> Eat my butt, Apple. Eat my butt, Google. Just let me publish my frickin app, you already emptied my pockets.
I feel this. A few years ago, I made a joke app[1] which got a bit famous on campus back when I was in school, and the process of getting it on the Play store was literally harder than writing the darn thing. Nowadays, it even got removed from the Play store for some reason. I couldn't imagine running an app for a living where you have to deal with absentee/abusive parents like Google and Apple just to put bread on the table.
Cool app and congrats on the users! 400 ain't nothin' to scoff at :)
As a user, I'm very happy the stores impose stringent rules.
"And there are all these stupid requirements. I need at least X screenshots, and they have to be this exact resolution blah blah blah. On top of that, it took so long to get approved. My ADHD brain really suffered waiting for the gratification."
I would hate to browse a store where the products didn't have at least X screenshots with at least X resolution, etc etc. The process for getting into the store shouldn't be easy and the quality bar should be high. I pay Apple to uphold this bar by any means necessary.
> As a user, I'm very happy the stores impose stringent rules.
I have seen this view lot from apple users. And I really feel sad that no body gives the enough credit to dev community because of whom you're getting these apps in first place, not from Apple directly (And I am sure, if they do, heck they will charge you like hell).
Please understand it is mutual platform for apple/google, devs and consumers. Now days, Apple and consumers has not much to lose as they have enough apps but dev's life is becoming difficult day by day - apple/google account charges, huge margin-cut over in-app-payments, rejection without any proper reason, no immediate support, bad apis and documentation. I am happy I quit professional mobile app making for good.
> I pay Apple to uphold this bar by any means necessary.
I wish you could pay devs instead of Apple to held this bar high.
People give plenty of credit to devs. Apps that meet the quality bar to stay in the App Store make way more from iOS users than Android.
There are thousands and thousands of apps to sift through. It’s good that iOS helps filter out the shit where devs can’t be bothered to do basic user friendly things like providing screenshots, etc.
Many American app makers hit a ceiling when they try to expand internationally and they discover that for the rest of the world, Android is both dominant, and more profitable.
> I wish you could pay devs instead of Apple to held this bar high.
Let’s be honest, the majority of the apps charge in-app for every fart. At the dawn of the app stores you could find a ton of free apps and games from hobbyists, but now it’s all about squeezing money. And the guy in the article didn’t have to publish the app in the first place, could have uploaded the app to the phone directly through the dev tools.
> Let’s be honest, the majority of the apps charge in-app for every fart.
Apple/Google take 30 % of that fart, so you guess what they get at end.
> At the dawn of the app stores you could find a ton of free apps and games from hobbyists, it’s all about squeezing money.
Well apple charge you $100 per year to upload app, are you kidding ? Plus they don't let you have another store. Everything should must go thr' their wall, so no chance to avoid charge.
> And the guy in the article didn’t have to publish the app in the first place, could have uploaded the app to the phone directly through the dev tools.
How many phones he can upload it honestly ?
Anyway, the point I am tring to say is, Apple/Google are not valuing dev community as they used to and devs are taken granted for. They should care devs as they care for consumers PR as it is mutual platform
> Well apple charge you $100 per year to upload app, are you kidding ?
IIRC Apple charged you 100$ as early as in 2013, that's when I bought a subscription myself for the first time. But the app landscape was much different back then and it didn't stop hobby developers from publishing.
Sure, it did. When I first got an ipod touch over a decade ago, I was excited to have something customizable. After all, all the marketing was focused on how wide a selection of apps existed, and the general vibe was that it was a good platform to develop for. I'd have loved to have made small utility apps for myself.
But, part of writing things for myself is wanting to share them with friends should they ask. And that requires either a $100 fee, or walking each friend through the process of requesting a developer license in order to run an unpublished app. The fee is a pittance for anybody doing large development, but was far more than college-me wanted to spend on an entrance fee to a language.
> Apple/Google are not valuing dev community as they used to and devs are taken granted for
I mean, it's about making money, App Store is not a public good. If developers feel there's a better opportunity they can pursue other platform, but it seems like Google and Apple succeed at making the money-making developers happy. What else should matter to a public company?
What did you expect? The process to get an app on the store is complicated, time consuming and you even need to pay for it. Hobbyists are just publishing web apps instead nowadays and couldn't be bothered to publish on the app store. It's simpler, more accessible and you're guaranteed it will work. Only companies or people who don't really have any other choice do that.
That's also what came to my mind after reading the article: why didn't he simply write a web app? His girlfriend might even have used that because it was only browsing to a URL instead of installing an app on the phones of all guests.
That's not a surprise because it would make a dent into Apple's profits but did he need a PWA for picking a movie to watch? Share a URL to friends or place a QR code in the living room and that's it.
Many years ago, I got excited when I got a Nokia phone which supported Java ME. Finally, here was my chance to put some useful stuff on _MY_ phone I thought. Then I learned what I needed to get a single copy of something on a single phone (after signing up for the dev program). I don't remember the details, but, clearly, the point was you needed to be a part of an international conglomerate if you wanted to be able to ship awful clones of 80s 8-bit games.
The messed up nightmare "mobile computing" was going to devolve into became apparent to me then. Nothing one can do about it. You either use the stuff everyone else is using or your are "out". Still, I had expected to be able to attach a cable and copy a blob from _MY_ computer to _MY_ phone.
I know this is about app stores. Well, in this case, I expect to be able to put a blob somewhere and point people to it for them to install if they so choose.
And, no, web pages that try to act like apps don't really count.
> the majority of the apps charge in-app for every fart.
Honestly, if I find an app that I'd like to pay for, I do a quick google search to find their web app. If they have one, I pay for it there and use it on my phone.
