> You can thank Apple for the Lightning connector and App Store too
The App Store was an absolute revolution for mobile app developers. It is hard to overstate how much of an improvement it was over the status quo. People are complaining about Apple taking a 30% cut; it used to be that the operators took a 70% cut. Not for hosting an app store, no, just for sending the reverse-billing SMS message with the install link. You had to host it yourself, there was no store so you had to advertise your app to make it discoverable. You had to arrange (and pay for) a shortcode and SMS provider for every single country you wanted to sell in. You had to write and host code to handle the incoming message on the shortcode and respond with a RB-SMS.
Next to that, the SDK’s were absolute dogshit, phone manufacturers didn’t give a shit about apps and the phones themselves were riddled with bugs (with the notable exception of SonyEricsson, their J2ME environment was excellent). Symbian was a PITA to develop for, BlackBerry was actively developer-hostile (unless you happened to be a Fortune-500 company). Samsung phones were an absolute disaster, every single phone model had a unique set of bugs you had to find workarounds for.
So in comes Apple, they charge only 30% and for that you get a nice SDK, an App Store that distributes your app, makes it discoverable and handles payments worldwide with zero extra effort. We were thrilled when they announced it, and rightfully so.
Google then followed suit with the Play Store, effectively matching what Apple was doing.
So yeah, Apple deserves some thanks for what they did with the App Store.
You’re not required to sell software through the App Store on macOS either. The App Store complaints are only relevant on mobile, which has always been a completely different market.
The App Store was an absolute revolution for mobile app developers. It is hard to overstate how much of an improvement it was over the status quo. People are complaining about Apple taking a 30% cut; it used to be that the operators took a 70% cut. Not for hosting an app store, no, just for sending the reverse-billing SMS message with the install link. You had to host it yourself, there was no store so you had to advertise your app to make it discoverable. You had to arrange (and pay for) a shortcode and SMS provider for every single country you wanted to sell in. You had to write and host code to handle the incoming message on the shortcode and respond with a RB-SMS.
Next to that, the SDK’s were absolute dogshit, phone manufacturers didn’t give a shit about apps and the phones themselves were riddled with bugs (with the notable exception of SonyEricsson, their J2ME environment was excellent). Symbian was a PITA to develop for, BlackBerry was actively developer-hostile (unless you happened to be a Fortune-500 company). Samsung phones were an absolute disaster, every single phone model had a unique set of bugs you had to find workarounds for.
So in comes Apple, they charge only 30% and for that you get a nice SDK, an App Store that distributes your app, makes it discoverable and handles payments worldwide with zero extra effort. We were thrilled when they announced it, and rightfully so.
Google then followed suit with the Play Store, effectively matching what Apple was doing.
So yeah, Apple deserves some thanks for what they did with the App Store.