[alexashka]

Nobody's really disputing that the App Store needs revision in a number of areas (discovery, refunds, trials, etc) It's a hard problem because curation is a hard problem. It is not unique to the app store - take a look at android's store or frankly, any online store that offers a wide array of products - curation is hard. I'm sure they're working on it.

A time of fewer but higher quality apps may be coming - but then there'll be complains about the selection system. Curation is hard.

The real complaint I hear most often is simply 'I thought I was going to make an app, publish it and make money! I haven't made money. I think the app store it broken'

Most businesses fail, there was a false impression that the app store is somehow different - it'll solve the reasons most businesses fail. It won't.

Your conclusion is correct - unless you've got great product-market fit (your product fits the need of many people today), you do not matter, to many people. Your app does not matter to many people unless it has got great product-market fit. Products that have great fit - do well despite some of the challenges, mostly through word of mouth. Just like most other small businesses.

[Nemcue]

> Curation is hard.

Oh please.

They just don't care.

Take Steam for instance, I have a thousand times better experience finding new games on there than I have on any mobile app store. I get recommendations from my friends, according to what Steam thinks I would enjoy playing, and they even have curators for apps so people whose reviews I can enjoy can list games with a short review. And those are just a few ways of discovering new games, there are a ton of others.

Neither Apple nor Google are even trying. That's the problem. They don't give a shit.

Valve barely gives a shit about improving Steam — since it'll print more money than they can ever spend regardless — and still they've surpassed both Google and Apple.

[rmidthun]

Scale matters. Steam has less than 4000 games total. The App store has 1400 applications every day.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-reaches-100-million-u... http://www.pocketgamer.biz/metrics/app-store/

[cwyers]

This is the first time I have heard Steam described as a positive example in curation in a long time. They're terrible at it. And as others have pointed out here, they have a MUCH simpler curation problem than Apple or Google have to face. I think even Windows Phone or Blackberry have a bigger app curation problem than Steam has an app curation problem. And Valve's response to this is that they want to move to a model of even LESS curation, because running the disaster pit that's Steam Greenlight is too uncomfortable for them.

[path411]

If they wanted to move towards less curation, then it seems counter to them creating tags, "recommended for you" games, steam curators, discovery queue, or their two new customizable curation panes on their homepage, and more, all in the past year.

Steam is very visibly and actively trying to improve curation, and despite being very poor at it previously, they have very much improved rather quickly.

[cwyers]

The entire point of tags and Steam curators is that Valve doesn't do the work, "the community" does. They're not trying to improve THEIR curation, they're trying to give users the tools to do it themselves.

[myko]

Actually discovery on Google Play is getting a lot better. I get recommendations based on what friends have reviewed all the time. Most of the interesting apps I find and install are because someone I know on G+ installed it and +'d it or rated it.

[Alphasite_]

Honestly steam as much a social network as a games platform at this point and that's what gives them the data, and we've see. How Apple and googles multiple attempts at social platforms have panned out.

[Nemcue]

I barely use Steam as a social platform, and still I have a thousand times better experience when it comes to discoverability. I understand what you're saying — people spend more time using Steam than they do the app stores (and they also have access to social graphs and what-not, although you could argue Apple & Google have this as well via messages).

I would argue that point is kind of moot, since many of the ways I discover games on Steam would work without any friends or a social graph.

The sales (holiday, weekly and daily), curators, user tags etc, etc. They would all still work.

They just don't care.

[olivier1664]

Don't forget the steam queue. It use prediction to show games that correspond to your taste. It's not very accurate, but it allow to show new games on each iteration. You do not waste your time on the always same top 100 games. It allow to discover some strange or underated titles .

[Crito]

I bet the average Steam user also spends orders of magnitude more than the average Android/Apple user as well.

I'm not sure what exactly that would suggest if true, but I think it would be interesting.

[debaserab2]

Really? I find steams suggestions to be about on par with the App Store: it tends to highlight whatever bid budget game is upcoming and never seems particularly relevant to me.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Well, that's... a point of view. I'm unconvinced it's an accurate one.

Firstly, the app model is pure genius. It means Apple gets an army of developers producing software for Apple with zero health/unemployment/other benefits, no up-front advance payments, and a limited curation cost.

The risks are entirely on the developer side. There is no downside for Apple.

Secondly momentum creates the usual extreme power law, with most of the benefits going to a small minority of developers.

What makes an app sell is some random combination of luck, faddiness, and marketing muscle.

It certainly isn't inherent quality or "fit". In fact you seem to be using "fit" as a rationalisation for app successes, not as a useful description of the processes that make an app successful - some of which seem to random.

Finally, there's the bottom line: devs like to that puts on a stage routine about having the right stuff, it's not unreasonable to expect it to do stuff right.

The point: the benefits of keeping devs onside and treating them with more respect would be immense, and probably economically incalculable.

Apple would have an instant army of fanboys/girls talking up the company to anyone who would listen. App quality would go way up to the point where iOS could potentially totally kill Android. App and hardware sales would increase further, and you'd get a classic virtuous cycle.

Unfortunately when you have a war chest heading towards $1tn you probably don't feel any need to care about the little people, and "eh - whatever" is good enough for you.

