narwhal

I can confirm that Apple recently did a mass email that featured one of my apps, so Apple *IS* promoting developers' apps. My brother forwarded the email to me and asked if I'd paid Apple for it. Nope. I'm very happy about it -- free advertising. Any developer complaining about free advertising is crazy. If they don't want to be in the App Store, get out of the App Store.

Pretty sure the HDMI port is for us presenters, and only the VERY latest Epson high-end projectors for gamers support 4K and HDMI 2.1. I'll admit Apple SHOULD make the port HDMI 2.1 next update, but it won't matter to most presenters for several years.

I think Apple should drop everything to 15% commission. The current situation is too complicated. As an under-$1M developer, I can't sell or buy apps without being bumped to 30% commission. Better to just keep it simple for everyone at 15%. Apple can handle the decreased revenue from the large developers.

Here's another idea: Apple should consider dropping the commission even further to 5%. So the App Store is basically a loss leader to sell hardware. It will lead to more apps in the App Store, will end all the gripes and lawsuits from developers about high rates, and basically kneecap other app stores from gaining a foothold.

None of these quoted analysts sound terribly concerned for Intel. However, the fact that Intel is running competitive advertising against Apple makes it clear Intel is running scared. Apple selling high-end laptops with $1000 to $2000 profit margin is worth more than selling a dozen Chromebooks for $250. Intel can retain its gamer audience (or share it with AMD), but board members and executives won't embarrass themselves carrying Intel laptops -- they'll want MacBook Pros.

In other product categories such as iPad and iPod where Apple has dominated, Apple eventually introduced products at every $50 price point -- for iPods it was from $50 to $500; for iPads from $300 to $1200; for iPhones from $300 to $1200. I imagine Apple will eventually sell laptops at price points from around $500 (a MacBook or iBook targeting schools) to $6000. You'll go into an Apple Store with a specific budget looking for a laptop, and Apple will have something at your exact price point. And if at every price point, Apple's laptop is better than an Intel laptop, it's hard to justify buying the Intel. Except for gamers.

My delay was I'm switching from Cocoa to Catalyst for my macOS apps. It's a lot of work. I think I've figured everything out now, but the learning curve is long. For one thing, Xcode 12 GUI doesn't support building for both macOS 10.15 (Intel) and 11 (Intel and M1), you need to tweak the project in a text editor. For another, you need to implement the old Mac help system in your Catalyst apps, including Help Indexer, and there's zero support for it in Xcode. Another thing is, Apple didn't post sample code showing how to implement menus on Catalyst apps, so it's a guessing game getting it working. There's zero sample code for the transition -- which is insane. Some frameworks simply don't work in Catalyst apps: you can forget about StoreKit and GameKit, they don't work on M1. There's more, I could make a longer list, but now that I've figured everything out, I'm busy releasing apps.