
The App Store turns 10 - coloneltcb
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/07/app-store-turns-10/
======
waivek
Whenever I get a new Windows laptop, the first four or five hours are spent
reinstalling software that I use on a daily basis.

I can just leave a new phone next to the router. With windows, I have to sit
and monitor a lot of things for those four hours along with hunting down the
most updated executables and setup files.

I feel that mobile got software distribution correct. Thanks a ton, Scott
Forstall.

~~~
abhiminator
>I feel that mobile got software distribution correct.

It's more like mobile got _package management_ right.

Windows is terrible as an example to use for installing/removing software as
it has extremely crude (almost non-existent) package management system
(referring to Windows Installer here -- .msi files). [0]

I like to think of the App store (and equivalent) as a Linux command-line
beautified by a GUI shell in a mobile form-factor.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer)

~~~
waivek
With Linux desktops I have to know command line stuff and risk having to debug
initial wifi issues myself.

~~~
abhiminator
>debug initial wifi issues myself.

But doesn't that make you better at troubleshooting and fixing problems in
Linux -- a useful skill to have?

~~~
waivek
I don't use Linux.

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abhiminator
The article was a trip down the memory lane.

Cannot believe how quickly a _decade_ has passed since the debut of the first-
gen iPhone and subsequent launch of the App store. I still have faint memories
of watching a recap of the launch event keynote by Mr. Jobs on a local news
channel (though my preteen brain didn't grasp its significance), while being
completely oblivious (not that I was unique) to the revolution it was about to
unleash in the lives of MILLIONS of developers in every nook and cranny of the
planet -- with Google following suit, of course.

Think of the innumerable industries that have been born, millions (billions?)
of lives that have been changed, trillions of dollars of value generated, all
as a result of this tectonic shift in software distribution.

~~~
nailer
Google followed, but Android and Andy Rubin have their roots at Danger, who
created very popular white label Internet smartphones for teenagers like the
Sidekick years before the iPhone.

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sillyquiet
The App Store is great, but the App Store interface sucks. It was bad enough
even when there were only a couple thousand apps in the store, but 10 years
and hundreds of thousands of apps later and discoverability is abysmal. Unless
you are a big player can advertise your app otherwise, having an app 'hit' is
about a scientific a process as making viral videos.

~~~
wmeredith
I feel like good search is to Apple as good taste is to Microsoft. It's like
it's against their DNA or something.

~~~
kochikame
With the huge exception of Spotlight on Mac OS

~~~
michaelmcmillan
Spotlight is absolutely horrendous?

~~~
iknowstuff
I think it works slightly better than search in Windows 10, and importantly,
Apple was first to the punch to bundle an indexing search engine into the OS.
Microsoft followed with Windows Vista.

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duxup
I heard once that Steve and Co. early on envisioned the iPhone to work mostly
with web apps through the browser, but when it became clear the tech wasn't
going to be there they went the app store route?

Anyone have anything that backs that up or hear the same thing? It's
interesting that 10 years later we're still there ;)

~~~
scarface74
It was Apple's official "sweet solution" for app development on the iPhone.

[https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote](https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote)

~~~
duxup
Thank you very much. My how things have changed ... and still haven't caught
up. Granted as another user says, Apple has no reason to push apps off the
store to the web now considering the insane cash flow.

~~~
threeseed
Also the fact is that mobile web apps are still terrible.

In almost all cases they still resemble HTML pages rather than feeling like a
native app.

~~~
duxup
I'll stick my neck out and say we're REALLY close to getting web apps ...
close, at least for productivity (not so much pretty graphics) apps.

But People thought that not long ago too... ;)

~~~
coldtea
For games, multimedia, editors, graphics heavy, etc it's a non starter and
will probably always be. If not in absolute terms, then compared to the native
equivalent.

Even for simple apps (like productivity) they eat battery like crazy.

Slack does less than what ICQ could do 20 years ago, and wastes 1000 times the
resources.

------
jccalhoun
On a semi-related note, can podcasts stop only giving links to itunes and
asking me to rate their podcast on itunes? Thanks, an Android user

~~~
zaksoup
Is there a unified library of podcasts and ratings on Android? As far as I
know there's a number of apps that maintain their own libraries but nothing
unified across the whole platform and built into the OS like iTunes.

~~~
thesandlord
Google Play Music has podcasts, that might be the closest thing.

~~~
abraham
Google just launched a dedicated Podcasts app.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.podcasts)

~~~
badwolf
Huh. They brought back Listen...