But that doesn't mean the opportunity wasn't real, or that it hasn't been squandered.

It was and it has. And that's been a bad thing for everyone - including Apple.

[code_duck]

> Firstly, the app model is pure genius. It means Apple gets an army of developers producing software for Apple with zero health/unemployment/other benefits, no up-front advance payments, and a limited curation cost.

How is that different than say, people writing for the Commodore 64 or Windows and selling it with no connection to the company? Do you mean the alternative would be for apple write all of the software available on iOS? I don't see how third parties writing software for an operating system or device would be considered an amazing new idea.

[FordPrefectAO]

It is different because in the case of Commodore 64/Windows/$thirdParty, the developer can do releases, pricing, refunds, etc outside of Apple's control.

[lozf]

... and without giving them a third of the profit (or is it revenue?)

[madeofpalk]

Apple takes 30% of revenue.

To be fair, Apple handles a lot for that 30%. Accounting/Tax records, payment, bandwidth and storage etc.

They could probably afford to take less, but they do take care of a fare bit of hassle from app distribution and selling.

[Crito]

> "To be fair, Apple handles a lot for that 30%. Accounting/Tax records, payment, bandwidth and storage etc."

I think people would have a better opinion on that deal if it were optional.

Apple offers to take care of billing/bandwidth/storage on iOS for 30% of revenue? Neat!

Apple demands to take care of billing/bandwidth/storage on iOS for 30% of revenue? Lame.

[throwawaymsft]

Imagine if Microsoft got a third of the revenue from Turbotax, Photoshop, AutoCAD, World of Warcraft, etc.

[Steko]

A better analogy might be to ask how much Wal-Mart marks up software in their store. The answer is more than Apple does. Apple's value proposition is they bring x hundred million paying customers with credit cards ready to go into the store and you will sell at least 30% more than if they didn't bring those customers to you.

[fpgeek]

Is Wal-Mart's markup still bigger than Apple's once you take out the incremental costs of dealing with physical boxes in stores [1]? Considering the substantial markups we see on things like books and DVDs, I suspect not.

[1] To be precise we should also take out Apple's incremental (not fixed) costs for delivering apps, but I suspect those are negligible on a per-app basis.

[freehunter]

But Apple has thousands of developers producing high quality apps. There's literally zero chance that all, most, or really even a significant some of them will be enough to earn their developers significant amount of money.

How many Windows developers make enough from their one-off piece of software that they can quit their job and work full time on it? Hardly any. How many Linux developers? An even smaller amount, closer to zero (you want to talk about a platform where people expect to get free-as-in-beer software, when was the last time you paid money for any non-enterprise Linux software?). Now look at the difference between a PC and an iPhone. On a PC, you can have meaningful, long-term engagements with software. I've put hundreds of hours into each Civilization and Elder Scrolls games, thousands of hours between the entire series of each. And iPhone games advertise a huge game at under 10 hours of gameplay. I spend $50 to play a game for 500 hours. If I want that kind of return from an iPhone game, even 99 cents is way too much to spend.

I'm not arguing that the apps need to be more engaging. It's just the platform doesn't lend itself to that. It's about small bits and bites and sporadic usage. And for that, apps are even massively over-priced. And you want to argue about discoverability? How is the discoverability on Windows? And the discoverability on Linux... on Debian the package is apache2, on RHEL it's httpd. Same package. That's poor discoverability.

I'll go against the article: I'm not an Apple fanatic, I don't own a Mac, I have an iPhone as one of the many phones I use, I don't have an iPad, I've never published to the store, and I have no relationship with Apple. But is there anything wrong with the App Store? If there is, it's in developer expectations. I've written Windows and Linux software and put it up for free on my website. You know how many views it gets, let alone downloads? Zero. I get around that lack of income by having a job and developing as a hobby, like most software (except, I guess, the App Store). The App Store is an incredible thing for developers, but many developers see it as nothing more than a gold mine that they can exploit, then get upset when they only make $100/mo, even though they put in all that effort. Effort doesn't guarantee success anywhere in life.

If you feel Apple owes you anything, that's your own damn fault. There has never been a better time to be an independent developer than there is right now. But if you go in expecting people to throw money at you then blame Apple when they don't... well just because you play guitar doesn't mean your band is going to get a recording contract.

[ksk]

>The real complaint I hear most often is simply 'I thought I was going to make an app, publish it and make money! I haven't made money. I think the app store it broken'

Where have you heard that most often?

[venomsnake]

> A time of fewer but higher quality apps may be coming - but then there'll be complains about the selection system. Curation is hard.

Then don't curate. Simple, elegant and effective. Make side loading possible, give root to the devices that people own and make the app store optional. Nobody loses.

[cmdkeen]

"Nobody loses" - of course they do. Apple protect users from themselves by making it hard to install dodgy software on their phones.

For ever alleged power user who wants to do something different there are probably 100 users for will be burnt because they don't understand that your root enabled device and other app source is a massive attack vector.

We're years into the iPhone, you knew what you were buying. Apple have spent years selling the iPhone as safe, what you propose is turning all the marketing into misconceptions for users when they think Vlad's warez site can't ruin their device.