Development

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Back in August, Apple said that it would pay out $100 million and make several changes to the App Store to settle a class-action lawsuit brought about by developers, and the settlement offer received preliminary approval yesterday

How much will developers get?

Developers who earned $1 million or less through the U.S. storefront for their apps in every calendar year between June 4, 2015 and April 26, 2021 can receive between $250 and $30,000.

Sounds like a floor of $250. Not nothing.

As to the timing?

Going forward, briefs, papers, and memoranda in support of the final approval of the settlement must be filed by April 29, 2022, and a Fairness and Final Approval Hearing will take place on June 7, 2022. If and when final approval is granted, developers will begin to receive money from Apple.

Here’s a link to the settlement website, where you can sign up to be notified when the settlement process goes live.

Marco:

After the dust settles from the developer class-action settlement, the South Korean law, the JFTC announcement, and the Apple v. Epic decision, I think the most likely long-term outcome isn’t very different from the status quo — and that’s a good thing.

Lots of interesting points made, worth reading. Among the most important, is this bit about “side loading”:

I don’t expect side-loading or alternative app stores to become possible, and I’m relieved, because that is not a future I want for iOS.

And:

Facebook owns four of the top ten apps in the world. If side-loading became possible, Facebook could remove Instagram, WhatsApp, the Facebook app, and Messenger from Apple’s App Store, requiring customers to install these extremely popular apps directly from Facebook via side-loading.

And everyone would.

And:

Facebook would soon have apps that bypassed App Review installed on the majority of iPhones in the world.

I do get the logic here. My worry is that the forces that push Apple to make changes (think politicians, lobbyists, and anti-trust investigators) might not have the technical understanding of the implications Marco points out above.

Apple:

Apple today announced a number of changes coming to the App Store that, pending court approval, will resolve a class-action suit from US developers.

Key there is “pending court approval”, so this could still change.

Key changes:

The agreement clarifies that developers can share purchase options with users outside of their iOS app; expands the price points developers can offer for subscriptions, in-app purchases, and paid apps; and establishes a new fund to assist qualifying US developers.

Homing in on that first change:

Apple is also clarifying that developers can use communications, such as email, to share information about payment methods outside of their iOS app. As always, developers will not pay Apple a commission on any purchases taking place outside of their app or the App Store. Users must consent to the communication and have the right to opt out.

And this, from the plaintiff’s motion for approval:

Apple has agreed to revise its App Store Guidelines to permit developers of all app categories to communicate with consenting customers outside their app, including via email and other communication services, about purchasing methods other than in-app purchase. See Berman Decl., Ex. A at § 5.1.3. Under the App’s Store existing Guidelines, developers may not use contact information (emails, phone numbers, etc.) obtained within an app to contact their user base outside the app. As a practical matter, this prevents developers from alerting their customers to alternative payment options. The proposed Settlement lifts this restriction, and it does so for all app categories.

So theoretically, I could put an app in the App Store that was purely a demo (limited features), with a notification that pointed to a web site (outside Apple’s control) to sign up for the full version. Again, theoretically, I could put in language that said, you’ll save me Apple’s 15%/30% commission if you sign up on my web site.

My question is, would Apple approve an app with language like that?

There are other changes as part of the settlement. One interesting one:

Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer from the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have earned $1 million or less through the US storefront for all of their apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 — encompassing 99 percent of developers in the US. Details will be available at a later date.

This strikes me as a pool, split among all eligible participants, something common for class suit settlements. You get a notification from the settlement fund, certify that you meet the conditions, become part of the settlement, get a check or credit (usually tiny, depending on the number of participants). Not certain that’s what’s going on here, we’ll learn more once the settlement is approved.

There’s definitely a lot of spin in the press release. Maybe Apple trying to prove a point to anti-trust folks? Follow the headline link for all the details.

Fantastic lead-in to next week’s WWDC. Love me some great swag, especially the pins.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s annual worldwide developer conferences cost the company about $50 million a year to put on and the company is building a new center at its Silicon Valley headquarters to assist developers, according to its top App Store executive.

This is from Phil Schiller’s testimony yesterday at the ongoing Epic v Apple court proceedings.

$50 million. That’s a lot. Going to assume (speculation on my part) that that number includes the costs of paying all the engineers for time they contribute to prepping their sessions, as well as for time they spend at WWDC itself. And then, at least in the olden days, there’s the cost of renting the venue, prepping the venue, and staffing the venue.

Those costs surely have come down significantly, now that everything is virtual and held in house.

Another piece of the accounting puzzle that’s changed is the income from the hefty $1,599 ticket price. Multiply that by 5,000 attendees (pre-pandemic) and that’s about $8 million back to Apple.