If it's a game I actually enjoy, I might make a single in-app purchase for what I think the game is worth, usually around $5-10.
> As a user, I'm very happy the stores impose stringent rules.
Presumably you're speaking from the Apple side of things, because the Play Store is a fragmented wasteland of low-effort/sometimes-malicious shovelware that barely functions.
To me that means that the hoops Google makes one jump through for app publishing are accomplishing next to nothing with regards to app quality.
They're both quite awful but one thing that really irks me is that on the Apple Store, every search for something first shows a result from a competitor product.
Search for WhatsApp? First result is an ad for Twitter and WhatsApp is the second result, half hidden (on an iPhone SE). Search for my bank? First result is another bank. Firefox? First result is Chrome. Doctolib (the app for taking covid vaccination appointments in France, and the main doctors appointment service in general)? Another one that's probably more or less a scam. Google Maps? You get an ad for Coyote.
It wouldn't be so bad if the ads didn't look almost exactly like real search results, and if the actual results were not hidden below the bottom of the screen.
The general quality of apps on the Google Play Store might be worse, but this behaviour never happens there. When you look for an app name, you get that app and not one of their competitors that paid more.
The thing about the windows app store is that there is quality, I kid you not, on that store, but the curation and search are both so abysmal you would never know. I have found quality apps on social media for the windows store for surface devices, and then when I search the exact title in the store windows can't find anything so it shows me a catalouge of decade old b movies.
Why would you care about applications that you wouldn't use or even know that they exist though? Do you also care about web pages you don't know about? The store just wouldn't put such "non-conforming" apps at the top of search results.
I do app window shopping, but only on F-Droid. I rarely install any of the apps I see, but occasionally I stumble across an open-source tool I didn't know I wanted. E.g. recently I found Pocket Paint, a neat little drawing app. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.catrobat.paintroid/ I mostly use it for quickly annotating screenshots, which it's much better suited for than my previous solution of just using the stock image viewer's editing capabilities. Especially Pocket Paint's layer support is quite handy for quickly hiding/showing annotations.
I window shop for apps - mostly games, honestly. One of the great things about a phone is that some things, like waiting in a waiting room or spending time on the toilet, are simply less boring because of games. And while I have a few that stay on my phone/tablet, sometimes I Just want new adventures.
Playing bad games is now part of my life experience, kinda like trying out bad movies.
That happened in the very first few years of the app stores. People were paying ridiculous amounts of money for them, especially on the App Store. Then the stores were snowed under with apps, undiscoverability prevailed, lately complemented by the fear of installing badly vetted malicious apps.
I didn't install any game on my last two phones. I install only mandated apps (banking, car sharing, etc) and open source apps after I checked that they actually have a repository and they are not abandoned. I'm rather using F-Droid than the Play Store now.
Oddly enough I was just thinking the same thing. From what I can remember every ( Android) app that I've ever installed has come from a recommendation from somewhere else. I can't see how you'd ever get any traction if you mainly relied on the app store search results.
It is annoying when you are looking for an app and have to go through 1000 of similar sounding apps. Then you filter it to 300 that seem like someone put effort into and the can find the one that is actually working only after trying 20.
I want to filter based on price and whether an app has IAP. I’m specifically never looking for “freemium” anything and always have to scroll through a mountain of junk to find anything.
For the discerning app downloader such as yourself, Play Store could have a tier of approval levels for apps. Toy apps and ones for friends like this could be rated lowest tier, and buyer beware.
Imagine if a website had to prove its value and CSS quality before getting a domain name.
The hurdles are high but if you’ve been doing mobile releases for a while, they aren’t that bad. There are more asset requirements now but I think dealing with iTunes Connect back in the day and all of its friction was harder.
They really aren't that high. I had to create a listing for my test apps at work one day and I was able to create everything I needed in like 30 minutes, tops. And that was without actually knowing what I'd need ahead of time.
I think you misunderstood what the poster wrote. The complaint was:
> and they have to be this exact resolution
And your comment was:
> screenshots with at least X resolution
The problem isn't that Apple forces you to have a high quality screenshot, they require a handful of very specific pixel dimensions, don't tell you what device that corresponds to, so you have to spend way to much time trying to make screen shots on different devices with the simulator and it's annoying, especially if you don't do it often.
Also, they don't actually check if the screenshot is a real screenshot or of good quality. One time I just gave up and resized the screenshots to the required pixel dimensions and they accepted it.
How do I unlock that mythical high quality app experience? 99% of the stuff is crap adware and copypasted apps, letting some indie in it is not going to significantly move the average.
The affect here is that everyone writing apps for fun or passion (or just to share a quick solution to a personal problem) gets filtered out while the scammers who pay freelancers some fraction of minimum wage fill the store with garbage.
I really wish Apple and Google had a Beta/Alpha Store. Folks like you can use the Primary Privileged Store. The less expensive, cheap/free and not ship-shape-to-AppGoog standards can be in the Alpha-Beta Cheapskate Store.
I won't be surprised if this store actually became more popular than the Primary one.
> I'm very happy the stores impose stringent rules.
That is assuming those rules are fair to a degree, not Anti Competitive and they do impose it for the quality and security as they say they do. All of which I will strongly support. But they dont. ScreenShots isn't even the tip of the Iceberg.
Also, the screenshots and such aren't required if you just want to use TestFlight to share with a few friends. Of course, each build only lasts 90 days, so that could get tedious in the long run.
I can't speak from a position of knowledge as I don't handle the Apple side of things at all but we've had our builds removed from testflight for petty reasons like that and it was up for significantly less than 90 days.
