No company has done as much damage to the perceived value of software, and the sustainability of being an independent developer, as Apple.
Not that other companies wouldn’t have done the same thing – they would have. It’s just that Apple was the successful one.
It’s resolutely the fault of us as consumers, and it’s actively encouraged by the App Store.
Protip: software as a large, recurring expense was always going away for consumers given the sheer mass of open source code available as an alternative or building blocks, and the rise of the internet turning software into a non-scarce good. This article reads like a buggy-whip maker yelling at Henry Ford.
Yeah, I’d have to agree. While a few of the points are good most of it just bitching about not being able to rip off the consumer anymore.
Oh, the guy who bought your app a while ago can still use it without paying you again. Booo-f–king-hooo, cry me a damn river. It’s just like any other creative work. It’s not like the books I own expire and I have to buy them again.
Edited 2017-05-05 03:30 UTC
Mainly agree except books don’t get updates.
Yeah, it’s like people want to pay 99 cents for apps, and then expect to get updates for life. And most of the time, they’re not even willing to pay that. I guess they figure developers don’t really need to eat.
So far that assumption is holding. Prices won’t go up until people stop writing as much quality software for iOS and Android… and with major companies like Microsoft and the entire open source community offering their products free on mobile, that’s never going to happen.
Actually, technical e-books do get updates. I get an email with the new download link after the author uploaded the new version.
I don’t know, do people actually bitch about having to pay for major updates? I would expect to get minor updates and bug fixes no matter how much (or little) the app cost but not major updates.
And lets be real, 99% of mobile apps are utter ripoff junk that isn’t even worth 99 cent.
Edited 2017-05-05 07:53 UTC
Wrong, you get (online) erratas and they are republished as second, third (and so on) editions, with additions.
http://www.raster-media.net/shop/source-book-1?c=9
😛
Actually I have several books that have rec’d several updates. They call them ‘an addendum’, and no, I didn’t have to pay for them, they were mailed to me.
Actually some e-books do expire.
Something else: a lot of video content is now streamed, the average person can not own that content any more.
Aren’t those more like rentals though in that you pay a much lower price but you have to “return the book” (so to speak) after some time.
I just know they exist and I know for example Amazon can take your book back (returning you your money back) when they change their policy for a book.
Not sure about the exact specifics I avoid such products/services as the plague.
I am: (1) a consumer (2) who never paid a single eurocent for apps installed on his Android phone and Linux laptop and (3) in the past contributed to several FOSS projects. With those hats on, my single answer to the author is “cry me a river”.
I agree that some apps really aren’t worth much, but it’s undeniable that app stores have created a race to the bottom which, in turn, means that software is perceived as a commodity.
While it’s true that some developers expect to make a living out of something that should be regarded a hobby providing a little extra money at best, expecting to pay close to nothing and receive updates forever is no less unrealistic.
Last but not least: just because in the past you’ve been able to give your work/time away for free it doesn’t mean that everyone else could afford to (or should).
RT.
Edited 2017-05-05 08:31 UTC
I don’t understand what prohibits developers to push out a new paid product as an upgrade to the previous one.
I don’t understand what prohibits developers to ask for higher price.
Nothing but the invisible hand of the market.
I think he’s asking for quasi governmental style control of the app store to keep prices artificially high.
Apple introduced a better way of connecting software makers to software users, and opened the flood gates. Now supply and demand have taken over.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
While apple popularized it, apple really doesn’t deserve credit for introducing it. Even on the iphone itself they were second. The iphone wasn’t originally supposed to have 3rd party apps at all, apple had to come up with a new strategy when they saw how popular Cydia was for installing apps on jailbroken phones.
Edited 2017-05-05 14:13 UTC
Eh, they deserve some credit. They could have punked out like the movie/music industry and just sued everyone and their brother. Instead, they recognized that they were really stupid, and took steps that recognized the market opportunity they didn’t see coming. Sometimes its more important how a company reacts to opportunities, than it is to spend eternity devising genius products.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
Sure we can give them some credit for embracing it commercially. I was just being a bit pedantic about them having “introduced it” when others were already doing it (albeit with less success).
The thing that struck me about this was that it’s a complaint about a simple economics problem. The value of products trends toward 0 in a market, as software is an infinite resource. There is no scarcity – and most orthodox economics models exclusively model scarcity.
This naturally means the act of developing software has little value – in orthodox economic models. We could just change those models, but that requires critical thought about the religion of capitalism, which is a big no no in most western circles.
He’s saying the app store has brought about too much competition that he can’t compete against the 0.99 cent apps.
Most of the software *is* a commodity. Exceptions are thing like custom written software, in-house developed apps and such.
The mention of my FOSS involvement was to point my opinion is not one from a mere freeloader.
App stores have simply brought it to the public’s attention…
I paid nothing to download Linux in the 90s, i’ve been receiving free updates ever since and a lot of software took far less effort to produce than Linux did.
