¶ Early App Store and Shifting Landscape
Hello and welcome to another episode of App Stories. I'm John Voorhees and I've got Federico Vettici with me. Hey, Federico. Hi. Hi, hi. I'm doing really well today. How about yourself? I'm doing well. It's Friday, which I like. This week we couldn't record app stories on Monday since I had my condo meeting. That's always fun. Nothing like the condo meeting. Interrupting your day job.
I have a topic for you today, Federico. This is one that I came up with. I want to talk a little bit about the changing landscape. of the world of apps. The topic of this very podcast, the world of apps. Exactly. Because I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I mean, recently Apple announced that... It was making some changes to the way mini apps work. And mini apps are like usually web-based technologies embedded inside of a native app.
think you know things uh the line is like this and then there's a bunch of other we chat yeah yeah yeah yeah and but but even you can look at some of the things like even like chat gpt with that open the ais has an ios app and they are like little mini apps embedded inside of chat gpt on the iphone yeah and by the way that should that should be happening in december right open ai said that they were gonna have a proper launch for apps
inside CHGPT before the end of the year? I think that that's right. And that was a while ago. Maybe October or something. End of late October, maybe. It's been a while. yeah yeah so you know that's not really the topic that i want to talk about many apps are i don't find them super interesting it's just like really a change in the the business practices of how uh how compensation works on the App Store. It's one aspect I want to talk about.
What I want to talk about is that you and I have seen a lot of change since the early days of the App Store, right? We've seen subscriptions come, which some people seem to still think might go away someday. or should be removed and they're not spoiling they're not uh but but we've seen that we've seen a bunch of other things happen and we've also seen a lot of attempts over the years to break down the App Store silo. I mean, one of the things that I think...
Looking at it in hindsight that Apple accomplished when the App Store launched was that it sucked an awful lot of the oxygen out of online commerce, that a lot of the economics of the web. Moved to the iPhone and to a lesser extent you'd like the Play Store and Android that you know, Google was successful to a degree there too and There have been a lot of things since then
especially in recent years where people have hyped a new technology or a new approach as a way to kind of break that hold on online commerce. There was, you know, crypto. Crypto is still around. Crypto didn't really change the app store in any meaningful way, though. Then there was the metaverse.
And the metaverse was going to be the new place we lived instead of using our phones. Nothing happened. Nothing happened there either. But now we're in the midst of an AI boom. And I think that we are truly at what I think is a...
an inflection point in technology that's not just about the app store it's much broader than that but i do think there's a very important aspect of this in terms of what its impact is going to be on the app store in particular and so i thought we would talk a little bit about All of those things. And kind of where we are today compared to where we were a while back with things like subscriptions and AI and everything else. I mean, there's just been an incredible amount of change. like the
It has even changed the way we cover apps and Mac Stories because it's just not the same as it used to be. And so it's different for us, but it's also different for developers as well as consumers as well. Yeah, I think so this is an excellent topic. First of all, I think at a high level, the two things I would say. that have changed. I started doing this in 2009. I actually mentioned this on Connected a few days ago. This AI boom and the fact that this landscape is moving so quickly.
¶ Subscription Models, Developer Relations, and UI Design
Especially if you live at the bleeding edge of AI, it's making me feel sort of how I felt when the App Store was booming in 2008, 2009. I think it's very similar. The whole reason why I started Mac Store is because there was so much to write about and I felt that... I needed to have an outlet. But in terms of apps, the two things I would say at a high level that are different. We have moved away from the old model of this monolithic... App updates, like these major app updates, like Tweetbot 2.
Tweetbot 2.5, Tweetbot 3, Reader 1, Reader 2. Like that used to be the Mac Stories strategy years ago. Like these major app updates. And the big reason why that's changed is that subscriptions have changed the formula for developers. Now you're no longer incentivized to have this big app updates every once in a while and then charge again for the next version of an app. Instead now...
App updates happen throughout the year, every month, every week, you know, because you're charging people a subscription, therefore that changes your relationship to your customers. And as a result, it changes how we cover apps. So that's one. And the second... is since 2009, the overall developer sentiment toward Apple has changed. Apple is no longer the underdog. And what's the expression, John, from a movie? You either die a hero or live long enough.
