Apps on iPad are starting to rot

Apps on iPad are starting to rot
Marco Arment, a well-known foreign developer, wrote on his personal blog that apps on iOS are beginning to "rot", especially on iPad. Specifically, apps are no longer actively updated, app versions are not developed specifically for iOS 7, and the iPad App Store is no longer vibrant and has a variety of choices. If you are an iPad user, now let you take an iPad and carefully look at the third-party apps on it. How do you think they are doing? Are they still actively updated? Are their versions developed specifically for iOS 7? Looking around, you must see - iOS 6 keyboard or old-style controls, right? Looking back, can we find any new and great iPad apps recently? For users, is the iPad App Store still vibrant and has a variety of good choices? Do you still care whether new iOS apps will have iPad versions and be upgraded in time? Is there? If iOS 8 is released, are you sure that some apps can be upgraded? Since I am not a loyal iPad user and I don't use iPad much, I really hope you can say - our iPad is fine and there is no problem, this is just your iPad abnormal... Anyway, it seems to me that iPad software is becoming stagnant. The App Store's "Top Lists" are doing evil The design of the Apple App Store is the biggest cause of this problem. The dominance and prestige of the "Top Lists" far outweighs the efforts of others. Therefore, 99.98% of the apps outside the list are encouraged by Apple's ecosystem to imitate the design of the apps in the "Top Lists". Coupled with the huge profit incentive, this leads to all kinds of phenomena: spam, shoddy products, plagiarism and app scams. In addition, quality, sustainability and updates seem irrelevant to the success of the App Store. Apple is just lazily relying on the apps listed in the top list instead of more editing, searching and selecting good apps. Given this, the easiest and best way for Apple to improve the quality of apps is to remove the Top Lists from the Apple App Store. I hope Apple realizes its importance to everyone - developers, consumers, and hopes that Apple will make changes to encourage higher quality apps. Yes, if they still want to continue to drive iPad sales and increase the differentiation between iOS and Android devices, this is the first step. Ubiquitous competition in the app market is hurting the quality and sustainability of iOS apps. As apps become more commoditized than in the early days, the app market is becoming a mature, developed industry, and competition is everywhere, and it is becoming more brutal and unscrupulous in many unknown areas. It takes more effort than ever for an app to attract attention, but it is difficult to get or increase revenue. For full-time iOS independent developers, their main income comes from their apps, not consulting or other related work, but now such full-time independent developers are becoming increasingly rare. Consulting business has not been immune to the decline. At that time in 2008, clients spent a lot on app development because they had to do it. Now mobile app developers are everywhere, and app development is no longer a specialty, but a commodity. I am not the only one who has noticed this. Matt Gemmell, Luc Vandal, Gus Mueller and others have also noticed the existence of this problem and pointed out this phenomenon in their respective articles. These pressures are taking a huge toll on the quality and sustainability of iOS apps, and it’s important to note that this problem is far more severe and visible on the iPad than on the iPhone, mainly because the huge installed base on the iPhone can hide this problem for a long time, while the iPad’s installed base is much smaller, so the problem on the iPad is easy to show. But the iPhone app market is also doomed, because most of the same problems exist. As the economy tightens, it will be harder to get the full benefits that developers paid for apps in the past: full-time developers, pixel-perfect custom designs for every screen, frequent free updates, and interfaces that are completely different from iPhone and iPad. At the same time, there is a wave of developers quitting. Many people will give up development for stable, high-paying jobs (many have already given up), but for those of us who want to stay, there are solutions to the current problems. When an industry matures and can handle these pressures, the survivors are those who can adapt and find terrible reasons to lay off people, while at the same time convincing the rest to accept more work without pay increases, so that they can do more with less money. So is there really no future for app development? Efficiency is the key. Having efficiency means being able to do more work and write more but less custom code and UI. In addition, Apple has greatly helped us improve efficiency. Each iOS version brings new features that make it easier to implement many features. For example, the iOS 7 redesign brings advantages to independent developers, which can make ordinary UIs cool. iOS 8 helps even more. It expands and opens up a vast new world. CloudKit eliminates the trouble of operating web services for many applications. Adaptive layout will no longer require most applications to prepare different UIs for iPad and iPhone. Instead, it provides a UI that automatically matches the screen size similar to responsive web design. The road ahead is still not easy, but I believe that those who survive can adapt and continue to move forward.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.

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