19: Improving the App Store, Part 1
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Welcome to Under the Radar,
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a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Marco Arment.
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- And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,
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so let's get started.
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So today we're going to unpack some of the things
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that we think might make the App Store better.
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And if you were a listener to Developing Perspective,
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the show I did before this one,
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you might know that about a year ago
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I did a long, long series,
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actually it may have been two years ago,
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I did a long series about things that I thought
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make the App Store better. And we both kind of make our livings inside of the App Store.
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And so, as you would imagine, we have a lot of concerns, thoughts, goals, like things
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we think about in the App Store, because it's a place we spend a lot of time both as a customer
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but also as a producer. It's easy, I think, for us to look at the App Store and to just
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kind of like whine about it, to look at it and say, "Oh, I wish it did this, I wish
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it did that." Like, we all have some kind of like pet things that we think might make
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better for whatever the better might mean to us. But it's challenging. It's difficult
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for us to perhaps take the step back and say, "The App Store is the way it is, and whining
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about that isn't going to change it." We can look at it and we can learn from it, and it's
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like our job as developers is to understand how we can make a living inside of it as it
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exists and hope that Apple is doing things on their end to make it better. But from the
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outside, it seems like sometimes when I think about the App Store too much, I start to get
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sad. And I go and, when I'm trying to be a good student of the App Store and understand
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what's being successful, what's working, I go to the top grossing list, which isn't necessarily
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the most constructive place, because that's not really the kind of apps I'm making. But
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I go there and I look at the top grossing app, which right now as a recording is Clash
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Royale. And I go to its IAP list and it's like, "What would you like to buy? A fistful
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of gems, a pouch of gems, a bucket of gems, a barrel of gems, a mountain of gems, or a
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wagon load of gems.
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Wait, is that really what I thought you were joking?
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That is the list of the top in-app purchases in the top grossing app right now.
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Oh, that's so sad.
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And it's kind of sad too when I think about like I go to WWDC every year and almost always
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they'll have like Apple will have a big slide that talks about how much money they've paid
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out to developers.
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Last year it was something like $14 billion or something.
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And rather than that being exciting and encouraging and being like, "Yeah, let's do this, guys,"
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it just kind of makes me sad because I look at that number and I just think, "Well, I
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guess that's a lot of wagons full of gems."
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And that's just not great.
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Yeah, I mean, that number, outside of any information on the distribution of those stats,
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the media might be a little more interesting, although honestly it would probably be pretty
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sad too, just in the opposite direction.
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But yeah, when you have these mega-hit games that are bringing in hundreds of thousands
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of dollars a day or more, that's roughly what we're talking about here.
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You could be bringing in millions of dollars a day.
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From our perspective, it's really easy to look at that and be like, "Wow, why am I
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even in the App Store if that's what succeeds?"
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But that's not a very productive way to look at it or encouraging way to look at it.
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I think a better way to look at it is we aren't even playing the same game as these people,
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And what we need to be concerned about is,
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is there a game that we can play here?
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Like, is there a spot for us in the App Store
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where we can succeed?
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I think there's enough apps by smaller shops
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that aren't abusive games like this.
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There's enough apps that do succeed
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that the answer to that is almost certainly,
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yes, there is a spot.
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But that doesn't mean necessarily
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that it's easy to get into one of those spots.
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Although it might not necessarily need to be easy.
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But that also doesn't mean that Apple's doing everything
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they can to make sure the rest of the store is healthy
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besides just that top grossing list.
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And there's lots of areas, I think,
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for potential improvement that we're gonna talk about.
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- Yeah, and I think it's one thing,
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the thing that motivated, I think, this discussion,
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why I wanted to sort of talk about it now,
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is that if the first time in a long time,
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I feel like there's outward signs that the App Store
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is going to be changing this year.
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and most significant of which is Phil Schiller
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has now taken responsibility for it,
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which I mean, I think Phil is awesome
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and that's really encouraging to me,
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but even just the simple fact of there's a change
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in leadership there, that there's a change
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in responsibility, like in my mind can only be good.
