Hey guys it’s Greg with Apple Explained,and as you can see from the title, History of the App Store won this week’s votingpoll.
If you missed the poll and didn’t get tovote, make sure you’re subscribed, that way the voting polls will show up right inyour activity feed.
Now I’m glad this topic won because 2018is the ten year anniversary of the App Store and that means if you’re in middle schoolright now, you probably don’t remember what life was like before the app era.
So let’s travel back to 2007, the year ofthe original iPhone, and explore how people used their smartphones without an app store.
Back then, when you purchased a smartphone,whether it was a Blackberry, iPhone, or Nokia, you were stuck with the software includedon the phone.
If you wanted to use Facebook, you had togo through the smartphone’s web browser and get on Facebooks website.
And because you were accessing the site ona mobile device, you were served the mobile site version.
And the problem with this was most mobilesites were half-baked versions of the full website.
So you typically didn’t have access to allits features and functionality, and if you did manage to access the full desktop sitefrom a mobile device, it was slow, clumsy to navigate, and hard on your battery.
So right away you can see the need for anapp store.
But things always appear more obvious in retrospectbecause Steve Jobs didn’t believe the iPhone needed an App Store, he favored the conceptof web apps.
The reasons why he preferred this approachis that web apps were inherently free, easy for developers to create and update, and didn’trequire the infrastructure and resources necessary to operate something like an app store.
Jobs said, “The full Safari engine is insideof iPhone.
And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 andAjax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone.
And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you knowhow to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhonetoday.”
Needless to say, not everyone agreed withhim.
Apple board member Art Levinson favored theapp store approach and called Jobs six times to change his mind, saying, “Jobs at firstquashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth tofigure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers.”
And I think that was a very reasonable concern. After all, no one had ever made an app storefor such a large platform like iOS before.
This disagreement created a divide withinApple.
Team web apps, and team app store.
Those who supported an app store argued thatdevelopers needed the ability to create native apps on iPhone since it came with so manybenefits.
Great power management, offline access, optimizedperformance, ease of use, monetization opportunities, and a reason for customers to choose iPhoneover its competitors.
Needless to say, Jobs ended up getting hisway and at the 2007 WWDC, Apple announced that iPhone would run web apps.
But the news fell flat.
Developers were frustrated that they couldn’tcreate native apps for iPhone like they’d been doing with the Mac.
It also left very little room for developersto monetize their web apps outside of ad revenue.
And the features of their web apps would belimited to the capabilities of Web 2.0 instead of having access to native APIs in an iPhoneSoftware Development Kit.
This disappointment sent a clear message toJobs, and he responded later that year in an open letter that began, “Let me justsay it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDKin developers hands in February.
We are excited about creating a vibrant thirdparty developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applicationsfor our users.”
This change of heart was well received inthe tech community and customers became excited about the potential of native third partyapps.
About five months later Apple released theiPhone SDK to developers for a $99 annual fee.
Developers praised the software developmentkit since they could build and test apps quickly and had access to some of the same APIs Appleused to build their apps.
The kit also had an iPhone simulator to mimicthe look and feel of the device on the computer while developing.
This kicked off an app-creation frenzy.
Developers knew that being one of the firstapps offered on the App Store was a huge advantage, since the marketplace would quickly balloonin size.
Five months later Apple opened the App Storeto customers with 500 apps available.
And in its first three days, users downloadedover 10 million apps.
The app store was a grand slam, and it wasjust the beginning.
At the end of 2008 the app store offered over10,000 apps and Apple released the top ten paid and free apps of that year: The top tenpaid apps were Koi Pond, Texas Hold’em, Moto Chaser, Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3d,Super Monkey Ball, Cro-Mag Rally, Enigmo, Pocket Guitar, Recorder, and iBeer.
The top ten free apps were: Pandora Radio,Facebook, Tap Tap Revenge, Shazam, Labyrinth Lite, Remote, Google Earth, Lightsaber Unleashed,AIM, and Urbanspoon.
