
An iOS Developer’s Wishlist - treskot
http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2014/01/24/to-apple-an-ios-developers-wishlist/
======
acdha
#13 should be even more generic: not just “Set default apps in iOS” but
introducing something like the desktop OS X services, Android intents, etc.
which would allow an app to start an operation with a type of data (i.e. a
URL, an email address, a picture, etc.) and allow the user to send it to an
arbitrary app.

You should be able to send a URL to Instapaper or send a picture in
Dropbox/Facebook/etc. without making either one your default "browser", "photo
viewer", etc.

~~~
ambler0
This has been my number 1 request for iOS since the beginning. I'm starting to
think it's never going to happen.

~~~
acdha
Ditto - very odd given that it's both a huge usability improvement and
something Apple already had developed. A little time porting the services menu
from OS X to a touch equivalent and it'd be done, probably without even
needing an API change.

~~~
gress
It's a usability improvement for power users but a massive increase in
complexity for regular users who comprise the vast majority of the user-base.

I think they should solve the problem, but I don't think the existing
solutions are good enough.

~~~
acdha
Have you ever seen a normal user have to deal with sharing data between two
apps which haven't hard-coded support? Most people just give up and think you
can't do it. With a little streamlined support – i.e. default email, browser —
and some basic UI thought (e.g. remembering the last / most frequent choices,
setting per-app defaults, etc.) the current situation would be a lot less
painful.

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joosters
"App deletes/uninstalls – How many users deleted the app _and a way of
identifying them (an ID or equivalent)_ "

That's none of your damn business, app developers.

~~~
LordIllidan
I agree that identifying them feels like a huge privacy issue - but geographic
information would be interesting.

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TheMagicHorsey
Apple doesn't really treat its developers very well. It focuses on consumers.
Some of the things on this list are shockingly bad design decisions from a
developers point of view. And they are minor thing to fix. The fact that they
haven't been fixed, this many years after the launch of the App store, tells
you something about Apple's fondness for developers. Remember, the original
iOS device didn't even have an App store. Jobs had to be convinced to let you
guys onto the platform.

I think that in the long term that attitude is going to come back to haunt
Apple.

Say what you will, but Microsoft always treated developers like its customers,
not as some annoying beggars to be dealt with only under geneva convention
standards, and no better.

~~~
jarjoura
I think this is a bit of an unfair comment. Apple has been constantly
improving their App Store. When it launched it was literally a direct port of
their Music store over with little thought of how Applications and their use
cases actually differ.

The first set of requests from the OP makes is more general. Plus, I agree,
the store really needs better search, but this will benefit both consumers and
developers. Though honestly, search is already 100x better than it was just a
couple years ago, so I am not worried they are not aware of that.

As far as analytics and review data go, MixPanel and Flurry have been amazing
at tracking everything I've ever needed from app usage. The only use case I
can see from Apple breaking apart iPad/iPhone from downloads becomes useful
only when you have users who install apps but never launch them.

I really like the App Store now, it feels very organic with very visible
editorializing going on.

~~~
zbowling
Didn't you use to work for Apple though in a past life jarjar? :-)

You are entirely correct though. I would still love to be able to reply and do
customer support in the comments and reviews like Google Play. Star rating
need to go though.

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ja27
Give me a way to (optionally) provide separate packages for retina / non-
retina and iPad / iPhone / iPhone 5. Sucks to have iPad retina assets sitting
an iPhone.

~~~
grey-area
Or better yet, provide a way to provide resolution-independent assets for app
interfaces in a format like svg or pdf, instead of providing bitmaps for 7
zillion different sizes.

It sucks to have retina assets full stop and it's only going to get worse as
screen sizes change gradually and we end up with a huge number of legacy
sizes. Now that ios7 is all about flat design, they could look at moving
developers away from producing bitmaps which fit the screen and towards using
repeated patterns for grounds and resolution independent artwork on top.

~~~
gress
Resolution independent assets do not work.

[http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-
sizes/](http://mantia.me/blog/the-importance-of-icon-sizes/)

~~~
grey-area
As screens get more and more detailed, trying to adjust pixels individually on
say icons for each size the OS requires is pointless (I believe the count is
15 and rising). You need to design the icon with the usage in mind, and make
sure it doesn't have too much detail which will matter when it is scaled. See
the twitter icon for a good example of one which works at any size and could
be scaled without losing its impact. IMO all icons on ios should be like that
- simple and iconic. Same goes for icons in toolbars etc.

The vast majority of developers simply scale down icons and other assets to
fit the various sizes Apple requires, so in practice the retina approach just
means the same assets being scaled resized and cropped lots of times by
developers to jump through the hoops Apple requires, and the problem is only
going to get worse.

