Even CREATING the MacOS build for MAS is such a pain that I gave up. I tried going to the Microsoft Store but that also was a nightmare.
Every platform has hurdles and roadblocks designed to screw over developers and bring more money to Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
With Microsoft, for example, you HAVE to use their monetization platform. You can't use stripe.
With Google, they seem mostly just incompetent and not directly malicious.
The discussions on /r/androiddev are enough to scare you to NEVER build an Android app.
Have a business making 7 figures on the app store for the last 5 years? 10k revies? 5 stars? Not anymore. They just killed it and they won't tell you why.
Or someone files a trademark in a 3rd party jurisdiction and you lose your app entirely.
Then there are the big boys like Uber that just flat out ignore the rules because they know Apple won't remove them.
OR.. I could just bypass the app stores entirely right? Just distribute my app on my own site. Don't play these games.
However, now I've basically abandoned a massive source of users.
If you've never built an app and experienced how hard it is do to customer acquisition you're NOT going to appreciate how much of a challenge this issue is for ISVs.
Some apps simply would not exist without the app store distribution.
Getting featured by Apple could make or break a company. Just getting featured ONCE could mean the difference between your startup succeeding or failing.
... but they won't feature you if you're not in the app store. They also won't feature you unless you really do EVERYTHING they say including completely tailoring the app for their platform.
https://getpolarized.io
I'm just a humble independent software developer so I can't really target every platform 100% so having cross-platform code is really nice.
Unfortunately, every platform seems to want to screw you over somehow. I've written about this on our blog before:
https://getpolarized.io/2019/02/28/dear-app-stores-dont-bloc...
https://getpolarized.io/2019/04/05/Google-Will-Kill-Chrome-E...
Even CREATING the MacOS build for MAS is such a pain that I gave up. I tried going to the Microsoft Store but that also was a nightmare.
Every platform has hurdles and roadblocks designed to screw over developers and bring more money to Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.
With Microsoft, for example, you HAVE to use their monetization platform. You can't use stripe.
With Google, they seem mostly just incompetent and not directly malicious.
The discussions on /r/androiddev are enough to scare you to NEVER build an Android app.
Have a business making 7 figures on the app store for the last 5 years? 10k revies? 5 stars? Not anymore. They just killed it and they won't tell you why.
Or someone files a trademark in a 3rd party jurisdiction and you lose your app entirely.
Then there are the big boys like Uber that just flat out ignore the rules because they know Apple won't remove them.
OR.. I could just bypass the app stores entirely right? Just distribute my app on my own site. Don't play these games.
However, now I've basically abandoned a massive source of users.
If you've never built an app and experienced how hard it is do to customer acquisition you're NOT going to appreciate how much of a challenge this issue is for ISVs.
Some apps simply would not exist without the app store distribution.
Getting featured by Apple could make or break a company. Just getting featured ONCE could mean the difference between your startup succeeding or failing.
... but they won't feature you if you're not in the app store. They also won't feature you unless you really do EVERYTHING they say including completely tailoring the app for their platform.