The second bit of that quote is “the company is building a new center at its Silicon Valley headquarters to assist developers”. Can’t wait to learn about this.

Will WWDC ever return to an in-person event? If so, will it be downsized (like sporting events, with their 25% crowd limits, at least in the short term)? Will this center be designed to replace the in-person labs that are such a critical part of pre-COVID WWDC?

Sami Fathi, MacRumors:

Eleftheriou has highlighted yet another scam app on the ‌App Store‌. This time Eleftheriou is shining a light on how one scam app called “Privacy Assitant: StringVPN” uses Apple’s in-app purchasing system to trick people into purchasing either a weekly, monthly, or yearly subscription for a fake VPN service.

Here’s the tweet:

https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1379682377304211457

First things first, wrap your head around what’s going on here. Then wonder why these sorts of apps are allowed on the App Store.

I posed that question in this tweet. Follow the link, read the responses.

Some have suggested that Apple makes money on the scams, is not motivated to fix the problem. I just can’t accept that explanation. No way.

A better explanation is in this tweet from Joe Cieplinski:

I think it’s because for every one of these, there are 10,000 more that they did take down. I don’t think most of us understand the scale at which people are scamming the App Store. How many per day can a small group of reviewers take down, realistically?

If so, feels like Apple either needs to ramp up their efforts here, budget for more reviewers, or find a way to get smarter. Maybe they could create a trusted list of third party reviewers, starting with @Keleftheriou, who can help trim the scams out of the App Store. Maybe even offer them a bounty.

This hurts users, hurts Apple’s reputation, and also harms the developer community, especially indie devs, because it makes it so much harder for their apps to stand out/stay in business. This has got to change.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

When Apple announced the transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips, the company offered a custom Mac mini with the A12Z Bionic chip so that developers could update their macOS apps to support the new ARM platform. The company is now asking developers to return these DTK Mac minis as the M1 Macs were introduced in November last year.

And:

As developers had to pay $500 to get the custom Mac mini with A12Z Bionic chip, Apple will offer a $200 credit for each DTK returned. This credit can be used as a discount to buy a new M1 MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini.

Apple made the Developer Transition Kit available so folks could test and update their Mac apps and be ready when the M1 Macs started shipping. Developers paid $500 for the kit and knew when they signed up that they’d have to return them at some point (returning the DTK was specified in the agreement, no surprise there).

Apple is easing the sting of having to return the “rented” DTK with a $200 “one-time use code” credit towards the purchase of an M1 Mac.

One wrinkle: The $200 expires at the end of May. Presumably, WWDC will be virtual again and will occur in June. And if new Macs are announced at WWDC, this means the $200 will not be usable for those Macs. Some developers are notably unhappy.

All in all, I think Apple could have avoided this PR bruise if they would have clearly laid out the specifics when they released the DTK in the first place. You pay us $500, we’ll give you a $200 credit that expires at the end of May when you return the box. As is, I got the sense that people were expecting Apple to send everyone an M1 Mac. An unfair expectation, true, but Apple could have controlled this from the beginning.

Unbound for Mac blog:

With the announcement of the App Store Small Business Program, I’ve stopped selling Unbound directly via the web site. I thought it would be worth explaining how I came to that decision.

This is an interesting read, mostly for developers, but also for folks interested in Apple’s business practices.

If you sell a Mac app, you likely either sell it on the Mac App Store or via an eCommerce engine like Paddle. The economics are a big part of the “how to sell” decision.

Paddle takes a much smaller cut than Apple, but requires a time and coding investment. Apple’s move to cut their end for small (under $1M) sellers from 30% to 15% definitely has an impact on the overall math.

Paddle gives you the freedom to update your app when you like, no approval necessary. Apple, obviously, has hoops to jump through, including a notarization process, and restrictions on content.

Paddle makes it easy to do demos, offer coupon codes, etc.

If Apple highlights your App, the exposure can bring a huge spike in sales.

If Paddle suffered a data breach, suddenly I would be on the hook for exposing people’s emails or (God forbid) credit card data. While this has not happened, and I have no reason whatsoever to think Paddle is anything but competent, I’m still much happier trusting Apple’s security practices than any third party. (And if Apple has a security breach, I feel like I’m unlikely to take the blame from customers—the vast majority of them have done business with Apple directly in the past, whether for their computers, phones, or even just iTunes purchases.)

Even apart from a data breach, removing all third parties from the equation is a privacy win for customers—I can proudly tell people the app collects no data whatsoever, whereas Paddle had to “phone home” to validate product keys.

This last bit is something I never considered.

Worthwhile, provocative read.

