<story><title>Fear of Apple</title><url>http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/3/24/fear-of-apple</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Spooky23</author><text>Your experience is the price of admission to gain access to a global audience. The low barrier to entry is why you&amp;#x27;re fighting for pennies.&lt;p&gt;Twenty years ago when I was in high school, I worked at CompUSA. They sold a lot of software in their day... in my region of the country, 40% of software sold passed through our store&amp;#x27;s door. To sell software at CompUSA or similar retailers, you needed to interface with a publisher, who would then try to sell your software to a buyer at the store. Then you&amp;#x27;d need to print collateral, get an attractive box, duplicate physical media in quantities sufficient to stock 500 stores. At your expense.&lt;p&gt;And for all that, you&amp;#x27;d be a box on a bottom shelf somewhere.&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to actually sell software, you&amp;#x27;d need to pay for premium placement on an endcap or display. I recall one vendor who paid over $2M for premium endcaps at each store for a handwriting recognition app.&lt;p&gt;When customers were dissatisfied, or returned your software that wasn&amp;#x27;t supposed to be returnable, the store would withhold payment for your software (which was running 60-90 days late in most cases) and mail you back the resealed box at your expense, which may have contained a rock instead of your software.&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to 2015, and you&amp;#x27;re paying $99 to sell software for $15 that nets you $10, which is paid promptly every month. Apple treats you like cattle, because you are in effect a cow to them... there are thousands of people like you!</text></item><item><author>firloop</author><text>This article summarizes the epitome of my experience as an Apple developer. I&amp;#x27;m 17 years old and a developer on the app store. The App Store feels opaque and like a black box where I submit builds with little to no feedback or control. I get paid when Apple decides, and could be eradicated from the App Store at a moment&amp;#x27;s notice.&lt;p&gt;I realized early on that being featured by Apple was unlikely, and have adopted a sustainable pricing model  (a term I was unfamiliar with before reading this piece) to fund my development. I&amp;#x27;m certain that by charging $14.99, I stay out of the bottom 47% of developers that make less than $100 a month from the app store. I do not rely on the app store for anything. From visibility to app discovery, I feel that Apple has failed me. When I get support emails, I cannot even refund a single paying user, which means I have to send $14.99 back to the user using PayPal and eat Apple&amp;#x27;s $4.50 fee for that transaction. It&amp;#x27;s immensely frustrating and a main reason why I allow users to sign up concurrently on my website using a card (Stripe).&lt;p&gt;Every part of developing for Apple leads me to this conclusion: I do not matter. My app does not matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kalleboo</author><text>&amp;gt; Twenty years ago when I was in high school, I worked at CompUSA&lt;p&gt;So, selling software was a PITA full of inefficiencies and middlemen. Everyone hated it.&lt;p&gt;Now, 20 years later, we live on the open web, a level playing field where anyone can experiment to their heart&amp;#x27;s content and sell what they want, how they want it.&lt;p&gt;And you wonder why people complain about Apple adding restrictions? And your answer is &amp;quot;tough luck, we have the possibility to do things better, but things were even worse 20 years ago so just suck it up&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your experience is the price of admission to gain access to a global audience&lt;p&gt;This Hacker News comment has access to a global audience. There are fart noise videos on YouTube with access to a global audience. That means nothing anymore.&lt;p&gt;Apple also do a piss-poor job of giving that access. It&amp;#x27;s already easier to find our app via Google than searching for the literal exact app name on the App Store. Whenever you release an update theres a 1-12 hour window where people will get random error messages since there&amp;#x27;s massive CDN sync lag.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fear of Apple</title><url>http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/3/24/fear-of-apple</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Spooky23</author><text>Your experience is the price of admission to gain access to a global audience. The low barrier to entry is why you&amp;#x27;re fighting for pennies.&lt;p&gt;Twenty years ago when I was in high school, I worked at CompUSA. They sold a lot of software in their day... in my region of the country, 40% of software sold passed through our store&amp;#x27;s door. To sell software at CompUSA or similar retailers, you needed to interface with a publisher, who would then try to sell your software to a buyer at the store. Then you&amp;#x27;d need to print collateral, get an attractive box, duplicate physical media in quantities sufficient to stock 500 stores. At your expense.&lt;p&gt;And for all that, you&amp;#x27;d be a box on a bottom shelf somewhere.&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to actually sell software, you&amp;#x27;d need to pay for premium placement on an endcap or display. I recall one vendor who paid over $2M for premium endcaps at each store for a handwriting recognition app.&lt;p&gt;When customers were dissatisfied, or returned your software that wasn&amp;#x27;t supposed to be returnable, the store would withhold payment for your software (which was running 60-90 days late in most cases) and mail you back the resealed box at your expense, which may have contained a rock instead of your software.&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to 2015, and you&amp;#x27;re paying $99 to sell software for $15 that nets you $10, which is paid promptly every month. Apple treats you like cattle, because you are in effect a cow to them... there are thousands of people like you!</text></item><item><author>firloop</author><text>This article summarizes the epitome of my experience as an Apple developer. I&amp;#x27;m 17 years old and a developer on the app store. The App Store feels opaque and like a black box where I submit builds with little to no feedback or control. I get paid when Apple decides, and could be eradicated from the App Store at a moment&amp;#x27;s notice.&lt;p&gt;I realized early on that being featured by Apple was unlikely, and have adopted a sustainable pricing model  (a term I was unfamiliar with before reading this piece) to fund my development. I&amp;#x27;m certain that by charging $14.99, I stay out of the bottom 47% of developers that make less than $100 a month from the app store. I do not rely on the app store for anything. From visibility to app discovery, I feel that Apple has failed me. When I get support emails, I cannot even refund a single paying user, which means I have to send $14.99 back to the user using PayPal and eat Apple&amp;#x27;s $4.50 fee for that transaction. It&amp;#x27;s immensely frustrating and a main reason why I allow users to sign up concurrently on my website using a card (Stripe).&lt;p&gt;Every part of developing for Apple leads me to this conclusion: I do not matter. My app does not matter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cbd1984</author><text>&amp;gt; Your experience is the price of admission to gain access to a global audience.&lt;p&gt;Nothing they said was inherent to the process of getting a global audience. Apple has created all of their problems they mentioned; we know this because Apple could make them all go away.</text></comment>