Apple doesn't necessarily want to solve that problem.

Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0]; namely the software, games and media that make their hardware useful. Software in the app store is a viciously competitive low-margin market; just like most other commodity markets. Which is why you need to treat it skeptically and work on building a name outside the app store before you are putting money into it.

Look at Twitter as an example. They give away their app to drive usage of the service, and in the early days they were totally OK with other developers making and selling twitter clients. This was because twitter clients are a complement to Twitter the service and their money comes from selling the analytics and advertising that the service enables.

0. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

> Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0]

I've heard this argument before, and if it's true, it's suicidal. Apple will have failed to learn a critical lesson from Microsoft's dominance of the early PC era: it's the apps that matter. Even once there was a significant potential market of would-be platform "switchers" who wanted something beyond what Windows was offering, these switchers remained on Windows because the critical apps in their day-to-day usage (be that Office, CAD software, or whatever) only ran on Windows.

If Apple's view is truly so narrow that they kill the ability of their "complements" to make good money, then Apple is pushing hard to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Even if Apple had unquestionably the very best manufacturing processes, hardware design, and platform software design, it would all be worthless if no one other than Apple can afford to write and support high-quality software for that platform.

Now, I'll agree that from Apple's publicly observable positions with its App Stores that they (incredibly) don't seem to understand the need and necessity for maintaining a virtuous cycle between developers and their platforms.

A wild-a-guess: This may stem from a deep misunderstanding of the nature of software. Sure, a random tapping game or timer app or whatever is essentially a replaceable one-off, a fungible commodity. But software that's a fungible commodity fundamentally doesn't create any platform stickyness. If it's really so easy to recreate, it can and will trivially show up on a new platform. This is especially true in a world where many software organizations really are getting better at delivering on multiple platforms.

Beyond the fungible stuff, there's the important category of software that I increasingly view as a "living" thing rather than a static artifact. Such software requires ongoing maintenance and care. This allows it a lifespan across the changes of its underlying platform(s), and to absorb and embody deep problem domains. I pose that these apps, no matter the genre (games, "creative", technical, etc.) are the ones that can create platform stickyness. This, in turn, implies that humans must be able to make a living supporting that software. Undermining this is like cutting off the "oxygen" to a vital part of a platform's ecosystem.

I might be wrong but in the case of Apple it seems that to its customers it's Apple that matters, not apps. It's a brand many people want to buy because of the same mechanisms that make people buy luxury brands. The only time I remember when Apple's branding wasn't really enough has been in the 90s when graphic designers left Macs for Windows machines because Adobe software run so much better there. It was an undeniable combination of hw and sw problems. All of them came back and more thanks to the iPod first and the iPhone later.

So you might be right that too many inconveniences will send faithful customers away (I gave an example) but I don't believe commoditized apps are such a problem. People buy Apple because it's Apple and only a barren app store could drive them away now.

Once upon a time, Apple invested to own 19% of Adobe, which went onto become a powerful software anchor of Apple's hardware ecosystem. Perhaps a bit too powerful for Jobs' liking, hence the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS.

> the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS

What modern strategies?

I've seen this theory proposed multiple times, that Apple wants to commoditize software, but I've never seen anyone actually demonstrate ways in which Apple is doing that, just speculation that it would be in Apple's interests.

It's more about what they don't do to help developers make money. A web search will find research papers on software ecosystems, which discuss best practices for mutually-reinforcing, virtuous circle, feedback loops between platforms and developers.

Stardock's 2014 report touches on related topics, http://www.stardock.com/press/CustomerReports/Stardock2014.p...

For not helping developers make money, developers sure do make a lot of money on iOS compared to other mobile platforms.

it's not that they don't make money, but they don't allow developers to operate good businesses. being able to give trials to users, or to handle advertising in certain ways, or to have more flexibility with payments, etc - all of these things would be beneficial for businesses to be able to control directly, but they can't, as they're in the walled garden.

Many are making money right now, but I would suggest they don't have terribly good businesses, in that they don't own the relationship with the end user. One change of Apple's policies can put you out of business.

