Vampire Survivors should have won.
I didn’t know people still use the App Store.
As opposed to?
So, people don’t use third-party apps anymore? Doubtful.
what? there are almost 2 billion iPhones out there, how are we supposed to download and update apps? you’re tripping dude
Of course a game with $100 in-app purchases is on the list. Disgusting.
When was the last time you guys downloaded an app from the App Store? It’s been months if not years for me. Got Reddit, Instagram, Shazam, and Google Maps. I could give a shit about anything else
Just did a download history check. Between my iPad and my iPhone I download anywhere between 4 and 10 apps a month with the odd exception of a month a I may download 1. Actually hit 11 the other month.
To be fair though I use my iPad as a musician so I’m regularly downloading AUv3’s. New keys, samplers, mixing stuff, effects and so on.
I got Lumafusion during their Black Friday sale, so I can play around with during a long as trip in a month and it’s nice to support a developer that doesn’t require you to pay monthly.
i love mobile puzzle games and have them in droves.
weekly, i tune in to scroll through the newly listed apps, and sometimes find one that interests me.
then i search inside its page for similar apps.
i definitely encounter the same recommended wheel of apps, but at times it leads to a single app that will interests me.
and that’s kind of enough for me.
it’s also a toilet time waster, so…
When an app requires subscriptions or in-app purchases, it’s a hard no from me to even consider to install it.
I don’t mind paying for an app once, even to a significant amount. But I don’t want to commit to a subscription, not for an app.
But I don’t want to commit to a subscription
There are certain cases where a subscription makes sense (password managers, weather apps, and content apps like Netflix and Spotify come to mind specifically).
Like 2 days ago. I got Logic Pro.
Nice! Enjoy. I was just tracking in the studio with my copy yesterday. Love being able to have Logic in the booth without the fan of my laptop.
*couldn’t
Honkai star rail well deserved game of the year
Really good game
I fucking love it tbh, played every day since it came out. Hoyo knows what they are doing
*money sink
How so ?
My guy it is a gacha game you either waste your time on it or pay
Yes it a gacha game but you aren’t force pull ^^
F2p vegan crossfit E6E5 Seele main btw /s
Lost in Play, Lies of P and Honkai Star Rail are the only non-subscription apps, and the last one has IAPs up to $100. The best apps and games on the shittiest app store.
For anyone searching for a strong puzzle game, one time payment and no IAP, please support Loco Looper: https://www.locolooper.com/
I am not the dev, but I wish people supported smaller studios who actually put out quality apps on mobile without riddling them with ads or subscription mechanics.
Starrail is a gacha game tho
Star Rail and Genshin are both gacha games that are completely enjoyable as a pure F2P player. The main cast of characters plus a few of the easily obtainable F2P characters are more than enough to get you through all of the story and event content, and they even give you enough of a trickle of jades/primogems through free story and event quest rewards that you can pull a few 5* characters (though you obviously have to be a lot more selective on who you want to pull for than a paid player would have to be).
Star rail is actually a quite polished game I wasn’t surprised it hit #1
I don’t play it because I mostly quit gacha a few years ago, but Mihoyo really are the best at making really nice looking mobile games.
Those IAPs look gacha as fuck.
They are, but they’re completely optional and you don’t need to make any purchases to progress through the entirety of the game content. Plenty of people are pure F2P players.
*best apps and games for us to make money
I recommend Automatoys. Download full game and unlock entire thing with 1 iap. Its really sad seeing all the reviews dogging on it for “scamming them”… because it wasnt entirely free.
People just expect free games now. Even if it means its grindy as fuck, with tons of ads and IAP. People just want free.
Who still uses the App Store?
Everything is subscription based, it’s a hellscape of apps.
Even when I know what I want I cringe with the 90% scammy apps in the search results.
Wait, there are alternatives to the App Store?
There will be in the EU but not yet
I’m counting down the days. Apple has until March. I can’t believe they’re leaving it to this late. They’ve had years to roll this out and they’re waiting until the last minute. They better have a BULLET PROOF rollout or the EU can and probably will fine them $33B for non-compliance. “Whoopsie we have bugs” won’t cut it after this many years of notice. They’re playing with fire.
