
The iOS and Mac markets are almost the same size? - pcr910303
https://inessential.com/2020/03/27/the_ios_and_mac_markets_are_the_same_siz
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anoncareer0212
Apple fan/dev here: he's an old school Mac influencer who got famous for
writing the first popular Mac RSS client, and blind to the effects his
particular narrative would have on those numbers - it's the same 30,000 people
who are hip to Mac blog culture, not independent discovery on two separate
platforms

~~~
webwielder2
The Venn diagram of people who use BBedit and NetNewswire is roughly a circle.

~~~
jolux
What am I missing about BBEdit? I’ve tried to get into it a few times and it
just seems archaic and weird and less capable vs even my emacs setup, let
alone something like Visual Studio Code these days.

~~~
adiabatty
I'm a fan of vim, BBEdit, and Visual Studio Code, but "less capable than
emacs" describes just about every text editor.

While I'm using VSCode a lot more these days, I still like BBEdit a lot. It's
a Mac-native programmer's text editor that manages to remain performant on
large files.

I think part of the problem is that in order to make a good programmer's text
editor, you need a large community of people who're able and willing to make
good plugins for it, and any text editor with a userbase smaller than "half of
all linux nerds" isn't going to have enough engineer hours put into all its
per-language tooling. Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer
attention to get people to work on compatible language servers and whatnot,
but the granddaddy of all Mac text editors can't attract that much attention.

Plus, I get a _lot_ of mileage out of multiple cursors. Way more than I'd have
expected ten years ago.

~~~
josteink
> Visual Studio Code manages to attract enough developer attention to get
> people to work on compatible language servers

Not to nitpick an otherwise good argument, but the _whole point_ behind LSP
and language servers are that they are completely editor-agnostic.

A language server which enables great functionality in VSCode should be able
to provide the same for other editors too.

~~~
jolux
I know what you mean but VSCode tends to have the benchmark front-end
implementation for any given language server in my experience. Not how it
should be, of course.

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larrik
> Yes, the iOS app has more downloads, and it got there in only a few weeks.
> But if the iOS market were so much larger than the Mac market, you’d have
> expected this to happen within a day or two of launch day.

Based on what logic? Everything about this article feels like it's based on
vague and incorrect assumptions.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I feel like being on Hacker News sometimes warps the context of a personal
blog post.

If I put out a tweet that said "Huh, my app got about the same number of
downloads on iOS and Mac, I think the market's about the same for certain
types of apps" would you say my tweet is full of vagaries and incorrect
assumptions?

~~~
pvg
_sometimes warps the context of a personal blog post_

That's true but those blog posts end up making poor HN posts. This one is very
short, contains a little bit of data and would not have been hn-noticed other
than for the deliberately provocative title which then becomes the central
topic of the HN discussion. People familiar with the author/blog don't have
any trouble recognizing their chain is being playfully tugged; on HN it's just
a bombastic one-liner sitting on the front page, demanding rebuttal.

A lot of tweets that are perfectly fine tweets make bad HN posts for similar
reasons.

~~~
freehunter
I’ve had my personal blog be linked on HN without my knowledge and the
comments damn near made me stop writing altogether. Everyone assumed I wrote
the post for them to read it, when in reality I just wrote it for myself and
someone else submitted it.

------
crabl
I don't know about that... I think the only conclusion you could draw from
this might be that the market for iOS and Mac _RSS readers_ are almost the
same size. You might even be able to stretch it to say they are the _same_
market.

~~~
oefrha
I wouldn’t even draw that conclusion. NetNewsWire is very old school with an
old fan base, and outside its existing fan base I don’t think it’s
particularly relevant today (sorry). I doubt a user new to RSS or new to RSS
reader on Apple platforms today would land on NNW.

(I’m a longtime Reeder user.)

~~~
jolux
The new NNW is a total rewrite which started off as a different app.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Kinda. The original NetNewsWire was made by the same guy behind the current
NetNewsWire. It's just that there was a period in between where NetNewsWire
was owned and developed by someone else.

~~~
leejoramo
Same guy. 100% different project. He required the NetNewsWire name well after
the start of this new open source RSS reader.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
If it does the same thing and has the same name and creator, is it really a
different project? Many software releases are actually complete rewrites under
the hood.

The only reason what became Net News Wire 5 originally had a different name is
because NNW was owned by BlackPixel at that point.

~~~
jolux
>If it does the same thing and has the same name and creator, is it really a
different project?

Yes? I don't even understand how this is a question.

>The only reason what became Net News Wire 5 originally had a different name
is because NNW was owned by BlackPixel at that point.

From the post announcing the new name
([https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home](https://inessential.com/2018/08/31/netnewswire_comes_home)):

>You probably know that I’ve been working on a free and open source reader
named Evergreen. Evergreen 1.0 will be renamed NetNewsWire 5.0 — in other
words, I’ve been working on NetNewsWire 5.0 all this time without knowing it!

There's no evidence there is supposed to be continuity between the projects
other than the name changing. You can say it's old school but the entire thing
is written in Swift to modern UI standards. Not sure what more you could ask
for.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Yes? I don't even understand how this is a question.

Well that's where we philosophically disagree I guess. To me, version 10 of
Mac OS is still the continuation of version 9 of Mac OS, even though they're
fundamentally different systems under the hood.

~~~
jolux
>To me, version 10 of Mac OS is still the continuation of version 9 of Mac OS,
even though they're fundamentally different systems under the hood.