To become the villain? Is that something like that from Batman? I don't know. Spider-Man? I don't know. I honestly don't know. Please don't be upset. But that's the idea, right? In 2009. You know, unfortunately, toward the end of Steve Jobs' life, the iPhone was brand new. The App Store was brand new. Everybody wanted to make apps. And sure, there was also the economic factor. People were making money.
A lot of money early on. A lot of money. But the indie scene, which is what I think Mac Stories is mostly well known for covering over the years. They wanted to make apps because it was Apple's chance to redeem itself and also to prove that they were paving this new future, you know, free from Microsoft, free from Google. They were designing the future.
developers wanted to make apps for the App Store. But over the years, for all the reasons that we've covered in the past 16 years of Mac Stories, that's changed. And now I don't want to say that developers today resent Apple. Some of them do. I think some of them do. It's a spectrum, for sure. And that spectrum did not exist before. Now, for many financial reasons, political reasons, cultural reasons...
the sentiment has changed. And so many developers, many existing developers from the old guard of Mac developers and then iPhone developers, they've maybe lost their enthusiasm. New developers... I still, there are new apps coming out, right? Yeah, there are. I think this is something I'm just going to interrupt for a second because I do think that maybe the indie scene is smaller than it used to be.
But I do think it is replenishing itself at the same time. I think it's smaller and younger. Yes. Yes. Yes, I think it's smaller than before, but replenishing itself is a great way to put it. Because we do see these young developers, students, maybe some of them still in high school, that are learning to code maybe...
thanks to AI. And surely SwiftUI was something that really helped. Like we see these new utilities come out on a weekly basis. Some of them don't last. Some of them just come out, they have a version one and then... They're kind of abandoned. Well, they're what I call portfolio apps. Portfolio apps, yes. Where a young student is trying to have something that they can show off to get a job or to get into school or whatever.
¶ AI's Reshaping of App Development
it happens to be there are there are a lot of apps that were only released to get a job and that young student gets a job at Apple, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just the way it is. But they don't have a long shelf life, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And so I think at a big level, that idea of subscriptions have changed.
how new apps and app updates are released and therefore how we cover them on Mac stories. But also the sentiment toward Apple is different now. They're no longer the underdog. They're the world's biggest corporation. The politics of Apple and Tim Cook and the US government surely are not helping a portion of the developer community that disagree with Tim Cook's relationship with the US administration. From my perspective,
Apple's relationship with the European Union also didn't help. So there's also that factor to consider. It's happening everywhere, really. It's happening in the US. It's happening in Korea and Japan and a bunch of other countries. In the UK.
Although in the UK, Apple was right when it comes to encryption and the back doors from my perspective. But yes, it's gotten more complicated. So those two factors have definitely changed how we cover apps because... the apps that we cover are different and maybe we should talk about that like are the actual apps different yeah right before we get to that though i do want to touch on subscriptions in a little more depth because one of the things i wrote recently for the club was
asking the question whether subscriptions have spoiled the fun of trying apps and what I was thinking about was the early days of the App Store where for a dollar or two you know, at a time. You could test. You could try out. dozens of apps and it wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna break the time right right good times good time but now it's like all right i really want to try this but it's gonna be five dollars ten five dollars
Right, a month. And one of the things that I find, and part of this story wasn't so much about just how it's changed, but ways that developers should think about subscriptions and ways to get people. make it easier for people to try apps. Because what I find myself doing is if it's an app I want to try, but it's maybe $5 or $10 a month.
I'm kind of busy. And if I just sign up right now, I may not have enough time to try it before the whatever free trial expires. And I find that I don't like that pressure because what I'll end up doing is like, all right, now I'll wait.
until i know i've got a little extra free time and then i'll sign up but you know what happens i forget about the app and i never try it and that i think is unfortunate and why I think with subscriptions, I'd like to see more experimentation with things like consumables within the within the app like you know it's you have so many searches or you have you can set up maybe it's something you're tracking it's a media tracker you can track like
10 movies but no more than that you know that kind of stuff where it's like you can get a feel for the full functionality of an app on your own schedule without being cut off at some point yeah yeah that is true Subscriptions really are the default at this point. I don't really remember the last time I purchased a paid upfront app, especially on iOS and iPadOS.
I still do purchase apps on the Mac, like the old-fashioned way, because the Mac is more old-fashioned like that sometimes. Do you do the one-time payments if they're available for apps? Depends how expensive it is. Like recently, I wanted to do a lifetime purchase for an app and it was like $200. I was like, geez, I don't know. Like, I get it, but...
