It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.
It's a mature market. Maybe the age of new and interesting apps is over? I know I've pretty much settled into a small set of apps that I use on my iPhone, ThinkPad, and iPad and probably haven't installed anything new (ie not upgrades) for five or ten years now.
The last new app I installed was either Fusion360 or Visual Studio Code.
I guess I have had to install apps for other things I bought (like Christmas tree lights), but I don't really count that because the app is only a gateway to the thing I really want to use.
>Maybe the age of new and interesting apps is over?
it's a shame it really feels this way! i discovered some fun social apps recently like Bump and Retro that are a refreshing break from the big algoscrollers, but all my friends are either too locked into the existing big social apps or are determined to not mess with any social apps at all.
Try to find a slideshow app that just plays photos as a slideshow. The first 10 results are all the same app with different skins. You try to make a slideshow and after adding 10 photos it wants you to upgrade to a $10/month SUBSCRIPTION to MAKE SLIDESHOWS.
Only a problem because apple removed the ability to change your slideshow speed. Tried showing my fam a trip recently and it flies through at mach 5
Yes. My wife’s mother keeps buying crap in game using my card and I have no reasonable way of blocking her from doing so if I want to keep app purchase sharing.
It’s insane. Does no one at apple have senile in laws? Or is this acceptable?
I still do this but with F-Droid (or one of the nice frontends like Droidify).
Will some new player come and give us some golden years of VC handouts and pre-enshittification decency? I hope so, but the barriers to entry are mighty.
I've had success finding games in the Apple Arcade by just browsing. The bonus is that the games are all included with Apple+ and don't have any ads or microtransactions.
That said, I completely agree that you cannot find any interesting apps by just browsing the App Store as a whole.
Except on Android when you search for something and you get the big "match found" with "install" button, it's an ad and the real result is hidden like a search result.
This practice ought to be illegal. These are trademarks, and monopolies are injecting themselves as market makers in a bidding war they created.
This isn't enshittification. This is Roman Empire collapse. It doesn't work anymore.
99.99% of users never visit the settings. For those that do, they won't get past scare wall #1 of enabling APKs and scare walls #2, #3, and #4 of downloading, installing, and enabling the app.
Google knows this.
Tyranny of defaults, trained user behaviors, ecosystem, scare tactics, and even SERPs manipulation to make this nigh undiscoverable.
But they weren't content with some number of you slipping through the cracks! They're starting to close the ability to release unsigned and self-signed code. You can only imagine what's after that.