Maybe next year they'll resurrect Reader :(

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1123581321
I really like the animation at the start of the article. How was that likely
created?

Edit: I know it’s a gif. I’d like to know what tool(s) Apple likely used to
create the gif.

~~~
cakebrewery
You can probably do this with simple tools. It's all about the layers; If you
observe closely, you can see all the objects in the frame have very simple
movements.

The 3D effect is just an optical illusion coming from all these simple
movements in 2D space.

Some creativity goes a long way!

~~~
valine
I disagree. Look at the airplane, it's clearly made in 3D software.

~~~
cakebrewery
Very possibly. But that would be easily reproducible with layers as well.

Look how there is no perspective change on the rising blocks and the shadow
underneath. Blocks just move straight up and down and shadow just
increases/decreases in size.

People movements are just tween animations.

~~~
valine
Its an orthographic rendering, that's why there are no perspective shifts.

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segmondy
I'm still curious, where can one get a comprehensive list of Apps published in
the app store, date uploaded, number of downloads, etc?

~~~
pwinnski
They don't publish an API for that, and companies that have created one (like
AppAnnie) seem to reserve that info for paying customers, AFAIK.

That said, they do offer a search API which should be (slowly) crawlable over
time:
[https://itunes.apple.com/search?country=us&entity=software&t...](https://itunes.apple.com/search?country=us&entity=software&term=WHATEVER)

------
dawnerd
Oh man, that takes me back. I remember Cro-mag rally and Super Monkey Ball so
well. I wonder if they're still around...

Quick edit: Cro-mag is still alive and kicking, looks like it just got iPhone
x support too. Crazy.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Cro-mag’s developer Pangea Software has been an excellent Apple platform
developer for a long time now. If you ever played Mighty Mike/Power Pete,
Nanosaur, Bugdom, or Otto-Matic on the Mac that’s them as well.

------
tonyedgecombe
I wish they offered a proper rental model in the App Store, I know you can do
it with in-app purchase but that all feels a little underhand, I'd rather use
something baked into the store.

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rakibtg
Congrats Apple! Also, I have been struggling uploading my first iOS app to
Apple store since last 10 days!

------
zubairq
Nice thread, I'm trying to build a poor man's app store for the web at
appshare.co , but true , you can't beat mobile apps for performance and native
integration with your phone

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NearAP
If you purchase an App from the App store and then change your phone, I assume
you should be able to carry over the paid app to your new phone.

Does anybody know if the App Store enforces this and what (if anything) they
do to vendors who violate this?

It seems that there are numerous complaints on the review page of "word with
friends" by people who paid for the Ad-free version but when they moved to a
new device, they no longer have access to the Ad-free version

~~~
sillyquiet
This _can_ happen, when non-scrupulous devs 'deprecate' an older version of
their app in favor of the 'new' version. e.g., you buy 'CoolApp' and in-app
purchase features for it. But oh no, 'CoolApp2' has come out and 'CoolApp' is
no longer updated for newer devices, so sorry.

Otherwise, an app, and its in-app purchase set remain available via a user's
iTunes account indefinitely as far as I can tell.

~~~
scarface74
Why is it "non-scrupulous" for a dev to charge for a new version of piece of
software? Are they suppose to update an app forever without further
compensation?

~~~
noxToken
Here's a realistic scenario. I pay for CoolApp. It works fine even though
CoolApp2 is live on the store. I get a new phone. I go to download CoolApp,
but it's no longer available. If I want to use CoolApp, I must use CoolApp2.

I'm not expecting CoolApp to be forever supported. CoolApp works fine for my
use case, so I planned on continually using CoolApp until it made sense for me
to upgrade. But now that CoolApp2 is the only version available, I have to buy
the newer version alongside my new device. If I turn on my old phone, I can
still use CoolApp without skipping a beat. I think that's what the other
commenter was getting at.

~~~
sxg
But that's not the case (at least not on iOS). Even if CoolApp has been
removed from sale, you can download it on your new phone from your purchase
history. The only exceptions to this are technical limitations on the old app
that render it incompatible with the new phone such as 32 vs 64 bit,
deprecated APIs, etc.

~~~
scarface74
Even better if CoolApp 1.0 has been continuously updated for new OS’s and the
newest version isn’t compatible with a device stuck on an older OS, you can
download the “last compatible version”. I was able to download and use
Netflix, Crackle, Plex, Hulu, Spotify and Google Drive on my 2010 first gen
iPad that was officially abandoned in 2012.

I reset it and downloaded older versions of apps last year.

