Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious.
Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam).
It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people.
The other suggestions are also really good, I'd love to be able to pay for big updates (though I personally don't really mind subscriptions for apps I regularly use).
I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible.
I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure I really used the right search term and that the result is actually a first party app.
If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results.
Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term
I think they're trying to get $appname to bid high to ensure they're listed first instead of a competitor. Google Ads does this too on the search engine. I often query and see $companyname advertising for their name even when they are a large brand that is dominating the #1 spot. Problem with App Store adds is, apps don't typically have the ad budget and probably don't lose out too much if they do have name recognition. It really boils down to poor UX.
Apple should wind down their ads system (iAd) entirely. Advertisements are antithetical to what Apple stands for - privacy, premium experience, doing the right thing for users. They should lower their cut to 10% (not to 20, as the article states) and start offering curated experience bundles like they do with AppleTV.
iAd was shut down years ago. Tracking ads might not align with some of the values Apple espouses but it seems a bit of a stretch to say a company famous for its ads (and often lowbrow-dismissed as 'just marketing' entirely) and advertising are 'antithetical'.
Lowering their cut is antithetical Apple. Apple should remain at 20% and perhaps go as high as google adsense. You agree it is a premium experience that comes at a cost.
> It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people.
It's an old-school protection racket, particularly because they own both sides of the deal.
"It'd be a shame if anything happened to your app store listing. But, you know, if you just pay us $5/mo we can make sure that doesn't happen to _you_."
App Store search results aren't very good. Instead of trying to improve the interface or results, they added app search Ads to monetize their poor search functionality. Also, the App Store has prominent ads for their in-house services (Apple Arcade apps).
> I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible.
Coming from the android world there is a very high bar for a native app for me. I tend to assume the app is garbage if it could have been done just as easily as a web app.
I find this surprising and it makes me wonder if native android apps are just bad?
The difference between a native iOS app and a fake app that's really just a wrapped web page is obvious. Native apps are a lot faster. It's possible there is some selection bias here and you only notice the web apps when they're bad, but I really don't think this is the case. Native apps just seem categorically better.
If Facebook pouring immense resources into it couldn't get web based mobile applications to be good, it's probably because the technology just can't compete with native.
This is also very frustrating with branded searches on Google. It's basically extortion, where you have to buy the ads on your brand or someone else will. They excuse it by pointing to how cheap it is on a PPC basis, since the clickthrough rate and resulting quality score is so high. Great, you're only extorting a nominal amount. Thank you.
Right now, Apple can do whatever they want because they pick us off one by one, and ignore us. Google does exactly the same thing. If we organize as a large enough group, they have to listen. I firmly believe what Apple does is anti-competitive and they need to be regulated firmly by the government. I also think Google and Facebook need to be firmly regulated by the government as well.
Apple needs to allow other people to create their own App Store or they should be regulated by the government. We need to organize as a group of software developers and sue Apple and lobby our politicians, because that seems to be the only way Apple will listen.
I also agree that subscriptions are NOT the way to go, and having paid upgrades are the best way to go. Driving down the costs such that things are freemium has ruined our industry as far as I'm concerned. I want to pay good money for a good piece of software, but even $0.99 is "expensive" for most people these days. This needs to stop otherwise iOS app development will become the sweatshop of the 2020s.
> even $0.99 is "expensive" for most people these days
In my experience, this is not really true - most people (including myself) just cannot find these apps and instead see only subscription ones which seems to be the new trend.
The last 7 apps I downloaded on iOS wanted a $5-10/mo monthly subscription, and I literally _cannot_ purchase the app. And I'm talking about really basic zero-infrastructure apps:
- 2 transcriber apps that use iOS's native speech recognition functionality only (no server).
- A Snapchat equivalent that puts beards and other funny things on a picture of your face.
- A photo collage maker.
- A photo effects editor.
- An app that turns live pictures into gifs (really?)
As a developer, Apple is heavily, heavily pushing us to adopt subscriptions, even for apps where it makes no sense. We get contacted by developer relations folks several times a year, they even dragged us to a seminar to espouse the joys of subscriptions. We do a camera app.
All we want is clearly-marked trial versions (not "free apps with in-app purchases", users think that's bait-and-switch and give you 1 star reviews), and upgrade pricing. Apple refuses to adopt those.
Thought experiment: Let’s day that Apple banned an app by both Black Lives Matter and “Focus on the Family” and they both complained about it to the government. Which one do you think the government would be more likely to force Apple to carry?
It continues to amaze me that anyone wants the sane government more involved in technology whose leader wants to “shut down Twitter” and wants all of the data it can get to spy on citizens.
