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THREAD: Here's a little tale about what it's like to be an indie iOS developer working under Apple's 800lb gorilla rule...
Earlier this year, Apple acquired Dark Sky, a highly popular weather app and API, used by thousands of indie apps big and small.
In the acquisition, they announced they'd be shutting off the API, forcing all those developers to find some other service. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21201666/apple-acquires-weather-app-dark-sky-shut-down-android-wear-os-ios
In the acquisition, they announced they'd be shutting off the API, forcing all those developers to find some other service. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21201666/apple-acquires-weather-app-dark-sky-shut-down-android-wear-os-ios
Switching to another provider is no small feat. Dark Sky had novel features and a friendly pricing scheme that's hard to match. Their killer feature was real-time precipitation intensity estimates, so you could see exactly when rain would start and stop, down to the minute.
A couple months after the acquisition, Apple announced iOS 14 at WWDC. iOS 14 adds a long-anticipated widget feature for the home screen, so you can see little bits of app content alongside your icons. https://www.engadget.com/ios-14-iphone-widgets-app-library-171319303.html
Unsurprisingly, Apple's new Weather app uses Dark Sky's data to show real-time precip estimates in their widgets (when it's raining.) https://twitter.com/nateboateng/status/1275355391405297664
As a weather app developer, this is now a table stakes feature we have to support. Why would someone bother paying for a separate app that doesn't have real-time precip widgets, when the stock app has this built in?
But we don't have Dark Sky anymore.
But we don't have Dark Sky anymore.
This is an existential threat to indie weather apps. We're now forced to:
A) Find a new provider that's comparable and integrate it instead of Dark Sky.
B) Create a new set of widgets that are at least as good as Apple's (preferably better!)
C) Do all of this in about 3 months.
A) Find a new provider that's comparable and integrate it instead of Dark Sky.
B) Create a new set of widgets that are at least as good as Apple's (preferably better!)
C) Do all of this in about 3 months.
We also have to learn all the new tech, update our existing app to work with iOS 14, and deal with the fact that this is all beta software that's clunky, poorly documented, and barely works in a bunch of ways.
Oh, and Apple has special access to private APIs that we don't have.
Oh, and Apple has special access to private APIs that we don't have.
For the privilege of being backed into these corners, and scrambling to even stay competitive, we also get to pay Apple 30% of our revenue.
(And our mobile app revenue isn't enough to pay a full-time salary in any case.)
(And our mobile app revenue isn't enough to pay a full-time salary in any case.)
This is honestly enough to make me want to stop working on @helloweatherapp. This same cycle happens year after year and it's exhausting. We rarely get to work on what we *want* because we get railroaded into doing changes like these.
One can imagine an alternate universe where Apple's apps are all open-sourced as baseline starting points for developers to build upon. The entire app ecosystem would benefit from that.
But instead, the platform provider wields its power to compete against its own developers.
But instead, the platform provider wields its power to compete against its own developers.
This is not unlike Amazon undercutting 3rd party sellers by selling their own competing products, promoting those, and taking a loss to price competitors out of the market. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/amazon-emails-show-effort-to-weaken-diapers-com-before-buying-it
Anyway, we've been working on some new widgets. /END THREAD.
