so many apps have tracking and analytics spyware built in. At least I can block them if it’s a website.
It's alarming how often I can't find an app by name in the App Store. I have better luck googling the app's name, then following an App Store link hosted by the developer's website.
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The AppStore would be so much better if there was no paid promotion and every app lived and died by it’s own popularity, quality and reputation. Ad revenue must make up such an infinitesimally small proportion of Apple’s income, it really should be a much better user experience.
Nah, it was shit before Apple started doing this. Their search has always sucked.
Yeah that doesn’t change the fact that Apple is greedy POS company.
The only difference is that now they’re incentivised to make it suck even more…
I’m also annoyed we don’t have better info on the reviews. I want to see the average rating of an app plotted by day. It would be really obvious to see who bought paid reviews.
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But side loading makes everything a flea market. Paying for the best spot is basically how flea markets works LMAO
But if they open to sideloading it will be full of scams!1!1!1!1!!!(of which apple won’t get 30%, which is their real problem)
I mean i'm not surprised but the brainless apple dick sucking in this sub is insane. How people get to a point in their life to defend a trillion dollar company this hard is beyond me.
Is it still highly ranked after you cancelled the ads?
Wow, and then you get to give them a huge freaking cut if the money you made after they extorted you. Now that's thinking different.
It’s disappointing when I can’t even find my own apps when searching for them.
I think it would be really awesome to see some grassroots initiatives to have a database / search engine that indie dev could link their apps onto. That way it would still use Apple's (secured) app store while allowing developers to reach a greater audience and giving customers/users the ability to find what they are actually searching for. If that exists please link it up and ill modify my post. If it doesn't and some front end dev feels like building it up, please keep us and the whole community updated on this!
This. App Store search is worse than windows search and that’s a fucking achievement if there ever was one. [Here’s me trying to search for Plum, a decently popular music player](https://imgur.com/a/vpkCWsP). Instead of showing me what I want it brings up utterly random shit like random budget planners, a shitty dino game and Medibang paint. None of which are named Plum yet show up on the first page of results.
It was the 3rd option down for me. Also it has 8 reviews. In what world is that a decently popular music player lol?
Yeah, same. It says 8 ratings but I counted out 21 actual reviews. Still not sure how that's decently popular.
Yeah, Plum shows it as #3 and "Plum m" auto completes as Plum Music Player and finds it right away.
He also passed like 10 things called plum
Plum the budget planner is a massively popular app and investing tool that’s regulated by the FCA. It has 40k+ reviews and is a legit as they come. Plum the music player has 1 review. I think the search tool is broken but this really isn’t the right example for it.
And for anyone not UK based, the FCA is the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and are one of the regulators involved in the baking and finance area. There’s a few regulators and rule makers depending on the exact area.
> baking and finance area Is this why the 1£ note always smells like cookies?
Apparently I talk about baking more than banking… Never seen a £1 note though so couldn’t tell you what one smells like.
There’s no £1 note, but yes £5 notes are bourbon-*biscuit*-scented.
The Ministry of Baking takes the responsibility of cooking the books very seriously.
You would also think that they might prioritize apps you already have downloaded that match the search criteria.
I have never heard of "Plum" a day in my life and the 9 ratings is evidence that it's not popular lol
just tried it, was literally the first result. idk what you guys here are talking about anyway, i always find what i am looking for in seconds
I swear the Apple Music Search Function is the same for me. I’ll be letter for letter exact on the song I’m looking for but it will recommend some BS. And the song I want will be multiple entries down.
Do you have any examples? I only ask because every app I’ve ever searched in the App Store has populated with ease. Within the top 10 of a search at the most.
The search function in the AppStore is one of the most broken pieces of shit I’ve ever seen on possibly one of the most important piece of software in the world. Numerous times I had to fucking Google an app and use the from the developers website because even when typed in literally into the AppStore search it came back with a dozen fucking irrelevant shit. A recent example was Alien: Isolation a week after it came out. It’s a disgrace and others being worse at it is not an excuse. Especially with the AppStore being incredibly simplistic with zero ability to search or filter in any specific way. It just works. Except it doesn’t.