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And I think I'm encouraged that even Phil
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has kind of publicly, in a few random sort of tweets
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or things, when people are bringing to his attention,
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like there's weird issues in the App Store,
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like I'll probably have a link in the show notes
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tweet someone sent him showing a sort of like a featured area in the App Store for the puzzle
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games, and it's just full, chock full of the 2048 clones. And you kind of have the, and
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he, you know, his response to that is like, "That shouldn't happen. We'll look into it.
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Thank you." And the fact that that kind of thing is even happening at any level makes
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me encouraged. And so I think we wanted to do for the rest of the episode is to kind
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of think through what are some things that we would like to see done, you know? Like
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If we were sitting down in a room with Phil and he was like,
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"As independent developers, what could I do
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"to make the App Store better for you?
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"What would that be?"
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And think through what that would actually be
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and things that we could think about
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that would make the App Store an objectively better place,
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both as a customer or as someone
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who makes their living in it.
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I think that one of the biggest things I'd like to see,
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I just wanna see signs of motion,
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signs that Apple believes that this isn't as good
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as it could be and is willing to take the steps
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to prioritize real change and experimentation
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and improvement in the App Store.
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Because the App Store is now just under eight years old.
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For being almost eight, it really has not changed very much
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from the way it was launched.
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There have been small improvements here and there,
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but almost unchanged.
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The entire industry, Apple included,
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have we learned nothing since it started?
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Obviously we've learned something.
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So I think it's upon Apple to just show
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that they're willing to make changes over time
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as we learn what works, what doesn't,
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what's healthy, what's not.
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And so far we've seen very little of that.
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So that's what I, my number one hope
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is not any one particular change,
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but just I really hope that Apple just shows signs
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of not being complacent, not thinking that what they have now
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is the inevitable end and as good as it can get.
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- I agree, yeah.
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And I think seeing, like I said,
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in some ways it's any change.
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Like there are certainly things that,
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like pet things that I would like,
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and which we'll certainly talk about,
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But just having a sense that the App Store is going somewhere, and that I could--
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like, if I look towards my own personal future of, like,
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should this be the place that I'm making my living,
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if it seems like it's sort of getting worse and worse,
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or at least sort of has plateaued at a not great level,
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that's not an encouraging thing to look forward to
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and to seek to kind of invest my time and energy into,
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versus something that seems like,
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even if it's just a slow incremental process
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of getting better and better, that would be great.
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That would be encouraging.
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Like that would be motivating
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and something that would make it feel more worthwhile
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to put all the time and attention
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that I'm putting into the App Store currently.
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- Yeah, I mean, that's, because I feel like where it is now
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is not in a very encouraging place for people like us.
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Right now, we can get by, but it's hard,
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and there's not a lot of headroom.
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It doesn't feel like it's on its way up anymore.
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It feels like it's on its way down,
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at least for people like us, you know?
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And it feels like we have fewer and fewer options
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over time of like how to make a decent living
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in the App Store.
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A lot of this is just market forces at work here.
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A lot of this is not within Apple's control to change.
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By far, the biggest problem in the App Store
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for indies to get by is just that there's a massive amount
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of relentless competition, not only for exactly
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the same things that your apps do,
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like if I release a podcast app,
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there's already a whole bunch of podcast apps out there.
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So that's problem number one.
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Problem number two, anything I do in mine
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that will be different or noteworthy,
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other people will be able to do as well.
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I don't have any kind of magical abilities
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that nobody else can duplicate.
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Anybody can do the same things I do.
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And if you have an app that is popular at all,
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that will happen because number three,
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there are absolutely tons of developers out there.
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They all are trying to make the same living
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out of the same pie and the pie is growing
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but so is that pool of developers.
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And then finally number four,
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there are lots of other things competing
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for everyone's attention all the time
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on their phones as well.
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So even if your app does pretty well
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against other similar apps,
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you're also competing with literally everything else
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they have available on their phone
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which is everything in the consumer web world right now
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basically, so you're competing with those top grossing games
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or instead of listening to a podcast,
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they could choose to go play Clash or whatever.
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So you are competing with all of those things.
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Because this is the hot place to be,
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the level of competition is just immense and ruthless.