If you were around for the release of theapp store you were probably just hit with a bit of nostalgia.
In 2009 Apple ran an ad campaign with theslogan “There’s an app for that” and the catchphrase found its way into pop cultureand was parodied several times over by YouTubers and television shows alike.
The term “app” became so popular thatit was awarded the honor of being 2010's "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society.
The immediate success of the app store promptedother smartphone companies to do the same on their platform.
Google released their own store for androidcalled Google Play near the end of 2008, Microsoft opened its Windows Store in 2012 (later renamedMicrosoft Store,) and Amazon released their Amazon Appstore in 2011.
Now Amazon’s store was the only one to sharethe Appstore name with Apple, and this triggered a lawsuit.
Now that may sound a bit petty, but Applehad applied for a trademark on the term “App Store” in 2008, which was technically approvedin early 2011.
Apple spokesperson Kristin (who-goot) Huguettold Bloomberg that, “Apple’s fear is that by using the ‘App Store’ name, Amazon’soffering will ‘confuse and mislead customers.’”
But after making little progress on the lawsuitafter two years, Apple and Amazon called a truce.
According to Apple, they didn’t need topursue legal action against Amazon anymore because consumers had spoken clearly in theirpreference for the Apple App Store.
The App Store received its first small updatein iOS 3 which introduced in-app purchases and push notifications for third party apps.
Now, the release of in-app purchases willprobably go down as one of the most controversial features in App Store history.
The announcement was huge for developers,and led to a fundamental shift in the way applications were marketed and priced.
Up until this point, developers of premiumapplications faced a major problem: they had no way of offering a watered down versionof a premium application for free that users could pay to unlock if they liked what theysaw — a capability that was quite common on desktop software.
This led to the creation of ‘Lite’ versionsof applications, which typically offered a reduced feature set, and required users tobuy an entirely new application to access its premium features, which obviously wasn’tuser friendly.
With in-app purchases, this was no longera problem.
Lite versions of applications were removedentirely, and in its place premium apps were offered for free with feature restrictions.
If users wanted access to all the featuresdown the road, they could easily purchase them from within the app.
But there was a downside to this capability,particularly with gaming apps.
Instead of being used to unlock features,in-app purchases were used to endlessly charge users in order to keep playing a game.
You could download some great games for free,but it may only be a demo. So in order to play the full game, you’dhave to pay.
And to continue to play the game, or to unlocknew content, you’d have to pay again.
This was a result of the new freemium pricingstrategy that plagued the majority of “free” gaming apps including Candy Crush, Clash ofClans, and Farmville.
Some users also felt that developers wereonly releasing a portion of their game, and then charging users for the remaining gameplay,rather than using in-app purchases to provide bonus content.
But unfortunately Apple had no control overhow developers utilize in-app purchases, so the feature was and continues to be exploitedin order to maximize profit.
In iOS 4 Apple tried to help developers monetizetheir apps by introducing iAd.
And this is where web apps snuck back intoiOS because when a user tapped on an iAd, it would fill the screen with a web app-basedinteractive advertisement that could offer downloadable freebies like wallpapers, videos,and even apps without requiring a trip to the App Store.
And when a user tapped the exit button, thead would disappear from the screen and leave the user right where they left off.
So throughout the entire process, you werenever taken out of the app.
This was in contrast with other ads whichwould rip users out of their app and take them to the web browser to display the advertisingcontent.
After six years of activity, Apple quietlydiscontinued the iAd App network in 2016 without any justification.
In iOS 5 the App Store was integrated withinGame Center so users could easily find and buy new games.
And the App Store also received a new downloadssection where you could see a list of apps you’d downloaded from any iOS device connectedto your account.
The App Store got its first redesign in iOS6 that included viewing app screenshots in full screen.
Also, when you downloaded an app, it didn’tredirect you to the home screen anymore, a helpful feature if you wanted to stay in theapp store to download multiple apps.
In iOS 7 the App Store received many new capabilitiesincluding a wish list, searching through previously downloaded apps, auto app updates, viewingpopular apps based on location, and new icon animations when downloading an app.
