[whywhywhywhy]

The “there’s an app for that” world where small to medium sized teams can build a very iOS native app that takes advantage of the latest and greatest of the device is long gone.

It’s kinda weird how Apple doesn’t realize this and continues to build for that world. Maybe if they were willing to shift on their % for devs that do build that way but unless they did there just isn’t the audience buying apps outright and the only ways to profit are tricking people into abusive subscriptions or building on ads and their personal data.

Until then no idea why any dev would build just for the Apple ecosystem and not something agnostic.

It’s telling to me that the biggest tech apps of the last 2 years all ran web/desktop first.

[jessekv]

There are still a few, e.g. https://halide.cam/

But if you are successful, there is a chance of getting sherlocked, so its a risky business model.

[dingledork69]

> But if you are successful, there is a chance of getting sherlocked, so its a risky business model.

What does this even mean? Watson shows up to help out?

[wlesieutre]

Watson was an independent search application on Mac OS, until Apple basically photocopied it and named theirs Sherlock. Since then it's become a verb for when Apple takes your app and builds it into the OS.

Another blatant example was Dashboard, which copied Konfabulator, Night Shift is a copy of F.lux, etc.

[countvonbalzac]

I still use F.lux, it's much better than night shift IMO, just wish they had it for iOS.

[qubex]

When they demonstrated on-desktop widgets the other day, I thought to myself “there goes Konfabulator/Dashboard 2.0”, and then I thought to myself “you’re old enough to remember that and to be caustically cynical”.

[ladberg]

Technically Sherlock predates Watson, it's just a lot of the useful additional features added by Watson were copied to Sherlock.

[wlesieutre]

Ah you're right, it was Sherlock 3 that copied the Watson features. Mostly related to searching the web for things like ebay listings, recipes, stocks, software.

So the Watson name was probably inspired by Apple's from previous versions, but the Sherlock 3 feature set definitely got cloned from Karelia's.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

"Getting sherlocked means that Apple just announced the software, or feature that a developer built their business on."

https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...

[kemayo]

> Until then no idea why any dev would build just for the Apple ecosystem and not something agnostic.

The standard reason given is that iPhone users are much more valuable than Android users, in that they're a lot more likely to pay for things. If I'm creating a workout app with a fancy form-correction feature then I might well want to use Apple-platform things that make it quicker to develop, at the cost to me of only slightly restricting my actual market.

[codeflo]

It's not just the machine learning stuff, they have a non-portable approach for everything, including the platform's primary programming language. They still seem to live in a world where a significant niche of developers targets Apple platforms and their bespoke APIs only.

The problem with that world view is that (a) everything with a network effect can't target a single platform anymore, and (b) the business model for old-school professional single-user apps was killed by the App Store.

[actualwitch]

They are relying on people looking into spending statistics by platform and realizing that if they want those sweet sweet $$$, they are forced to deal with apple and their walled garden.

[nerdbert]

Unlike Microsoft? Windows APIs are just as "bespoke".

[fnordpiglet]

I think they seem to be doing fairly well as a company, and part of that is not letting themselves be tethered by a standard to allow competitors equal access to their walled garden. Whether you like that or not, it’s the strategy they’ve taken. They would rather not have your app than distort their platform to accommodate its ability to run on another platform.

For developers the reason to adopt the apple ecosystem is fairly simple. People willing to pay for an apple device are likely willing to pay for a subscription. The apple model is essentially you buy a subscription to their hardware - they release at a regular clip, they anticipate most customers will refresh, there’s no meaningful upgrade path, etc. As a developer I prefer subscriptions over one time purchases because it incentives my maintenance and growth of features for existing customers rather than a never ending grab for new customers. As a consumer while my pocket book certainly prefer one time pay, I actually do see the benefit in incentivizing continuous improvements for existing customers. (I do however wish that apple didn’t hide the subscriptions management so deeply and made it very prominent, and until they do it falls into the abusive category IMO)

[Someone]

> It’s kinda weird how Apple doesn’t realize this and continues to build for that world.

If you’re a hardware manufacturer, I don’t think building for the common denominator of the web browser is a viable strategy. Looking at various of their competitors, it certainly brings in less money.

How many people would buy an iPhone that’s basically a “browser device” if, for 50% of its price, they could get something that’s 80% as good (percentages for illustration purposes)?

[lwkl]

> It’s telling to me that the biggest tech apps of the last 2 years all ran web/desktop first.

What are the two apps that you are referring to? No snark just curious. Because the only thing I can think of are video calls or social media (which are arguably older than two years).

[whywhywhywhy]

ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion. Both web/terminal first.

Think 5-8 years ago at least one of them would have been app first.

[pzo]

You already have native chatgpt app by openai. Also Microsoft have integration on native edge browser, SwiftKey keyboard and Bing app.

There are also many mobile stable diffusion apps and even native mobile discord app which is UI for midjourney

And since all those app require a lot of typing or prompt tweaking they where better suited for desktop first