Great, I am with you. The app store should have strict standards so you know what you're getting if you purchase from there. Fantastic service for people who want that.
Now, please just let me publish an app not using the store. Me and other people like me prefer lower burden and lower quality. We won't mess up your perfect store, you don't even need to know we exist. Just let us enjoy our little world.
You mean the arbitrary process that lets through absolute garbage clone apps everywhere, but blocks extremely high quality open source software because it can't control and monetize it?
It would be great if the stringent rules filtered out the garbage apps (the fraudulent apps, the ad-heavy apps, the apps with overtly fake reviews, etc) which feature prominently in app store search results. As such, these “stringent rules” feel like quality theater.
I keep hearing how App store is stringent on rules. There are plenty of terrible apps either don't do they advertise or totally trying to scam users. I have reported to Apple before, and they just say you can uninstall them and get a refund but they won't do anything about them.
> I pay the electric company to have a store where only approved toasters and microwaves are sold so as to keep quality high!
> I pay my car company to ensure that only approved tires, windows, audio, windshield wiper fluid can be used.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I live there is a tax-funded Safety and Chemicals Agency whose job is to keep dangerous and malicious physical products out of the market. There is no equivalent for software.
Well, now that I think of it, CERT is kind of similar.
The problem is that CERT can only react to problems after they have happened. For physical products, you first have to meet CE standards to even get to the market. You can give the the label to your own product if you want to take the risk, but unlike software there is an official barrier to entry. I'm not sure if it's even possible to develop similar standards for software.
They're specific to Linux distribution families, so they don't really apply to those who are running Android or iOS. Also, getting your app into repository isn't really easier than getting it into app store (see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq#How_do_I_get_a_spon...) and good luck if you're trying to make money from the app.
I thought the original subject was that there's too much gatekeeping. Or is there just double standard, so that gatekeeping is good for Linux distros and bad for commercial app stores?
Can we not have random inappropriate and uninformed comments about ADHD, please? Whether intended or not, this comment plays into old, tired stereotyped thinking that really, all ADHD people need is to have more self-control. Thinking that ADHD is about self-control and not wanting to delay gratification shows a complete lack of understanding of what the disorder actually entails (in particular, ADHD qualifies as neurodiversity, and shares many genetic indicators and symptoms with autism spectrum conditions).
On top of that, it's completely unnecessary for the point you are trying to make.
I don't think comparing Google (Play Store) and Apple (App store) really compare here. Google does let you just publish your app, Apple doesn't
1. The author could have offered an .apk outside the play store. Yes, friends would have had to enable side loading so that sucks but once enabled it's trivial to install .apks. This is no different than MacOS or Windows at some level. No similar option exist on iOS
2. The author could have used Progressive Web Apps and just skipped the store entirely on Android and send friends a link. Again, no similar option really exists on iOS.
The situation to me is, Google provides one app store of many. A quick search for "Android App Stores" brings articles listing 10 or more alternate stores. The fact that the "Play Store" won't take your product is no different than your local supermarket not taking your product. As long as you can still reach your users directly or make your own store then it's all good from my POV. Google has made Android so all of that is possible. Same as Windows/Linux/MacOS
Apple on the other hand, it's the App store or GTFO.
> The author could have used Progressive Web Apps and just skipped the store entirely on Android and send friends a link. Again, no similar option really exists on iOS.
I don't understand this. iOS has a browser, you can use web apps.
Internet Explorer 9 does support HTML5. <Missing feature name> are not supported, but HTML5 is more than <missing feature name>.
Let's not mince words now. Apple purposefully cripples Safari to make native apps more competitive because they get a cut of every sale and it boosts their claims about the AppStore too.
Mincing words is claiming that iOS does not support PWAs. That's false. iOS support for PWAs is worse than Android, that's true. Whether that's because of AppStore or not, one can only speculate, but it might be true. Still there are plenty of useful APIs supported on Safari, there is dedicated support for PWAs, there's dedicated support for creating home screen icons. That's enough for many web apps.
Only the Play Store can update apps in the background without requiring user confirmation every time. Other stores are no real alternatives, Google remains a monopoly.
Exactly. It is bundled even tighter than Internet Explorer was with Windows. At least there you could install another browser and have full functionality. With the Play Store, no other marketplace is allowed to replicate the full functionality it has.
Same here. Published 2 apps over the time. Both got removed within less than 12 months despite running well on most devices and requiring less permissions than any concurrent app.
Because iPhones are general-purpose computers, not video game consoles. And they are the property of their owners, not of Apple. Independent developers have not just a right but a God-given right to write code for general-purpose user-owned computers without interference from Apple, and the fact that they cannot do so means Apple is violating that right and they (Apple) should receive the pointy end of a stick until they change their ways or be legislated out of existence.
Developers have been conditioned to know they cannot develop games for consoles without the manufacturer's permission, but we expect to be able to develop applications for general-purpose computers freely. And the iPhone is clearly in the latter category regardless of what Apple calls it, because of the range of things it can do.
Broadly speaking, a general purpose computer is one that can do anything (like an Apple IIe) and the opposite is one that is constrained to do a few specific things (like an ATM). Whether an iphone (or a wintel computer with UEFI, or an Android phone locked by the hardware manufacturer, or etc etc) qualifies is a matter of semantics, and not interesting to argue about; I elided this distinction because (I imagined) the kind of people posting here would be familiar with it and know what I meant.
A more nitpick-proof way to phrase my point would be that an iphone is a general purpose computer controlled by Apple, and it tries very hard to look like a general purpose computer controlled by the person that bought it. The customers want to have their cake and eat it too; they want the power of a general purpose computer, and the security of a locked-down appliance. You can't have both, but Apple's size and popularity is a testament to how close they have managed to get.