And developers gain access to the new HealthKitAPI in iOS 8 which allowed them to link apps to a central database of a users personalhealth data, with the users permission.
In iOS 10 developers could buy ad spots inthe App Store’s search results similar to what we see with google and Amazon.
Apple also allowed developers to respond touser reviews of their app.
Finally, in iOS 11 the App Store receivedits biggest redesign yet that was cleaner and more consistent with other apps like AppleMusic.
It also had a bigger focus on editorial contentlike daily highlights.
This reorganization was meant to encourageapp discovery and help lesser known apps earn some time in the spotlight.
Today, users spend more time on apps thanmobile search and the app revolution shows no signs of slowing down.
The App Store offers over 2 million apps thathave been downloaded more than 130 billion times.
And all of this success has added up to over$70 billion in revenue for developers.
But the worldwide popularity of the App Storehas caused some problems, especially in China.
In 2017, the Chinese government requestedthat Apple remove the The New York Times App from the China App Store.
Most likely to block critical or revealinginformation about their leadership.
Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said, "we havebeen informed that the app is in violation of local regulations.
As a result the app must be taken down offthe China app store.
When this situation changes the app storewill once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.”
Apple also began removing VPN apps in compliancewith new laws in China requiring a government license for businesses offering VPNs.
Many criticized Apple for enabling China’saggressive censorship in order to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio said, “Here’san example of a company, in my view, so desperate to have access to the Chinese marketplacethat they are willing to follow the laws of that country even if those laws run counterto what those companies’ own standards are supposed to be.”
But Tim Cook remained optimistic about thesituation, saying, “My hope over time is that some of the things, the couple of thingsthat’s been pulled, come back.
I have great hope on that and great optimismon that.”
But what do you think? Is it okay that Tim Cook is bending to China’swill, or is Apple just practicing standard business protocol by adhering to local laws? Let me know what you think.
And if you want to vote for the next videotopic, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you nexttime.
If you missed the poll and didn’t get tovote, make sure you’re subscribed, that way the voting polls will show up right inyour activity feed.
Now I’m glad this topic won because 2018is the ten year anniversary of the App Store and that means if you’re in middle schoolright now, you probably don’t remember what life was like before the app era.
So let’s travel back to 2007, the year ofthe original iPhone, and explore how people used their smartphones without an app store.
Back then, when you purchased a smartphone,whether it was a Blackberry, iPhone, or Nokia, you were stuck with the software includedon the phone.
If you wanted to use Facebook, you had togo through the smartphone’s web browser and get on Facebooks website.
And because you were accessing the site ona mobile device, you were served the mobile site version.
And the problem with this was most mobilesites were half-baked versions of the full website.
So you typically didn’t have access to allits features and functionality, and if you did manage to access the full desktop sitefrom a mobile device, it was slow, clumsy to navigate, and hard on your battery.
So right away you can see the need for anapp store.
But things always appear more obvious in retrospectbecause Steve Jobs didn’t believe the iPhone needed an App Store, he favored the conceptof web apps.
The reasons why he preferred this approachis that web apps were inherently free, easy for developers to create and update, and didn’trequire the infrastructure and resources necessary to operate something like an app store.
Jobs said, “The full Safari engine is insideof iPhone.
And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 andAjax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone.
And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you knowhow to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhonetoday.”
Needless to say, not everyone agreed withhim.
Apple board member Art Levinson favored theapp store approach and called Jobs six times to change his mind, saying, “Jobs at firstquashed the discussion, partly because he felt his team did not have the bandwidth tofigure out all the complexities that would be involved in policing third-party app developers.”
And I think that was a very reasonable concern. After all, no one had ever made an app storefor such a large platform like iOS before.
This disagreement created a divide withinApple.
Team web apps, and team app store.
Those who supported an app store argued thatdevelopers needed the ability to create native apps on iPhone since it came with so manybenefits.