Sure, and it carries over certain parts and leaves out others. Substantially
similar? I'll buy that. Arguably the same thing, ontologically? I think that's
a lot harder to prove, which is what the OP I replied to was saying.

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obarthelemy
RSS readers are a very specialized market. Around me, only techies and nerds
have heard of it. Mobile Natives haven't and are using FB/I/Twitter instead
(sad !). So this boils down to th enerd market on iOS and MacOS is the same
size. I'd go one step furter: it's probably not only the same _size_ , but,
simply, the exact same.

------
Wowfunhappy
> And, given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days,
> a Mac app could be more profitable than an iOS app.

And you can charge more for a Mac app.

------
pier25
> _given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days_

Do you agree HN?

~~~
gnachman
I write both: iOS during the day and macOS at night. iOS is significantly less
buggy and has less legacy baggage than macOS. iOS has some features that macOS
doesn't, so there is more to learn. I spend a _lot_ less time working around
platform brokenness on iOS than on macOS. macOS lets you do a lot more than
iOS in ways that are unmaintainable (e.g., private APIs), which helps you
create accidental complexity for yourself.

Both platforms have a long tail of little-known behaviors (such as
accessibility features) that make it hard to create well behaved applications.
But iOS mostly just works (once you know which features are toxic and avoid
them), while macOS's brokenness has completely metastasized.

~~~
hellofunk
I’m curious which features you would advise a dev to avoid in iOS, because
their problems, i.e. toxicity. I’m getting more into iOS programming and it
would be great to know some pitfalls on the roadmap.

~~~
gnachman
Anything added after iOS 6 is the cheeky answer, but it’s not totally wrong
either. Auto layout is incredibly hard to debug; it’s great when it works
right, though, fwiw. The audio APIs are a garbage fire (equally on both
platforms, at least!) Mapkit has a lot of sharp edges if you try to do
anything more than Apple envisioned, which is true of a lot of iOS and macOS
APIs. View controller transitions are a mess, but they may have fixed the bugs
by now—I’ve stayed away since being traumatized by them five years back. The
Metal shader compiler is an absolute shit show of bugs on the Mac, but is
better on iOS. Core Bluetooth has caused me pain (just doesn’t work
sometimes). Stringly types objective c-isms like KVO. In app purchases are a
mess (I’m told, haven’t used it myself). CoreData might look like a good idea
but you will live to regret it if it’s an important part of your app.
UITableView is really powerful but also gets complex fast, with legacy baggage
showing up when you try to get fancy (like auto layout and dynamic row
height). The security API is hard to use correctly, also on both platforms.

Mostly though Xcode is the worst piece of software I’ve ever used, besides
Wind River’s IDE and Windows ME.

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supernes
The way I understand it is that you can reach roughly the same amount of users
on both marketplaces, which goes to show just how horrible discoverability is
on the iOS store.

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ksec
>News reading is probably more of an iOS thing than a Mac thing in general

I think that is where the assumption gone wrong. News Reading /= RSS. I mostly
consume Social Media on my Mobile. Or easy to read, digest, bite-size
information. Easily hoping on and off in the timeline. My RSS feed is none of
that, for me it tends to require more focus and longer time to digest. Hence I
never do any RSS reading on mobile.

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monadic2
Markets for RSS app developers^

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ilikehurdles
Any iOS app has a ton of competition within its category for a many-times
larger audience. Any macOS app has very little competition for a tiny
audience. 36k downloads can mean that you've captured a larger audience on one
platform than the other, and that seems more reasonable than the conclusion
that the audience sizes are the same.

------
sunkenvicar
Discoverability is horrible on the iOS App Store. I have looked for a good RSS
reader on there in the past and only been served shovelware.

I found out about NNW from DF the other day. Even after using and installing
it, it is nowhere to be seen when I search for RSS.

Apples broken App Store system surfaces cheap crappy apps. Apple wants users
to make impulse purchases so they can skim 30% off the top. It’s a bad
experience and is doing tremendous long term damage. Steve Jobs would be
pissed.

~~~
quesera
> Steve Jobs would be pissed

Discoverability on the App Store has _always_ been horrible.

That, and App Store performance (search, page load, etc) are high on the list
of things that baffle me most about Apple.

These are not hard problems to fix. There is no incentive to not fix them.
Customers are suffering. FTFAS.

~~~
arvinsim
> There is no incentive to not fix them.

I think there is an incentive not to. If you buy Apple hardware, you are stuck
with these stores. They know you will complain but ultimately comply and
accept.

~~~
leadingthenet
That makes no sense. Wouldn't Apple want you to download as many apps / spend
as much money on new shiny things as possible?

I think it's just incompetence.

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ipqk
You gotta control here for variables, hon.

------
obarthelemy
Actually, when Apple launched the Airbuds, I computed that it was very likely
the AirBuds would generate more profit for Apple than Mac hardware.

IIRC assuming 70% profit on the Airbuds and 30% on the Mac (because lots more
R&D, lots more support, lots more warranty, lots more dev...), a 30% attach
rate made the Airbuds more profitable.

~~~
mattl
# Air Bud

* Budget $3 million

* Box office $27,771,629

# Air Bud: Golden Receiver

* Budget $11 million

* Box office $10,224,116

Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch and Air Bud: Spikes Back are
direct-to-DVD movies, so we don't know about their box office performance,
sadly.