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- Yeah, and I think I was, before the show,
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I went and took a look at just trying to quantify
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just how big the App Store is
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and how much it's continuing to even grow,
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And honestly, at the end of looking at all this,
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I just had tremendous sympathy for the poor app reviewers.
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'Cause right now in the app store,
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I think they're, I found a couple of conflicting numbers,
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but the number's somewhere in the ballpark
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of around two million apps.
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And it seems like they're being added to the store
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at roughly 2,000 a day.
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Seems to be the best number I could get
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kind of looking around, which means that during this show,
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like during 30 minutes of this show,
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something like 42 apps will have launched.
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And that's just new apps.
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- That's crazy.
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It doesn't let even updates.
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The poor people in App Review, I don't even
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know how to conceive of the workload
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that those poor people must have.
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Even you can't release apps that quickly.
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I mean, I'm famous for having lots of apps.
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And I look at this, and it's like how--
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the first thing that I think that Apple
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needs to work on is understanding
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if they're going to do something about that.
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Early on in the App Store, they used to always get up on stage
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and talk about-- now we have 100,000 apps.
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Now we have 500,000 apps.
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Now we have a million apps,
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as though having a big number were something desirous.
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And in the early stages, maybe it was,
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to say when they were first building out the app store,
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it was an important thing to have lots of apps
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and to cover all the different goals and things
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that people might wanna do on their phones.
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But my suspicion is at this point,
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that of those, say, 2,000 new apps every day,
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I can't imagine all of them,
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or at least even the majority of them,
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are really adding to the platform
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and making it better and stronger.
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and puts a tremendous load, I'm sure, on the app review team.
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And so it means that you and I, when we submit a bug fix
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update, say we have some problem in our app, we submit it,
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we have to wait at least a week to get it reviewed and out
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into the store.
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And I can't imagine--
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I've got to imagine some of that is coming from just
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the sheer volume of junk.
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And say 2,000 is the right number.
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It's like 2,000 a day new apps are being approved.
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What's the number of apps that are getting rejected?
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It's just got to--
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There's got to be things that Apple can do on that end.
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And I don't know if it's changing the review guidelines, making it so that there's some
00:13:21
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kind of extra barriers to actually submitting apps, to try and make, or being just sort
00:13:27
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of harsher in app review and having higher standards on sort of a more editorial opinionated
00:13:34
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side to make it so that people get the idea.
00:13:37
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So very quickly you would expect that if the process of just sort of putting sort of not
00:13:43
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high-level apps into the App Store became unsuccessful, after a while people would stop
00:13:48
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doing that. It would be a waste of time and not really worth the effort or something.
00:13:51
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Yeah, but that's so risky, though. Anything they do to try to make subjective judgments,
00:13:57
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I feel like, is just asking for trouble. Because they already have a lot of these things now,
00:14:02
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and they do often get crap for making a bad decision, usually warranted. Anything they
00:14:07
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do to try to say, "Okay, well now your app doesn't have to just follow these rules,"
00:14:11
◼
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It also has to be like worthy a little bit, to some degree.
00:14:14
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Even if it's just a minor degree,
00:14:16
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this has to be like worthy of being included in the store.
00:14:19
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It has to have value to somebody.
00:14:20
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And they already define that minimum functionality rule,
00:14:23
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which is vague, and that just refers
00:14:25
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to a level of functionality.
00:14:27
◼
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What if there was also a level of minimum quality?
00:14:29
◼
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Again, there have been rules that kind of alluded to this
00:14:31
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in the guidelines since the beginning,
00:14:33
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but they haven't really been enforced very much.
00:14:35
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The problem though is that this isn't just like
00:14:37
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Phil Schiller making those decisions.
00:14:39
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This is probably hundreds of employees in AppReview
00:14:43
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who all have to be making those decisions constantly.
00:14:46
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They're not gonna be able to kick every one of them
00:14:48
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up to a manager for approval,
00:14:50
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so you're gonna have to,
00:14:51
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they have to come up with rules
00:14:53
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that can be consistently enforced with a large staff.