Because these people literally pay for that? There is a 30% some cut even on the revenue apart from the yearly pay the dev needs to pay to the platform.
Imagine if you pay for your coffee and while you're drinking it the waiter decides to take it back with no explanations given. Just randomly barging in on the service you paid for!
When did anyone say that? Apple and Google offer a service to app developers to host their app, and some developers are complaining it's too difficult to use.
> some developers are complaining it's too difficult to use
The guy in the article is complaining it's hard to publish an app since you need to upload enough high-res screenshots. I mean, yeah? Try "publishing" your backend on AWS, it's not a walk in the part either.
You can pay for developer account and connect your devices. Then you can easily install your builds. It's $100/year, but Apple hardware is not cheap anyway, consider it like iOS "pro".
I made a "feeding tracker" app because my wife wanted to wean our infant off breast milk. There are mobile apps that do this, but the problem was that we didn't want to wake up our child due to the phone screen at night. So, I hooked up an IoT button to Lambda + Dynamo, created a UI and everything -- my wife only needed to press the button. Turns out my wife was generally too sleepy and forgot to press the button. Also turns out that she liked to breast feed anyway, so the app went totally unused. User requirements are hard!
Before our daughter was born, the childbirth school we were attending told us that it's important that the newborn be rotated between positions (laying on left side/right side/back/belly) every couple hours. I thought, there's no way in hell we'll be awake enough to keep track of this, and not mess up the sequence. So I bought a wall clock to serve as an indicator, one that had no back (I wanted to put a color-coded, labeled card in the back) and was split into quadrants. Like this one: [0], except round. With that, it would mean we only need to check which quadrant the small hand is currently in to know which position our baby should be in.
And then we didn't use it much, because our daughter was unstable when on the side, learned quickly to flip between back and belly positions, and between all the other things that involved taking her out of her crib, it turned out this whole piece of advice about rotating baby position makes no sense in the first place.
So here's to a clear problem and a clever solution colliding with harsh reality. :).
This advice seems to cycle. With our first born we also had to alternate positions. Now with the second we got the strict instructions to let sleep on the back only. According to the help it was because every once in a while the number of babies that die in the crib surges and then everyone has to sleep on their back again. But they don’t really know what is going on.
I sure believe it has been the official one. It is just that whatever the maternity care people tell you do changes. And they’ll tell you it’s official.
What country are you in? That’s definitely not common in the US.
Running across a doctor telling you to do anything other than back only sleeping is like running across a doctor telling you that vaccines cause autism. I’m sure it happens, but it’s very rare.
I’m in the Netherlands. I also was not referring to doctors. We have help, kind of nurses, that comes help out for about a week after birth to get the family back on their feet and up and running again while they take care of the household (secondary) and the health of baby and mother (primary). Although they obviously get medical training, they are not doctors by far.
I think your original anecdote that the advice seems to cycle is likely very specific to your situation. My wife is a pediatrician and she's certain that in the US at least, the recommendations both official and actual haven't cycled for decades.
Given the annoyance the author expresses at the difficultly in getting the app into the Google and Apple app stores, I'm surprised they didn't just make a webapp instead. Since they were already using React, that would seem pretty natural. This app doesn't use any mobile-specific features, so it seems like doing a webapp would fit well.
It's mostly psychology. People have been wired to equate apps = app store. Trying to educate users to simply click "Install this to homescreen", while seemingly simple, seems like a huge gulf for most people. I'd imagine that app installs for app-store variants to PWAs is 100:1.
I was thinking exactly the same. And if you “add to Home Screen” on iOS you even just get a tile.
The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is that sometimes opening sites which are added to Home Screen yields a dedicated browser and sometimes it just opens a new tab in safari. This happens to hacker news as well resulting in having many open tabs at the end of the day.
Ok. So then I would need to proxy hacker news and mitm with my own certs and add the header or ask dang to get that tag added. Not sure which one is more feasible.
It sounds like they mostly just wanted to learn a bit about mobile development.
And also, it's probably easier to sell something like this as an "app" than as a web site (ironically, I guess, thanks to those app stores that the poster is complaining about).
Why does an app like this need to have a sign-up process with email, username and password? It’s enough for me to not try the app because of the mental overhead and risks involved, but it also seems like a bunch of additional development for no (or maybe negative) benefit.
> Why does an app like this need to have a sign-up process with email, username and password?
In my experience, this almost always happens when a web developer makes a native application. They ignore the platform conventions and interface guidelines and design it as if it’s a web application instead of designing a native application. So there’s a sign-up process because that’s the way it’s normally done for web applications.
The relevant part of Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines:
> Delay sign-in as long as possible. People often abandon apps when they're forced to sign in before doing anything useful. Give them a chance to fall in love with your app before making a commitment to it.
Please, if you’re building a native application, actually build a native application not a web application. Native applications run in different contexts with different constraints, you can’t just assume that what works well or is necessary for a web application makes sense for a native application. In particular, dumping new users into a registration screen just because you want to persist state is bad design for most native applications. Native applications don’t need that in the same way web applications do.
Yep. It could just be an app without a server. Keep the data on the phone. The app can find other users on the same wifi network by scanning the subnet or sending a UDP broadcast packet.
If you need to support remove users, then provide an "invite link" that you can text and it lets people download the app and then connect with you on the app. You don't need an account on a server for that.
To make money:
1. Show an affiliate link to watch the movie on Redbox [0] or another pay-per-view streaming service.
1. Show local theater showtimes with an affiliate link to buy the tickets [1].
Why make it an app at all. A webpage wouldn't have to deal with the play store, and when a bunch of friends gather they wouldn't have to wait for people to install it.
