David Smith on Changing App Business Models→

David Smith is an independent developer who launched his first iOS app in 2008. He’s seen a lot of change in the App Store since then, which he chronicles in an insightful post on his blog. Smith examines the revenue his apps have generated since 2012 and the pattern is unmistakable. Around 2013, the majority of his revenue flipped from being primarily from paid sales to advertising.

Looking back, Smith concludes that:

…the change is mostly been in the App Store market, rather than in my own attitudes. In many cases adding advertising to my apps has been something I’ve fought and resisted as long as possible. But in the end the pragmatic answer has been to not swim upstream and instead follow where my customers have moved to.

The market has been pulling me along towards advertising based apps, and I’ve found that the less I fight back with anachronistic ideas about how software “should” be sold, the more sustainable a business I have.

Smith readily acknowledges his experience is just one data point in a large App Store. If you’ve followed the fortunes of independent app developers over this period though, his conclusion rings true.

Be sure to visit Smith’s website to see the charts breaking down the components of his apps’ revenue. The short-term impact of app launches on overall revenue is an interesting footnote to the post’s main focus.

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Game Day: Gemini

Some games are as much about art and the experience they create as they are about gameplay. Monument Valley comes to mind for instance. Gemini – A Journey of Two Stars is a beautiful new game from Echostone Games that falls into the same category and succeeds by being simultaneously stunning and engrossing.

As you start Gemini, two stars have fallen from the sky. You play as the larger star. There are no instructions or tutorials, just subtle visual hints about what you are supposed to do. Tapping the left and right sides of the screen guides your star in those directions.

As you approach the smaller star, the two interact and begin to rise. Get too far away from the smaller star and both start to fall from the sky. This makes for an interesting tension as you try to stay close to the smaller star, which can have a mind of its own, while also completing the game’s tasks.

As you rise through a gorgeous abstract landscape, the sky darkens. If it gets too dark, your stars will fall. To avoid that you need to light beacons by steering your star over them. Lighting up the sky has the added advantage of revealing more of your surroundings. The stunning artwork of Gemini is paired with an equally impressive and soothing soundtrack that sets the tone for the game.

As you lose yourself in Gemini, the game is more about the interaction of the stars than anything else. The dance between the stars and making sure you bring the little star along become the focus. This is a very different game, but the feeling of a connection with the small star that Gemini created as I played reminded me a lot of playing Journey last Summer on my PS4.

Gemini is relatively short. The six stages of the game should take most people no more than 1-2 hours to complete. If you evaluate games by the numbers of levels per dollar you spend, you may be disappointed with Gemini, but as a piece of interactive art, I suspect many people, myself included, will return to Gemini over and over just to enjoy the visuals and soundtrack.

Gemini is available on the App Store at an introductory price of $2.99.

Review Guidelines Added for Subscriptions, Stickers, and SiriKit

On the heels of Apple’s announcement of an impending App Store cleanup, it has updated its App Review Guidelines to cover app subscriptions, stickers, and SiriKit apps. Among other guidelines, Section 3.1.2(a) states that:

While the following list is not exhaustive, examples of appropriate subscriptions include: new game levels; episodic content; multi-player support; apps that offer consistent, substantive updates; access to large collections of, or continually updated, media content; software as a service (“SAAS”); and cloud support.

The availability of subscriptions for apps that are ‘continually updated’ provides additional clarity to an issue that was hotly debated and discussed among developers since subscriptions were announced shortly before WWDC.

The App Review Guidelines also include an entire section on stickers.

Whether your app contains a sticker extension or you’re creating free-standing sticker packs, its content shouldn’t offend users, create a negative experience, or violate the law.

Section 4.4.3 includes a link for making infringement claims and states that if you cannot back up your rights to content contained in stickers with documentation, your sticker packs and extensions will be removed from the App Store. Repeat violators risk having their developer accounts revoked.

With respect to SiriKit, section 2.5.11 of the Guidelines provides:

Apps integrating SiriKit should only sign up for intents they can handle without the support of an additional app and that users would expect from the stated functionality. For example, if your app is a meal planning app, you should not incorporate an intent to start a workout, even if the app shares integration with a fitness app.

This guideline seems to be designed to avoid confusion that could be created by an app without clear SiriKit functionality accessing SiriKit.

Apple Announces App Store Cleanup

Apple has announced a plan to clean up the App Store. Apple’s developer site states it plainly:

To make it easier for customers to find great apps that fit their needs, we want to ensure that apps available on the App Store are functional and up-to-date. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.

Beginning September 7, 2016, the same day as the event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 7, App Review will begin evaluating all existing apps on the App Store to determine if they are functional and meet App Store guidelines. Some of the highlights:

  • If App Review determines that changes need to be made to an app, the developer will be contacted and given 30 days to update it, after which it will be removed from the App Store;
  • If an app crashes on launch, it will be removed from sale immediately; and
  • Existing customers will still have access to apps removed from the App Store.