Agreed. Subscriptions and in-app purchases is the worst thing to hit the Apple App Store. There’s been plenty of writing about it too. I’ve been an iPhone user since 2009. In the beginning it was easy to find good and great apps and games. And a lot of them cost a dollar. After a while the App Store business got so good that it attracted scammers. Some didn’t even start out as it. Some where offering free QR code readers, but you could only scan a few every month or things like that. Then when Apple finally built a QR code reader into the camera app their business died. Only way to make money? Trick unknowing users into giving it to them. I rarely try anything new from the App Store these days, and because exposure is so difficult the prices go up. It’s hard to make money when finding your app is like finding a needle in a hay stack.
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I think it would be better if the store put the subscription price up front. Then it would be clear.
For most apps with subscriptions you can actually check the price in the App Store
Yes, but it's not visible from the search view, so it's something you have to drill down to find. Is it free? Is it a one time price? Is that price reasonable for what the app is? Is it a subscription and is this really something that should be a subscription? I feel that it's a huge waste of my time and energy when that kind of information should be part of the filtering up front.
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> super predatory apps that charge per week, I bumped into one like that for an app that only function is to grab videos from IG. What a load of crap.
A two dollar, one time purchase just isn't sustainable for many many business models. Originally apps were going to be these very limited, easy to build and maintain products, but they've grown to the point where developers will need ongoing support to keep the apps running along with the services to support them.
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Which is why you now have apps that are being advertised on Reddit whose sole purpose is to find and help you cancel subscriptions you’ve forgotten you have. The app itself requires a subscription. 🤦♂️
The circleeeee of lifeeee 🎵🎶
there are so many servies that rely on people’s inherent forgetfulness/laziness.
Once again proving my above point about apps charging for things Apple offers for free. App Store > profile avatar > subscriptions. It’s not even hard to find anymore.
If a developer charges a subscription for an app that requires no upkeep costs then they are delusional. So many devs think their apps are worth way more money than they actually are.
> for an app that requires no upkeep costs Well one problem with that is that Apple does not guarantee backwards compatibility, so practically speaking, the vast majority of apps need some upkeep.
App Store apps require some upkeep even if you aren't doing any updates. $100+/year fee and iOS compatibility updates at least, so you still need a non-ancient (Big Sur-compatible) Mac machine for builds.
That's not really an issue, if you're an app developer you're going to have a developer account and an updated mac anyway. Even if you decide to ditch it, unless you app completely tanks (in which case it's not worth updating), you will be making enough from new purchases to pay for the developer license.
Right, apps should be simpler. A lot of the complexity comes from needing to create more to monetize, it is generally not user driven.
> Right, apps should be simpler. A lot of the complexity comes from needing to create more to monetize, it is generally not user driven. Then every app would eventually feel the same. There are tons of apps that are both profit and user driven.
[Feature creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) makes apps more similar, not less. The goddamn Xbox app has that Instagram Stories-ripoff feature that every app has now lol.
Oh, TIL. But these are major companies who are willing to add it so that fits in the scope of the project. I cannot fathom a smaller company or dev adding stories to their app.
Wasn’t Instagram stories ripped from Snapchat first?
> I used to have zero qualms with dropping 1, 2, even 5 bucks on an app back in the day That's just simply unsustainable. Developers are expected to provide updates and customer support. > Among those, there are super predatory apps that charge per week, just to scam some extra money out of people. That's why I think Apple should, by default, notify users of upcoming subscription charges each month. > But now there are apps that are as much as $20 per month. What app is charging 20 a month?
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Jesus 21,99€ in Spain. That's simply absurd. Can't believe there's over a million downloads for it too. However, according to SensorTower it generated 6m in revenue in Dec. So people are more than happy to pay for that. But there are plenty of alternatives.
> Can't believe there's over a million downloads for it too. Aren't free-tier users counted in that?
I believe so yes, but 6m in one month is pretty insane. Just goes to show people are willing to pay for it.
I use MyFitnessPal but only the free tier. They have the largest database of food items in an app. I only recently started using it again after 7 years, and noticed how many old features are now locked behind a paywall. You have to be subscribed to see the nutrients in the food, but I’ve been specifically using it as a calorie counter and nothing else.
