macplusplus

cropr said:

sflocal said:

Peza said:

sflocal said:

dysamoria said:

I’m absolutely with the developer here, on this issue.

And I’m firmly in the Apple camp.  Apple is the one doing all the work obtaining and keeping its large base of customers willing to pay for apps.  If 30% is too high given what Apple does they’re more than happy to go to the Android camp, where they probably make zero money.

70% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

whiners.

I bet you own Apple shares. Never on the side of the customer, and this developer never stated they don’t want to give Apple its cut, their complaint is clearly over Apple forcing them to take money from the apps customers, basically here’s a free trial, enter all your payment details and we will charge you if you don’t cancel, it’s a dirty trick purely designed to milk money from the customer, putting the giant corporation Frits and foremost and the customer a very far behind lonely second. 

It’s not only an anti competitive move but very clearly anti consumer and I’d argue in come countries potentially illegal. I’m glad the developer stood up to Apple on this one.

As a developer myself, I remember easily the years of boxed software and the difficulty of actually making money in that market.  Factor in overhead, marketing, distribution, and everything else associated with selling independently, a 30% cut to access that market is chump change.

Apple created this market that developers have access to.  Not the other way around.

keep whining.

I am also a developer. My most profitable app manages elections for general assemblies of companies and non profit organizations.   It is available on iOS , on Android and as a web application.  I am offering a free trial version of my app: maximum 10 voters and 5 voting topics.   Organizations must register and pay for more voters or more topics. There is no auto-billing.   The app was approved without issues, but reading this article I am not so sure anymore if the next version will pass.  

If I would only make the app for iOS, I would have no sales.  My customers (the organizations) want a solution where all  shareholders/members can vote, irrespective of the device the voters are using. A survey (110 organizations replied) revealed that exactly 0 discovered my app via the App Store.   Which basically means that the marketing story you are telling does not apply for my app: Apple does not bring me any customers.  But of course for your apps this could be different   

After the survey I made the decision to limit the registration and the payment functionality to the web app only, so I don't have to pay 30% for something that does not bring real value.   Voters can still use the iOS and Android app for all elections: paid and unpaid 

foregoneconclusion said:

Apple Arcade is going to evolve over time, just as their other services have. Looking at what games have been the most popular or engaging is what you're supposed to do. Why wouldn't you want a greater percentage of those types of games? For me personally, the $60 for a year of Apple Arcade has already been worth it. Oceanhorn 2 provided over 20 hours of play. Pinball Wizard provided 10-12 hours. Shinseki: Into the Depths was around 15-20 hours. I've played Towers of Everland for 15 hours. And I'm currently about 5 hours into Beyond A Steel Sky. That's a good chunk of time for the price...probably more than I expected. 

danvm said:

dewme said:

danvm said:

melgross said:

as for the glass feel. Well, I’ve been over that for years now. You just have to stop thinking about it.

I do a lot of writing in my Surface Pro and it's very nice the you can change the friction level by replacing the tip in the Pen. The writing experience improves a lot.  I think Apple should do the same, instead of just stop thinking about it.  

Another thing that IMO will improve the writing experience with the Pencil is a eraser. It's very quick and easy turn the Pen to erase something in the Surface instead of the double tap you have to do with the Pencil.  

Actually, Apple nailed the erase thing with Scribble. All you have to do is “scratch out” the text you want to erase, as if you’re trying to black it out. It works great and is much better than flipping the pen on a Surface. A lot of things work great with Scribble once you conform to the tool’s expectations, and I guess as others have said, get over the unnatural “writing on glass” ergonomic. I’m not there yet, so either I need more training, the tool needs more training, or some combination of the two.

Like I said, this is a tough problem that many technically and human factors experts have been attacking for decades. Some of them put more emphasis on the pen side of the equation and others put more emphasis on the writing surface part of the equation. As users, we are the in the middle and our experience between pen/pencil and paper/tablet really determines how well the system delivers on the promise. Apple’s approach seems to be very successful for artists and sketchers but handwriting is a tougher problem to solve.

For me, part of the problem is that I haven’t actually been writing a whole lot for a very long time. Handwriting is no longer my primary means of getting thoughts committed to a permanent or semi-permanent form. My muscle memory associated with handwriting is way out of shape. I suspect I’m not alone, especially when I see how adept younger people who grew up with smart devices in their hands from a very early age are at text entry on phones. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of younger people struggle to write using a pen/pencil on paper. Perhaps they would prefer writing on glass, but I suspect they’d rather just type. 

I didn't knew about the "scratch out" for erasing.  For some reason, I miss that in the WWDC keynote.  That's a big improvement over double tap.  Being better than the eraser, maybe.  I can see cases where the eraser is easier vs scratching out. For example, erasing long part of a note or erasing multiples notes in a PDF document requires less effort with the eraser vs scratching out each note. At the same time, I suppose there are cases where scratching out would be better. 

Regarding the writing experience, I think Apple should improve it.  Apple drawing experience is better than the Surface, but writing experience IMO is better with the Surface. And friction is one of the reasons.  I see no reason that I have to adapt to a worst experience when you can improve with something as simple as replacing the tip, as MS did with the Pen.  

Regarding taking notes vs typing, I agree with you that many people prefer typing for most things.  But there are cases where note taking is better, for example when annotating a PDF or Word document, or when working with equations.  In addition, it's completely silent compared to keyboards, and that's a big plus in conference rooms

It's nice to see Apple and MS improving in this area, specially for me, since I have to take notes in a weekly basis. 

nubus said:

JWSC said:

How do you conclude that MacPro users would be lost?  The MacPro has this magical thing called a PCIe slot.  Have an Intel MacPro? Get a PCIe card with Apple Silicon.  Have a MacPro with Apple Silicon? Get a PCIe card with Intel x86.  This is a non-issue.

1. There is no PCIe card with Apple Silicon and there won't be. Think security on a card + power + system integration + the fact that there are very few sold units. On the Mac Pro storage is connected to T2. And it won't work with the existing GPU in the Mac Pro. Last time Apple dropped computers launched 2-3 months earlier, and those computers got one OS update (10.4.2 to 10.5). The Mac Pro is toast - again. In the old days Apple offered motherboard replacements but that stopped like 20 years ago.
2. The Mac Pro is PCIe 3.0 - which simply isn't fast enough. Even budget computers from AMD are now running PCIe 4. The Mac Pro 2019 was built using tech that was obsolete on launch. You can get a B550 motherboard with a PCIe 4.0 SSD for 50-100% better performance on storage.