00:14:57
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The more room for subjectivity there is,
00:15:00
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the harder it is to achieve consistency,
00:15:01
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and they already have issues with this.
00:15:04
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Anything they do to make the rules
00:15:06
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to basically raise the bar
00:15:07
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►
of their minimum quality standards,
00:15:09
◼
►
they're gonna get so many more problematic rejections,
00:15:12
◼
►
so much more bad press about problematic rejections,
00:15:15
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►
and they're gonna have people like us complaining.
00:15:17
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►
So it's a hard balance to strike.
00:15:19
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►
I don't think they've struck the right balance yet.
00:15:22
◼
►
Certainly, raising the bar is challenging.
00:15:25
◼
►
- Oh, sure, yeah.
00:15:26
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I mean, and I look at that and it's like,
00:15:27
◼
►
I don't envy how they would make the decision.
00:15:30
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►
But it seems like it's either you have to
00:15:32
◼
►
take the approach of the Google Play Store.
00:15:35
◼
►
The bar is, is this basically functional and not malware?
00:15:40
◼
►
At least conceptually.
00:15:41
◼
►
I'm not a Google Play expert,
00:15:43
◼
►
but the app review process there
00:15:44
◼
►
is much more streamlined and straightforward.
00:15:46
◼
►
It says best I understand it.
00:15:48
◼
►
Where you have very low bars
00:15:50
◼
►
and you approach the problem almost more
00:15:54
◼
►
on the demand side rather than the supply side.
00:15:57
◼
►
You just let anybody who wants to have an app
00:15:59
◼
►
be in the store.
00:16:00
◼
►
If you do that, you just need to build the store itself,
00:16:03
◼
►
like the front end into that,
00:16:04
◼
►
such that users can very easily and quickly get away from things that aren't great and
00:16:11
◼
►
are driven towards things that are good.
00:16:13
◼
►
Because I think you could probably say the ultimate goal of the App Store, if you had
00:16:17
◼
►
to try and boil that down, is that any time a customer downloads an app, they're getting
00:16:22
◼
►
a good experience.
00:16:24
◼
►
That would be a reasonable goal for what the App Store is trying to do, that a user says,
00:16:28
◼
►
"I have a need," or "I want to be amused or entertained," or whatever it is.
00:16:32
◼
►
and they go to the App Store, that the things that they find there are going to give them
00:16:38
◼
►
a positive experience.
00:16:40
◼
►
And there's a lot of things that the Apple could do, maybe on the editorial side, to
00:16:44
◼
►
dramatically improve that structure.
00:16:47
◼
►
Where right now, in the App Store app, there's the featured area, the top charts area, and
00:16:53
◼
►
the explore area.
00:16:55
◼
►
The featured area, I think they do a pretty good job.
00:16:57
◼
►
There are very rarely things in that first tab of the App Store that I look at and I
00:17:01
◼
►
I see, and that I'm like, "If someone downloaded that, they're going to have a bad experience."
00:17:07
◼
►
If in the top charts area, it starts to get a lot more questionable, and there's a little
00:17:11
◼
►
bit of self-filtering of that, that obviously people, in order to be on one of those lists,
00:17:17
◼
►
lots of people had to have thought that your app was good, but it starts to get more questionable.
00:17:22
◼
►
And then you get into the Explore tab, like that poor third tab in the App Store app,
00:17:25
◼
►
which has been three or four different things over the last eight years, and just feels
00:17:30
◼
►
like it's always turning over and it never quite finds its way, but that's the place
00:17:34
◼
►
that you'll start to very quickly get into areas where the quality or at least the robustness
00:17:41
◼
►
of those apps becomes more and more problematic as you go.
00:17:45
◼
►
And it's like, maybe if Apple can't fix it on the review side, maybe it's just,
00:17:50
◼
►
"Let's just focus on editorial.
00:17:52
◼
►
Let's staff up dramatically, really go through the App Store."
00:17:55
◼
►
And it's like, if we think these apps aren't good, maybe we just flag them as such, and
00:18:00
◼
►
We say, like, you know, this is a B app,
00:18:02
◼
►
and it's not gonna show up in certain places,
00:18:03
◼
►
or it's gonna be very B prioritized
00:18:05
◼
►
in the way that people can find it,
00:18:07
◼
►
but it's still there?
