David Pierce, writing at The Verge (gift link):
The Pixel 10 Pro solidified a feeling I’d been having through all of my tests: Android is a better operating system than iOS. [...]
If all you got from your phone was the out-of-the-box experience, I’d have picked the Pixel. But unfortunately for Android, app stores exist. And the App Store absolutely wipes the floor with the Play Store. Lots of the apps I use every day — apps like Puzzmo, NotePlan, Mimestream, and Unread — either don’t exist on Android at all or only exist as web apps. Most of the ones that do work on both platforms are better on iOS. And forget about the kind of handcrafted, small-developer stuff — apps like Acme Weather, Current, and Quiche, just to name a few recent favorites — that’s all over the App Store and absolutely nowhere to be found on Android.
Put aside your feelings on whether you agree “Android is a better operating system than iOS”. What’s interesting here is that Pierce, who thinks that’s true, still prefers the overall experience of iOS because the apps are so much better. I first wrote about this in 2010, in “Where Are the Android Killer Apps?”:
But, the thing I’ve noticed, eight months after returning a Nexus One I borrowed for six weeks from a friend, is that, well, I don’t seem to be missing much.
I’ve complained, numerous times, about the “how many total apps are in your store?” metric — the idea that Apple is “winning” because there are more iOS apps than there are apps for any other mobile platform. If quantity of app titles were all that mattered, we’d all be using Windows, not Mac OS X, right? Having the most apps matters, but having the best apps matters too. The sweet spot for a platform is to do well in both regards.
And then, more recently, in 2023, “Making Our Hearts Sing”:
I will offer another quote from Kubrick: “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.”
Art is the operative word. Either you know that software can be art, and often should be, or you think what I’m talking about here is akin to astrology. One thing I learned long ago is that people who prioritize design, UI, and UX in the software they prefer can empathize with and understand the choices made by people who prioritize other factors (e.g. raw feature count, or the ability to tinker with their software at the system level, or software being free-of-charge). But it doesn’t work the other way: most people who prioritize other things can’t fathom why anyone cares deeply about design/UI/UX because they don’t perceive it. Thus they chalk up iOS and native Mac-app enthusiasm to being hypnotized by marketing, Pied Piper style.
What’s happened over the last decade or so, I think, is that rather than the two platforms reaching any sort of equilibrium, the cultural differences have instead grown because both users and developers have self-sorted. Those who see and appreciate the artistic value in software and interface design have overwhelmingly wound up on iOS; those who don’t have wound up on Android.
Apple would be wise to cultivate a further widening of this third-party software-quality gulf through radically improved developer relations, rather than attempting to squeeze additional rent from this advantage — which, while penny-wise in terms of juicing its App Store revenue in the near term, is ultimately pound-foolish in the way that it is souring developer sentiment.
The real goldmine isn’t that Apple gets a cut of every App Store transaction. It’s that Apple’s platforms have the best apps, and users who are drawn to the best apps are thus drawn to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad. That edge is waning. Not because software on other platforms is getting better, but because third-party software on iPhone, Mac, and iPad is regressing to the mean, to some extent, because fewer developers feel motivated — artistically, financially, or both — to create well-crafted idiomatic native apps exclusively for Apple’s platforms.
Apple should focus its developer relations on cultivating that motivation, and trust that in the end that will continue to prove lucrative for Apple itself. They should do whatever it takes to make their cut of App Store transactions feel like a beneficial bargain to developers, not an oppressive tax.
Instagram Engineering
Shopify Engineering