[reeddavid]

I'm not an app developer, but I am equally frustrated as a user on several of Wil Shipley's key points:

1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find what I'm looking for, then take your commission.

2. Upgrade pricing. I'm tired of abandoned apps, especially those I paid for initially. I don't expect developers to work for free (nor do I want to have 100+ subscriptions). Let me upgrade to major new versions.

3. Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to buy something outright and use it for its useful life. There are many apps I never use because I don't want yet another subscription, but I would have happily purchased.

4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.

EDIT: I see trials have been possible for 2 years! I had no idea. I guess I haven't encountered any, which seems odd.

As a user, I feel that Apple has created a race to the bottom and they've made the app ecosystem way less valuable to me. I would be happier if upgrades and trials allowed me to spend more money to get more valuable iOS apps. Instead I regret some purchases, avoid some purchases, can't tell how much apps actually cost, have to find new apps when old ones are abandoned, and don't trust that I'm able to discover and buy the best apps.

[wool_gather]

On point 4, what you want (and I, as both a user and developer) still doesn't exist. The trial functionality that Apple offers is only for auto-renewing subscriptions. (It's not particularly flexible, either.)

There are workarounds, but nothing that's really built in to the App Store as it should be.

[syshum]

For #4, I think a Steam Style Refund policy would also work, If you do not have X number of hours/minutes app usage or X days since purchase you should be able to get a full refund

[vageli]

> 4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.

I would be surprised if Apple didn't have in place a policy similar to the Google Play store (and others, like Steam), where you have a limited amount of time (a couple of hours) during which time you can "return" the software and not incur the cost.

[viraptor]

That's true in my experience. It happened maybe twice, but I got pretty much immediate refunds for purchases from previous day that I wasn't happy with. There wasn't anything wrong with the app itself, it just wasn't what I expected I'm getting.

[tonyedgecombe]

Trials would only make sense if the applications were more expensive. My downloadable software gets single digit perentage conversion rates, that wouldn't add up on something that cost a few dollars.

[_ph_]

Honestly, many applications on the app store are too cheap. I am happy to pay a reasonable sum for an app, which I could test, so I can verify that it works at all or even works for the intended promise.