How about comparing instead to money made by Apple, enabled by iOS developers?

It sounds like you feel Apple owe developers a living?

Apple could attract more developers (and thus more iPad users and more corporate revenue -- reversing declining iPad growth) if developer success was more closely aligned with Apple success.

Attracting more developers does nothing to attract more users.

How about attracting financially successful (not hobbyist) developers who can drive new use cases for the platform?

I think there's lots of evidence for that theory. For example, giving away iLife, a package that contained replacements for many of the most common app types, with every Mac. Also, if you look at their Pro apps, like Logic & Final Cut, Apple has consistently undercut the competition agressively, likely as some kind of loss-leader to sell Macs. For example, I remember when Apple bought eMagic (the developers of Logic) they slashed the price from something like $600 to $200, a shockingly low price at the time. All the other software makers had to respond with "lite" versions to compete in this price bracket.

What makes it hard to compete is the competition.

If some app makers start to be unable to compete, competition will drop, and profits will increase, right?

Yeah yeah. But none of that has anything to do with typing an app's entire name in the search bar and getting a ton of garbage unrelated results. Discovery being broken is not really a "commoditize the complements" play, it's just bad UX.

Dark patterns ("bad UX") and broken discovery are a means to the end of "commoditizing the complements".

Bad UX in an Apple component is not a "dark pattern". It's just, well, bad UX.

Knowing Apple, knowing its history and people that work there and the things they care about, I think Apple is incapable of deliberately producing a bad UX. When it happens, it's caused by other factors rather than being an explicit decision. In the case of App Store discovery being broken, I think it's caused by the fact that the App Store seems to be run largely the way the Music Store is run (with the addition of app review), and nobody complains about search / discovery in the Music Store, but it just so happens that the infrastructure and design around the music store doesn't work quite so well when applied to apps.

Why do you think there is no visible investment/improvement in App Store UX, from the world's premier design proponent?

Because the people that care about design don't really care about the App Store (they care about products instead), and the people that run the App Store don't really have an incentive to try and make dramatic changes in something that, from their perspective, is wildly successful. Change might break things, especially when operating on the scale that Apple is (just think of what the load must be on the App Store).

Apple executive leadership is responsible for successful change in all departments, they could make this a priority if they wanted.

That's true. And if you care about this issue, you could try appealing to Apple executive leadership (emailing tim cook, or running a PR campaign designed to get Apple executive leadership to see your arguments).

Alternately, one could invest in startups that solve this problem.

I don't know how much has come from it yet, but here's some an example of some investment:

"Apple Acquired Search Startup Ottocat To Power The ‘Explore’ Tab In The App Store"

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/06/ottocat-apple/

Yeah I hear you.

I had a reality check when I launched my mac app. Good thing it doesn't have much competition at least for now.

Trials? How much does a paid game cost; a few bucks? People really want a trial before they make a $1.99 investment? When you go to a restaurant, do you ask for a piece of steak before you actually order it? Do you get a trial of a movie before you buy a ticket? A trailer doesn't count because apps can have trailers too. Why is this trial obsession such a big deal for such cheap products? I personally would love to see the end of the in app purchase model. When I buy a game, I want to have the game and not have to be feeding money into it to unlock stuff. But, the market likes them because those games appear "free."

Thats part of the problem though. Because there are no trials it's forcing down the prices the developers can charge for the games which again make them unsustainable and thus back to creating a very skewed distribution of income from the market 1-9-90 distribution and that's probably being nice to how the distribution goes given the 5000 apps being submitted each and every day.

One can use the shareware approach. Give away some levels and sell additional ones.

> no way for developers to build meaningful relationships with their customers

Isn't that just a nice way of saying 'forcing a meaningful relationship' onto the customer? Obviously users can seek out more information from the developer's website / twitter / etc if they want to. Everyone else probably doesn't want to be nagged by SPAM e-mails and other forms of self-promotion. I feel like trial software falls into the same gimmicky category. Inevitably users wait to purchase until the trial ends and end up feeling annoyed for being forced to pay for something they were using for free. Even more so now that so many users are used to IAP feature upgrades.