A poorly-researched dictionary of British Slang words and phrases, written by some guy off the internet.
Spurred on by the news that Apple is now bigger than Microsoft, I’m going to invest some time in doing more blogging for my fledgeling nest-egg, Beta Minus. I’ve started a blog on http://betaminus.com/, and migrated a couple of posts I had here about mobile app sales. Just to tempt you over there, I’ve written a brand new post about using my Proximity app whilst skiing.
I’ll try and keep this blog for things marginally more funny. Once I think of them…
Here’s a scenario that played out for me this week, and has probably played out for you before too. I’ve been tinkering around with the idea of recording on-track video from car races, and I was looking for a mobile app which could record video along with telemetry from an OBD2 engine management system while driving the car. From this you can make nifty videos overlaying dials from the car on the live feed.
Anyway, I was delighted to find that such an app exists! So off I went and downloaded it (it’s called aLapRecorder HD). It’s a rather specific niche market, so unsurprisingly there’s pretty much just the one app to do this.
I installed it, got it going and then found a few bugs in it that were going to cause a bit of a problem with what I had in mind. So off I went to the developer forums… only to find that the forum is full of spam and appears not to be in use. Off I went to the reviews page (sometimes you can get some useful extra info from there) only to discover that the most recent reviews were all one-star ones complaining that the app didn’t work well on current hardware and that the dev didn’t pay any attention to the forum or email, and appeared to have given up on the project. And, sure enough, the last update was from November last year, so it looks like he has dropped it.
Why would the developer give up on something that was so close to great? The app looks superb and just has a few bugs. It’s so nearly perfect!
Well, let me tell you why. The “pro” version (which removes a two-recording limit) has sold “1,000 – 5,000” copies, for $6.50 each. The developer has made somewhere between $6k and $30k. This app obviously contains many months of solid development work – I’m going to estimate six months, but it easily could be longer. The US Department of labour says that computer programmers in the US earn $60k per year on average. This app’s first review was in April last year, so if this talented programmer has sold the absolute highest number of copies that he could have done, he has been paid the average developer wage for the last year. And if he’s sold the least, he’s been paid what he could have got working in McDonalds. So, screw it. Instead of buggering around answering emails from angry users and fixing bugs for various new devices, the developer has no doubt just gone and got a job with some software company and is busy programming his heart out doing something different.
The consumers of this are car racers, and this is an expensive hobby. I just got an email suggesting that I buy the cheapest bolted neck restraint available for $600, which also involves replacing all four of our team’s helmets, at about $150 each. Race entry fees are easily $500-$1000 even for the cheap races. It would make no difference to a race team if this app was $30, $50 or perhaps even $100. And then the developer would have been able to keep working on it.
We’re used to wanting to pay the lowest price for everything, of course, but we have to remember that software is not like physical goods. It needs care and feeding to stay up-to-date with hardware and technology, and it is something that can evolve over time to improve, well after you have purchased it. It makes perfect sense to just want the lowest price when you go and buy a waffle iron. If the company who sold you it goes out of business, who cares? You still have a waffle iron. But if the company who sold you a piece of software goes out of business, it’s not going to get updated to work on the phone you’ll buy next year.
Of course, it’s the developer’s choice as to how he prices his application and in my view this developer made a poor choice. But the culture of users right now is constantly forcing prices down, and giant companies are busily producing mobile apps that make no money because they want a foot in the door of this market and, hey, they already make money from other stuff. For the poor indie developer who isn’t making money from other stuff, he’s left with a userbase that isn’t willing to pay for anything and an app that doesn’t make him a living wage.
So the next time you look at the price of an app, don’t think “$5.99?! Jesus Christ, what am I, made of money?”. You should instead think “$5.99? Hmm, perhaps this will still exist in three years”.
Some web sites are bad. Just clicking on a link in an email can send you somewhere that looks like PayPal, asks for your login details and will then instantly automate the emptying of your account. Some web sites prompt you to download software which will encrypt all the files on your computer and then try to charge you for a decryption key. Some web sites are bad, m’kay?
Well, the great news is that Google have solved this problem. Rumour has it that the next version of Chrome will limit your web access to a predefined list of “known good” web sites. Sites can easily apply to be added to that list and, as long as Google approves them, they’ll be available in your browser the next day. Isn’t that great? I don’t think any other browser is going to be able to compete with Chrome once they get this out.
Of course, Google aren’t doing this. Because it is a terrible idea. The reality is that the existing security systems build into browsers actually do a pretty good job of preventing access to malicious web sites. Don’t believe me? Visit http://winsetupcostotome.easthamvacations.info/answered-polynomial-eccentricity-unserviceable/029287718218614814 . It contains malware that will install on your computer. Go on!