In English, the government doesn't necessarily mean the executive. If Congress passed a law stating how platforms must treat the developers, them one could sue Apple to enforce it.
I'm not an app developer, but I am equally frustrated as a user on several of Wil Shipley's key points:
1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find what I'm looking for, then take your commission.
2. Upgrade pricing. I'm tired of abandoned apps, especially those I paid for initially. I don't expect developers to work for free (nor do I want to have 100+ subscriptions). Let me upgrade to major new versions.
3. Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to buy something outright and use it for its useful life. There are many apps I never use because I don't want yet another subscription, but I would have happily purchased.
4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.
EDIT: I see trials have been possible for 2 years! I had no idea. I guess I haven't encountered any, which seems odd.
As a user, I feel that Apple has created a race to the bottom and they've made the app ecosystem way less valuable to me. I would be happier if upgrades and trials allowed me to spend more money to get more valuable iOS apps. Instead I regret some purchases, avoid some purchases, can't tell how much apps actually cost, have to find new apps when old ones are abandoned, and don't trust that I'm able to discover and buy the best apps.
On point 4, what you want (and I, as both a user and developer) still doesn't exist. The trial functionality that Apple offers is only for auto-renewing subscriptions. (It's not particularly flexible, either.)
There are workarounds, but nothing that's really built in to the App Store as it should be.
For #4, I think a Steam Style Refund policy would also work, If you do not have X number of hours/minutes app usage or X days since purchase you should be able to get a full refund
> 4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.
I would be surprised if Apple didn't have in place a policy similar to the Google Play store (and others, like Steam), where you have a limited amount of time (a couple of hours) during which time you can "return" the software and not incur the cost.
That's true in my experience. It happened maybe twice, but I got pretty much immediate refunds for purchases from previous day that I wasn't happy with. There wasn't anything wrong with the app itself, it just wasn't what I expected I'm getting.
Trials would only make sense if the applications were more expensive. My downloadable software gets single digit perentage conversion rates, that wouldn't add up on something that cost a few dollars.
Honestly, many applications on the app store are too cheap. I am happy to pay a reasonable sum for an app, which I could test, so I can verify that it works at all or even works for the intended promise.
People who are worried about Apple's review process being arbitrary and onerous have no idea what's in store for them when VR/AR becomes more mainstream. Facebook's Oculus store is more of a "don't call us, we'll call you" and it's not getting better - they're actively training users to want this type of curation.
The smartphone era will quickly be seen as the Good Old Days where publishing was self-serve at all. Basically what I'm saying is, we need to nip this in the bud, or indie development is over.
The "don't call us, we'll call you" model already exists in the form of game consoles. Nintendo is probably the most restrictive in this way. If you don't have a pile of money for the development equipment, don't bother calling.
I don't think this is as true for Nintendo anymore. The switch store is full of tons of stuff. Maybe they're not letting everything through, and they certainly aren't letting everyone make physical games, but the digital store seems like it must not have a big filter.
When the iPhone was first released there was no App Store. Many people asked for one. Eventually Apple relented and told developers to... make web apps for the iPhone instead. This wasn't enough, so eventually eventually they released the App Store. Somewhere alone the line the iPhone was also jailbroken and users with the jailbreak could install their own software.
The point is that a general purpose computing device without apps is a highly unstable situation. The bigger the potential for apps, the louder the demands get.
Honestly I prefer a curated store. I’ve had discussions with people who work at the Apple App Store about having only curated apps show up by default, but anyone “rejected” from the curated list can still put their app up, they just have to give the direct App Store URL for people to find their app.
I’d love this, myself, as a customer and as a developer. But, also, I’m arrogant enough to assume I’d be one of the curated.
That misses the largest and fastest-growing market for VR: self-contained systems like Oculus Quest, which has had no real competition for about a year now.
They ask that you pitch them with marketing materials and get permission before you start working on anything, so they can "compassionately" tell you not to even start:
> If we feel that your app is not a fit for Quest, we'd like to let you know that early in the development process, before you've made significant production investments, rather than at the end.
I was curious about the arguments for not including upgrade pricing on the App Store. Apple maintains that upgrade pricing is a relic of shrink wrapped software and subscriptions are better.
I lean softly towards Apple on this one. A few reasons I can think of for why subscriptions are preferred over upgrade pricing:
- The app developer can keep making money over a longer period of time.
- Generally means somebody can try out software first before committing, whereas upgrade pricing implies you either have to commit before trying it or nothing -- there are no demos on the App Store.