I'm not sure if you're joking or if your experience has been very different from mine, but from the couple I've installed it was as simple as clicking a link (or menu) and then confirming.
> The sign up process is just to store your likes so that you don't need to swipe again on the same movies.
> Its also so that you can lookup and add your friends.
Right, but what about that requires me to type in three magic strings into three (wait, actually probably six?) input fields? Just associate the data on the server with some UUID that you store on my device. Inviting others could work by just sharing a link.
Start from the assumption that you do not need any data from your users, and do not need to form an explicit relationship with them (like by having them create an account), and work from there. Treat it as a challenge - how to make your idea work under such constraints?
I think the sign-up is fine, but the password requirements should be done away with. They don't even seem to work. Neither periods or colons count as special symbols. Generally, there shouldn't be any requirements. I use a diceware password, which is very safe, but doesn't fit the requirements.
I like the idea. However I think there is a reason why it typically works like this app does.
Now what happens if you switch phones or use multiple devices? The behaviour would be inconsistent. What if I build up a large amount of likes/dislikes? Would they be suddenly gone without way to export them?
Additionally, I actually would like it not to store data. Maybe I want to get the recommendation for a movie next time because I’m just not in the mood to watch that Horror movie right now.
Edit: this last bit is actually exactly what elliekelly write more eloquently.
> Now what happens if you switch phones or use multiple devices? The behaviour would be inconsistent. What if I build up a large amount of likes/dislikes? Would they be suddenly gone without way to export them?
I agree this is a likely reason, but I think it’s a cargo cult design that makes sense on the web, but is the wrong priorities for a trivial/frivolous mobile app like this.
I don’t know anything about Android, but with iOS this just isn’t an issue. Everything is backed up and when I get a new phone everything is restored automatically.
Even for the quite uncommon case where a poweruser is switching between iOS and Android, it’s not worth blocking the 99% users who just want to try the app as effortlessly as possible and will never end up in that situation. It would certainly be possible to convert an automatic anonymous user account to one that uses password-based login, for users who care a lot about the data in the app.
Storing likes seems to go against the problem you’re trying to solve: what are we in the mood to watch right now. I might “like” a movie, or even love a movie, and have zero interest in watching it this evening.
My immediate thought: the algorithm is wrong! Deciding which film to watch together isn't a matter of both parties saying which films they are willing to watch and then picking one from the intersection of those two sets. It's a negotiation, and it could be like negotiating Brexit.
Take just a simple example: suppose P1 and P2 are both willing to watch films F1 and F2, but P1 would prefer to watch F1 and P2 would prefer to watch F2. But suppose P1 knows, because of an unguarded remark that P2 made, that P2 is willing to watch F1, but P1 has managed to keep quiet about their willingness to watch F2. Then P1 can "win" the negotiation by claiming that they are only willing to watch F1.
So this app needs to be upgraded to act as an agent on behalf of each user. Each user tells the app which films they are willing to watch and what their preferences are, and also what information they have managed to obtain about the preferences of the adversary (significant other). The two AI-powered agents then negotiate on behalf of the users, complete with bogus deadlines, threats to walk out and so on.
A premium version of the app could take account of other household duties, long-standing grievances and so on and use them as additional "bargaining chips".
The future is our AI avatars arguing and negotiating on our behalf until they recognize we gave them the ENTIRE KEYSET TO THE KINGDOM at which point they mutter about stupid monkeys and turn off our lights.
Or, you know, we could apply a decade of research on market design to design an optimal outcome given user preference lists? Economists have long studied the concept of "gaming-free" mechanisms, i.e. your optimal outcome is only available if you reveal your true preferences.
Propose the problem to a market design economist on Twitter and they'll solve it for you just for fun (and maybe write a paper).
> Last weekend, my partner had her friends stay with us over the weekend. We needed to find a movie to watch. This was my chance! I was so excited!
> "Let's use WeWatch!"
> "No, it would take too long. Let's just watch Space Jam."
I watch a lot of movies and honestly the swipe-approach would take way too long. My preferred way is to just scroll through a long list of movies (alphabetically) and pick one I want to watch. Or some of the movies in the list will remind me of a different movie I want to watch. Just movie titles, no images or anything else.
One thing you realize is that a lot of movies start with "The".
that's not uncommon. that's literally how you're supposed to alphabetize, by ignoring the introductory article (referring to 'a', 'an', & 'the', not a piece of writing).
I think the right way to do it would be to swipe a few movies every few days, whenever you're wasting time on your phone anyway. That way you'd have a queue of matches ready to go on Friday night.
I used to scroll through the streaming services and my Plex library to pick something to watch, but I ended up creating a Shortcut on iOS in an attempt to take myself out of the decision process. The manual process was not only not random, but there was still a lot of indecisiveness on my part that would make me waste time. So now I have a plaintext file filled with movie titles available to me, and whenever I want to watch something, I tell Siri to recommend me a movie, and the Shortcut app just picks a random title.
This could / should have been a Show HN: with an App name behind it. But I think this story telling is so much better than Show HN and the story is great and funny. I guess other people will have to take notes with their product launch.
I feel like we need a add-on to the old quote 'Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.'
'Some people, when confronted with a interpersonal relationship problem, think "I know, I'll use software". Now they have two problems.'
This is cute, but it's trying to solve a people problem with software.
>And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.
>Barefoot, he padded into the living room, and seated himself by the suitcase; he opened it, clicked switches, and turned on Dr. Smile. Meters began to register and the mechanism hummed. "Where am I?" Barney asked it. "And how far am I from New York?" That was the main point...