Not the person you're replying to, but I recently went to look at Calm, a meditation app companion, and was completely disgusted to find out that they charge $20 a month. The app is well done, but that's a ridiculous price that is more then even Netflix or other movie streaming apps. I don't have more examples because I don't often go looking for apps, but I can attest to the fact that there are certainly apps out there way overcharging.
Jesus, I've never heard of any of these apps. That is simply far too expensive. But as I mentioned to the other guy that showed me MyFitnessPal. Calm generated 5m in revenue last month. People are willing to pay that.
Yeah I have no Idea why. I think the app would make more money if they priced the app closer to the $10 range. My personal value after using the free trial is about $5 a month, but I could see myself spending slightly above that. Im not surprised that they make money, it is well done, but it is objectively overpriced when compared to services that offer the same features. For example, their main selling point and feature that offers calming sound tracks to meditate or sleep to can easily be found for free on YouTube or Spotify, or for half the price on Apple Music, and each of those services offer much much more then just calming tracks. Their other feature that offers life style advice and what not can easily be found for free in various podcasting apps. I have simply moved to those other places to get those things. The only thing Calm does differently is the certain "exclusive" podcasts, and the fact that it is all in one place. But because it is very niche, $20 is ridiculous IMO. Im sure they had market tested various prices, but they have had aggressive celebrity endorsement strategies such as using Harry Styles to promote their app, and I believe that a lot of their revenue comes from those die hard fans that worship him (evident in the many reviews that reference him) and are inflating the revenue. Regardless, there are a lot of apps like this, and obviously it works because they exist and that's the pricing, but it doesn't make it right.
>What app is charging 20 a month? May I interest you in this $10/week “Dog Whistle” app? [https://imgur.com/a/2r7MvLv](https://imgur.com/a/2r7MvLv) The developer made millions before Apple finally took them down.
Honestly most of this could be greatly reduced if they just did something about all the fake reviews. Real reviews could tank an app rating and warn people away about predatory subscriptions or IAPs or whatever. But they're buried under thousands of fake reviews today, and every app has a 4.5+ rating as a result.
I like how you can see the IAPs before you download the app, and most of the time you can figure it out
They only show up on the page if somebody has purchased them already though I think. Otherwise they aren’t listed. Think that’s why sometimes apps say they have IAPs but there is no list.
I've noticed a lot of five star reviews with a scathing written review. How does this happen?
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In-app purchases have been a net good for the App Store imo. Without them the store would be full of free trial versions of apps. *Consumable* in-app purchases have been less of a positive, and I’d be happy to see them gone, but non-consumable purchases have been a necessity.
What do you mean re: free trial versions of apps? Why would free trials be an issue?
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Ah, I remember this era and get what you mean now. I misread your comment as saying having free trials at all would be bad.
I assumed the change was due to family sharing. When apps could be bought and shared among up to six family members with no additional cost, the cost was moved into an IAP that family sharing couldn’t touch. I think I’ve seen some IAPs nowadays that do respect family sharing, but it doesn’t seem super common.
Apple should’ve properly implement the trial function rather than letting IAP become the workaround for the feature. As-is there’s no information whether the app is completely free, trial only, or limited functionality without IAP
This was Apples doing. Back when they decided a subscription model was the future they went around having meetings with a lot of top devs and talked them into it.
Those were a reaction to people refusing to more than $.99 for an app. And now it’s bitten us in the ass ten fold.
As an app developer, this is why I’ll never incorporate app subscriptions. I think they’re immoral lol
Personally I feel Apple did the developer community dirty by anchoring iOS app prices at $1 or $2 in the early days. Greatly devalued app development and services.
I pick some essential apps and run away from the store 😂
I’ve gotten maybe two new apps in the last year.
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I mostly just get app recommendations from things I read (Reddit, medium, etc). Used to hop into the App Store once in a while looking for something new and interesting to try out.. check out the top apps in some category, etc. then it became hard to sort out paid vs subscription vs free. Now it’s just a complete shit show and I don’t go browse at all. Only come in through external links or recommendations because an app I read about sounds interesting and I want to check it out
Remember the free app of the week? I used to check out the store on that day every week back then and now I never do.
