Linked List: July 29, 2014

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

App Store Top Lists and App Rot ★: Marco Arment:

Quality, sustainability, and updates are almost irrelevant to App Store success and usually aren’t rewarded as much as we think they should be, and that’s mostly the fault of Apple’s lazy reliance on top lists instead of more editorial selections and better search.

The best thing Apple could do to increase the quality of apps is remove every top list from the App Store.
Where Are the iOS Indie Developers? ★: Brent Simmons:

I think my point still stands — pure iOS indies are fairly rare. I can easily come up with a bigger list of pure Mac indies, even though iOS developers in general outnumber Mac developers.
A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year ★: Jared Sinclair:

Despite all of these circumstances, Unread still only earned $42K in sales ($21K after taxes and expenses) and is on a course that doesn’t promise much growth. I conclude from all this that anyone who wants to make a satisfying living as an independent app developer should seriously consider only building apps based on sustainable revenue models. I suspect this means through consumable in-app purchases, like those in Candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans, or through recurring subscription charges, like those in WhatsApp. Furthermore, I have grave doubts that any solo developer would have the capacity to ship and maintain either kind of business working alone.
Apple TV Updated With CNBC and Fox Now Channels ★: One hole in these Apple TV “channels”: they each require you to authenticate through your cable provider separately. Seems like something a future Apple TV update should allow you to do once, at the system level, and then allow all these channels to just work.
MacBook Pro Speed Bumps and Minor Price Cuts ★: Minor updates, including a nice bump in the default RAM for the entry-level machines.