- Subscriptions also mean a developer does not hold out new features or bug fixes for customers unless they upgrade -- it incentivizes developers to keep working on an app and maintain a relationship with customers. This is especially true as the app needs to be updated to be compatible with new devices and OS versions.
- Potentially lets customers choose feature sets in the app. This is a good thing as it means developers can broaden their market to customers who want to pay less for fewer features or more for more features. It doesn't lump everybody into the same bucket.
There's a lot of arguments one way or another - but the killer deal-breaker for many of us is the feeling of being held hostage: once you stop paying subscription, you typically don't get to "keep last paid version" - you loose application, and any files, data or artifacts that you created with it or would open/manipulate with it :-/
The other aspect is just how well we each feel we can keep track of and be disciplined with dozens of subscriptions. I'm the other way around from you - I'd pay $5 for an app without blinking, even to "try it out"; but I hesitate to "commit" to $3 a year, let alone $3 a month, for something new.
I’m willing to pay enough monthly software subscriptions to count on one hand. Subscriptions are not the answer for the vast majority of apps and Apple’s insistence on pushing this as the solution is just more evidence that the survival of indie devs doesn’t matter much to them.
I responded to some of these in a different response, I’ll edit it a bit here, but my points are the same:
The subscription model fails in a lot of ways, for everyone. For example, my next app is an interior design / home control app. How would the customer feel if they stopped paying and didn’t have access to their house any more? Most people would be pissed.
I don’t want to hold my customers’ data for ransom and cut them off if they stop paying me my extortion money.
Also, I estimate about half the people who buy version one of my app will enter their floorplan into their computer, place their furniture, be happy, and never use the app again (until I upgrade it to offer home control, as well). If those users just pay like a buck each and cancel after the first month, I’m not going to make my money back for the six years I’ve put into this app.
--
New stuff:
I’d argue that it’s much more important Apple let developers put out one-time-per-customer, timed, fully-functional demos.
Developers with successful products are already incentivized to keep updating them. What I’ve found again and again is that version two of a product will do better than version one.
Adobe’s been selling Photoshop since I was in college, and it’s not like they didn’t upgrade their app. Same with Intuit / Quicken.
That's not a choice for Apple to make, developers should be able to sell upgrades as they see fit (I am not referring to extravagant never before seen business models)
I think this shows, in my opinion, how little native vs. web/electron actually matters to overall quality. You can generally make a smooth, fast, bug-free app on any platform. Or not...
I used to use the Android version and I was never quite sure whether it was native or not. I couldn't think of a way to tell.
You can make a bad native app, but you can’t make a good Electron app.
Edit to add: Lots of people are mentioning Visual Studio Code. I agree it’s a good app in many dimensions; I didn’t mean to say that an Electron app can’t be good in some ways, even in the most important ways, but rather that Electron introduces flaws that prevent the app from being good in all ways. In particular, while faster than most Electron apps it’s still sluggish on old devices. It still loses track of files when renamed unless you do the rename through Visual Studio Code. The UI elements aren’t as polished as native let alone consistent with it, settings aren’t synced and backed up to iCloud, system-wide keyboard settings aren’t obeyed, Quick Look previews aren’t provided, etc. All of these problems were either introduced by Electron or made more difficult by it.
I use vscode, but I miss the speed of sublime for large projects & the terminal emulator will crash/freeze for me occasionally (which also seems to happen in IntelliJ based editors as well)
Slack on macOS is Electron. Slack on iOS is native, and their app wasn't actually all that bad until they redesigned it a couple months ago and made it really, really bad :(
I’m still not over the fact that notifications on my phone don’t clear when I view the message on my computer, and this is by design because of some other big fix. It’s been almost a year
I think that's a bit unfair to Slack. I've been using it for 5 years now and it's one of the most dependable apps I've ever used. When you consider how many messages and rich content it's handling, I think they are doing a fairly decent job. I wouldn't call it slow either. If anything my biggest beef with slack is sometimes the cross-device syncing isn't perfect. And I'm unable to use it offline at all.
I buy an app on my iPhone once every couple months. I simply cannot find anything. I cannot buy.
The 'freemium' games hide.
I want:
- games that offer a single purchase, or a one time upgrade for full features without ads. Yes, some people will buy the 'bucket of coffee beans' upgrade. I won't. I don't want to search through twenty games that offer it.
- productivity tools that do something useful. My phone is stuck in 2001. Universal menu ordering? Teach me in two minutes? Manage my contacts to call people I haven't talked to in a while? Anything?
- privacy. Why does the Peet's Application in the background still get updated location services, draining my battery? When is the microphone on? Who is really calling me?
Seriously. A business model based on "the other players aren't doing well either" seems excessively fragile.
