> We understand that directing your user outside of your app may not be the user experience you prefer to offer your users. However it is a common experience in a variety of iOS apps.
That doesn't seem like the kind of uncompromising approach to fantastic user experience that has made Apple so successful.
I think Instacast, and maybe Flattr as well, should boycott Apple and instead focus on the Android platforms starting with Google Play and Amazon's Appstore. Otherwise they are helping to perpetuate and even reward this kind of behavior.
Does anyone have the link for Instacast for Android?
Year after year, this 2003 essay by Tim Bray continues to be true:
> I’ve been following some discussions about the future of software applications, and a phrase that came up in my dinner with Robb Beal has been echoing in my mind.What it comes down to is this: if you want to develop software, you can build for the Web and/or Unix and/or OSS platforms; or alternatively, you can be a sharecropper. Your choice, but I think it’s an easy one. Especially since the users out there want you to do the right thing.
> What Robb actually said, in a conversation about Mac software outputs like Ranchero and Watson and his own Spring, was that building for the Apple OS feels like being a sharecropper.
I think his statement of "the users want you to do the right thing" is being a bit generous. Users want whatever app they want on whatever platform they have. They don't want to jailbreak their device to install your app or go to some out of the way (possibly untrustworthy) place to locate it. Centralized, reliable app stores are liked generally by users. That said, as a developer, it is onerous/depressing to have faceless "bureaucrats" decide the fate of your apps acceptance/rejection.
Funny as a developer I don't have the same problem. I intrinsically understand that it is their store hence their rules. So long as I follow their well published and understood guidelines there won't be a problem.
Just like I would get banned from Google if I didn't follow their rules.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
That essay needs updating. It is entirely possible to be a web developer who is a sharecropper these days (see: massive reliance on Facebook integration, Twitter integration, Google APIs, or any other platform that you don't control and couldn't easily replicate).
I did two years ago. Sold my iMac and switched to Linux. I think it didn't have that much influence on Apple, but I feel good about it, I get my stuff done, and that's what counts.
While the App store is indeed powerful, it's also severely flawed beyond the approval process.
Discoverability is a huge problem, and honestly, more than 80% of the apps aren't very good. And given that iOS apps are still in the gold rush stage, that percentage of crappy apps is growing by the day.
If a significant number of the developers who vote with their feet are part of the top 20% (for quality), and the boycott becomes more widespread, I think Apple would have to respond.
In the post-Jobs era, who knows if something like this could have an impact.
Apple has acknowledged their issues with discoverability with their purchase of Chomp. And again the issue of the 80% of apps aren't good argument is that your definition of 'good' differs from everyone else.
Especially the massive number of young kids buying apps courtesy of the iPod touch.
You know, I feel like iOS and Android are recapitulating the Mac and PC wars of the '90s. Not exactly, mind you, but it feels like the same struggle between niche beauty and popular pragmatism. Between a controlled experience with a unifying vision, and plug-and-play user freedom.
One major difference is that iOS enjoys an advantage in apps that Mac never had in software. I think that could change, though. There is a positive feedback loop in which the most popular platform attracts developers and hence has the most software and so people buy that platform. I don't perceive that system to be in a stable state at the moment, much like it wasn't in, say, '88. People routinely develop for both platforms. And who knows, perhaps that will be the steady state answer this time; we're a lot better at abstraction than we used to be. But I think it's possible that Android could become popular enough (and perhaps Apple drive enough developers away), that the whole thing could pass a tipping point.
What I'm saying is, I don't think the beauty of the apps is the most powerful force in play here. I think the existence of apps is a lot more powerful. At least, that's what I think happened last time beauty fought pragmatism.
Starting with Windows 95, Windows had an objective advantage over Macintosh. The operating system supported preemptive multitasking, the hardware was considerably more powerful, and the software base was huge.
With iOS vs. Android, from the consumer's perspective, the differences are really subtle. The major issue at hand with developer freedom is hidden from view for most people.
That doesn't seem like the kind of uncompromising approach to fantastic user experience that has made Apple so successful.