> With the release of iOS 18 later this fall, Apple’s changes may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year, according to an analysis by app intelligence firm Appfigures.
Actually, it will be far better for consumers than that. I am sure, that pretty much none of those apps have thought about security and privacy implications with this kind of data on the level that Apple has, and is implementing for these features.
In addition, a substantial number of these apps are ad-supported which brings up a lot of issues related to privacy and tracking. In addition, if they are VC funded, under pressure to make money, they may try to sell the data they have.
I don’t think password managers are ad-supported. One thing for sure, apple is going to leverage ios to make sure it’s better integrated to the OS, and it’s also going to make it harder for you to move to a competitor (android or windows).
So, in the short term, you’re probably right, but in the long term certainly not.
You have a fair point in that a native experience will more than likely keep privacy in mind and have more resources to produce a potentially better experience. The concern is that these are unethical practices. Now, they don’t own a monopoly over the smartphone market, but they do have a monopoly on the actual app purchase market, so the monopoly question is debatable. Apple has both created the game (marketplace), owns the game and has private information on how the game is being played. They are then using that information to increase the value of their offering. They have a statistically unfair advantage against any offering on their marketplace and can use that to build up their own product. I’m not a lawyer and I can’t speak to the legality, although this is something that would be classified as at least suspicious, although it’d be hard to build a case on, if at all possible.
Ethically, their practice of appearing to target successful offerings and undermining them is debatable. There’s no right answer here, it’s a matter of opinion. But this repeated behavior would signal to anyone looking to build a commercial success on their marketplace: don’t be too successful. You have to remember that you have a multi-trillion dollar international corporation suppressing the success of small (internationally <$1B business is considered small) businesses, who have employees that believe in their mission. And you can see I keep referring to “their marketplace” that they legitimately own, and I understand they may not be doing anything “illegal” as defined by current law, but when you look at a multi-decade view of this practice, I think we’re going to start to see new laws being drafted and regulations put on place. I’m not sure how you even begin to fight a “virtual monopoly” which has little physical monopoly dominance.
I will caveat that I do thoroughly enjoy Apple products and the seamless Apple native applications and integrations with each other. I do appreciate their craftsmanship and attention to detail. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when we see a similar headline every year each of the last few years, where a closed environment controlled by one entity is swallowing more and more of the world’s resources and preventing others from growing.
Consumers benefit when Apple builds an OS with insecure APIs, where developers can't built apps that guarantee data protection? That's an inverted way to look at it. Why would you trust Apple if you can't trust apps built on Apple's platform?
Until you find all the inconsistent behavior between chrome, Firefox and safari. Oh and mobile safari vs desktop safari. Bad accessibility support, poor programming languages, etc
At least you don't have the sensation of fighting against the owner of the platform you're developing on. Undocumented behaviors or system limits of closed-source systems is the worst. Then after a while you realize that :
- apple itself probably isn't using the architecture it wants you to use and so its products don't have the same limits (theirs being directly embedded in the OS)
- there are some special entitlements you can ask to bypass those limits, but you have to ask them politely and they can revoke them at any time.
Procreate is great, and reason alone to buy an iPad if you are a digital artist. But Apple's Flow and Notes will probably grow in capability over time. Apple is also building in AI image generation, which arguably replaces not just Procreate but also the artists who use it. ;-(
Apple's "pro" apps - Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro - are fairly successful in their categories. Personally I'm a big fan of GarageBand, especially on iOS. MainStage is also kind of cool. I wish Aperture hadn't been killed before its time.
And I still find that I use Preview, Safari, Mail, Terminal are on a day-to-day basis even though I have some good alternatives in each category. Keynote is my go-to presentation program even though I also have PowerPoint.
„…the letter then complaints some of its signees cannot use it for their work. "Work that could easily include productions for your very own Apple TV+ service," it states.“
Google maps has had that for years, right? I don’t think this threatens AllTrails.
I’ve used AllTrails for 10+ years and they’ve degraded by trying to force into paid subscriptions for basic functions. So I use them less and less (I just want maps and tracking hikes). So I’m happy that Apple is adding them and I don’t think will make me use AllTrails any less.
Users: Why do Apple implement features that are already paid for apps that I like?
Also users: Why do I need to buy third party apps to do [X]? It should be native.
I get it - I’ve been a happy user of things like PCalc for years, but for every Apple Mail, there’s a Spark. For every calendar there’s a Fantastical. And so on.
