‘Tim, Don’t Kill My Vibe’

Bryan Irace:

Barring a sharp correction, Apple looks increasingly likely to miss out on a generation of developers conditioned to first reach for tools like Cursor, Replit, or v0 — especially as Apple’s own AI tooling remains notably absent. This goes well beyond enabling new entrants to “vibe code” — experienced mobile developers who, despite history with Xcode and a predilection for building native apps, are begrudgingly swapping out their tools in acknowledgement of the inarguable productivity benefits. [...]

App Review has always long been a major source of developer frustration. Authoritarian yet inconsistent policy enforcement aside, it’s simply too hard to distribute software even to your own Apple devices, let alone someone else’s. This isn’t new by any means, but as the time to build an app shrinks from weeks/months to hours/days, it feels more egregious — and thus like more of a liability — than ever before.

This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. I feel like Irace is onto something here that I haven’t seen anyone put their finger on before.

The App Store, when it debuted, made developers deliriously happy. The UIKit frameworks (a.k.a. CocoaTouch), Objective-C, and Xcode were all way better ways to create apps for mobile devices than anything else at the time. And for distribution, going through Apple and the App Store was way easier and way more democratic, and 70/30 was way more generous to developers, than anything from the various phone carriers around the world. You’d be lucky to get a 30/70 split from the carriers, and they’d only deal with large corporate developers. There were no indie or hobbyist mobile app developers before the App Store. (It’s kind of nutty in hindsight that network carriers were the only distribution channel for apps 17 years ago.)

17 years is a long time, though. And developers long ago stopped seeing the App Store as something that makes them happy, or that reduces friction and hassle from their lives. Instead they view it as a major source of friction and hassle. Apple should have focused on keeping the App Store as a thing that makes developers (mostly) happy all along, not (as things stand today) mostly miserable.

Basically, the threat to Apple that the App Store poses is not regulators coming for it. That’s a distraction. The threat, as I’ve long tried to argue, perhaps unsuccessfully, is that market forces will work against it eventually. Developers have long since grown resentful toward the technical and bureaucratic hassles of publishing through the App Store, and the size of the purchase commissions Apple keeps for itself. Apple’s commission percentages haven’t grown over time, but a 70/30 split that in 2008 seemed remarkably generous (or even the newer 85/15 small-business split) today seems like a platform engaging in usury and abusive rent-seeking.

AI might be the disruption that brings about the “eventually”, because now it’s coming for the developer tooling experience too. If Apple’s native programming frameworks and developer tools aren’t the best, most satisfying, most productive ways to create great apps, what’s left that makes developers happy to be creating for the iOS platform?

Apple should move mountains to refocus itself on making the experience of developing for (and on) Apple platforms the best in the world, including distribution and monetization. Instead, they seem to be resting on the assumption that it’s a privilege, self-evident to all, just to be allowed to develop for Apple platforms.

★ Monday, 24 March 2025