Everything is a race to the bottom, the difference is where the bottom is – for physical goods it’s the cost of raw materials, physical assembly and transportation plus the inherent barriers to entry (production tools etc), but for software the bottom is 0.
Especially since open-source encourages the continuation of existing efforts, since you don’t have to put in any of the up-front commitment (psychological, if nothing else) that negotiating for the source to someone else’s defunct project would entail.
Edited 2017-05-06 05:14 UTC
bert64,
First, I agree with you that the marginal costs for software goes to zero, but that’s an incomplete narrative. If that were all there was to it then companies like microsoft would not have been able to sell hundreds of millions of copies of windows without regards to marginal cost. Prices did not go down in proportion to marginal costs even though microsoft’s market was growing. Instead, historically the fact that marginal costs were zero actually lead to higher profits rather than lower prices for software makers. What’s missing is that we need to take into account bargaining power and the effects of middle men, oligopolies, market manipulation, etc. Even with the same supply and demand at the edges of the market, the dynamics of relative bargaining power in the middle do matter as well. Consolidating all stores into a behemoth store distorts the bargaining power so greatly that the producers have no influence to raise prices at all, in short the market collapses down to the marginal costs which is exactly what’s happening with the app store monopolies.
Monopolies are extremely unhealthy from a free market point of view. Nevertheless some people feel that consumers are the winners under this kind of controlled market where developers have no bargaining power and prices are kept low. It’s true to a point but many of them are only seeing things from the consumer side without considering how this combination of low prices, walled garden fees, etc goes on to affect the development side. It doesn’t merely hurt developer’s wallets, it also reduces the resources available for innovation and higher quality software. Regardless of our opinions about anything else, I imagine we can all agree that software quality in appstores is a widespread problem today.
We tend to place blame squarely on the developers but the truth is it is extremely difficult to justify investing in better software when you have such little bargaining power with which to ask for a higher price. At least if there were smaller local stores you could build up your reputation within that smaller market (the big fish in a small pond effect).
The iPhone app store is already divided into countries with different listings for each country. You could try a smaller country to build up your reputation.
Edited 2017-05-07 15:08 UTC
Em_te,
It’s still a monopoly though, and even if those stores weren’t all controlled by the same company, it’s bad that there isn’t more viable competition. In any other context having only one viable store per country would be strongly criticized for the unhealthy lack of competition.
That should mean there is room for a (free) market of software on platforms like Android where sideloading is possible.
I guess in most cases consumers are not willing at all to pay a significant amount of money for a mobile app since they are rather limited in functionality compared to a full fledged desktop application.
Collecting micro payments is most feasible for a developer through the infrastructue of an app store.
The needs of most people are fulfilled by free apps downloaded from the Play Store, no need for sideloading.
The author of the linked article can cry me a river.
By coding for iOS, they actively support a walled-garden OS with no way to officially sideload, and they expect something good to come out of it for the user OR the developer. Yup, that makes sense.
PROTIP: If an OS doesn’t allow sideloading (from an apk files or similar) and doesn’t allow alternative app stores, the owner of the single whitelisted app store has all the power to arm-twist developers in terms of price, upgrades and generally on whatever other terms he likes, and the developer agreed on this by choosing to code for that platform. The old excuse of “iOS is where all the users are” doesn’t even hold any water anymore. The reason devs code for iOS is because they think “no piracy” will result in a windfall of purchases, not caring about the control Apple has over them via the App Store.
That said, smartphone and tablet software isn’t really worth that much. People don’t really do that much on their smartphones and tablets to justify buying expensive software packages. Before the iPhone, most people didn’t even load apps on their Symbian smartphones and Windows Mobiles beyond a single-digit number of apps (most of them free). Even on Desktop computers, only packages with hundreds of features are able to sell for a significant price. The “App Economy” is a lie. But you can make a reasonable amount of money if you put ads on your app.
Edited 2017-05-05 10:26 UTC
And that’s why in Android the software business is so much better, because users can side-load their applications and Google can’t strong-arm the app developers.
Now seriously. Nowadays, software has 0 marginal cost. Not even packaging/media/distribution. Barriers of entry for new developers are 0. Don’t expect to make much money for anything that plenty of people can develop.
If you are making some application better think about how you plan to make money out of it. And not, selling the application won’t be that way unless you are actually doing something *hard* to replicate.
I’ve always read that iOS apps are 2-3X more profitable than their Android counterparts, and in general iOS apps make far more money. A quick search reveals articles that say just that. So not sure how the software business is better in Android?
raglan,
I’m also curious about that. It used to be that the IOS market was the same size as or even bigger than android, but if the market keeps shrinking that will obviously dig into IOS app sales. So maybe what used to be true is no longer true.