So I respectfully disagree, there are no easy solutions in this area, however
I think resolution independence has better possible solutions than designing
something as vector, then manually producing scaled rasters at every possible
display size. At the very least Xcode should take care of that, but I'd prefer
if iOS did, and accepted vector images within apps to start with - it could
easily cache bitmap representations as it needs them, and then it could change
those on the fly when screen sizes/resolutions change instead of requiring new
binaries.

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yojo
Tried to read this on my phone, but 20% of the page was locked in a non-
dismissable banner. Fire your marketing team.

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xamlhacker
I don't develop for iOS so this one surprised me: "How many downloads on iPad,
iPhone, iPod separately". Does Apple really not tell you the device breakup?

~~~
dan1234
No, the built in sales reporting is very basic. You need to build in analytics
if you want a device or OS breakdown.

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kumarm
10 of 13 are provided by Android (Google Play) Today. You might as well ask
Apple to make app store like Google Play :)

~~~
r00fus
Given the successful features of iOS7 that were really popularized on Android,
first (that I mostly love), I say yes.

The App Store should take the good parts of the Play Store.

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milk3422
I have to agree, my largest gripe with the app store is searching for an app.
When I look for a decent app, I currently google for app reviews, then go back
to the app store find it by name and download it.

~~~
MBCook
Searching in the App store is a disaster. If you search for "Twitter", you'll
get the official app (which I expect was hardcoded) and... a bunch of garbage.
No Tweetbot or Twitterific.

The fact that developers get to pick categories and that's not reviewed is a
disaster. Let's look at the top board games:

3\. Doodle Kingdom, some kind of puzzle game

8\. Phase 10, a card game

9\. Doodle God, another puzzle game

12\. Skip-Bo, a card game

Other categories are worse. Minecraft (and it's clones) are near the top of
most categories. It's basically impossible to find anything if you don't know
the name ahead of time.

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ckoglmeier
Some good ones on that list. I'd definitely add A/B testing support built into
the ecosystem (and controlled remotely) as well as alpha/beta release support
for new releases.

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berzniz
Love this wish list! Some great points you got there.

About videos: I rather if they'll allow animated gifs instead. Indie
developers just don't have enough money to spend on videos and we'll lose to
the bigger companies.

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jarjoura
My #1 would be Beta testing through the store. We need a way to get an
application out to set of people to test in the field. TestFlight requires
managing a provisioning profile that has been filling up quickly as the group
of testers come in and out of the program.

We cannot use the corporate profile as that requires the devices to be company
owned and that is just not possible since we want to stay in compliance.

Google Play store launched a similar system this past year that has been very
helpful to our Android testers. Now I'm just waiting for Apple to follow up
with something similar.

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patja
How about user profiles so a family can share an ipad?

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akramhussein
Xcode could do with auto-creating the stubs for methods required by protocol
interface. My 2 cents.

~~~
sosborn
This might help: [http://nshipster.com/xcode-
snippets/](http://nshipster.com/xcode-snippets/)

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applecore
Why is app discovery so bad?

Searching for an app in the App Store is a disaster.

~~~
adregan
I think it's because of the App Store's roots in iTunes. Searching for
media—music, let's say—usually requires you to know the name of the artist,
album, or song. How rarely does someone know the name or developer of an app?

If I were to search for music in the same way I search for apps, I'd never
find anything I was _really_ looking for. The terms are too broad. However,
searching for music (even if using overly broad search terms) at least lets
you preview a song, so you can judge if you're about to make a good purchase.

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treskot
A huge thank you for all your comments and feedback. I've updated the blog
post with 6 more wishlist items based on your replies.

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abvdasker
How about not coding in Objective-C amirite?

~~~
zbowling
Objective-C is a wonderful language. Stop trying to start a flame war.

~~~
Touche
So wonderful no one ever chooses to use it outside of Apple Land.

~~~
zbowling
[http://apportable.com/](http://apportable.com/)

~~~
Touche
Tool for compiling your iOS apps to other platforms...

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jamesjguthrie
I'd like to have:

1) Device testing without a dev account or jailbreaking.

2) Xcode on Windows and Linux.

I don't think these are unreasonable!

~~~
jarjoura
Well I guess in theory since you could build clang/llvm for Windows and Linux
you could build the iOS cross-compiler toolset. The code-signing (not sure if
that one is open sourced already for OS X) would need to be ported.

App installation could work over https similar to TestFlight.

SO yeah, lots of missing pieces in there too I'm sure, but doesn't seem
impossible if you're feeling up to the challenge.

~~~
jevinskie
Yes, build your own clang and extract the SDKs (headers + libraries) from the
Xcode DMG. You can use (or at least you used to be able to) maloader [0] to
run codesign.

[0]: [https://github.com/shinh/maloader](https://github.com/shinh/maloader)