No, I know. We turn over our apps so often that $200 is a lot to ask. Exactly. For you or me. There's also, I feel like, no, before I get to AI, I want to mention something else. I think a major turning point turning point over the past 16 years was iOS 7. And what came after iOS 7? It used to be possible back in the day to release an app that stood out, if only because of its visuals.
right? Because it was visually and graphically unique, right? You could make a little visual artifact and you could sell it as an app on the App Store. with flat design and the move away from skeuomorphism. It has made everything a little more heterogeneous in that sense. Like everything is pretty much, everything kind of looks the same. I mean, let's be honest, everything kind of looks the same. SwiftUI sort of compounded.
¶ Interoperability, Chatbots, and New Developer Focus
Which is a good and a bad thing, I think. Because you've talked about, you've wrote about this, we've talked about this. You can tell when it's a typical Swift UI. Oh, sure. It's got the look. It's got the look. Yeah. The thing is, on the plus side with that, I think that that democratized development in a big way. You didn't have to have design chops to make a good app, a good functional app.
I mean, in large measure, that's why I built an app. I didn't have, I have got no artistic skill at all. But using stock UI components, I was able to build an app. And I think that's true for a lot of these portfolio apps. utilities we see and that's gotten even better with swift ui yeah yeah and so there's there's the design aspect and i think the next elephant in the room that we need to address is ai
From so many different perspectives, I feel like the obvious one is that all the VC money is going into AI apps right now. I mean... In the latest issue of Mac Stories Weekly, I wrote about another dictation app for iOS and MacQuest. I cannot even tell you how many dictation apps based on AI we've seen this year. There are, you know...
At least a dozen of them, at least. Maybe a dozen. And it feels like there's always a dictation app that pops up every month. And that happens because all the VC money is going there. All the investment funds are funding apps that have some kind of AI integration. And the reality is that developers are doing that because the...
When you zoom out and you take a look at chatbots and you take a look at the big ones, you take a look at ChatGPT and Google Gemini and Cloud and to an extent Grok by XAI, you know, these chatbots that have millions of users. People are using them. And so the assumption goes if people are using them and they're getting used to this different way of working and this different way of interacting with the computer, it only makes sense to sort of have some of that functionality carry over.
bleed into the apps that you use on your phone. And smartphone makers are doing this. You're seeing AI features into different Android apps by Google. You're seeing Apple intelligence features into different apps made by Apple. And so developers are saying, well, if chatbots are so popular and if the operating system is getting AI features, therefore I, the developer, I'm supposed to also put AI features into my app because that's the...
That's the thing now. And so that's changing the apps that we cover. That's changing the services that we use. And that's changing the economics of it all, really.
¶ Navigating Dynamic Tech and Workflows
Yeah, it is. And I think when you look at it, even if a lot of these experiments in AI integration and apps don't work out in the long run. What is happening is that all this money pouring into app development right now, which really wasn't happening probably.
three or four years ago not not anywhere really there really was a quiet period there was a very quiet period and from our perspective looking at it that's kind of boring i mean there were there wasn't a lot going on there wasn't a lot of action of new kinds of apps and now we're seeing like some really interesting approaches to old problems you just sent me a mac app today that
does a new way to manage and navigate your files on your Mac. And it looks really interesting to me. I look at it and I think, hmm, you know, maybe not. But on the other hand, I want to try it. And even if it doesn't succeed, doing that and it's plugged into AI in some way, I think that there are ideas that are being developed that are going to inform.
more apps down the road and i think there's only good things can come from that really yeah yeah and then i think you know you know people keep saying that this ai bubble will burst i don't know If that's the case, I do think that it's unrealistic to think that...
hundreds of startups will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. I do think that at some point there will be some consolidation. Some of the big players will come in and scoop up a lot of these startups. I mean, just take a look at OpenAI. which acquired Sky from the original shortcuts team even before it launched. And I think that's going to happen with all of these dictation apps, with all of these AI-based file managers, AI-based audio editors, like all of...
It's unrealistic to think that we're going to be surrounded by hundreds of apps in each category of software, right? So there will be, this is just history speaking, there will be, it's a cycle. I spent 25 years as a bankruptcy lawyer. I've seen a lot of bubbles in my time. And I know how it goes. And there are good and bad things about bubbles.
