Serious Must Die! even developers are mass abandoning Gay Phone Inc iOS!

https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/...developers-to-abandon-new-ios-app-development

iOS 8/9 causing music developers to abandon new iOS app development?
Coloobar
Coloobar
April 2015 edited April 2015 in General

I just received sad news that the sequel to one of my favorite iOS games, Avernum 2, was pulled by the developer from the app store just a just few days after its release. They are ceaseing all development on iOS apps. It seems iOS 8.3 broke the game engine for all of his games, and there's at least 5 of them. You can read about it here:

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/...why-we-are-no-longer-developing-for-the-ipad/

Now I wonder will all of the problems with music apps and iOS 8, if it's causing app developers to shy away from making new apps in the iOS environment? I mean, who knows what's going to get broken when iOS 9 comes out.

[Deleted User]
[Deleted User]
April 2015 edited April 2015

It's the same with web development - every time the server software, or server side scripting, or browser, or CMS, or mySQL, or Wordpress etc. etc. etc. gets an update a whole bunch of stuff gets broke and we have to learn how to fix it and new techniques to keep our services up to date.

But that's the nature of the job, you just have to get on with it - I spend at least a third of my time, unpaid, learning new stuff. Adapt or die, because some other bugger will turn up to fill the gap.
AndyX
AndyX
April 2015

Sad news indeed. I'm also a big fan of Jeff Vogel and Spiderweb games, and was very happy when they began porting their games to the iPad.

Speaking as a user, not a developer, who’s probably spent thousands of dollars over the years in iPad and iPhone apps, I have to say that the points Jeff makes are very valid and sad - not only regarding the impact of 8.3, but also the business model that Apple seems to favor in their app store.

I have totally ceased buying games for my iPad and iPhone, and recently became a very loyal Nintendo 3DS fanboy. I have no problems paying anywhere from USD 6 to USD 50 a game or app, if it’s the quality I’m looking for.

By the way, there are some very few but interesting music apps on that platform as well - for instance the Korg M01D music workstation. It’s a shame however that Nintendo manages to make their hardware even more walled than Apple.

As for the iPad, I still think it’s untouched for mobile music production and performance, but personally I’m only willing to invest in premium apps made by developers who have a history of actively maintaining their product and listening to their customer base.
Goozoon
Goozoon
April 2015

bullshit.. new stuff is born everyday. If they won't update their few-year long used engine it not our fail. In these days all is changing you can use the same technology 5 years without updates
AndyX
AndyX
April 2015

@Goozoon your point is valid; but reading Jeff's post and the ensuing discussion, I think his problem is more related to the App Store business model not providing enough return for a niche developer. If he was making enough money, I doubt he would care about periodically updating his stuff.
anickt
anickt
April 2015

Look at how many apps are just fine. There will always be a few that don't make it for one reason or another. All of my favorite music apps work great in iOS 8.3 and those that don't can be easily replaced. I don't know of any single music app that can't be replaced by another app.
Samu
Samu
April 2015

It's not like iOS8.3 hit the developers by 'surprise' if they cared to keep up with what's happening with the development of the platform they are developing on this would not be a problem.

We've all been thru this when some app just reach 'end of life' it has happened on both Windows and Mac platforms in the past and will most likely happen again. I personally remember the transition from PPC to Intel, and deprecation of the 'Classic environment' in later versions of OS X...

As for the Apps on iOS platform it just shows which developers are truly committed...

At some point we learn to see and accept that apps are not an 'investment' they are commodity with an expiration date just like music is now days a 'consumable product' and not an investment like it used the be when vinyl was popular...
DaveMagoo
DaveMagoo
April 2015

@Samu said:

At some point we learn to see and accept that apps are not an 'investment' they are commodity with an expiration date just like music is now days a 'consumable product' and not an investment like it used the be when vinyl was popular...

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart...rts-launch-as-vinyl-sales-soar-in-2015__8906/
anickt
anickt
April 2015

Sales of vinyl now are a drop in the bucket compared to when vinyl was the primary medium to distribute music. How many individual artists in the 60's and 70's sold in excess of 1.29 million vinyl LP's? Quite a few I'm sure. Just sayin'...