00:18:08
◼
►
Like, I don't know, is that better?
00:18:10
◼
►
- I hope they would do something like that
00:18:11
◼
►
behind the scenes, though I figure they probably aren't.
00:18:13
◼
►
But if they did, it would probably not be wise
00:18:16
◼
►
for us to know about that.
00:18:18
◼
►
You know? - Sure.
00:18:19
◼
►
- 'Cause I think that would cause issues.
00:18:21
◼
►
You know, ultimately, what we want Apple to do
00:18:24
◼
►
is to make it easier for apps like ours
00:18:27
◼
►
to be successful and to be found by people in the App Store.
00:18:31
◼
►
But it's worth challenging the assumption
00:18:33
◼
►
that our apps are better.
00:18:34
◼
►
You know, like if you look at what's actually
00:18:37
◼
►
in the App Store and if you look at that top grossing list
00:18:39
◼
►
and you see what succeeds, it's probably hard
00:18:42
◼
►
for Apple to look at that and think they have
00:18:44
◼
►
to do anything differently than what they're doing now
00:18:46
◼
►
in like content choosing or steering the rules
00:18:50
◼
►
in such a way to encourage or discourage different types
00:18:52
◼
►
of apps than what they're getting now.
00:18:54
◼
►
because what they're doing now is working very well,
00:18:57
◼
►
just not for people like us,
00:18:58
◼
►
but it's working very well for some people
00:19:00
◼
►
and it's working very well by many metrics
00:19:03
◼
►
for Apple's customers.
00:19:05
◼
►
In the way that people are downloading a bunch of apps,
00:19:07
◼
►
they are playing these games and putting their coins in,
00:19:09
◼
►
it does work for a lot of people now, just not us.
00:19:14
◼
►
So is that really a problem?
00:19:17
◼
►
Like do you think Apple sees it as a problem
00:19:19
◼
►
and do you think it actually is a problem?
00:19:21
◼
►
- It's a tough question 'cause it's really hard
00:19:22
◼
►
to separate, obviously, my own personal views and business from the more objective, if this
00:19:29
◼
►
was not what I did, and I was just someone who just went to the Apple store, bought an
00:19:33
◼
►
iPhone and opened up the app store.
00:19:37
◼
►
And it is definitely a trap, and I think you're sort of right to point it out, in these types
00:19:42
◼
►
of discussions in our community, that you can very easily slip into the very subjective,
00:19:48
◼
►
like, indie apps are better kind of a mindset. And you end up with like, well, it's like,
00:19:54
◼
►
if there's not a vibrant, independent community of app makers that somehow like the world
00:20:00
◼
►
is a sad and terrible place. And, you know, you could argue in some ways, it's like, you
00:20:04
◼
►
know, smaller companies tend to take bigger risks. And so more innovation happens or those
00:20:08
◼
►
types of kind of more justifications. In some ways, what I hope is that if Apple is happy
00:20:13
◼
►
with the majority of successful businesses in the App Store or a lot of the money for
00:20:19
◼
►
the App Store, whatever, coming from those types of games and even just being game-focused
00:20:22
◼
►
in general. It's games and big companies. In the top 10 grossing apps, there are other
00:20:29
◼
►
things that aren't games. There's things like Spotify or services like that, big companies.
00:20:34
◼
►
The reality is, and the hard thing to say to myself is, maybe that's fine with Apple
00:20:40
◼
►
and they're totally cool with that. And in some ways, their actions thus far indicate that they
00:20:44
◼
►
are. And there's the introspection of saying, "If that's the reality, am I just in the wrong place?"
00:20:52
◼
►
At this point, it's not something that I really want to make a change about. I'm not saying,
00:20:58
◼
►
"Oh, I want to get out of the App Store." When I look at that, I'm like, "Maybe at some point,
00:21:01
◼
►
I will have to, though, because it would just sort of not be economically viable to do what I do,
00:21:08
◼
►
and that would make me sad. But yeah, it's not up to me to decide what goes into the App Store,
00:21:13
◼
►
or what apps should the App Store be geared around making viable. Obviously, I'd like for it to be
00:21:20
◼
►
more viable for me, and I think you could make a reasonable argument that it's important to have
00:21:25
◼
►
some base level of the smaller developers like us filling in cracks and pushing boundaries.