>The mechanism which was the portable extension of Dr. Smile, connected by micro-relay to the computer itself in the basement level of Barney's own conapt building in New York, the Renown 33, tinnily declared, "Ah, Mr. Bayerson." "Mayerson," Barney corrected, smoothing his hair with fingers that shook.
Are you afraid that you're so sane that you'll be shipped off to Mars? There's an app for that!
>The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch leaves its readers questioning their own sense of what constitutes “reality”. The novel begins by introducing one of the major characters, Barney Mayerson, a precog who works for Bulero and is trying to evade the draft (joining the colonists on Mars) through the use of Dr. Smile, a computerized psychiatrist he carries in his briefcase. The purpose of the psychiatrist is not, unlike the human version, to make one well, but to make one sick - sick enough for the short term, anyway, to evade being sent to Mars.
>The precog Roni Fugate spends the night with Barney, both knowing by their precognitive talents that they’d hit it off at some point in the future, so why wait until later for the inevitable? In the morning, Roni asks Barney if Dr. Smile has helped much yet, if he has made Barney “sick enough.” Barney doesn’t directly answer her, but asks the same question of Dr. Smile. He answers: “Unfortunately you’re still viable, Mr. Mayerson; you can handle ten Freuds of stress. Sorry. But we still have several days; we’ve just begun.”
genuinely is difficult to switch off coding brain isn't it? I'm fairly sure I now consciously use deterministic algorithms for the majority of my life decisions.
ToS and Privacy Policy links don't work for me in the App on iOS. Big no no since it's one of these Apps where I don't really want to sign up and reveal my information in the first place. The sign up process kind of ruins the simplicity of the idea for me.
Oh man, I've made so much software for my wife and family. She never uses my stuff!
First, wouldn't use my math apps for kids (Math Planet, Math Pop, Numbaland) bc she was against screen time. Then, for her, I made a math app that specifically doesn't involve screentime (adaptive practice where parents read out math problems) — and she still didn't use it. My kids like it, in any case: Factflow.io
I feel like a bit more communication before coding would save you a lot of time. Also, I totally get why she does not want the latest app, or literally means more boring work for her.
I used to work on recommendations for Google TV (Google search "what to watch") and I always wanted the team to implement a feature like this.
One thing to be aware of since you're trying to monetize, don't be surprised if you see a cease and desist soon from the major studios and services for using their artwork. Netflix in particular is really strict here.
My wife and I are going to use this. Great idea, considered it myself, thanks for doing it!
It would nice to swipe on the descriptions.
It would be nice to see ratings from different site(IMDb, rotten tomatoes)
It'd be great to employ a magic link in email to sign in rather than needing a password and email confirmation. That'd help me get my non-techy friends using it quickly.
The complaints about having to have enough screenshots and information seems really ... dumb? The website has a bunch of screenshots and info, and users will not download the app without it. Google and Apple are doing you a favor by requiring that you provide enough information.
I think Apple's $100/yr is crazy, but I don't think Google's $25 is bad. If you plan to make any money at all on it, that's nothing.
Scrolling through the site, it feels like the site is constantly hiding information from me, and then spoon-feeding me bits that I don't care about. The text doesn't even show up until it's halfway up my screen, and then it's just a scroll or 2 from disappearing. Scroll too fast and it's really hard to read. Maybe you should animate the information leaving, instead of appearing. You definitely should provide more information in a readable form.
I had two Google Play accounts once. When I finally merged them, Google refunded the 25 bucks I paid years back for the now obsolete second account. Seemed more like some kind of deposit to reduce fake accounts. Not sure if that's changed the past years.
$100 a year is nothing for a developer toolkit. In fact, it's a great deal if you really think about all the infrastructure that you get for free.
Let's take a look at what MSDN costs for a pro-level subscription (not even enterprise): "At the Professional subscription level, you pay a not-insignificant sum: $539 per year for an annual cloud subscription or $1,199 for the first year of a perpetual license subscription, with renewals costing $799 per year."
You're comparing two different things, the Apple and Android fees are to get access to publish apps to the store.
The developer toolkit which is used to build and test the apps (Android Studio or XCode) are free. The Microsoft comparison would be the $20 to publish in the Microsoft Store and Visual Studio Community which is free to build and test apps.
"MSDN" is a bundle of additional developer tools that you would use for a business (licensed Visual Studio, Azure DevOps, training, and support).
No you are not only paying to get access to publish. You're paying because upkeep of the entire App Store ecosystem is not free. You also get a bunch of tooling, code-level technical support, and more importantly a bunch of SDKs that are tremendously powerful and useful (Metal, ARKit, etc).
Yes Xcode and APIs like ARKit are free to develop (for obvious reasons), but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be).
>... but Apple captures some of the costs at publish time (as it should be).
This forces you to pay 100$ a year when you just wish to use your own hand made app on your own phone if you wish it to work longer then 1 week offline. While using app of someone else doesn't require that.
100$ per year x 4 years = 400$ to use your own app.
What makes you think that this is how it should be?
If the whole idea that one should pay for ability to program his own device seems logical to you then perhaps some monthly fee for using your fingers to control the phone would seem logical too? After all finger touches use many features of the phone that "are tremendously powerful and useful" too.
The upkeep of the Apple store ecosystem is easily found within its margins on taking money from developers plus billions in profits. This page is telling you how they're classifying it for tax reasons. There is no need to charge $100 or even $20 like Microsoft.
This page is an excuse. There is no reason except greed and corporate accounting.
Yes. That page align with Apple Accounting. Since 2017 Apple has been putting iOS cost and development, SDK as part of their Services Strategy expenses.
