But… why would I put the effort into getting an llm to make me an app when a there’s an existing app that I don’t have to maintain? I don’t want to have to make every app I use?
There's a huge difference between local apps that cost one time 3-10$ and apps that ask for a subscription between 5 to 20$ per month. the first category will remain and might become more popular as quality increases, the second category will be oblitereated as the value isn't there, even if all the buyers are rich. The second group takes up a much larger part of the pie than the first though, so apple's revenue will decrease.
It depends on the value of your time relative to the price of the application. Many of us here are well paid and time poor. It makes sense to pay for well built apps. For the world, we are truly the top 1%. 99% of people would be happy to spend a few hours building an app they need to occasionally maintain. Especially if the app is subscription based.
We should also remember that the effort of building and maintaining apps is dropping precipitously as LLMs get smarter, faster, and cheaper. OpenClaw signalled the direction in which we're heading, and within a year, Anthropic will no doubt have cheap and competent agents which can handle the maintenance autonomously in the background.
> 99% of people would be happy to spend a few hours building an app they need to occasionally maintain. Especially if the app is subscription based.
With people slowly abandoning dedicated computers they fully control (if we can even call windows/macOS that) and going towards mobile/tablet computing more every year, which is a far more locked down device run by companies that are becoming increasingly hostile to “side-loading,” I just don’t see how this can become reality.