Apple:

Apple today announced an industry-leading new developer program to accelerate innovation and help small businesses and independent developers propel their businesses forward with the next generation of groundbreaking apps on the App Store. The new App Store Small Business Program will benefit the vast majority of developers who sell digital goods and services on the store, providing them with a reduced commission on paid apps and in-app purchases. Developers can qualify for the program and a reduced, 15 percent commission if they earned up to $1 million in proceeds during the previous calendar year.

This is major news for indie developers. Game changing.

The way I read it, if Apple pays you up to $999,999, across all your apps, in a single year, you pay 15% commission instead of the current 30%. You’ve just moved from 70% to 85% take (21% increase). That’s huge.

Specifics on the program, which launches January 1st:

• Existing developers who made up to $1 million in 2020 for all of their apps, as well as developers new to the App Store, can qualify for the program and the reduced commission.

• If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.

• If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.

So what happens if you hit the magic $1 million threshold?

My understanding is that you’ll pay 15% on the first $1 million, then 30% on everything above that first $1 million.

Remember, this is across all apps, so if you have 10 apps, add all the revenue together to figure out where you are, commission-wise.

Great move on Apple’s part. Long time coming.

Unless you are a developer, it’s not really important to understand the App Clips concept.

What is amazing to experience is the new iOS 14 ability to play a game demo in Safari itself.

Give this a try:

• Fire up iOS 14 Safari on your iPhone
• Tap this link to the FiriGames Phoenix II game page
• Tap the Play button in the top banner of the page

The game play is fun, but makes the larger point that you got to experience the game before you plunked down your hard earned bucks. A fantastic capability.

John Gruber, on Widgetsmith:

It’s rocketed to the #1 spot on the App Store’s Productivity list. My teenage son, out of the blue, asked me if I’d heard about it — not iOS 14 widgets in general, but Widgetsmith specifically. A well-deserved hit product.

First things first, here’s an App Store link to Widgetsmith. It’s free to download, with in-app purchases. Give it a look.

Moving on:

And but so of course the ripoff scammers are already doing their thing, and the App Store is welcoming them. Search for “Widgetsmith” — the exact name of Smith’s app — and the first app in the results is not Widgetsmith but a name-alike ripoff called, I swear, “Widgetsmith – Color Widgets”. This utterly shameless ripoff, replete with a ham-fisted knockoff of the icon to boot, is listed above the actual Widgetsmith, despite the fact that the actual Widgetsmith is currently the #1 app in Productivity and has over 53,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews. The ripoff app has 25 5-star ratings, one 1-star rating, and one written review, which reads, verbatim, “Thank developer for making such great app especially for iOS 14!” The entire description of the ripoff app is written in similar broken English.

As John notes in his update, the “ripoff” version of Widgetsmith is now gone, more a testament to the power of the press, I suspect, than any automated App Store takedown process.

Read Gruber’s take on all this. It’s right on the money. How does this sort of thing continue to happen? Is it a sign of the complexity of the App Store, an overwhelming number of titles to police?

If that is the case, if the volume of available apps is more than Apple can properly manage, might that not be a fair argument for reducing that 30% fee (less service, reduced fee)?

Oh, and props for that headline, Gruber. Delicious.

Reuters:

The Coalition for App Fairness, structured as a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. and Brussels, said it plans to advocate legal changes that would force Apple to change. Beyond Epic, Match and Spotify, other members include smaller firms such as Basecamp, Blix, Blockchain.com, Deezer, and Tile, along with developers from Europe including the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe and Protonmail.

From the Coalition signup page:

The Coalition for App Fairness was created by industry leading companies who want to see freedom of choice for consumers and a level playing field for businesses. This is an open call to all developers, big and small, to join us – and together we will fight back against the monopolist control of the app ecosystem by Apple.

If you are interested in joining the coalition, please fill out the following form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Is there a path for compromise? Will this continue to escalate until something explodes? Is this the hill Apple will defend to the death?

Lines are being drawn, sides being chosen. I hate this whole thing.

Nice write-up (with lots of clarifying screenshots) from Jeff Johnson on where Apple is going with Gatekeeper and signing on the Mac, especially with the coming of Apple silicon-based Macs.

If you are not a developer, this is still worth a look. Think about the current experience of running an app you downloaded from the internet, as opposed to from the Mac App Store. Apple is slowly tightening the screws, from the olden days of “run whatever you want” to “we highly discourage this practice”.

The sequence of pictures really tells this story.