00:21:30
◼
►
When new things come out, I've made my business in a lot of ways about watching Apple and how they
00:21:37
◼
►
push new technology out in their phones or in iOS, looking for new opportunities, and
00:21:45
◼
►
as soon as I can, jumping on those. And being able to take advantage of being smaller and
00:21:49
◼
►
being able to make those kinds of decisions that maybe bigger companies can't. And that
00:21:54
◼
►
seems like a good thing, but it's very selfish and self-centered to say, "If the App Store
00:21:59
◼
►
doesn't make my business model work, then it's not good."
00:22:03
◼
►
Now, the way that the App Store bothers me now though with like what succeeds and what
00:22:07
◼
►
doesn't, you know, not only from just like a, you know, an obvious like envy that those
00:22:11
◼
►
aren't my apps in the top grossing position, but what bothers me that I think might be
00:22:16
◼
►
relevant here to Apple and to the users is that the apps that succeed today, I think,
00:22:22
◼
►
make the iPhone look a bit like a cheap flea market. It is not like a high fashion or a
00:22:30
◼
►
high quality branding angle that we see now today with like all these, you know, basically
00:22:37
◼
►
like casino games. They're not, this is not like a classy great experience for a lot
00:22:43
◼
►
of people and it doesn't make Apple's products look good to know that most people
00:22:48
◼
►
are using them most of the time to like, you know, throw coins into a psychologically abusive
00:22:54
◼
►
game that their friends and family made them obligated to play. I don't know. Obviously
00:23:01
◼
►
people, it's a little bit snobby of me to say it because obviously a lot of people do
00:23:04
◼
►
enjoy these games and are perfectly fine with that and I don't want to diminish their enjoyment
00:23:09
◼
►
of those. But do you think from Apple's point of view, do you think that's really what they
00:23:12
◼
►
want the iPhone to be in practice? Do they care and does that really fit the way they
00:23:19
◼
►
want to brand this device?
00:23:20
◼
►
I wouldn't think so. I mean, this is the funny thing. I was a fan of Apple before I was an
00:23:27
◼
►
Apple developer. And the thing that I think is so... At a fundamental level, when I try
00:23:34
◼
►
and think of the things that I associate with Apple and with their brand more generally,
00:23:41
◼
►
is that there's a certain amount of trying to be more... It's more aspirational in the
00:23:47
◼
►
the sense of they're trying to make it better. They're not just trying to make a basic works
00:23:54
◼
►
is sufficient is fine phone. They're trying to make the best of anything. And in most
00:24:01
◼
►
of the things that they do, whether or not they hit it or not is a whole other question.
00:24:06
◼
►
But their goal, their mission is to make the best and to have, when you go into an Apple
00:24:13
◼
►
store that you always come out with a good experience. They're not trying to be mediocre
00:24:18
◼
►
or sufficient, they're always trying to be better. And if you would apply that kind of
00:24:23
◼
►
mindset to the app store, you would imagine you'd end up with a different app store. If
00:24:29
◼
►
they're willing to take that risk of, you know, they don't make the hundreds of different
00:24:35
◼
►
variations of the iPhone, they try and make one that's really, really good and is the
00:24:40
◼
►
the best. And in the same way, it's like they rather than trying to have all the different,
00:24:44
◼
►
you know, it's like you go into an Apple store, it doesn't feel like going into Walmart. It's
00:24:48
◼
►
like the App Store is much more like going into Walmart or something like that. Or worse.
00:24:52
◼
►
Yeah, but it's that kind of a feeling, right? It's like, you go in and you see a charger,
00:24:56
◼
►
whatever, you know, some iPhone accessory on the wall of an Apple store, and you expect
00:25:02
◼
►
that that is going to be good, you know, it meets a certain basic level of criteria versus
00:25:07
◼
►
Because if you go into Walmart or you go into Amazon and you're presented with probably
00:25:12
◼
►
ten times the number of choices, you have a much harder decision and you're in a harder
00:25:18
◼
►
position to make that choice because they haven't curated it for you.