While I think there needs to be alternatives I suspect a lot of people will be disappointed as many developers don’t alter pricing at all and we are going to see some really scummy behavior by some going forward.
I am a very infrequent user of the app store as is and we have always had freedom on the Mac platform and that just meant mostly other stores with their own embedded fee structure along with having to guess if a site and developer were trustworthy.
So we may just end up in a situation where we have a few large trusted app stores and still have to pay them all.
I’m not expecting much of a change to pricing, and I’m fine with that. It’s all the apps Apple has been blocking for all these years that I’m interested in. Particularly Firefox with its own engine, Google Assistant as the default voice assistant on iOS, and Steam as an actual distribution and installation method where we can buy iOS apps on Steam and play them on our phones.
This is a very lofty ideal. Especially something like Google assistant as a system default. That would require significant system-level changes that gave an application/service low-level access to your device. I just don’t see that happening.
Changing voice assistants is explicitly required in the DMA. There’s a lot in there in addition to sideloading. That’s why I’m surprised they’re leaving it to the last minute. It’s a huge change.
There may be small variations in pricing, but the reality is more likely developers and app companies will keep pricing the same and pocket the App Store “fees”.
There’s already trollstore/ side loading up to 3 apps for a one week signing window.
The former requires you to not update your iOS (works up to 17.0 rn) and the later is a pain in the butt to keep re-signing
As opposed to what? What are you talking about?
I genuinely don’t see what’s wrong with that tbh. The updates don’t pay for themselves. It’s kind of ridiculous people expect lifetime development for a single $5 fee or something
As an app developer, it’s difficult. It’s a ton of time and effort to develop and maintain apps. User expectations are sky high. The associated tooling and server costs to provide high level experiences can get very costly.
Subscriptions give us an ability to get a more stable revenue stream. This helps us to not need to focus so much on constantly acquiring new customers but actually create a great experience for our users. Same thing with ads, they are annoying but without making some revenue we would just be bleeding money. We could skip the ads and just harvest and sell you data. Remember, almost every app makes money off of you it’s just a question of how.
The problem is how often they are abused. Pay to win games are terrible for everybody. Making anything a real grind to get without paying sucks too. Freemium is a nice model but again, sometimes it’s done poorly. It’s a balance of trying to pick what features to gate behind the paywall so as to encourage purchases but not degrade the experience for others.
In one of my apps, it’s entirely ad free and all basic functionality is usable without paying. I don’t have a server for it and everything is local, so the costs are lower. I don’t really collect much data on users so as to not be invasive. The subscription unlocks themes, a stats page, and states it’s also to support the dev team. Personally, I think that’s reasonable.
My other app has higher costs (server) and the subscription is more and there are ads. One banner ad, one full screen. Full screen only appears after checking in, and isn’t too disruptive (imo). Most users could close the app after that and not care too much. That subscription removes ads, and adds some goodies like premium themes, app icons, and user tags.
At the end of the day it’s hundreds of hours of effort to create and support these apps, in addition to the monetary cost (you need a developer account with Apple, $120 CAD a year). I believe I should be compensated for all the work, just like anyone else. I’m not a fan of harvesting and selling data so I prefer the subscription model. I remember reading about the best option back in the day. One time purchases are brutal for devs because there is often a peak early on in the apps life. They then have a bunch of users, but not much income. So it’s hard to support the app and they often had to continually pump out new ones.
I’ve tried to create a fair system where the premium portions are mostly nice to haves and aesthetics, not core functionality. It’s difficult to get right and ultimately there will be users who hate it but I can’t please everyone unfortunately.
I hardly ever. My app discovery is primarily outside of the App Store. Like you said, subscriptions have been over-exploitative and browsing the store is not what I find to be a pleasant experience.
A fuckin makup app being the best iPad app sums up the platform to be honest.
Why? Because it doesn’t appeal to your personal taste?
*subscription make-up app.
