[debt]

It boils down to budget. The app ecosystem simply isn't a high priority because it makes little to no money relative to Apple's core business. Matter of fact the best thing they did was introduce ads to app search, at least now they're probably making a few more bucks.

They invest most of their resources into hardware and critical software. Everything else clearly is secondary.

It doesnt take much to form this opinion either, just look at the quality of their software overall. Very inconsistent, trending towards mostly stable. Design improves which is good I guess but not what developers need.

They don't make a ton of money from independent developers and it doesn't matter anyway because most of the heavily used apps are created by Apple themselves.