“Developers seem frustrated in recent weeks, with developers from Bohemian Coding joining Panic, BBEdit and others in choosing to withdraw their products from sale at the Mac App Store,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“I’m not about to launch into a tirade against Apple on this. I’m going to suggest a solution; one I think will deliver significant improvement,” Evans writes. “Developers are the life-blood of any platform.”
“The best solution I see is to create a new executive position — president or vice president of developer relations,” Evans writes. “This person would have the power and the capacity to build stronger relationships with developers, would evangelize them across other units and would be able to satisfactorily and positively resolve developer problems, such as those currently driving developers away. This role would take certain responsibilities away from many existing members of Apple’s senior management, but would be equipped to prioritise the needs of developers more.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So more of an addition than an out-and-out shake up, but certainly something Tim Cook and Apple’s BoD should be considering. Too much is falling through the cracks lately.
SEE ALSO:
Developer yanks hit app Sketch from Apple’s moribund Mac App Store – December 2, 2015
How Apple could fix their flawed Mac App Store – November 27, 2015
Apple’s Mac App Store is a ghost town – May 7, 2015
Dev pulls MplayerX from Mac App Store over sandboxing; Latest of many Mac developers to abandon Apple app distribution – August 21, 2012
There already is a VP of developer relations. His name is Ron Okamoto, and he reports to Phil Schiller.
-jcr
Well he’s doing a bang up job, that’s all I gotta say.
Obviously, he’s just there to earn a pay check because no one knows about him, and devlopers are running away from the app store. This is a big problem, and if Apple doesn’t get off its collective ass and get out ahead of this, it’s going to be a huge problem.
Bullshit. A handful of developers, out of tens of thousands, have decided that they have a high enough profile that they can do without the app store for distribution.
-jcr
Eddy Cue’s org needs to be broken up. It’s too big and I think he’s in over his head. Cook should hire a SVP to oversee all of Apple’s cloud business. And then hire a VP that reports into Craig Federighi or Phil Schiller to support all developer relations. Eddy Cue will still have plenty on his plate with Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple Pay, iTunes and App Store.
It does not need to be broken up. I’d say the same thing that happened with Jony’s org needs to happen. Bring in a couple of people who can take some of the work off Eddy’s shoulders.
Eddy Cue just needs to go.
Yes it does. Tim Cook needs to bring in somebody really experienced in cloud services. That’s not Eddy Cue.
YES, please replace Timid Tim with a visionary executive worthy of being Steve Jobs’ successor.
Cook needs to go because he has no passion for the products. Ive has to go because he has too much passion for himself.
And the Apple BoD is AWOL.
First of all, developers ARE NOT leaving the platform, they’re leaving the Mac App Store. They all still offer Mac applications on their own websites.
The Mac App Store was created so newer users to the platform can easily find software and be sure that the apps they download are safe from malware, etc.
Most of the developers leaving the store primarily write developer tools. I’d argue that someone looking for that type of software is already knowledgable enough to look outside the App Store for it.
What needs to happen is that Apple needs to create a special “aisle” in the store that allows less restricted software to be sold at the purchaser’s own peril.
They also used to have a web page on their site that listed tons of Mac software and simply provided a link to the developer’s site. This needs to be resurrected and added to the store as well.
Eddy Cue’s gotta go.
Just move Ive back to hardware (only) development, and find that one magic soul who can channel Steve’s vision back into reality. Sure, a few heads will foll (or burst into flame), but Apple needs to get its mojo back.
Recently helped some people purchase used iMacs and Mac mini’s – they need to run legacy programs, so we had to get machines that could run OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). From the delightful Hello video after install, to the lush, almost lickable appearance of those old dock icons, it really brought back the joy of that old Apple experience – something that’s sorely lacking lately. Apple was the company known for it’s user-friendly, user-befriending aesthetic, ever since the advent of OSX. Now the hardware is aesthetically good (if occasionally off-balance in execution – looking at you, Mac (mini) Pro), but the software side has left much to be desired. Go back and find a You-Tube of the 10.6.8 hello video and pictures of the dock icons to see what I mean.
Ive doesn’t run software and has nothing to do with developers or the App Store.
And these developers aren’t leaving the App Store because of the look of Apple’s OS UI.
I think that Apple really needs to re-think the way the App Store works. I don’t think that it is oversimplified in a way that hurts developers, and by extension, the very customers that Apple wants to keep happy.
To not allow free trials and paid upgrades makes it impossible for developers of expensive, specialized software to sell there.
Add in the problem of inexcusably long approvals from Apple and I can understand developers being pissed.
However, on of the other often cited developer complains is how their product gets lost in the clutter of the app store. While I don’t love the store interface and do think it is hard to find good apps amongst a lot of garbage, this is true in any marketplace, real or virtual. I have no problem “discovering” software that someone paid to advertise to me or put a sales staff behind.
Got your mobile app update. Disinstalling after this post. Stop wasting your time, just use the browser. You can splatter as many ads as you like.