How to summarize the app store in one sentence: pdf reader app with 60euro yearly subscription
And whose fault is that? Greedy apple wanting to take a cut.
Confused the hell out of me as to why I couldn’t see kindle versions in the amazon iOS app
They take the same % as Steam does on PC
I mean I get that apple charge a percent for the app, they are hosting it. But why should I have to pay them extra for content I consume directly via the app?
That old model just wasn’t sustainable. Developers needed to constantly sell copies to new customers just to keep the lights on. It worked for small-time, one-off apps like a pdf reader but for games, particularly with multiplayer or online features they have to pay employees salaries and server costs too.
At some point the customer base was maxed out and sales slowed.
I went back in my app list to the beginning when the App Store launched and so many of the companies that made those early apps are just gone now. Blaming Apple as being greedy is reductive and overly simplistic.
r/iOSgaming may help you out. Lots of good games and suggestions and many aren’t subscription/PTW. You will need to pay up front though.
(Far to many people complain about subscriptions but then also complain that the app isn’t free or has ads.)
Productivity apps are definitely a hell scape of overpriced subscriptions though. I will not argue that.
Oh grandmaster Feahnor, where do you legally get your native apps from?
Guess what. Not one of them is pay-once. All are subscription-based. I guess getting 30% does skew one’s judgement…
Photomator has a pay once option. Too Good To Go is literally free with no IAP. That’s just from the apps that I know about from the list, not sure about any others that aren’t subscription based or offer a pay-once option.
I just scrolled through them. All had in app payments except for the Arcade one which in itself is a subscription, and the MacOS one. Maybe it’s showing me different ones than to you. :)
A bunch of them just have a one time purchase option and some are even free.
AllTrails is a funny one. It’s founded largely on the crowdsourced notes from their community. But I wouldn’t be surprised, even expect, that the developers get 70% of the cut and Apple 30%, none of which have anything to do with this main aspect of the app that is highlighted in the App Store’s “featured app” page.
Apple even has the gall to highlight the crowdsourced trail notes in their “featured app” page.
The trail notes have never been the selling point for me personally. It’s more about how there are 10 different high quality versions of every trail, including 3D modeled trails that are all available with GPS tracking offline that can make it a literal lifesaver.
I’m not sure why they shouldn’t be able to charge for such a robust app (which also comes with a watch all), even if it also features community notes and tips.
A bunch of them just have a one time purchase option and some are even free.
Not one of them is pay-once.
The Lost in Play iPad app looks like a one-time purchase.
I wouldn’t even mind it if they were more affordable, but asking me to pay €60 for a weather app or €120 or whatever for Ynab is ridiculous. I usually only start yearly subscriptions around the start of the year, for budget reasons, but that would easily add up.
I wouldn’t mind paying for some apps if they offered monthly subscriptions at the same price as a yearly subscription. I get that the whole point of yearly subscriptions is to lock people in, but they usually only offer a weekly trial, which isn’t enough to see if I’ll use the app enough to be worth its money.
YNAB pays for itself for sure. Absolutely love it.
What does the subscription weather app even do? Give you a free umbrella every time you forget yours? I don’t think there is any app worth money on mobile except for some games and professional apps.
yea no you get enhanced radar features among other things
That makes sense. But what sort of data would radar show? The location of nearby clouds and where exactly rain is?
What does the subscription weather app even do?
It funds the exorbitantly expensive costs of constantly tracking and updating weather
Does checking the weather for 30 days really cost even $2 (assuming $3 for maintaining the actual app and profits)?
Lies of P is pay-once.
Still kinda boggles my mind that Unpacking got a cultural impact award.
The App Store is filled with garbage. I’m looking forward to the day we can sideload an alternative Open Source app store like F-Droid.
What better apps are in F-Droid? Are their many crapps in there?
Shoutout to Honkai Star Rail. Never thought I could get into mobile gaming, but HSR proved me wrong. It’s quickly become my most played game the past few months. Play it more than my Xbox series x, steam deck, switch, and steam library
Sadly this list tells you the quality of games these days is lacking.