The thing is, I don’t think anyone would contest that on average, iphone users are wealthier than android users. So while there may be fewer of them, they may be willing to spend more. I’m genuinely curious what the real data says. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s being biased because many have a personal stake in the game.
I think it’s pretty clear that the app market has become saturated for everyone though. At least with games, they’re “consumed” and people keep wanting new experiences, but how many times can you resell productivity apps? It’s not just mobile, even companies like microsoft and adobe are struggling with the buy it once & keep forever model, this explains their push towards towards the SAAS “rental” model.
If you do that, your app immediately is uninstalled. There’s just too much shit going on out there with bad ads to run that risk on my devices, thanks. I don’t need your app that much, sorry.
It might be me, but I can’t find any ware it the article where the authors presents any arguments for his statement that the Apple app store is bad.
But I think the real problem with his statement is that outside of gaming(Which funny enough on pc is dominated by the Steam app store) there have not for the last 10 years been an successful industry selling software to private users.
So the app store is not killing the “Sell software to privates” industry, because that industry don’t curerrently exists outside of app stores.
In fact: One of the reasons we have so many websites, trying to be entire apps, are exactly because we miss a good app store on Windows And MacOS X.
The Apple App stores also bans the GNU General Public License as well, so the other sustainable method of software production is eliminated as well.
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enf…
Apple don’t ban the GPL. The App Store is not compatible with it. The GPL requires the user to be able to recompile the source and produce the same binary. Due to signing this is not possible. Apple therefore are complying with copyright law.
daveak,
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed the terms, but as I recall it has more to do with the fact that apple refused to comply with the source distribution requirements of GPL2: if you distribute binaries you also have to distribute the source. Apple could easily comply with that but they couldn’t be bothered to do it and just banned the apps when people asked them to comply. I recall this happening with VLC, but are there other examples?
I did a search, and I found that apple was purging gpl3 software from macos (and probably IOS too).
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/03/24/1546205/apple-remove-samba…
GPL3 requires that users not only get the source code but are also extended the right to change the GPL code within their own devices. It came about to combat the tivoization of open source software (provide the source code as required, but hardware will intentionally block user modifications). Unfortunately I think GPL3 was too little too late, and the most significant GPL project (aka linux) does not have a “GPLv2 or later” clause. So there are an awful lot of embedded linux devices today that are “tivoized”.
Sort of. If it’s your own software you can distribute it however you want–if I make a program and release it to others under the GPL I myself am not bound by the GPL. So there is plenty of “copyleft” software on the iOS App Store, such as VLC.
That assumes that either all copyright has been assigned to you or you’ve gotten permission from the other contributors.
Most non-FSF GPLed projects are in a situation where no one person has the rights necessary to use all of the code under any terms other than GPL. (Which is a design feature of the GPL to prevent code from being closed up down the line.)
Edited 2017-05-06 02:22 UTC
That’s why they don’t want that continuing 30% revenue for those extra iPad versions, endless updates, etc. etc. Apple especially enjoys watching it’s 30% cut race to the bottom along with the price of software.
Apple would much rather pay for the infrastructure to let consumers endlessly download the same app, over and over and over, while not getting a dime out of past the initial sale.
The rush to the bottom is the ubiquity of the software. This is what happens when you no longer control distribution or presentation. When Vendor A is put right next to Vendor B and presented to the user. barring anything else, the primary distinction between the two products will be price, and someone is always willing to go cheaper.
I’ll await the follow up article about the problems the phone book caused based on how names are collated, and how the Zelansky Brothers were forced to change their name to AAA Plumbing.
The author complains about the app store as if the methods of software distribution that came before it made developers’ lives so much easier, but I see no evidence that this is true. Let’s go through the authors’ arguments one by one:
I agree that this is a serious downside. But on the other hand, you can’t seriously argue that the developers aren’t getting something out of the agreement too – I don’t just mean exposure, I mean protection from piracy.
When comparing the app store to “traditional” software distribution mechanisms, I see no evidence that the “traditional” way makes the developers’ life any easier or more lucrative.
Edited 2017-05-06 13:45 UTC
Incidently, since I never owned an iPad, for a long time I never knew what that “+” icon meant. For a long time I thought it meant the app included in-app purchases.
how much a typical old fashion software publisher takes off the top of a developer’s payout?
I wouldn’t think it’d be 30%. Then again, I think a lot of times the Publisher hires a development shop to create the software, then they handle all of the packaging, distribution, etc.
Which in the long run probably IS worth 30%. Apple, Steam, Google Play, etc all pretty much just reserve space/bandwidth, yet charge similar (though I don’t think the numbers from Steam or the Google Play store have ever been publicly stated).
Really, kind of crazy to think a third of your earnings go to someone who provides nothing more than a download link.
I agree but the writer forgot about Google with it’s 1GB free email accounts, it was the beginning.