But Apple are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
Arguing that device manufacturers should refrain from including commonly used features in their OS so that third parties can profit from selling those features to users is certainly a take. Can't say that I find it particularly convincing, though.
this fleecing of customers is my most hated software business model, ever. salesforce is utterly useless unless you head on over to the app store and buy the functionality you actually wanted, same with airtable, microsoft anything, all anyone sells is frameworks with an app store now and it makes me want to go full office space on my computer
The annealing of the OS in the long term is great though. It opens up that $400MM to different apps that will become core features in the future as people vote with their wallet.
LOL that is one way to spin it. I’d rather just stay out of mobile development unless my ideas were too difficult to implement. No one wants to be a bullet point on Tim Apple’s yearly slideshow presentation.
Ahh yes the “My ideas are so good that Apple will steal them so they aren’t worth doing”-argument.
I find this argument to be completely unrealistic. It’s like the people that want you to sign an NDA to talk about their idea.
Ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything. Yes, Apple might sherlock you but Apple has never and will never serve all the use cases people want (and that’s ok!). They often cover the 80% use-case which leaves room for third party apps to serve the power/niche users while Apple raises the bar for the category.
I use a ton of third party apps (and pay for them) that Apple has their own versions of because they cover my needs better than the stock apps. Drafts, Carrot, Things, CleanShotX (desktop), Annotatable, and the list goes on.
Just say you aren’t interested in mobile development, you aren’t good at it, or that you find it uninteresting. Don’t hide behind “Apple will steal my idea”.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 86.8 ms ] threadActually, it will be far better for consumers than that. I am sure, that pretty much none of those apps have thought about security and privacy implications with this kind of data on the level that Apple has, and is implementing for these features.
In addition, a substantial number of these apps are ad-supported which brings up a lot of issues related to privacy and tracking. In addition, if they are VC funded, under pressure to make money, they may try to sell the data they have.
Consumers are far better with Apple doing this.
So, in the short term, you’re probably right, but in the long term certainly not.
Ethically, their practice of appearing to target successful offerings and undermining them is debatable. There’s no right answer here, it’s a matter of opinion. But this repeated behavior would signal to anyone looking to build a commercial success on their marketplace: don’t be too successful. You have to remember that you have a multi-trillion dollar international corporation suppressing the success of small (internationally <$1B business is considered small) businesses, who have employees that believe in their mission. And you can see I keep referring to “their marketplace” that they legitimately own, and I understand they may not be doing anything “illegal” as defined by current law, but when you look at a multi-decade view of this practice, I think we’re going to start to see new laws being drafted and regulations put on place. I’m not sure how you even begin to fight a “virtual monopoly” which has little physical monopoly dominance.
I will caveat that I do thoroughly enjoy Apple products and the seamless Apple native applications and integrations with each other. I do appreciate their craftsmanship and attention to detail. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when we see a similar headline every year each of the last few years, where a closed environment controlled by one entity is swallowing more and more of the world’s resources and preventing others from growing.
No company treats their developers as badly as Apple.
- apple itself probably isn't using the architecture it wants you to use and so its products don't have the same limits (theirs being directly embedded in the OS)
- there are some special entitlements you can ask to bypass those limits, but you have to ask them politely and they can revoke them at any time.
Apple's "pro" apps - Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro - are fairly successful in their categories. Personally I'm a big fan of GarageBand, especially on iOS. MainStage is also kind of cool. I wish Aperture hadn't been killed before its time.
And I still find that I use Preview, Safari, Mail, Terminal are on a day-to-day basis even though I have some good alternatives in each category. Keynote is my go-to presentation program even though I also have PowerPoint.
Source: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/04/19/video-editors-dem...
I wouldn’t exactly call that popular or successful.
Logic Pro is quite widely in use in some areas though.
I’ve used AllTrails for 10+ years and they’ve degraded by trying to force into paid subscriptions for basic functions. So I use them less and less (I just want maps and tracking hikes). So I’m happy that Apple is adding them and I don’t think will make me use AllTrails any less.
Also users: Why do I need to buy third party apps to do [X]? It should be native.
I get it - I’ve been a happy user of things like PCalc for years, but for every Apple Mail, there’s a Spark. For every calendar there’s a Fantastical. And so on.
But Apple are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
I find this argument to be completely unrealistic. It’s like the people that want you to sign an NDA to talk about their idea.
Ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything. Yes, Apple might sherlock you but Apple has never and will never serve all the use cases people want (and that’s ok!). They often cover the 80% use-case which leaves room for third party apps to serve the power/niche users while Apple raises the bar for the category.
I use a ton of third party apps (and pay for them) that Apple has their own versions of because they cover my needs better than the stock apps. Drafts, Carrot, Things, CleanShotX (desktop), Annotatable, and the list goes on.
Just say you aren’t interested in mobile development, you aren’t good at it, or that you find it uninteresting. Don’t hide behind “Apple will steal my idea”.