This is a common, lazy argument. Apple's bundled apps are typically MVPs rather than best of breed. For me an MVP is perfectly fine for my photos and video editing while, say, for calendar and address book I use third party apps.
I doubt anyone would claim that Pages or Numbers are any sort of competition for flagship apps like Word or Excel, while at the same time they don't even break new ground like google docs did (yes, I know it wasn't the first either).
And perhaps Apple will get its act together on its subscription services but so far they aren't world beaters either, and never have been (going back at least as far as eWorld in the 1990s).
I'm sensing an assumption that Apple needs their in house apps to be best of breed. I'm not an iOS or macOS user, but I've worked on systems over the years. It really seems like they're happy to let someone get popular to identify the niche that needs to be filled, roll an MVP to cover it, and kick out the originators with no real excuses.
It's like they're still focused on hardware development and the software is just things users want to do so let's have an app only as needed to retain users, ish.
I am an iOS and macOS developer and user and it doesn't look that way to me at all. (FWIW I use their hardware because IMHO it sucks less than the alternatives; I'm no special fan).
Actually this part I agree with 100%:
> It's like they're still focused on hardware development and the software is just things users want to do so let's have an app only as needed to retain users, ish.
And I assume this hardware focus is why their subscription options have been a mixture of mediocre and worthless.
But this point, while a common trope (and even with a name, "sherlocked"), I have't really seen it much in practice, especially since OS X rolled around:
> It really seems like they're happy to let someone get popular to identify the niche that needs to be filled, roll an MVP to cover it, and kick out the originators with no real excuses.
I haven't seen much evidence of this in the real world. Even in the case of the Sherlock app they made a more powerful tool and still left room for third parties. They don't make much on their own software and their MVPs really are basic.
Apart from a few marquee apps in the photo/video space they don't really have a big app effort as far as I can tell from outside. I don't know how good those apps are either.
In the end they want to save on r&d / market research costs. In Ye Olde Times, Apple would go on their own and ask themselves "how can we make an improvement in the lives of our customers?"... the answer were iconic, revolutionary products (iPod, iPhone, earpods) that outright created entire device classes.
Now? The only thing in focus is rent extraction - App Store cuts -, recurring revenue and vertical integration. Anything not contributing to that gets atrophied (documentation, as mentioned, or Apple Server) or put on life support (essentially the whole rest of the ecosystem, including for all too many years pro-level hardware). Innovation? Why should Apple take the risk and improve their core product with features that won't get used? They're letting third party devs pick up the slack and buy up or clone the most successful things.
They're still better than Microsoft as they discovered that people are willing to pay a hefty premium for devices that have security and privacy first class members at the priority scheduling for new features (especially compared to the utter shitshow that Google has allowed Android to become by not cracking down on vendors), but innovation that doesn't give them a direct cash profit simply does not happen any more.
> Now? The only thing in focus is rent extraction - App Store cuts -, recurring revenue and vertical integration. Anything not contributing to that gets atrophied (documentation, as mentioned, or Apple Server) or put on life support (essentially the whole rest of the ecosystem, including for all too many years pro-level hardware). Innovation? Why should Apple take the risk and improve their core product with features that won't get used?
well, thats the system we live in; companies are chartered to make profit...
to be honest, im surprised we get even the current level of support and innovation from apple that we do... i think in the long term though, this will only hurt apple, as other alternatives will be more plesant and easy to develop, the only thing keeping apples controlover devs will be its vice-grip on the appstore...
Yeah, and if you had the balls to make something you thought people would like, you sure as hell wouldn't call it a common, lazy argument, because you'd do everything you could—which is very little—to protect yourself from being cannibalized in the software industry.
I doubt anyone would claim that Pages or Numbers are any sort of competition for flagship apps like Word or Excel, while at the same time they don't even break new ground like google docs did (yes, I know it wasn't the first either).
And perhaps Apple will get its act together on its subscription services but so far they aren't world beaters either, and never have been (going back at least as far as eWorld in the 1990s).