Great power management, offline access, optimizedperformance, ease of use, monetization opportunities, and a reason for customers to choose iPhoneover its competitors.
Needless to say, Jobs ended up getting hisway and at the 2007 WWDC, Apple announced that iPhone would run web apps.
But the news fell flat.
Developers were frustrated that they couldn’tcreate native apps for iPhone like they’d been doing with the Mac.
It also left very little room for developersto monetize their web apps outside of ad revenue.
And the features of their web apps would belimited to the capabilities of Web 2.0 instead of having access to native APIs in an iPhoneSoftware Development Kit.
This disappointment sent a clear message toJobs, and he responded later that year in an open letter that began, “Let me justsay it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDKin developers hands in February.
We are excited about creating a vibrant thirdparty developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applicationsfor our users.”
This change of heart was well received inthe tech community and customers became excited about the potential of native third partyapps.
About five months later Apple released theiPhone SDK to developers for a $99 annual fee.
Developers praised the software developmentkit since they could build and test apps quickly and had access to some of the same APIs Appleused to build their apps.
The kit also had an iPhone simulator to mimicthe look and feel of the device on the computer while developing.
This kicked off an app-creation frenzy.
Developers knew that being one of the firstapps offered on the App Store was a huge advantage, since the marketplace would quickly balloonin size.
Five months later Apple opened the App Storeto customers with 500 apps available.
And in its first three days, users downloadedover 10 million apps.
The app store was a grand slam, and it wasjust the beginning.
At the end of 2008 the app store offered over10,000 apps and Apple released the top ten paid and free apps of that year: The top tenpaid apps were Koi Pond, Texas Hold’em, Moto Chaser, Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3d,Super Monkey Ball, Cro-Mag Rally, Enigmo, Pocket Guitar, Recorder, and iBeer.
The top ten free apps were: Pandora Radio,Facebook, Tap Tap Revenge, Shazam, Labyrinth Lite, Remote, Google Earth, Lightsaber Unleashed,AIM, and Urbanspoon.
If you were around for the release of theapp store you were probably just hit with a bit of nostalgia.
In 2009 Apple ran an ad campaign with theslogan “There’s an app for that” and the catchphrase found its way into pop cultureand was parodied several times over by YouTubers and television shows alike.
The term “app” became so popular thatit was awarded the honor of being 2010's "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society.
The immediate success of the app store promptedother smartphone companies to do the same on their platform.
Google released their own store for androidcalled Google Play near the end of 2008, Microsoft opened its Windows Store in 2012 (later renamedMicrosoft Store,) and Amazon released their Amazon Appstore in 2011.
Now Amazon’s store was the only one to sharethe Appstore name with Apple, and this triggered a lawsuit.
Now that may sound a bit petty, but Applehad applied for a trademark on the term “App Store” in 2008, which was technically approvedin early 2011.
Apple spokesperson Kristin (who-goot) Huguettold Bloomberg that, “Apple’s fear is that by using the ‘App Store’ name, Amazon’soffering will ‘confuse and mislead customers.’”
But after making little progress on the lawsuitafter two years, Apple and Amazon called a truce.
According to Apple, they didn’t need topursue legal action against Amazon anymore because consumers had spoken clearly in theirpreference for the Apple App Store.
The App Store received its first small updatein iOS 3 which introduced in-app purchases and push notifications for third party apps.
Now, the release of in-app purchases willprobably go down as one of the most controversial features in App Store history.
The announcement was huge for developers,and led to a fundamental shift in the way applications were marketed and priced.
Up until this point, developers of premiumapplications faced a major problem: they had no way of offering a watered down versionof a premium application for free that users could pay to unlock if they liked what theysaw — a capability that was quite common on desktop software.
This led to the creation of ‘Lite’ versionsof applications, which typically offered a reduced feature set, and required users tobuy an entirely new application to access its premium features, which obviously wasn’tuser friendly.
With in-app purchases, this was no longera problem.
Lite versions of applications were removedentirely, and in its place premium apps were offered for free with feature restrictions.