I mean, there's always a human toll when there's a bubble. And I think that that's the part of it that I soured on and why I don't do it anymore. But there's also, there can be good things that come out of a bubble. We saw it with...
the development of fiber optic cable and that being strung across the united states we saw it with the first web bubble and the crash of the web in the early 2000s you know all this investment is happening and those assets that actual property, the computers, everything.
they're not going away they're still going to be there and they'll be available to be repurposed for new ideas in the future that can be acquired at a low price if it's from a failure of a big company and that's not a bad thing that's why i mean i'm not going to get into a lecture about bankruptcy but that's why bank no that's fascinating though because i i was not thinking of your perspective from your well it's why bankruptcy exists at least historically the reason bankruptcy
in the United States is to efficiently reallocate assets from businesses that fail for one reason or another maybe they fail because they're a bad idea maybe they just fail from political or economic factors that are outside of the control of the company but it's an efficient way of redeploying assets to new uses
that's governed by a set of laws. And I think that that is what we're, that's what everybody's anticipating. And, you know, saying that there's a bubble and that the bubble's going to burst.
that doesn't mean that AI is going to go away. And it doesn't mean that all these companies are going to fail. It just means that there are going to be winners and losers. And even the fact that there are losers is not necessarily... completely a bad thing is all i guess i'm explaining is that that that capital that you know those assets get redeployed in a new way
And life goes on. So, you know, I think, yeah, I think we are in some kind of bubble. And I think it is going to burst. But I don't think that every idea that is being... Pursued in the world of AI is a bad idea. I think it's here to stay and I think it does have good use cases The problem is is that it's so overblown right now, you know, it's being sold as the solution to everything and It's just probably not, right? But you're saying that the infrastructure will remain.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and the people who have studied it, you know, there's been investments in people, investments in equipment, investments in all kinds of things, networking, data centers, which, you know.
data centers is a hot topic i know but but yeah i mean there's all kinds of things that have happened that'll be it could end up you know all those data centers for instance could end up just uh leading to cheaper compute to the point where you and i might be able to afford some time on a on an nvidia you know gpu yeah it's almost likely if that's the case it means that all of these
I mean, just take a look at all of these dictation apps, for example. It's unrealistic to think that I think two years from now, we will still have 30 different AI dictation apps for the Mac, right? Some of them will be acquired. Some of them will shut down. There maybe will continue to be a couple of big players. It reminds me of the boom of task managers from a decade ago. How many of those are still left today? All right.
Right. Less than 10. Less than 10 things to do is tick-tick OmniFocus. Yeah. I mean, people are still making new ones, but the ones that were at the beginning of that boom, most of them are gone. Yeah, yeah. And so I think this will also happen with the AI apps that we cover. But right now that we are in this context, I think from my perspective, something that is changing is... Chatbots are eating into a lot of the features that I used to find an app for or design a shortcut.
or an automation for. We spoke about this last week on the plus segment of AppStories Plus, like the changing role of automation. And chatbots are eating into, you know, five years ago. I maybe could have considered like a Python IDE for the Mac or a web browser dedicated to research. And now I'm just consolidating all of those features into Cloud.
because it's an easier interface and it's more powerful. But a byproduct of that is also not just that I'm consolidating workflows and functionalities into chatbots, which I think a lot of people are doing the same. But it also means that when I do want to use a standalone app outside of the chatbot for something, like my task manager, I tend to prioritize apps that are not silos.
apps that have an API, apps that support extensions, apps that let me take my data and let me put that data in a conversational way inside of a chatbot. Yep. yep and i think that that's a good example of how this isn't just really a control issue from apple's perspective with the app store it's really widespread because These chatbots are going to, I think, cause a lot of people to prefer interoperability and openness and the kind of...
modalities that you can do with ai that aren't available in any app that's trying to remain closed yeah yeah i think i don't know The last thing I will say is maybe that when I started Mac Stories, back in the golden days of Twitter, the delicious generation of apps on the Mac. There was this sort of like, these days people would call it like builder culture or hacker.
culture and it used to be about making apps it used to be about making software that ran on the iphone which was new and then there was the whole for a couple of years there was the whole boom of ipad apps i remember the original flipboard or Read it later. Instapaper. Daily, I think. The Daily. The Daily. digital magazine. The magazine by Marco Arment, the original one. The original Twitter for iPad, which I still consider one of the greatest pieces of software ever made by Lauren Brichter.