Betteridge’ Law applies to this headline.
With any company but Apple, executive shakeups happen when sales are tanking. With Apple, they are called for when anyone gets a hangnail
The company is coming undone – at least to the extent when you compare it today to what it once was when everything “just worked” – that’s now history. Things, more and more, don’t work very well and some don’t work at all. It’s very M’soft-like when the new OS ruins the whole experience until we get to the second or third point updates. What happened to the tradition of it always working, not crashing operations, and delivering an outcome that made us glad the new version had been launched. Instead, we hesitate to upgrade because we fear failure.
Will we have to wait until there is a total collapse of confidence in the company’s products before Tim Cook is replaced? Yeah, I know the answer in the MDN environment is that I’m an idiot but more and more and more comments, some from MDN themselves, that prove I’ve been on the right track for a long time. So, keep up the blind support of the inept, inadequate, and clueless CEO and things will continue to decline right along with the value of AAPL that languishes worse than any other tech company on the planet.
There are numerous things Apple could do…
1. Get a new CEO with a vision for Mac products.
2. Stop this social agenda shit at Apple.
3. Create a proper Mac and Mac Pro that desktop users will want to buy. You know, the kind of bloody Mac/Mac Pro that you can expand when you are able to. :/
4. Rename OS X to MAC OS X.
5. Make Mac OS 11 touchscreen-enabled.
6. Stop this shit with the Mac App Store. i.e. pissing off developers.
7. Fix the F***ING bugs in Safari that make the Web content crash. :/
8. I could go on all day. :/
Pretty good list except #5.
The one think that Cook has actually done correctly is to continue to understand that touchscreens and Macs are completely different worlds. They need to separate devices optimized for their specific uses.
Do not allow the Mac to look, feel, or in any way operate like swipe-crazy iOS or Windows. The Mac needs to be optimized for user efficiency and performance.
What Apple really needs is a team of high level testers to make products reliably do what they are expected to do.
They should focus on:
– Functionality
– Reliability
– Ease of Use
The difference between Jobs and Tim Cook as I see it is this:
Steve Jobs tested and used the products.
Writers create, Editors improve.
Steve Jobs was an editor.
Apple needs an editor or editors to carefully examine, test and improve products.
Apple no longer “just works”. Tim Cook is the new Steve Ballmer. Fail.
If Apple “just worked” under Steve Jobs what the hell was Snow Leopard?!?
Snow Leopard was by far the best version of the Mac OS ever. Thanks to all the effort Jobs and his team put into refining it over the years.
Ever since, Cook has been releasing shoddy freebieware with me-too features copied from the competition. And the GUI is uglier than ever.
I thought this was a Carl plan, but it seems that the developers seem to want run the app
Store rather than Apple, I’ve been an apple person for along time and it seems be the same old problem. Everybody wants to do the same types of apple projects either hardware or
Software and doesn’t remember where it all began, with Apple. The problem is that Apples reputation and the garbage that these people place in the software like advertisements or hidden fees that kids have pay the developers directly avoiding the App Store just to keep playing a game or losing info to the developer by passing private info onto others to gain a market point really sucks. Apple market is not the same as Google or other hardware companies, who want to make any dollar they can. Look at Adobe and Microsoft turning off they’re programs if u don’t pay monthly or yearly. Good luck
Does Apple need an executive shake-up?
YES!
1) Mac OS X has been neglected and mangled to the point of utter user annoyance. Boot those in charge. Sorry! You have to go.
2) Apple security over the past year has become a JOKE.
J O K E .
Boot the dummies who let this happen.
Want an example? Every damned week I have to read THIS in the SANS newsletters:
ID: CVE-2015-7007
Title: Apple OS X Input Validation Code Execution Vulnerability
Vendor: Apple
Description: Script Editor in Apple OS X before 10.11.1 allows remote attackers to bypass an intended user-confirmation requirement for AppleScript execution via unspecified vectors.
CVSS v2 Base Score: 9.3 (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C)
WTF is wrong with your security staff Apple? What parasite has eaten their lazy, delusional brains? 2014 and 2015 have been the saddest years in Apple security history IMHO. WTF WTF WTF.
3) Apple let loose a half-baked TV gen 4. WHY? Out you go, lame management.
4) Mac Pro, an embarrassment of neglect. Pro ‘my ass’. There’s some major ass kicking required here as well.
Enough said, for the moment.
And I’m an Apple fanatic saying this.
You and I often don’t see eye to eye, but I commend you in your looking at things both ways.
Rage on brother…
That we occasionally disagree is fine by me. We’re thinking and sharing opinions on our thoughts. We’ve learned to respect each other. Equally rage on yourself brother…
What Apple really needs is a team of beta testers to make products reliably do what they are expected to do.
They should focus on:
– Functionality
– Reliability
– Ease of Use
Keynote for example was tested by a “low paid beta tester” for the past year. – Steve Jobs.
Writers create, Editors improve.
Apple needs editors to carefully examine, test and improve products.