"014 witnessed vinyl LP sales reaching a 20-year high in the UK at 1.29 million"
Holiday
Holiday
April 2015

In one sense I like updates to OS if they make my computer (and tablets and smartphones are essentially computers too) run faster and better, more intuitive, open up more functionality. On the other hand it means software developers often have to go through the trouble of making sure their application functions in the updated environment, which I'm sure is a pain in the arse. As well, sometimes you find with an update that your computer becomes slower and less capable or worse buggy. I think Apple is pushing updates and new versions of OSs exponentially in hopes that it will force people to upgrade their hardware, thus more profits for Apple.
DaveMagoo
DaveMagoo
April 2015

@anickt said:
Sales of vinyl now are a drop in the bucket compared to when vinyl was the primary medium to distribute music. How many individual artists in the 60's and 70's sold in excess of 1.29 million vinyl LP's? Quite a few I'm sure. Just sayin'...

"014 witnessed vinyl LP sales reaching a 20-year high in the UK at 1.29 million"

Ha...I forgot the demographic here lol
u0421793
u0421793
April 2015

I think I’ll go back to hardware. At least it usually keeps some sort of resale value decades later.
Diode108
Diode108
April 2015 edited April 2015

It is harder and easier than the old days. When we were writing for Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, and the like, we knew that we were dealing with pretty much set hardware (1 or 1.79 MHz 6502 respectively, RAM, video memory in a fixed location, etc.), and that it was going to be the same for years.

On the other hand, we could spend hours or days optimizing 20 lines of assembly language.
supadom
supadom
April 2015 edited April 2015

@anickt said:
I don't know of any single music app that can't be replaced by another app.

Samplr and Impaktor just came to mind

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-iOS-apps-abandoned

Why are so many iOS apps abandoned?
I'm clearing out apps from 2008 onwards that no longer work on my iPhone 4. Some are great and still work fine, but have never been updated for retina screens, the iPhone 5 or the iPad. Is copyright the problem: when a publisher goes down and the dev cannot get back the app? Otherwise it would seem sensible to me to maintain the app, having gone to the expense of creating it and perhaps publicizing it. An update puts it under people's noses again.
2 Answers
Ed Basulgan
Ed Basulgan
Answered 19w ago

There are a lot of reasons why people abandon and uninstall apps. One of them is that - the app just simply does not satisfy the needs of the user. Find out more in this post Tips to Combat Mobile App Abandonment in 2017 (http://toappdevelop.com/tips-to-...).
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https://betanews.com/2017/05/26/opera-abandons-ios/



Opera abandons iOS [Update]

By Brian Fagioli
Published 2 days ago

23 Comments

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I have been enjoying the Opera desktop web browser lately. In fact, the experience has been so good, that I have been using it on Windows 10, Linux, and macOS. The browser has many great features, plenty of extensions, and it is darn fast too.

As an iPhone and iPad user, I thought maybe it was time to use Opera on mobile. After all, why not use the same app across all my devices? Unfortunately, after searching for Opera in the Apple App Store, I noticed something odd -- none of the company's iOS browsers (Opera Mini and Opera Coast) have been updated in 2017. Since we are almost halfway through the year, I decided to ask Opera what was up. Shockingly, the company told me that it no longer has a team working on iOS.

As you can see below, an Opera employee by the name of "Rosi" sent me a tweet this morning, making the revelation. While the desktop version of the browser is still in development, the company has chosen to abandon its efforts on iOS. To show just how bad it is, the Opera Mini browser hasn't been updated in almost a year. Opera Coast was updated in December of 2016, however -- almost six months ago.

Sadly, this makes me no longer want to use the desktop version of the browser. By no longer developing for iOS, Opera isn't giving me the experience I desire -- the same browser across all devices. As of now, it seems Firefox and Chrome are the best options for those that do want a solidified experience.

@brianfagioli Hi, at this moment we don't have a team working on IOS which is why we haven't released any updates. /Rosi

— Opera (@opera) May 26, 2017

What do you think about this news? Are you shocked that Opera no longer has employees working on iOS? Tell me in the comments below.

UPDATE: BetaNews received the following email response from Opera.

It looks that our response on twitter was misinterpreted. We would like to clarify that Opera does not abandon iOS. On the other hand, we plan to keep developing it as Opera Min [sic] provides unique features that other browsers do not have, such as data saving for both webpages and video, ad-blocking, built-in newsfeed etc. And people love using it.

As most of the engineering resources are now on Android, our update on iOS is slow at this moment. Please bear with us and do stay tune for our next updates.

I also received the tweet response below.

@opera @thurrott When can we expect an update? Opera mini hasn't been updated in almost a year -- unacceptable. You don't even have a team working on it.