Readit News
Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam).
It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people.
The other suggestions are also really good, I'd love to be able to pay for big updates (though I personally don't really mind subscriptions for apps I regularly use).
I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible.
If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results.
There has to be a better way.
If one can click an “exact app name” box or similar, the results should always be as intended.
Of course I asked for more (like “no apps with more than $5 in-app purchases”).
They can help developers with ad discovery in a bunch of different and better ways that are less hostile for devs and users.
Dead Comment
Search for <model> <year> of any product on google, 50/50 shot its a different company's item in the first (few) places.
Search bribes are user hostile but developer necessary it seems.
It's an old-school protection racket, particularly because they own both sides of the deal.
"It'd be a shame if anything happened to your app store listing. But, you know, if you just pay us $5/mo we can make sure that doesn't happen to _you_."
Coming from the android world there is a very high bar for a native app for me. I tend to assume the app is garbage if it could have been done just as easily as a web app.
The difference between a native iOS app and a fake app that's really just a wrapped web page is obvious. Native apps are a lot faster. It's possible there is some selection bias here and you only notice the web apps when they're bad, but I really don't think this is the case. Native apps just seem categorically better.
If Facebook pouring immense resources into it couldn't get web based mobile applications to be good, it's probably because the technology just can't compete with native.
This. I've experienced this exact problem in helping elders install commonplace apps like Gmail.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101
Right now, Apple can do whatever they want because they pick us off one by one, and ignore us. Google does exactly the same thing. If we organize as a large enough group, they have to listen. I firmly believe what Apple does is anti-competitive and they need to be regulated firmly by the government. I also think Google and Facebook need to be firmly regulated by the government as well.
Apple needs to allow other people to create their own App Store or they should be regulated by the government. We need to organize as a group of software developers and sue Apple and lobby our politicians, because that seems to be the only way Apple will listen.
I also agree that subscriptions are NOT the way to go, and having paid upgrades are the best way to go. Driving down the costs such that things are freemium has ruined our industry as far as I'm concerned. I want to pay good money for a good piece of software, but even $0.99 is "expensive" for most people these days. This needs to stop otherwise iOS app development will become the sweatshop of the 2020s.
In my experience, this is not really true - most people (including myself) just cannot find these apps and instead see only subscription ones which seems to be the new trend.
The last 7 apps I downloaded on iOS wanted a $5-10/mo monthly subscription, and I literally _cannot_ purchase the app. And I'm talking about really basic zero-infrastructure apps:
- 2 transcriber apps that use iOS's native speech recognition functionality only (no server).
- A Snapchat equivalent that puts beards and other funny things on a picture of your face.
- A photo collage maker.
- A photo effects editor.
- An app that turns live pictures into gifs (really?)
All we want is clearly-marked trial versions (not "free apps with in-app purchases", users think that's bait-and-switch and give you 1 star reviews), and upgrade pricing. Apple refuses to adopt those.
Yes!! The App Store search function is useless. I want affordable paid apps without ads, subscriptions, or IAPs.
I think end users should have some rights with how they use computers, how they use software, how the social contract of the web is maintained, etc.
It continues to amaze me that anyone wants the sane government more involved in technology whose leader wants to “shut down Twitter” and wants all of the data it can get to spy on citizens.
Deleted Comment
> Google does exactly the same thing
1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find what I'm looking for, then take your commission.
2. Upgrade pricing. I'm tired of abandoned apps, especially those I paid for initially. I don't expect developers to work for free (nor do I want to have 100+ subscriptions). Let me upgrade to major new versions.
3. Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to buy something outright and use it for its useful life. There are many apps I never use because I don't want yet another subscription, but I would have happily purchased.
4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.
EDIT: I see trials have been possible for 2 years! I had no idea. I guess I haven't encountered any, which seems odd.
As a user, I feel that Apple has created a race to the bottom and they've made the app ecosystem way less valuable to me. I would be happier if upgrades and trials allowed me to spend more money to get more valuable iOS apps. Instead I regret some purchases, avoid some purchases, can't tell how much apps actually cost, have to find new apps when old ones are abandoned, and don't trust that I'm able to discover and buy the best apps.
There are workarounds, but nothing that's really built in to the App Store as it should be.
I would be surprised if Apple didn't have in place a policy similar to the Google Play store (and others, like Steam), where you have a limited amount of time (a couple of hours) during which time you can "return" the software and not incur the cost.
The smartphone era will quickly be seen as the Good Old Days where publishing was self-serve at all. Basically what I'm saying is, we need to nip this in the bud, or indie development is over.
