Craig Hockenberry and Ged Maheux of the Iconfactory recognized these issues as early as 2008. Unless apps get featured by Apple, then they have to rely on discovery. But Ged Maheux has pointed out that discovery is and has long been utterly broken.

Take the Iconfactory's app Twitteriffic. Maheux ran a test wherein he typed "Twitter" into the App Store search field. His app Twitteriffic was astoundingly listed as the 100th result. Sacha Grief experienced even worse results than Maheux: "The iOS App Store is so broken that I couldn’t find an app even when searching for its full name." All this after Apple acquired a company dedicated to search and discovery for the App Store.

Apple has done next to nothing when it comes to meaningful curation to help expose high-quality independent apps. This despite many reasonable requests being proffered by Maheux and others: interactive reviews, trial periods and paid upgrades.

For developers today, there is actually disincentive to providing support for their apps in order to make them dependable. Every time a developer release bug fixes in an app update, prior reviews are wiped and the reviews are left blank for the new version. Instead the best option for developers is to create 'free' viral apps with casino-like in-app purchases. Ideally, these trivial entertainment apps get featured and hit the "Top Free" list only to become abandonware shortly after. If they opt for a sustainable paid model, they have little chance for exposure.

This phenomenon has been explained well by Jared Sinclair. For Sinclair's app Unread, "Half of the lifetime sales of Unread were generated in the first five days." Even after being featured by Apple, a feat in itself, "It would take another 170 days (24 weeks) to generate that same amount again." Sinclair was among the lucky few to get featured by Apple, but he concluded that Apple's exposure was largely worthless because it lasts such a short time. The only way he was able to get meaningful exposure was through "positive, prominent reviews from influential writers" which also only helped him during his launch. In the end, he was only able to bring a take-home pay of "$21,000, or $1,750/month." And that was a privileged position to be in considering the odds against him.

Differentiating on Quality

Michael Jurewitz tells developers, "We would all be far better off if we strove to compete on quality, not price." But developers like Sinclair know better:

The lesson to be learned from Unread is that even if you keep your costs low and your quality high, the immense scale of the App Store — 100 million credit cards — is deceptive…The reality is that App Store sales patterns rarely support such a developer.

Even if Jurewitz is right in theory, today developers have few points of differentiation from which to justify sustainable pricing. Apple strove to commoditize design by lowering the bar so much that it has become a non-issue for developers. This is harmful not just for designers, but the developers themselves. In flattening iOS 7 and Yosemite, Apple has now created disincentives for developers to differentiate their apps visually. As such, there is now almost zero ability for software firms to market effectively with visual design branding.

The solution has to come from pressure on Apple. The question is whether any developers are willing to provide that pressure and criticism.

App Review

Criticism is rare today indeed, as noted by developer David Barnard, the creator of Launch Center Pro, who pointed out, "Developers don’t even publicly share all the crazy rejections for fear of reprisal from Apple. They micromanage the App Store" in App Review, a process in which apps are vetted for publishing.

In his the 2014 Panic Annual Report, Founder Cabel Sasser explained a struggle in which he tried to keep his frustrations with Apple's App Review under wraps so as not to cause Apple any bad PR:

There’s a little more history here than I’m letting on. We had a very long, very torturous situation with Status Board almost being pulled that we’ve never written up out of sensitivity to our relationship with Apple. I only mention it here because it proves that it is possible to fix these awkward rejection situations without Apple suffering negative PR in the public eye — we did that "offline". But it took an absolutely massive amount of mental energy and time to work through — positively Sisyphean. I would never want to do it again — I’ve run out of patience, I guess. I can say for certain that the "bad PR" version of the app dispute process is monumentally more effective. Which is a shame.

Sasser continued:

This is the biggest problem we’ve been grappling with all year: we simply don’t make enough money from our iOS apps. We’re building apps that are, if I may say so, world-class and desktop-quality. They are packed with features, they look stunning, we offer excellent support for them, and development is constant. I’m deeply proud of our iOS apps. But…they’re hard to justify working on.

Russell Ivanovic of Shifty Jelly feels that for Apple developers are disposable:

If there’s one failing that I feel they’ve currently got it’s that it’s almost like they see developers as an infinitely renewable resource. They care that developers on the whole appear successful, but I don’t think they would particularly lose any sleep if Shifty Jelly went out of business, or even if someone as big as Panic went out of business…If something bad happens to Panic, you can’t do that. These guys have been on the Apple platform for how long now and this is how you’re treating them? All they [Apple] need to know is that developers will keep turning up. And they will. It is literally like if we went out of business today and stopped making apps, then someone else would turn up.

Indie developers have high hopes that they will be one of the lucky ones to get featured by Apple. Many take inspiration from roaring successes like William Wilkinson's Manual. Wilkinson wanted "people to see that even an idiot like me can make it work, you can do it too." Wilkinson spent two months building the app to great fanfare with a launch price of $1.99. His total revenue in the first 100 days was $125K.

Wilkinson's hit is hardly instructive. It is the rare exception to the rule. One prominent developer I spoke to who wishes to remain anonymous put the situation into perspective:

Fresh developers creating new, great apps will always try to buy the App Store lottery ticket. Most will fail but some win and propel the next team to try as well. Wilkinson's indie success is a possibility but it's so rare. New developers are still allured because they say 'why not us too?'

Turning to Android

Arment has his doubts about whether Apple can continue to act so shamelessly towards developers:

I think that Apple has squeezed too hard in a number of areas and it’s costing them all this good will…I don’t think everyone’s going to Android but…that should be worrying to Apple. Because where it goes from there is dangerous territory. It could amplify. Someone could make a really awesome app for Android first and then what? Then Apple’s in a really bad spot.

If developers are suffering this much from the draconian review process that Apple is running, then why are they so afraid to assert themselves? What if the "bad PR" Sasser is afraid of did not become a nightmare, but rather a wake up call for Apple to see the value that developers bring to the table? Why are developers running around with their hands tied behind their backs in order to appease Apple, a company that developers themselves admit has left them out to dry?

Coincidentally, Russell Ivanovic is a case in point for what could happen if you defy Apple and launch on Android first. Ivanovic had initially been very lucky to have been assigned an Apple Developer Relations representative who gave him exclusive promotional opportunities. Few developers get assigned these representatives. Among the benefits Ivanovic received was the privilege to have Shifty Jelly's apps preloaded on iPads in Apple stores in Australia, a major marketing boost.

Things went south In 2012, when Ivanovic launched a new version of the Pocket Casts app on the Android Play Store first, rather than Apple's App Store. The launch was a real success, and he publicly shared the good news. Before he knew it, his Apple Developer Relations representative stopped all contact. The representative would not even answer his emails. Ivanovic had been completely shut out.