Im not usually someone who posts negative stuff, but my god has the Appstore gone down the shitter.
For context, for the last ~3,5 years I wasn’t really actively using any iOS devices. I had an iPad but used it rarely and only really as a Video machine. But now I’m setting up a XS I got for a killer price used (<60€) and of course I looked into the Appstore what the hot new Apps are. And my god nearly everything either constantly asks you for a subscription to use basic shit, is slow af or full of ads.
For example the „Favorite of the week“ an App called iScanner in my case took 4 seconds (!) to show me anything, which an is abysmal launch time, then shows me the Google ad tracking dialog followed by a clicking the „next“ button 5 times to show me nonsense company propaganda, followed by dialog to subscribe for 4,99€ a month. For a fucking document scanning app. And Apple has the gull to put this garbage in their weekly curated recommendations! And this isn’t the only example. 80% of Apps I downloaded today were removed within 5 minutes.
I’m honestley smitten by how bad things seem to have gotten. Really the only saving grace is that Apples own built-in Apps have gotten really good, in most cases to the point where downloading something else seems unnecessary. But still things seem to have taken a nose dive over the last 3 years.
Also to more active Apple users whats your way to find high quality Apps?
One of the things you’re seeing these days are apps made with bloated frameworks, so they’re cross-platform and easy to develop. In theory it’s great that anyone can make an app for any device with little-to-no code required, but it results in apps with absurd load times, ad bloat, and usability problems. And that’s across the board (though FOSS seems to buck that trend a bit still).
As an example, my kid’s school uses an app called Seesaw. It’s straight-up garbage. It takes several seconds to open, the back button doesn’t work, etc. At least it’s not littered with ads, but it’s a small mercy.
The web is experiencing the same thing. 60MB of ad services being loaded with every click, ads taking up 90% of screen real estate, slow everything, etc. I use some older hardware, but even websites that are mostly text are unusable without a strict adblocker. Not just annoying to use, but completely unusable.
These big frameworks were developed for large, high-traffic sites like Facebook. In theory, they’ll work for your AI-generated blog, but they’ll suck to load if you host them with a $5/month hosting plan and load 300 ad-related things on each page.
The solution is to create native apps and websites, or at least use frameworks appropriate to the task. But that would require people to give a shit, so I don’t see that happening often outside of FOSS projects (which are often a labor of love).
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
This is a large reason why I dreaded Apple making iOS apps a priority for the Mac. Everything wrong about the mobile model becomes a first class citizen.
I’d argue that you’re speaking on app development in general. Your complaints are universal outside of foss.
true maybe, but in terms of FOSS Apps iOS seems like a dessert. Android still isn’t anywhere close to regular Desktop Linux but it got a handfull of good FOSS Apps.
Also maybe rose tinted glasses but things were nowhere nearly as bad 5 years ago
It’s not a desert. The FOSS apps are there, but you can’t use the App Store to find them.
ok yeah I checked a list on github and indeed thats quite a list. But how do you actually get them on your phone?
I know there is a method sideloadly, but that is not really practical given that you constantly have to re-sign apps.
I’ve found a lot of them are on the AppStore, you just have to follow the link from the GitHub page or search for it on the AppStore. These apps just usually won’t be featured on the AppStore, I assume because they generally aren’t going to generate revenue for Apple.
As a side note, I find it really annoying that I can’t install an app remotely on my device. It’s been a little while since I used Android, but it was really convenient if I wasn’t on my phone but found an interesting app that I could authenticate into the Play Store, select which device I wanted to add the app to, and it would install remotely. It doesn’t seem like that can be done with the iPhone and it’s slowly becoming my leading complaint as they fix my other annoyances since switching from Android to iPhone.
its not quite the same as on Android with the Playstore, but you can enable a feature called „App Downlods“ which automatically syncs your installed Apps among your iOS devices. Its under Settings -> App Store -> App downloads
I’ve done that, but this is mostly an issue when I’m on my Mac and the links open in the AppStore and say it’s not compatible with my Mac.
so you can’t find anywhere, you couldn’t side load apps before EU fixed it
You certainly can, it just isn’t straight forward.
Wrt glasses, they’re not rosy, you’re seeing it straight.
I think most people in here are overthinking things. The simple fact is all the low hanging fruit apps were created a long time ago. There just isn’t much left to do with apps anymore, particularly from an independent developer perspective. So what you have now is a bunch of new developers recreating the wheel trying to make a buck with ads or tricking people into subscriptions after a free trial.
Or luring you to their app with a built-in web browser designed to keep you in their app, reading ads and further enjoying the enshitification of it all.
I know that this is besides the point, but you know that there is an included document scanner in iOS right?
You can go to files, tap the three dots at the top right and there it says „scan documents“
I do, thanks. That was a welcome surprise - the Stock iOS Apps have gotten extremly good.