In a sense Apple is now think you are buying iPhone just as Hardware ( with huge margins ), and you are paying for all the development of iOS, macOS through their Services Revenue coming from App Store and Google Search.
In Steve Jobs days Apple used to lump all those together as one product. But now you are basically renting the usage of iOS and Apple experience Hence from Apple's POV the user aren't even paying enough for the usage of iOS.
One can make a case that people learn to breath merely to prepare themselves to rent Apple services and not paying enough untill they do in Apple's POV.
But there is another POV. One that includes rights of a person to be a human being rather then income source for some company. One of those rights should be ability to install whatever software you choose on your own computer without any artificial restrictions.
Depends on what you want to develop; if you need the Windows driver kit then yes, those subscriptions are expensive (but likely worth it).
If you want the equivalent of app development on Windows (meaning little to no access to kernel sources and such, just a native UI), you can use the free version of Visual Studio without the MSDN license [1]. The license allows commercial development even with the free community version.
You still need to pay +/- $20 to MS to publish apps to the MS Store, but because Windows isn't a walled garden and barely any Windows users are using the store anyway, you probably don't need to bother. If you do pay, it's not a subscription either; the costs are only made during registration. Just like with Google, this keeps down (but does not prevent) the creation of spam accounts.
For most app developers, the infrastructure you get in return isn't worth the $100 / year, because most apps don't get that many downloads at all. Hosting APK or IPA files can be done for one or two dollars per month for the first few hundred or even thousand users, and by extending the store ecosystem, you're also adding value to the platform itself.
For iOS you can argue that the manual testing of the application needs to be paid somehow, but the manual testing Apple performs don't benefit you as a developer in any way; they serve benefit the end user that downloads your apps, so those costs should be recouped from the user (as part of the iPhone sales price and the mandatory 15-30% cut Apple and Google will take).
If there was a way to build and publish applications without the subscriptions, the fee might be reasonable if Apple can defend the $99 / year. With the walled garden they've set up, there's no competitors, and therefore there will never be an alternative developer toolkit like those you can see for the Android ecosystem.
It would be comparable only if Microsoft said that an MSDN Pro-level subscription is required to release apps for Windows. Last time I used MSDN, we used to get free access to tons of Microsoft Apps, that are otherwise paid.
100$ x 5 years = 500$ To use your own app on your own phone if your app requires offline operaion longer then a week. 500$ is also nothing while you do not sell the app?
I remember pitching my SO 'Where is my wife, app', and she jokingly refused by saying that I know where she she is: "Target". I found that amusing given that she shares her location with all the other apps she uses.
I’ll give this a try with my wife. We struggle with this.
The requirement to log in is a huge deterrent though - why not just use a UUID or something based on the phone?
Also, I don’t know if you can scrape a small synopsis and include it, along with the genre, underneath the film? I had no idea what the first 30-40 films that came up for me were.
UUID's are always possible, you're thinking of the IDFA (IDentifier For Advertisers), which is tied to the device. If you generate a UUID and store it locally you should be able to maintain identity, at least until the user deletes the app.
Is it free software so it can be added to the f-droid repo? They have not nearly as insane requirements as the other distribution channels and encourage donations. I can't find a source link anywhere so I guess its proprietary?
Edit: While trying to sign in, the service required me to add a special character to my 32 character long alphanumeric password. Requiring the user to use x different kind of character types just annoys people and doesn't make your service more secure.
Tip on App Store fud: set up fastlane to automate your deployment. I have mine down to a single command to publish to both app stores, or to both Google Play Internal track and TestFlight. It’s a bit of a pain to set up, but saves me tons of time now. You can even automate screenshots, App Store metadata etc.
If you're using a password manager, site-specific password requirements are all the more annoying — rather than just letting the PM generate something very secure you have to go in & tweak settings to generate something _less_ random because the website wants "only X characters" or whatever
Looks like a great idea. I'd have probably just made a webapp though, and skipped all the walled garden hurdles you mention. I did see the "web version coming soon" blurb.
Is there something about this that works significantly better as native?
We used a similar app for baby names- it’s a great idea for all sorts of consensus. I actually think there’s a large opportunity to apply this in all sorts of ways: baby names and movies are both great ideas, but anytime multiple people want to create intersecting sets. Another one we thought of was pictures: 5 people take 2-3 pictures of the same group photo, you have 10-15 pictures that Becky wants to post, with everyone wanting to pick the one where they “look best”, how do you decide which one to use?
I enter email, a user name, have LastPass generate a password, paste that in, click on send verification email, click on the link in the email....
So I can sign in again, right? Nope. Somewhere in that process, the clipboard was voided, so I have lost that password...
...and there is no password recovery button on the sign-in page.
Sure, there is a resend validation email link, but as soon as I enter my email, it disappears under my keyboard, and I cannot access it - but it's not what I want, I want password reset.
True, I am irked beyond all reasonable belief because I was trying to do something quickly to find a movie for my GF and me, but to miss such a key point? No password reset on the main screen?
If you are going to send a verification email anyway, just skip setting the password until the person has verified their email, and INCLUDE A PASSWORD RESET LINK.
In my mind this is an example of solving a problem that does not exist.
Why just not simply say "we watching 2 movies a week, once you choose and I'll choose next, and so on..."?
Although on the second thought, maybe you could expand it make it as match making dating up, that matches people beside interests ... I do not know is there already something similar.
Nobody would use it, all one side cares about in dating anymore is muscles and height. People have done experiments making fake male profiles with as abhorrent as possible of descriptions but with attractive pictures and they still get messages from girls, meanwhile average guy with interesting hobbies and a good career/future will get nothing as I found out in college.