Big marketing budget, medium quality product, high price.
I do my part in capitalism by purchasing products that are quality.
The point is that a general purpose computing device without apps is a highly unstable situation. The bigger the potential for apps, the louder the demands get.
-W
I’d love this, myself, as a customer and as a developer. But, also, I’m arrogant enough to assume I’d be one of the curated.
-Wil
They ask that you pitch them with marketing materials and get permission before you start working on anything, so they can "compassionately" tell you not to even start:
* https://developer.oculus.com/blog/submitting-your-app-to-the...
* https://developer.oculus.com/quest-pitch-form/
> If we feel that your app is not a fit for Quest, we'd like to let you know that early in the development process, before you've made significant production investments, rather than at the end.
I lean softly towards Apple on this one. A few reasons I can think of for why subscriptions are preferred over upgrade pricing:
- The app developer can keep making money over a longer period of time.
- Generally means somebody can try out software first before committing, whereas upgrade pricing implies you either have to commit before trying it or nothing -- there are no demos on the App Store.
- Subscriptions also mean a developer does not hold out new features or bug fixes for customers unless they upgrade -- it incentivizes developers to keep working on an app and maintain a relationship with customers. This is especially true as the app needs to be updated to be compatible with new devices and OS versions.
- Potentially lets customers choose feature sets in the app. This is a good thing as it means developers can broaden their market to customers who want to pay less for fewer features or more for more features. It doesn't lump everybody into the same bucket.
The other aspect is just how well we each feel we can keep track of and be disciplined with dozens of subscriptions. I'm the other way around from you - I'd pay $5 for an app without blinking, even to "try it out"; but I hesitate to "commit" to $3 a year, let alone $3 a month, for something new.
The subscription model fails in a lot of ways, for everyone. For example, my next app is an interior design / home control app. How would the customer feel if they stopped paying and didn’t have access to their house any more? Most people would be pissed.
I don’t want to hold my customers’ data for ransom and cut them off if they stop paying me my extortion money.
Also, I estimate about half the people who buy version one of my app will enter their floorplan into their computer, place their furniture, be happy, and never use the app again (until I upgrade it to offer home control, as well). If those users just pay like a buck each and cancel after the first month, I’m not going to make my money back for the six years I’ve put into this app.
--
New stuff:
I’d argue that it’s much more important Apple let developers put out one-time-per-customer, timed, fully-functional demos.
Developers with successful products are already incentivized to keep updating them. What I’ve found again and again is that version two of a product will do better than version one.
Adobe’s been selling Photoshop since I was in college, and it’s not like they didn’t upgrade their app. Same with Intuit / Quicken.
-Wil
You don't have to, you could make it readonly when the subscription expires.
I think this shows, in my opinion, how little native vs. web/electron actually matters to overall quality. You can generally make a smooth, fast, bug-free app on any platform. Or not...
I used to use the Android version and I was never quite sure whether it was native or not. I couldn't think of a way to tell.
Edit to add: Lots of people are mentioning Visual Studio Code. I agree it’s a good app in many dimensions; I didn’t mean to say that an Electron app can’t be good in some ways, even in the most important ways, but rather that Electron introduces flaws that prevent the app from being good in all ways. In particular, while faster than most Electron apps it’s still sluggish on old devices. It still loses track of files when renamed unless you do the rename through Visual Studio Code. The UI elements aren’t as polished as native let alone consistent with it, settings aren’t synced and backed up to iCloud, system-wide keyboard settings aren’t obeyed, Quick Look previews aren’t provided, etc. All of these problems were either introduced by Electron or made more difficult by it.
But I don’t know any other electron apps that feel responsive. Slack, discord, Notion... all super simple apps which respond like molasses.
I use vscode, but I miss the speed of sublime for large projects & the terminal emulator will crash/freeze for me occasionally (which also seems to happen in IntelliJ based editors as well)
Dead Comment
...........VSCode
https://www.reddit.com/r/Slack/comments/dfmuhj/issue_with_io...
It seems poor performance is a core value at the company.
The 'freemium' games hide.
I want:
- games that offer a single purchase, or a one time upgrade for full features without ads. Yes, some people will buy the 'bucket of coffee beans' upgrade. I won't. I don't want to search through twenty games that offer it.
- productivity tools that do something useful. My phone is stuck in 2001. Universal menu ordering? Teach me in two minutes? Manage my contacts to call people I haven't talked to in a while? Anything?
- privacy. Why does the Peet's Application in the background still get updated location services, draining my battery? When is the microphone on? Who is really calling me?
Seriously. A business model based on "the other players aren't doing well either" seems excessively fragile.