If users wanted access to all the featuresdown the road, they could easily purchase them from within the app.
But there was a downside to this capability,particularly with gaming apps.
Instead of being used to unlock features,in-app purchases were used to endlessly charge users in order to keep playing a game.
You could download some great games for free,but it may only be a demo. So in order to play the full game, you’dhave to pay.
And to continue to play the game, or to unlocknew content, you’d have to pay again.
This was a result of the new freemium pricingstrategy that plagued the majority of “free” gaming apps including Candy Crush, Clash ofClans, and Farmville.
Some users also felt that developers wereonly releasing a portion of their game, and then charging users for the remaining gameplay,rather than using in-app purchases to provide bonus content.
But unfortunately Apple had no control overhow developers utilize in-app purchases, so the feature was and continues to be exploitedin order to maximize profit.
In iOS 4 Apple tried to help developers monetizetheir apps by introducing iAd.
And this is where web apps snuck back intoiOS because when a user tapped on an iAd, it would fill the screen with a web app-basedinteractive advertisement that could offer downloadable freebies like wallpapers, videos,and even apps without requiring a trip to the App Store.
And when a user tapped the exit button, thead would disappear from the screen and leave the user right where they left off.
So throughout the entire process, you werenever taken out of the app.
This was in contrast with other ads whichwould rip users out of their app and take them to the web browser to display the advertisingcontent.
After six years of activity, Apple quietlydiscontinued the iAd App network in 2016 without any justification.
In iOS 5 the App Store was integrated withinGame Center so users could easily find and buy new games.
And the App Store also received a new downloadssection where you could see a list of apps you’d downloaded from any iOS device connectedto your account.
The App Store got its first redesign in iOS6 that included viewing app screenshots in full screen.
Also, when you downloaded an app, it didn’tredirect you to the home screen anymore, a helpful feature if you wanted to stay in theapp store to download multiple apps.
In iOS 7 the App Store received many new capabilitiesincluding a wish list, searching through previously downloaded apps, auto app updates, viewingpopular apps based on location, and new icon animations when downloading an app.
And developers gain access to the new HealthKitAPI in iOS 8 which allowed them to link apps to a central database of a users personalhealth data, with the users permission.
In iOS 10 developers could buy ad spots inthe App Store’s search results similar to what we see with google and Amazon.
Apple also allowed developers to respond touser reviews of their app.
Finally, in iOS 11 the App Store receivedits biggest redesign yet that was cleaner and more consistent with other apps like AppleMusic.
It also had a bigger focus on editorial contentlike daily highlights.
This reorganization was meant to encourageapp discovery and help lesser known apps earn some time in the spotlight.
Today, users spend more time on apps thanmobile search and the app revolution shows no signs of slowing down.
The App Store offers over 2 million apps thathave been downloaded more than 130 billion times.
And all of this success has added up to over$70 billion in revenue for developers.
But the worldwide popularity of the App Storehas caused some problems, especially in China.
In 2017, the Chinese government requestedthat Apple remove the The New York Times App from the China App Store.
Most likely to block critical or revealinginformation about their leadership.
Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz said, "we havebeen informed that the app is in violation of local regulations.
As a result the app must be taken down offthe China app store.
When this situation changes the app storewill once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.”
Apple also began removing VPN apps in compliancewith new laws in China requiring a government license for businesses offering VPNs.
Many criticized Apple for enabling China’saggressive censorship in order to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio said, “Here’san example of a company, in my view, so desperate to have access to the Chinese marketplacethat they are willing to follow the laws of that country even if those laws run counterto what those companies’ own standards are supposed to be.”
But Tim Cook remained optimistic about thesituation, saying, “My hope over time is that some of the things, the couple of thingsthat’s been pulled, come back.
I have great hope on that and great optimismon that.”
But what do you think? Is it okay that Tim Cook is bending to China’swill, or is Apple just practicing standard business protocol by adhering to local laws? Let me know what you think.
And if you want to vote for the next videotopic, don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you nexttime.
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