00:25:22
◼
►
They haven't looked at it and said, "We think these are the best," or "These are the ones
00:25:27
◼
►
that you should try."
00:25:29
◼
►
And I would hope that if they did that same kind of mindset onto the App Store that you
00:25:32
◼
►
could end up with a better experience, and a better place overall, and one that would
00:25:35
◼
►
fit the Apple brand better. The Google Play Store, I think, makes sense for Google. That's
00:25:41
◼
►
sort of their thing. We index all the information everywhere. Their sort of mindset around having
00:25:48
◼
►
a store that isn't strongly curated in the same way, it seems like that would be a better
00:25:53
◼
►
fit potentially. But Apple could potentially take the other extreme and say, "You know
00:25:57
◼
►
what? This is where we're going to go." I think that would fit for them. Ultimately,
00:26:01
◼
►
obviously, I would like that, I think.
00:26:03
◼
►
I would too. I mean like I was getting on a plane recently and I wanted to download
00:26:08
◼
►
a whole bunch of like new good games and seeing what was actually successful in the top charts
00:26:12
◼
►
and just trying to find good games for myself to play on the plane. Like if nothing else
00:26:18
◼
►
the App Store should have tons of good games, right? But I honestly had a lot of trouble
00:26:21
◼
►
finding any that had any kind of depth whatsoever. Most of them are like, you know, really like
00:26:26
◼
►
stupid, simple, like shallow things that like you play it for 10 seconds like, "Oh, that's
00:26:31
◼
►
it is? Okay. Like, it was actually really hard to find good stuff. I feel like we need
00:26:37
◼
►
better stuff in the App Store, and we need Apple to think about how they can get better
00:26:43
◼
►
stuff in there, how they can incentivize and sustain the development of better apps, not
00:26:48
◼
►
just more apps.
00:26:49
◼
►
>> Yeah, and I think there's some big problems here around, like, it's like the old, what
00:26:54
◼
►
they call it, the broken window problem. You know, where you have, if you're in a neighborhood,
00:26:59
◼
►
if you had a house that is derelict and has some broken windows in it. It starts to affect
00:27:10
◼
►
things that even aren't just that one house. If the bar and the expectation for going to
00:27:15
◼
►
the app store isn't high enough, it's going to have knock-on effects to lots of other
00:27:20
◼
►
apps. And you end up with customers who have different expectations. They'll look at the
00:27:26
◼
►
the App Store and say, "I think about our discussion last week about pricing," where
00:27:35
◼
►
it's harder in some ways to convince someone to have a paid upfront app and to download
00:27:41
◼
►
it. And some of that, I could imagine, is coming from a place of, A, there's a tremendous
00:27:46
◼
►
competition which is always going to have a downward pressure on pricing, but also if
00:27:52
◼
►
If you don't have good expectations that what you're downloading is going to be good, is
00:27:58
◼
►
going to be worth it because you've been burned before, that's going to discourage you from
00:28:04
◼
►
going ahead and downloading other apps and paying for them up front.
00:28:08
◼
►
So you end up with more free apps, and if your app is free, then you have this vicious
00:28:13
◼
►
cycle because the amount of time that you can justify putting into something if you
00:28:19
◼
►
expect to only be able to make money back from it, either from consumable in a purchase
00:28:25
◼
►
or even if you're just putting it out with ads in it. You're sort of the value of each
00:28:30
◼
►
customer to you, and for the downside of having a customer have a bad experience, it just
00:28:34
◼
►
continues to shrink down in kind of this negative cycle.
00:28:38
◼
►
Exactly. All right, well, we're out of time today. I think we're going to continue this
00:28:43
◼
►
discussion next week and with maybe some specific suggestions on how Apple can really make the
00:28:49
◼
►
App Store better, specific areas that might be worth experimenting with. So thanks a lot
00:28:53
◼
►
for listening and we will talk to you next week.