But for a few years in that, you know, I would say 2008 to 2013, up until iOS 7, the idea of like builder culture used to be... about making apps, making native apps, especially for Apple platforms. Now, it's very much been replaced by making web apps and... I'm building software for AI. I spend time on all the social networks. And unfortunately, you know...
The social media landscape is another conversation in and of itself. It's very fragmented. A lot of people still posting on X. Then you have Blue Sky. Then you have Mastodon. Then you have Threads. You have Reddit. I spend time on all of them. um besides threads because i really don't like threads and and and i see this like young developers or even like developers that i knew from back in the day as like indie developers making native software i see
I see them making this change. They're making web stuff. They're making web apps. They're making software for LLMs. They're tinkering with LLMs. This is very much a thing that has changed for me. Like some of the same people that I knew. From the previous era of Mac Stories and the App Store, now they're doing something completely different. And that's interesting. I don't really know if that's better or worse. It's interesting.
from my perspective it's just different and and this is i mean obviously this is something that you and i've thought about a lot because it does impact what we do and uh we you know we kind of roll with the punches yeah i think we are in a very fortunate and privileged position to to be able to have this conversation like it being on on the web with the same website for 16 years is it's kind of unheard of these days especially with the last few years with
Lots and lots of long-time websites going away. Yeah, and it's been a struggle, but that also allows us, I think, to have that kind of perspective. And I think it also helps that both... You and I, we very much don't have the mindset of let's just settle with the things that we know and we're familiar with. And sometimes, you know, it can be stressful. to keep up with the times and keep up with everything that's changing on a weekly basis.
It's fun, too, though. It's a fun, stressful. It's busy. And it can also be stressful for our readers and our listeners. Oh, yeah, for sure. And I totally understand that. And I get those comments from people saying, oh, well, I saw in a screenshot that you were using this. And then a month later, you're using that. So what do you actually recommend? And it's become, I guess, I guess.
I will wrap it up here. It is been, it's now hard. I used to do these articles years ago at the end of the year. My must-have apps. It's hard to do that kind of article now because it's hard to settle on anything for a long time if you are the kind of person who wants to try new tech.
We have friends who are like, no, I don't care about that. I just want to settle with workflow for a year or a couple of years. I don't want to touch it ever again, which is totally respectable and understandable. Right. But we like to try stuff. And so... Right now, it's so difficult to say, yes, I can tell you that the absolute best must-have app in this category that I'm going to use forever is this one.
Yeah, I lost count of how many times you and I switched task managers and email clients this year. Yeah, and that's, I would say, the thing that is the most different.
from years ago years ago you could make a definitive assessment you could take a look at take a look at a category of apps on the app store and say yes this one is the best right Now, not so much, especially because like everything is so, I don't know, extensible and malleable, you know, with shortcuts and app intents and AI and MCP, like everything is sort of blending together.
into these new types of workflows where... Yeah, there's no such thing as a monolithic app anymore. Apps exist in all different places, from your home screen to your automations to everywhere. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And it's so fluid, maybe. the best way to think about it that you gotta take I think more of a holistic view of apps like what do you want to accomplish in general versus which individual apps do you want to slot into the specific...
you know, areas of your daily life. Right, and how do those apps interconnect and relate to each other? I think that's just as important today as anything. Yeah, yeah. All right, Federico. Well, that's a really good conversation. We've been having deep conversations this week, you and I. We've got a good Mac Stories Unwind. You've got to give me a fun topic on App Stories Plus.
All right. Well, you know, for App Stories Plus, we are going to create a little wish list, you and I. We're each going to come up with gear and gadgets that if money were no object. We would like to. Oh, we're going to spend fake money. We're going to spend fake money. This is our Christmas list. It's an early Christmas list. All right. If money were no option. If we had a friend with an extra million dollars lying around who wants to spend it on us, what would we get?
We'll spend it. We'll spend it. We'll figure it out. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. You can find the two of us over at MacStories.net and we're on social media. Just look for Federico. He's at Faticci. That's V-I-T-I-C-C-I. And look up me. I'm John Voorhees, J-O-H-N-V-O-O-R-H-O-E-S. Talk to you next week, Federico. Ciao, John.