“The key takeaway we’ve reached (after two less than 24 hours playing with the iOS 7 Beta release) is this – every App must consider even basic updates to its UI to survive in a post-iOS 6 world.” Great. Telling developers to update their entire application – user interface and behaviour alike – to target a look and behaviour that isn’t final yet. Seems like potential for a lot of wasted work here.
I’m not sure I could think of a better way to annoy developers all over the world in one fell swoop! Google must be loving this!
The way developers feel about working on iOS versus Android is encapsulated in one slide from Tim Cook’s keynote:
http://9to5mac.com/2013/06/10/tim-cook-talks-numbers-at-apples-wwdc…
$10 billion paid to iOS developers. That probably compensates for the terrible burden of dealing with an OS update
I also noticed this piece by Horace Dediu at Asymco that shows that, based on Apple’s public pronouncements on iTunes accountholder growth, the company is adding approximately 500,000 new accounts each and every day.
http://www.asymco.com/2013/06/14/whats-an-apple-user-worth/
That should also help keep iOS developers happy.
It depends. If your app is free, you have to do the work and don’t get anything for it.
But also note the complaint about the various versions of Android still out there that create such a burden. Well the apps work across the platforms, the Gingerbread apps work on ICS. Maybe not optimally, but the apps I have on Android tend to work across my devices.
Apple is also saying everyone moves quickly to new versions, so you will have to change the app – and no one asked the key question – will the updated iOS 7 apps work well with iOS 6, or when they update, those still on iOS 6 will end up with a clunky, annoying experience? Or do you have to write it to support both with conditional code? And what if not everyone updates so quickly to iOS 7 given the radical change?
I would hope Apple would make things play nicely and easily, but then if the UI API were so good, why is iOS 6-7 not transparent? That the apps would work fine under iOS 7 without changes, but would simply work better if the changes were made?
Then ask money for it, do nothing or pull the app.
If you make free apps I suspect you enjoy coding so you’d welcome iOS 7 and new and interesting things to do while tinkering with the old code.
You didn’t understand the point at all.
Yes, app will works on iOS 7 without any change apart may be a detail here and there as it has always been the case between major iOS updates.
I am a developer and I have my own app: I found a single issue with iOS 7 I will have to fix, but the app works exactly the same way on iOS 7 compared to iOS 6, the difference being that it doesn’t looks like iOS 7 UI.
The point is that iOS 7 UI is so different that if you do not change the UI of your app to match the new look and feel, it will quickly feel as an outdated app and users may switch to a more “modern” app.
Respectfully, it does not matter that $10bn or however much was paid out to developers. As a developer, I only care about how much *I* make.
That’s understandable but if one is talking about the position or experience of the iOS developer community as a whole then that $10 billion sure makes a difference.
Operating systems change, occasionally in a quite radical step function. That’s just how it is I think. Tedious for some, an opportunity for others, but progress nevertheless.
Silly statement. How much you make is up to you. If you are making nothing then that means people don’t like what you are making.
Or it can also mean that the current mobile app distribution model only puts very few apps on the spotlight, at the expense of others which are so deeply hidden at the bottom of infinitely long lists that users do not even see them.
No market is free from that negative aspect. You’re pretty much screwed anywhere – iOS, Android and WP by now.
I totally agree with you here, however it does go to show that metrics like “woot, developers made 10 bn this year” are totally meaningless, whatever the platform.
Now, a comparison of median revenue and revenue quantiles across platforms would be much more interesting. But I guess that no one wants to do that because it would break the illusion that the mobile market is a software wonderland where it’s trivial to make money…
Edited 2013-06-15 13:27 UTC
I would love to see the median of iOS payouts. Not average, but a median.
Nobody ever got fired by going IBM/MS/Apple…
No, it doesn’t really say anything about how they feel.
Edited 2013-06-16 06:12 UTC
How does “basic updates” and “UI” translate in to “entire app”?
A lot of apps will be updated anyway to take advantage of iOS 7 specific features.
I don’t really like the new UI look, tbh. Old look had its individuality,new UI looks a lot like a mix of Android and Metro UIs. I especially hate the new icons. Pre-7.0 had great looking icons, now its just meh.
Edited 2013-06-14 15:40 UTC
This is why I have a loathing for so many developers – this belief that you write code once and then milk it forever without ever having to maintain or add any new features requested by end users because by birth right they should be millionaires. Honestly, there is this sense of entitlement that because there is no ‘moving parts’ therefore it should require no regular TLC to keep the software up to date. I hope that for every developer that whines that he/she might actually have to do some work that there are a group of developers willing to do the work to dethrone the incumbent in that particular genre of software.
As a developer, I already have a laundry list of features requested by users that I’m working on. But with each new version of iOS development of actual features has to be put on hold while time is spent making sure existing apps won’t break and will look appropriate in the new version. With substantial UI changes in iOS 7 there’s going to be more code and resource changes than any previous version change. Meanwhile, that list of features users are waiting for have to wait. When developing for a desktop OS, version changes were rarely this problematic for developers. A new OS simply meant new features available if you wanted to take advantage of them, but each new iOS version is like a silo unto itself.
This makes no sense. You don’t have to change your app for iOS 7. Just test it, and perhaps you will discover a fix or two you have to make.
Fitting in to the visual style of iOS is purely optional. If you would rather stick with your own visual style, then by all means do that. No one is forcing you to update the style of your app. The exact same thing applies to desktop operating systems. If you wrote your app with a Windows XP style, then it will look out of place on Windows 7. It will continue to function though.
But don’t be too surprised if people migrate to your competition because they have done the work to make their apps fit in visually, while you haven’t. That’s business.