At yoo let’s let Europe get that side loading shit approved then throw all the republicans out of the USA and we be sailing the pirate seas once and for all. GG 🏆
It’s cute you think it’s only the Republicans who are beholden to business lobbying.
It’s a real shame they didn’t give iPhone app of the year to Flighty in the end. Alltrails looks cool but Flighty is incredibly useful, to the point that I really can’t imagine travelling without it anymore
Flighty is amazing. I was at ATL when they changed the plane and gate on us due to mechanical issues. You saw the dozen people with Flighty because we all got notifications at the same time and headed to the new gate before Delta had told anyone.
I was surprised by that as well. Alltrail just seems like another exercise app that doesn’t seem to have anything over other similar apps.
I think Flighty looks amazing, but I wonder in what way you use it that makes it hard to imagine to travel without it.
Maybe I need to give it a second look. I’ve been using kayak for many years. I didn’t see what flighty offered that kayak wasn’t already doing.
Flighty actually took full advantage of Dynamic Island, widgets, and Live Activities early on in some innovative ways. Even their design & interface followed Apple’s guidelines to the T. I get AllTrails is a little more original and fosters more community, but Flighty is the perfect example of an app done right. 10/10 implementation.
Anyone else remember the days of browsing the App Store, especially the free top 100? Checking to see what new apps were hitting the charts. Having pages and pages of mostly useless apps but some real memorable glorified flash games were thrown into the mix. Never having to worry about anything except how much fun will this game be compared to the other.
Good times…good times… I haven’t browsed the App Store like that in probably a decade. I miss those days.
I do. Fond memories of downloading new apps and toys every day. Sadly those days are long long gone.
Omg it’s not only me???
Ehhhh most of the “free top 100” still had ads
What I feel like doesn’t exist anymore is the ability to pay like $0.99 for an app like “Jelly Car” and have it hold or collective attention for months. Phone games evolved and we didn’t know how good we had it.
True, but I feel like back then an app with ads just had a banner at the bottom or something. Now “ads” means a full screen unskippable video every few minutes. No thanks.
That was peak Appstore. Its all trash and scam apps now.
New app, 0.99 for life days
2023: Subscribe for $5.99 a month!
I wonder what will be the evolution of the Subscription based Model in 10 yrs time ?
Lifetime access still exists, but they want like $50+ lol
That sounds very reasonable
The best app I’ve seen was a lightsaber one that made sound when you swung your phone lol
Pepperidge Farm Remembers
This is what capitalism does to creativity.
Lmao go back to /r/antiwork bud
It’s economics my friend; I would go back to the Econ sub, but it’s trash here. You make apps, right, then you try to find ways to monetize them, cut costs, maximize profits and you end up with poor quality. I suggest you go back to r/Idontknowshitabouteconomics. Capitalism stifles creativity due to profit maximization and market dynamics.
Yes, because socialism and communism have always promoted creativity, amirite?
There’s a reason why most technological innovation and the most successful companies come from the United States, not Europe or China
I remember finding all sorts of cool, creative games since none of the big publishers were interested in the nascent App Store.
Then some smaller publishers started porting older, well known games.
Then big publishers started porting their older games.
Then some really good more recent games like Grand Theft Auto and BioShock started to appear. There were still cool indie games, but little by little I noticed games were free and wanted me to buy chests and boxes of loot to keep playing.
Then the games I liked and paid for once disappeared when iOS went 64bit and games weren’t updated. There were more games than ever, but they were either free to play or I paid for them but they were hardly updated and then an iOS update broken them.
Then I started seeing cool games again, but I need Netflix or some other subscription service to play them.
So now I just play games on my Switch.
Don’t forget the endless AI scheiss
I remember when there were Lite apps. You’d get the Lite version of an app and deal with ads, then pay $.99 for the version without ads. And that decision to spend the $.99 was always a tough one lol
Not sure what you mean. You can still do all that today.
Developers deserve to be paid just like everyone else.
iSoda, gun apps, sound buttons
The novelty apps were the bomb back in 2010.