Charlie Monroe:

On Aug 4, 2020 I woke up to a slightly different world – I had lost my business as it seemed. Full inbox of reports of my apps not launching (crashing on launch) and after not too long I found out that when I sign into my Apple developer account I can no longer see that I would be enrolled into Apple’s developer program – au contraire – it shows a button for me to enroll, which I tried clicking, but only got a message that I can’t do that.

After more investigation, I found out that the distribution certificates were revoked – evidently by Apple as no one else has access to them and I was sound asleep when all this happened. Each macOS app these days needs to be codesigned using an Apple-issued certificate so that the app will flawlessly work on all computers. When Apple revokes the certificate, it’s generally a remove kill-switch for the apps.

I got really frightened as all of sudden, no user was able to use my apps anymore.

This is an interesting read. Clearly, a mistake was made and Apple did apologize.

Do check that alert that popped up when users launched Charlie’s app. That’d certainly make me wonder about the safety of the software I was running.

Reuters:

When the App Store launched in 2008 with 500 apps, Apple executives viewed it as an experiment in offering a compellingly low commission rate to attract developers, Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing and top executive for the App Store, told Reuters in an interview.

“One of the things we came up with is, we’re going to treat all apps in the App Store the same – one set of rules for everybody, no special deals, no special terms, no special code, everything applies to all developers the same. That was not the case in PC software. Nobody thought like that. It was a complete flip around of how the whole system was going to work,” Schiller said.

And this bit of history:

In the mid-2000s, software sold through physical stores involved paying for shelf space and prominence, costs that could eat 50% of the retail price, said Ben Bajarin, head of consumer technologies at Creative Strategies. Small developers could not break in.

Bajarin said the App Store’s predecessor was Handango, a service that around 2005 let developers deliver apps over cellular connections to users’ Palm and other devices for a 40% commission.

With the App Store, “Apple took that to a whole other level. And at 30%, they were a better value,” Bajarin said.

Back to Phil Schiller:

“As we were talking to some of the biggest game developers, for example, Minecraft, they said, ‘I totally get why you want the user to be able to pay for it on device. But we have a lot of users coming who bought their subscription or their account somewhere else – on an Xbox, on a PC, on the web. And it’s a big barrier to getting onto your store,’” Schiller said. “So we created this exception to our own rule.”

And:

Schiller said Apple’s cut helps fund an extensive system for developers: Thousands of Apple engineers maintain secure servers to deliver apps and develop the tools to create and test them.

This is clearly a hot button topic. Does that 30% cut make the same sense today as it did back in the early days?

And what about the fact that macOS developers can sell their apps through services like Paddle, who takes a much smaller percentage but provides no marketing exposure or security/privacy oversight? Why doesn’t Apple allow this same sort of behavior in the iOS App Store? This would provide developers the same choice they have with the Mac App Store and likely quiet the uproar.

Seems to me, the devil in this model is the critical importance, to Apple, of services revenue. As I’ve said before, Apple is a public company and is beholden to its shareholders. They need that 30% from iOS app sales. I suspect the money it gets from the Mac App Store has never been big enough to be worth the PR black eye it would bring to force that iOS model on Mac developers.

It’d be interesting to see the cost of running the App Store, with all its engineers, writers, servers, all of it, as a cost per developer. Put that cost, side-by-side against the revenue per developer that Apple takes in.

Serenity Caldwell continues to bring it. Great work.

As much as I miss the camaraderie, I am really enjoying this year’s experience. My hope is that all the changes Apple is bringing, especially the new production elements, will continue next year.

[VIDEO] First things first, that’s Serenity Caldwell doing the voiceover on that video (embedded in main Loop post). Great to hear her in her new role at Apple.

As to the video itself, it’s fantastic. To me, it’s like a 15 second, quick cut, high energy iPhone commercial, stretched out to almost 2 minutes. And every bit as enjoyable.

Brent Simmons:

The best part of the App Store, years ago, from this developer’s point of view, was that it was easy to charge money for an app. No need to set up a system — just choose the price, and Apple takes care of everything. So easy!

Ah, the good old days. Before the race to the bottom.

But these days, in almost all cases, you’d be ill-advised to charge up front for your app. You need a trial version and in-app purchasing (IAP) and maybe a subscription.

Here’s the thing: this is a massive pain in the ass to implement, test, and support — Apple does not make it easy.

It is harder and harder to make a living building apps. Apple expects a lot from their developers. And if an ARM-based Mac shows up, that’s yet another wrinkle in an already complicated model.

Will Apple talk about the App Store this week, beyond touting numbers? Will we see a “We hear you, and here’s what we’re doing about it” moment?

Bookmark the headline link. Click to set a reminder. Not that you’d forget, but for some of us a good idea.