The site was first reported as malicious just today, but opening it in Chrome I see this:
Browsers, operating systems and the interconnecting web technologies have a bunch of mechanisms built into them to keep you safe online. And they work. How many times have you actually been caught by a phishing email, or installed apps that empty your bank account? How many people do you know who have?
Apple’s marketing around the app store is centered around the fact that it protects you from malware. Which is true to a degree – there’s almost no malware on the Apple app store. F-Secure estimates that 0.1% of apps on Google’s Play Store (which has no approval process) are malicious. But a whacking 10% of web sites are malicious. So why don’t you want a curated web site list?
I don’t want a curated web site list either. I also don’t want a curated app store – even one regulated by some sort of independent nonprofit would become a horrendous mess of inconsistencies, but one regulated by a corporation is even worse. Let’s take a look at a few of the actual Apple app store requirements. You can download the whole lot of them here and read them yourself if you like. What, you say? There’s 25 pages of them?! Oh, yes…
Let’s start with the easy ones.
3.15 Apps with previews that display personal information of a real person without permission will be rejected
Fair enough. That seems sensible and reasonably measurable.
4.1 Apps that do not notify and obtain user consent before collecting, transmitting, or using location data will be rejected
Seems fine to me.
14.1 Any App that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harm’s way will be rejected
Okay, I guess we don’t want people to be put in harm’s way. But offensive to one person isn’t necessarily offensive to another. What about Charlie Hebdo?
14.2 Professional political satirists and humorists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean-spirited commentary
Oh okay. Am I a professional satirist?
2.18 Apps that encourage excessive consumption of alcohol or illegal substances, or encourage minors to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes, will be rejected
I… hmm… what is excessive? And alcohol is legal – what’s wrong with me consuming plenty of it?
And here is the crux. A gatekeeping system that involves humans making judgement calls is almost impossible to keep fair and consistent. App developers know that the best way to get your app through these requirements is just to change something minor, resubmit it and hope you get someone different in whatever offshore team is reviewing these. I had one app that was just for submitting data to another system and required the user to log in. It was rejected due to 17.2 Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected. I resubmitted it with the same login screen and an “about” page but with a bug whereby it displayed an alert saying “[object object]” every time you ran it. It was immediately approved. My fix to remove the bug unfortunately took two weeks to make it through.
As well as making requirements that are hard to consistently measure, you’re making censorship calls on what your users may look at. Do I want to view anti-Jewish websites? No. Do I want to be prevented from viewing them? No, I do not.
18.2 Apps that contain user generated content that is frequently pornographic (e.g. “Chat Roulette” Apps) will be rejected
What the heck is “frequently”? I don’t know about you but I once shared a hotel with the crew of an aircraft carrier on shore leave and they were all sitting in the lobby on quite eye-opening Skype calls to their girlfriends. Also Skype is owned by Microsoft, a competitor of Apple’s. So probably a great idea getting rid of that. FaceTime doesn’t have to get store approval. Oh yeah, that reminds me:
3.1 Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected
This was the requirement that recently started Apple blocking apps which mentioned Pebble support (the Apple Watch’s most viable competitor). Don’t worry, though, after some negative press coverage they eventually decided to stop paying attention to that requirement and instead hold the Pebble iOS app in review for a curiously long time.
And this, to my mind, is where the curated store really starts to leave a bad taste in the mouth. While some of these requirements are mechanically measurable and undeniably beneficial, the great majority of them range between ill-defined judgement calls and downright anti-competitive practice.
2.16 Multitasking Apps may only use background services for their intended purposes: VoIP, audio playback, location, task completion, local notifications, etc.
This is why your favourite mail app can’t actually download email in the background. It’s not that the platform can’t do it. It’s that only apps that Apple themselves made are allowed to do that.
2.17 Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript
You know what this means? This means the only web browser you can use on iOS is the Safari one. You installed Chrome for iOS? Well that’s not actually the Chrome browser. That’s just some Chrome icons and the default browser. You thought it was faster? You were wrong, my furry friend.
Apple takes a 30% cut of all revenue from apps. In 2014, that was $3Bn. While the app store purports to protect Apple’s customers from themselves, what it mainly does is prevent anyone making money in apps without giving Apple 30% of it.
11.2 Apps utilizing a system other than the In-App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an App will be rejected
11.13 Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the App, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected
Ever wondered why the iOS Amazon app doesn’t have the ability to purchase things? It’s because Amazon don’t want to give Apple 30% of the money. Apple also blocked any updates to Microsoft’s SkyDrive app because they wanted their cut from users who paid for storage.
It’s almost hard believe but, in the 1980s, Microsoft was the darling of the tech world. They disrupted a near-monopoly on software and hardware and made a brand new technology available to a huge mass of people. They spent the next decade destroying their competitors via any means available and are still paying the goodwill price of that behaviour twenty years later. Let’s hope everyone can learn from that lesson.