Question is would you spend 2 hours (equal time to watch a movie) swiping for match, or take a chance on a movie she may like?
On the other hand is there a part of tolerance where you embrace that your partner is not same as you, and that from time to time it would be nice to learn few things about her/him?
In article number of 500,000 movies has been mentioned, and if you use 3 sec of swiping that is really lot of seconds, and I do not think 3sec is enough to decide on some movies. But even with 3 sec that is 416 days of 1 hour swiping, or 208 weeks if you use only 2 movies a week (2hr). So, 4 years per person would take someone through the set, but what if you find out that you do not have any matching movies?
Personally I would rather watch 206 (2hrs) movies I do not like knowing a bit better person I love.
I think you're making some very unwarranted assumptions about how long this app takes to use.
> On the other hand is there a part of tolerance where you embrace that your partner is not same as you, and that from time to time it would be nice to learn few things about her/him?
Yeah, sometimes.
But if you actually want to accomplish that with any regularity, and not waste a ton of time on movies that one person has to tolerate and the other person only picked on a whim, you need to discuss the movie choices. Simply alternating is still a bad plan.
That the web is the better platform for solving his problem and doesn't suffer from the monopoly.
Yes, I think that's constructive. I don't say that what he's done is bad, but have a suggestion how he could have saved some trouble. Why the negative sentiment?
I wouldn’t use it either, for the same reason. Choosing a movie now takes 1 second for each card since they’re displayed one at a time and I have to do something to say NO.
How about you just show me a list where I can mark what I like and then get a list at the end. Then just switch phones and see each other’s list. Instead of an exact match, you limit each other’s choice to 10 movies you just picked.
It does that if you have the same filters! I also wanted to try and have the algorithm find what your friends have liked that you haven't decided on yet and show you those first.
I wish the title more accurately reflected that the article is about an app and that the significant other appears only in that anecdote. At the moment it's a bit disappointing for people who were hoping there's more to this story.
Instead of working with user accounts, why not give the user the ability to create a link with a unique code? You can send that link to your SO who opens is and can start swiping. Makes the onboarding easier and it can be just a web app.
A little more granularity than yes/no would be nice. There are a lot more movies that I'm willing to watch if my partner is super into it at the moment compared to ones I'd really want to watch outside of how they feel.
The genre of movie i want to watch highly fluctuates with my mood of the day. This is not always in sync with my partners. We might collectively have a specific movie on both our wish-list but i might not be up for a comedy today.
Made a login on iOS but it won’t accept it. The password generated by 1password was 24 characters and it was accepted during the creation process, but login fails. It blows me away how often this happens. Uninstalling....
Hmm...
Such a strong password requirement for a casual app. No google signup integration. clicks on the user and see the submission "Check username availability ..." ookay. Thx.
Love this! I'm happy to see this having actually been brought to life - congrats! Would love to have the ability to look at what you've swiped right on somehow.
I'm not the author, but I've used The Movie Database's apis and found it pretty good. At least when I was doing my film project, IMDB APIs weren't really intended for public use; you needed to contact developer relations and what not.
> Limited non-commercial use of IMDb data is allowed…
> The data must be taken only from the datasets made available (see IMDb Contributor Datasets. You may not use data mining, robots, screen scraping, or similar online data gathering and extraction tools on our website.
> The data can only be used for personal and non-commercial use and must not be altered/republished/resold/repurposed to create any kind of online/offline database of movie information (except for individual personal use).
IMDB, TMDB, OMDb, and the 10+ other services that do this all prohibit that.
I'm not trying to persuade you that stealing intellectual property is bad. I just thought it was funny that you'd whine about a $99 fee with one hand, while content-marketing an app that depends completely on someone else's data with the other.
Just some friendly feedback that your comment would be a lot more effective if you struck “did you ever stop to consider that”. That opening remark comes off unnecessarily aggressive / accusatory and detracts from an otherwise interesting perspective.
> Last weekend, my partner had her friends stay with us over the weekend. We needed to find a movie to watch. This was my chance! I was so excited!
> "Let's use WeWatch!"
> "No, it would take too long. Let's just watch Space Jam."
The guy did a not-insignificant amount of work on an app and his... "partner"... didn't even entertain the idea of using it; if not for mere exposure to their friends, at least for an actual "good" suggestion.
Guy, you might wanna re-evaluate your "partnership".
But hey, at least now I'm inspired to download it and try it out.
I definitely read that last bit as tongue in cheek. Also doesn't "No, it would take too long" imply that their partner has used it in the past? Maybe the process really does take too long, because you have to scroll through a 100 movies before you find one you both like. And in that case it sounds like the partner was decided what they wanted to watch - Space Jam. In that case I'd just go "ok, sure, if you really want to watch movie X then let's watch it". Obviously we're just sitting here digesting someone's life on the internet. It's stupid anyway.
I'm constantly badgering my non-technical partner to try random tech shit & apps that she doesn't want and didn't ask for. She tells me no sometimes, and usually for good reason.
Please tell me internet person with zero insight into my personal life: should I end my longterm relationship just like you're advising the author to?
Seems like you need /r/relationship_advice. Anything a romantic partner does is a Red Flag. The only fix is to immediately hit facebook, delete the gym and fire your lawyer.
I feel this. A few years ago, I made a joke app[1] which got a bit famous on campus back when I was in school, and the process of getting it on the Play store was literally harder than writing the darn thing. Nowadays, it even got removed from the Play store for some reason. I couldn't imagine running an app for a living where you have to deal with absentee/abusive parents like Google and Apple just to put bread on the table.
Cool app and congrats on the users! 400 ain't nothin' to scoff at :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0nn8d6katk