— Brian Fagioli (@brianfagioli) May 27, 2017

Photo credit: Roman Rybaleov / Shutterstock

http://www.cio.com/article/3195083/ios/ios-has-apple-damaged-developers.html



iOS: Has Apple damaged developers?
Apple’s iOS App Store is filled with software, but has it hurt developers with a race to the bottom in terms of pricing?

ios app store primary
Credit: Apple
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As I write this post Apple’s stock has hit a new high of $151 per share, and the company is swimming in money. Apple's treasure hoard has topped $250 billion and shows no sign of slowing down. Apple is one of the richest and most successful companies in history.

But what about the developers that create the apps in Apple’s iOS App Store? One writer recently considered the idea that Apple has actually done an enormous amount of damage to developers by fostering a race to the bottom in terms of software pricing.

Matt Gemmell writes on his blog:

One measure of the value of a person’s creative output is what another person is willing to pay for it. Low prices actively court those who place less value on work. That’s not an admonishment; it’s just a simple fact. And no, you can’t balance the price-point and the sales figures to achieve the same income: there are far, far more people who will only buy at $1 (or free, if you’re trying to sell in-app purchases). If you sell at $3 instead, your number of sales will go down by much more than the factor of three that you increased the price by.

If your goal is just to make money temporarily (which is up to you), then the race to the bottom — with all its attendant risks, and its environmentally corrosive effect — is probably your best bet. You also need to acknowledge that you’ve marked your work as being essentially worthless, and that it’ll be discarded just as quickly. Your most vocal supporters will turn on you the minute you ask for more money (remember the extra levels for Monument Valley?). They simply won’t value you enough to even consider paying again, because you’ve already taught them that your work isn’t worth it.

Has Apple created a huge market, in terms of potential customers? Absolutely. It’s just done so at the expense of its platform-invested developer community. Judging by the company’s value and income, it was a very wise move, and you can justify it on that basis if you choose. But don’t ignore the reality of the situation. Apple is not a benevolent entity; your human-centric partner in aesthetics and ethos. If that was ever true at all.

More at Matt Gemmell’s blog

In a race to the bottom, nobody wins

I agree with some of Matts comments, the iOS App Store is filled with software and much of it is disposable junk. I rarely install new apps these days on my iPhone or iPad Pro. I particularly avoid iOS games since so many of them are simply “freemium” junk.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not angry at the developers. Most of them are doing what Matt noted in his commentary. They are chasing dollars in the way that Apple wants them to, and that shows in the quality of many of the apps in the App Store.

Personally, I have never had a problem paying more for useful or fun software. Nor would I have a problem paying for yearly upgrades or even a subscription (depending on the software).

For me it all gets down to value. If a developer provides software that adds value to my life, then I want to support that developer’s business. I don’t mind paying a developer for their time, effort and expertise.

This is not just me being nice, there’s also a certain amount of self-interest involved. If the developer has a viable business model then I can rely on him to continue to update his software, and to possibly release other apps that I might find useful.

Right now, however, some developers seem to be struggling with how to build a viable and long term business model in the iOS App Store. Thus we see the influx of “freemium” junk games and other apps that make use of that model.

Unfortunately for users, the “freemium” model just ends up clouding the waters and encouraging the production of more junk apps. So when you look for a game in the iOS App Store, it becomes difficult to find games that don’t try to nickel and dime you despite being listed as “free” to install.

The current "race to the bottom" in the iOS App Store is not serving users or developers well. In fact, it has driven some folks like me away from the App Store since there is so much junk to sift through to find useful or entertaining apps. I spend less now on iOS apps than I ever have, and I go all the way back with iOS to the very first iPhone.

Quality matters to me, not quantity. Quality apps are worth paying more for and add real value to the iOS platform.
Will some developers eventually abandon iOS?

If I were Apple, I’d give some careful thought to the issues raised in Matt’s post. Right now Apple’s iOS platform stands astride the world as the most lucrative mobile platform ever created. But that can change quickly if developers decide that it is no longer financially feasible to develop for iOS devices.

Yes, the idea of developers abandoning iOS sounds crazy. But stranger things have happened in the world of tech, and no company stays at the top forever. Sooner or later things change, the wheel turns and the company at the top begins to lose its place and can eventually end up at the bottom.

So Apple would do well to consider the viewpoint of developers, and make the changes necessary to insure that they have a viable business model. If Apple doesn't do this then the company might someday see a developer exodus from its iOS platform.

Did you miss a post? Check the Eye On Apple home page to get caught up with the latest news, discussions and rumors about Apple.

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