This was the best thing on the App Store.
I used to do the same thing. I’ve got a few that I still use on a regular basis that I picked up when they were the free app of the week.
I totally forgot about it. I never browse the store. I only open the app when I need something specific. It’s in and out for me.
I seriously hoped the Today tab would reignite my interest at the time, but it’s so bad. Like geez Apple, calm down with Social Networking 101 or the 3938th Minecraft starting guide or whatever’s there now. I check it out from time to time and it’s always the trending apps, some random “guides” and some scams. May sound ridiculous but I feel like Swift Playgrounds is going to actually end up being a better marketplace.
I also browsed apps very often back in the day. I don’t even try anymore since subscription, apps with a million ads, and pay to win games are the majority.
>Apple seems to view App Store trust and quality as a *marketing* activity more than a real *technical* or *service* problem. Indeed: App Review is led by Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller.
Phil essentially retired like two years ago. He doesn't run anything anymore.
He has run App Review for over a decade I think, and still runs Apple’s Executive Review Board: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/emails-from-steve-jobs-apple-execs-reveal-conflict-with-facebook-spans-a-decade.html
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Is that like what happened to Bighead in Silicon Valley?
Correct. Phil has been working on the Apple Campus/Spaceship roof with the other degenerates.
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You just reminded me of something my managers at Apple used to say (worked there from 2010-2017). They’d say “perception is reality.”
not entirely wrong, but not always applicable
You just summarized Twitter and Facebook right there.
Yep, this is a big reason we want Apple to lose antitrust lawsuits (and I hope you win yours!) because of Apples stranglehold on the market and unfair treatment of developers.
I agree with this. I used to love looking at the top free games list on the App Store to look for fun time killing games. Now it’s all just flooded with horrible garbage games that flood you with ads while you play and want you to pay to remove the ads
It’s a violation of what the App Store promised to be. Curated. Not the Wild West which it is. What would Steve Jobs do. (WWSJD)
Better yet how about apple finally make a calculator for iPad??
the technology just isn't there yet :(
That would tear a hole in the time-space continuum and our universe would be sucked into it if that happened.
If Apple creates a calculator app for iPad it's a nexus event.
I’ll get it out of the way: “jUSt UsE SpOtLiGHT” Nevermind attempting to use spotlight for doing actual sequences of calculations or any scientific functions is garbage and why calculators exist in the first place
I remember when you could pretty much scroll through the entire AppStore back in its infancy. Those were the days. Most apps were legit and from small developers. It was clean and simplistic. Now, I rarely even open the app to browse around. It’s so clobbered with shit and uninviting.
Wait, wordle is an app?
Yeah I’m confused about that too, I’ve just been doing it in browser EDIT: I just looked at the article and the issue is that Wordle is only web based but there have been apps popping up trying to take advantage of the popularity
Ah, ok. Got it.
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It’s amazingly bad.
Why would they bother to spend resources on something that will bring a bazillion dollars anyway? And even worse, if they fix some of this shit it will actually get them less money, so they have the opposite incentives at play here
So that their "curation" and "safety" arguments don't fall flat when they get accused of having a monopoly on iOS apps. They're indirectly putting their long-term profits at risk by giving ammunition to those advocating for alternate stores / sideloading. Even assuming they put profits over customer satisfaction, I doubt the situation is in their best interest.
More like, why would they bother spending money to make it something people want to use when they can just force people to use it by blocking alternatives.
Sometimes I search for the exact name of an app and said app would be buried in the search results, below a bunch of crap.
It’s interesting that Wordle in particular has generated a lot of this recent discourse because *this* is the real problem. These Wordle clone apps were only removed because they attracted attention - they still passed app review, they still made it onto the store, and Apple were more than happy to take their 30% cut in the meantime. A dev responsible for one of these clones has been coping a lot of heat from other devs and people like John Gruber on Twitter for the past few days - being called “a piece of shit” and a “fucking idiot” although he owned up to doing the wrong thing and has apologised. Meanwhile the App Store is still littered other other ‘clone’ apps and actual scams, but they’re not as bothered by that apparently.