You can also scan PDFs directly into your Notes app. I use that during meetings, because you can mark on the pdf with your Apple Pencil, while also taking standalone notes alongside the document.
It’s handy for my line of work, where I’ll often need to do rough sketches alongside printed reports. I scan the report into my notes, then have room for the sketches in the same workspace.
Wow thank you I did not know that! I’ve used Quickscan so far, which is fine, but even that is too much overhead for my purpose.
Its really strange that its not an option in the camera app
Apple promotes subscription based apps since they get 30% of that fee, simple as that. I have no idea how to fight against that. I used Google to look for free or buy to own apps before but Google sucks now too.
The ushering of the $1 price point did it. Most apps aren’t worth even that, so the developers struggle to make ends meet, resorting to subs and ads to make it work. Even the ‘legitimate’ app developers suffer because a $60 app looks ridiculous in a sea of $1s, so they have to swallow the pill and undercharge, hoping the volume would make up for it. It’s sad, and given that most successful apps aren’t the first from a developer, and well, you get the picture.
Oh. The ‘idea’ guys and the app store get their cut, regardless.
to more active Apple users whats your way to find high quality Apps?
I search the name or type of app. Or look through threads on here where someone asks, “what is your favorite iOS app,” or “what is the best app for X.”
I can’t remember the last time I installed something from the front page of the App Store. I’m always searching for something specific
I like to take a look through it every once in a while but most of the apps are for people who download mobile games, dating apps and various entertainment sources. I don’t watch much content on my phone, unless there isn’t another option, and I avoid mobile games for the most part so most of what shows up on the home page is relevant to general masses but not myself.
Yes, I rarely look at the AppStore recommendations. Even if they’re not paid promotions, I think Apple is incentivized to feature apps that will generate revenue for them whether from their cut on ads, subscriptions, or outright sales. That’s not to say they’re necessarily all bad apps, but sometimes their incentives don’t align with what I’m looking for.
I don’t think I’ve ever gone on the App Store hoping it would have good recommendations for new things to look at. Do people find good apps that way? 99.9% of the time opening an App Store I smash the search button so nothing loads and search for the app I want.
I rarely touch the App store to “find” something. If I discover I need an App for something, that’s when I just go grab it from the App store.
Trying to peruse the App Store is a nightmare. there are numerous things wrong with it, especially the rating systems and how ratings keep certain apps constantly in everyone’s faces, despite getting horrible recent reviews.
Yup pretty much. Everything is a laundry list of tracking and “live ops” that’s meant to basically consume your entire life. Games are all gated by time barriers unless you pay.
Everything is a subscription and most are ridiculously priced that if you subbed to 8 of them, you’d be out near $100 a month! For a handful of apps!
Apple never cared about the long game. I guess just like every other company. All Cook cared about was dollars. And since they took 30% of everything, insanely priced subscriptions were like gold to them. They also span off browser extensions into pseudo-apps to further widen their reach.
Integrity and quality is absolute shit. Even in iOS. Every version feels like a beta with either graphical glitches or serious bugs. It’s like we’re regressing.
I haven’t been interested in app for almost a decade because there’s just nothing worth my time.
It’s honestly nice to know that there are others that feel the same. As that’s the only way we can hope to shift away from this shitshow of basic thievery.
Check your previously purchased and installed apps to get back non-shit stuff.
forcing the devs to pay to launch their apps has it’s drawbacks
Wtf, is that actually a thing now?
Always has been on iOS, this is not new.
My bad, I misinterpreted op use of the word launch to mean opening the app.
Yes, you have to pay an annual membership fee to Apple if you want your apps to stay listed in the App Store.
QuickScan is a great, free donationware scanner.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ocr-text-scanner-quickscan/id1513790291
I happily paid for this. I use it to automatically export to my paperless consume folder on my nas. I have a widget on my home screen that brings me straight into a scan and auto exports after. It’s fast, clean and works really well.
This is crazy timing because I just had the mirror experience while trying to find a scanner app for an android phone I wanted to use around the house as a smart home remote. The play store was a dumpster fire. I bought the Quick Scan app (Dev is iSolid) on iOS and was willing to pay good money for one on the Android phone too, but every single scanner app on Android had ridiculous subscriptions. A few were $20 a month!
Genius scan is free and pretty good.
Auto export is locked behind the ultra subscription at $3/mo or $30/year. I’m not against subscriptions or anything, I just don’t think the feature is worth that price. I don’t want their cloud storage and whatever else comes with the ultra tier.
It’s really crazy how the only innovation we’ve seen the last decade from major tech companies is them making their products progressively worse for the consumers while they leech ever increasing amounts of data out of everything and hiding free features behind subscriptions. Hell man, I’ve had companies that I paid lifetime licenses for just completely break our agreement and roll out a subscription model, while also removing all of the features that made the product great to begin with (Spark email app).