In addition, Apple announced in an email to developers that going forward, app names will be limited to 50 characters. Apple explained that long app names, which developers use to try to influence search results, provide no value for customers, particularly because they are too long to display in full on the App Store.

Eight years and over two million apps later, the App Store is long overdue for a cleanup. Abandoned and broken apps create a real discovery problem for customers. We are well past the time when the number of apps served as meaningful bragging rights for Apple keynotes. The directness in tone and relatively short time frame given to developers to make changes to apps sends a clear message – Apple is serious about cleaning up the App Store. Developers with neglected apps had better pay attention if they want to remain on the App Store.

Tapbots Announces Pastebot for Mac Public Beta→

Pastebot by Tapbots was an early iOS clipboard manager that facilitated copying text, links, images and more. Today, Tapbots announced that it is bringing Pastebot to the Mac. As Tapbots did with Tweetbot for Mac, Pastebot is available as a public beta. As Tapbots explains:

We have been wanting to do a full blown Pastebot for Mac long before we first released it on the iPhone. Paul wrote a fantastic little utility app called PTH Pasteboard Pro on the Mac which I had always wanted to rewrite as a Tapbots app, but we were just too busy with iOS. After the release of Tweetbot 2 for Mac, it only made sense to have Todd start on Pastebot for his next big project. So we are very excited to release Pastebot for Mac…as a public beta.

I have been testing Pastebot for Mac for several weeks and it’s got some great features like the ability to create custom filters that allow you to transform clipped text in various ways.

If you are interested in joining the public beta, head on over to tapbots.com/pastebot.

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Remaster, Episode 17: No Man’s Sky: Review→

The Remaster trio are reunited to give their thoughts and experiences of playing No Man’s Sky, and also take a look at why there’s such a backlash against the game.

We had a good discussion on No Man’s Sky, its strengths and shortcomings, and managing expectations on this week’s Remaster. You can listen here.

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Connected, Episode 106: Running in Gucci Shoes→

With a week to go before Apple’s fall event, the Connected Trio gather from their respective lands to discuss the possibilities of new Apple Watch models, new Macs and Apple’s situation in Ireland.

On this week’s Connected, we start the speculation on what next week’s Apple event could bring. You can listen here.

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Sonos Adding Support for Amazon Echo and Spotify

In a March blog post announcing layoffs, Sonos CEO John MacFarlane made cryptic comments about bringing voice control to Sonos that specifically called out Amazon’s work with the Echo. According to The Verge and Variety, Sonos unveiled plans today to integrate Sonos with Amazon’s popular line of voice-controlled products beginning in 2017. A video released by the companies shows a family using an Amazon Echo Dot to play music, skip tracks, get artist information, and pause music. It is unclear from reports whether the Amazon integration is limited to Amazon’s music products or will be available to use with other services too.

Variety is also reporting that Sonos has struck a deal with music streaming service Spotify to allow Spotify customers to stream music to Sonos speakers directly from Spotify’s mobile app. Spotify will begin beta testing the new integration in October.

In February, Sonos added support for Apple Music in its own app. With these latest deals Sonos appears to be taking a Netflix-like approach to ensure it remains relevant by integrating with as many services and platforms as possible. The strategy makes a lot of sense given today’s highly competitive music streaming landscape.

For more on the Amazon/Sonos announcement, check out the video after the break.

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Apple Ordered to Pay Up to 13 Billion Euros in EU Tax Crackdown→

Dara Doyle and Stephanie Bodoni, writing for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. was ordered to repay a record 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) plus interest after the European Commission said Ireland illegally slashed the iPhone maker’s tax bill.

The world’s richest company benefited from a “selective tax treatment” in Ireland that gave it a “significant advantage over other businesses,” the European Union regulator said Tuesday in its largest tax penalty in a three-year crackdown on sweetheart fiscal deals granted by EU nations.

The European Commission is not saying that Apple has not paid its taxes. Rather, they have said that two tax rulings handed down to Apple by the Irish government in 1991 and 2007 had “no factual or economic justification” and constituted illegal state aid. That’s a problem in the eyes of the European Commission because profits from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India were attributed to Apple’s corporate entity in Ireland.

“Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in an e-mailed statement. “This selective treatment allowed Apple to pay an effective corporate tax rate of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003 down to 0.005 percent in 2014.”

The European Commission now wants the Irish government to claw back 13 billion Euros from Apple. Whilst this ruling is a significant development, it is far from the end of the story, Apple and the Irish government have already signaled their intentions to appeal the decision of the European Commission. If they do appeal, it is likely to take years for a final decision to be reached.

Update: Apple has posted an open letter from Tim Cook on their website, responding to today’s European Commission decision.

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process. The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals. We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don’t owe them any more than we’ve already paid.

The Commission’s move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been. This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters, and to the principle of certainty of law in Europe. Ireland has said they plan to appeal the Commission’s ruling and Apple will do the same. We are confident that the Commission’s order will be reversed.

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