Apple:

When the Apple 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 22 in a new virtual format, a global community of 23 million developers will have the opportunity to join from around the world for free through the Apple Developer app and the Apple Developer website.

23 million developers. That is an amazing number, especially when I think back to that tiny developer universe when the first iPhone SDK rolled out back in March, 2008.

Among them will be 350 Swift Student Challenge winners from 41 different countries and regions. The students were chosen based on their original Swift playground submission, part of Apple’s annual WWDC student challenge, which recognizes and celebrates the next generation of coders and creators.

This is one of my favorite parts of WWDC, the opportunity for the newest generation of developers to show off their skills.

Want to learn to program? Fire up your iPad and check out Swift Playgrounds. It’s a wonderful way to get started.

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

According to new data from Sensor Tower, the top 1% of publishers globally accounted for a whopping 80% of the total 29.6 billion app downloads in the third quarter of 2019. That means just 20%, or 6 billion, downloads are left for the rest of the publishers.

This translates to:

This bottom 99%, which equates to roughly 784,080 publishers, averaged approximately 7,650 downloads each during the quarter.

That’s an average of 2,550 downloads a month. Hard to make a living as an indie dev.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Software chief Craig Federighi and lieutenants including Stacey Lysik announced the changes at a recent internal “kickoff” meeting with the company’s software developers. The new approach calls for Apple’s development teams to ensure that test versions, known as “daily builds,” of future software updates disable unfinished or buggy features by default. Testers will then have the option to selectively enable those features, via a new internal process and settings menu dubbed Flags, allowing them to isolate the impact of each individual addition on the system.

And:

Prior to iOS 14’s development, some teams would add features every day that weren’t fully tested, while other teams would contribute changes weekly. “Daily builds were like a recipe with lots of cooks adding ingredients,” a person with knowledge of the process said.

Test software got so crammed with changes at different stages of development that the devices often became difficult to use. Because of this, some “testers would go days without a livable build, so they wouldn’t really have a handle on what’s working and not working,” the person said.

The proof will be in the pudding which, in this case, is iOS 14.

Apple:

Starting today, the WWDC app is now the Apple Developer app and delivers in-depth information from Apple experts all year round. Stay up to date with the latest developer news, informative videos, WWDC content, and more.

Smart. Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is but once a year. Apple is shifting the app to be more of a year round hub for developers.

Interesting comment from Mark Gurman:

https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1196627420201263105

One argument against this is the fact that there’s a WWDC tab in the facelifted app. And another, with perhaps less weight, is the emotional tie developers have to the WWDC name.

There will always be bugs. But the level of bugginess does seem to be rising to new heights.

Let’s start off with this recent Daring Fireball post, iOS 13.2 is overzealously killing apps in the background (and yields joy if you are a fan of the DF hidden URL game):

This bug where apps are getting killed soon after they’re backgrounded is driving me nuts. Start a YouTube video in Safari, switch to another app, go back to Safari — and the video loads from scratch and starts from the beginning.

There are many similar examples. Supposedly, this issue was quashed in a new beta, but it was surprising to see it make its way into the wild.

Next, take a look at this post from Kirk McElhearn, detailing problems opening iCloud files.

Another widespread issue is the frustration of trying to get HomePod to recognize a second person’s voice. For me, the issue manifested itself when my wife asked HomePod Siri to add an item to the shopping list, something she’s done on a regular basis since HomePod first entered our house a long time ago. But now, all she got was:

Who is this?

And that took us down a wild road of trying to figure out how to get HomePod Siri to recognize her as a person. Now, you might put this off to pilot error, but this problem is pretty widespread. I’ve spent a ton of time trying to solve this problem for my setup, and also helping others fix it for their setup. There’s no shortage of people who can’t get this to work and now have loved ones shut out from the HomePod.

I suspect that the issue at the core of this HomePod problem is a poorly chosen setting, or lack of the proper update. To me, if iOS 13.2 is required for this to work, Siri should say as much, instead of simply saying the unhelpful, “Who is this?” The complexity of the Home app setup is daunting, well beyond the capabilities of a newbie to work through. And there are a lot of settings that have to be “just so” in order for this to work.

I’m not trying to pick on Apple’s developers here. But something does seem amiss. Some say the issue is too much pressure to deliver on too short a timeline. I have no idea. But as a user, I am frustrated.

Apple:

The camp offers a hands-on technology lab, one-on-one code-level guidance from Apple experts and engineers as well as mentorship, inspiration and insights from top Apple leaders. After the lab concludes, participants get ongoing support and become part of a growing community of exceptional alumni who can help create and build businesses.

This is a great program, planting seeds for the future. Interested in participating? The next camp runs from January 28 to February 5. Here’s a link to the application.