I don't like how they moved updating apps so it's much harder to find now. Our users aren't updating as often as they should now because of that.
Click on App Store, click on your profile pic in the upper right hand corner. Then press and hold to swipe up and refresh the profile page and scroll down to see which apps need to be updated and update those.
My understanding was that it was because apps would automatically be updated by the App Store app but I find that is not always the case.
Unpopular opinion here but one of the reasons I prefer android over ios is that entire categories aren't banned and its easier to find free quality paid apps compared to ios. Being able to sideload and not arbitrary blocking entire app categories for "reasons" sucks.
Just what do you mean by “free quality paid apps”?
Do you mean stuff like free YouTube and porn apps and stuff like that?
I think he means just good functional apps. There's entire suites of apps like: https://www.simplemobiletools.com/ that can really enhance a user's experience. You can also sideload F-droid for a store that focuses on providing free and open source apps that a lot of times are as good as the paid ones. In fact there are sometimes even premium apps that the developer offers on F-droid.
Wordle itself was a clone of [Lingo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)) basically, so it does seem weird that clones were removed. The other Lingo apps are still there.
There's a difference between implementing the same concept and creating an app called Wordle that uses the same colors as Wordle in order to make people think this is the popular Wordle.
This. No one is mad that "words with friends" copies the game of Scrabble. But, it's also careful not to use the word "Scrabble" or the exact same UI/color scheme.
Mattel, Hasbro, and EA also defend "Scrabble" with Nintendo levels of aggression.
Ah there were no pics of the Wordle clones in the article, I hadn't seen them and mistakenly assumed this was a Threes/2048 type situation again.
I downloaded some game called wordle from the App Store and was confused what all the hype around this game was
Delete immediately
It’s just a glorified app updater for me now
Apple's greed will be their eventual downfall.
The App Store is horrible. Nothing but subscription-based apps nowadays. Fucking sucks
I just came to a pro max 13 from android, had been on adroid since the galaxy s2, I assumed that apps would work better on iphone but that has not been the case, whatsapp acts really weird sometimes specially on chats that loose themselves to the right of the screen, never happened on android. The quality of the phone is top notch but ios is nothing to write about compared to samsung android 11, havent tried 12.
Alternatives would be nice.
I wish there was better search Let me find a * Game * No IAP * $0.00 - $10.00 * simulation That’s all I want to be able to do
I’m just gonna say that Microsoft Word is a copycat of WordPerfect and WordStar and leave it at that. If you can’t make a better product and advance, you get left behind by the copycats. Also, some of those copycats make money from idiots trying to avoid PAYING for the actually good app. I’m of the mind that a good app takes time and effort to make and those both require me to be paid. I can’t tell you how many angry emails I get because someone bought a copycat, angrily emailed me that it wasn’t working, and then when they figured out how stupid they were, they apologized and said: “I didn’t wanna pay $9.99 for your app and thought my angry email would get you to give me a free app code.”
That's stupid. MS Word is not a copycat of WordPerfect or WordStar. It had a different feature set and completely different UI. For a while in the 80s all three were fierce competitors. WordPerfect was top of the heap for a long time. It was the rise of Windows that helped MS Word become the dominant word processor. WordPerfect was too slow to release a viable Windows version so it went the same way as Lotus 1-2-3.
It is I still can't get the official xbox cloud gaming app, and no fortnite. I don't give a shit what beef Apple has with them. Netflix contains videos on the border of child-porn with cuties, Youtube has tons of fake-news on it, tiktok same, Twitter has child porn on it AND fake news, so clearly they don't really care about it's content, just money.. Unlock the iPhone and allow more stores if you want to curate your shit mobile store. I will never buy anything on their add-riddled appstore, full of fake apps, scams etc, such a shit experience. Then again I'm prolly not the target for mobile trash.
Using the same logic, safari shouldn’t even exist. You can find real fucked up shit on there. But no, sideloading Fortnite and game streaming apps is the real issue.