The iOS and Mac markets are almost the same size?

https://inessential.com/2020/03/27/the_ios_and_mac_markets_are_the_same_siz

by pcr910303 • 6 years ago

98 116 6 years ago

crabl• 6 years ago

I don't know about that... I think the only conclusion you could draw from this might be that the market for iOS and Mac _RSS readers_ are almost the same size. You might even be able to stretch it to say they are the _same_ market.

oefrha2• 6 years ago

I wouldn’t even draw that conclusion. NetNewsWire is very old school with an old fan base, and outside its existing fan base I don’t think it’s particularly relevant today (sorry). I doubt a user new to RSS or new to RSS reader on Apple platforms today would land on NNW.

(I’m a longtime Reeder user.)

jolux10• 6 years ago

The new NNW is a total rewrite which started off as a different app.

mrzool• 6 years ago

Being a heavy, long-time RSS user and having tested both the macOS and iOS app of NNW, I think you’re wrong. NNW it’s incredibly well-done, fast and polished, and it’s the best RSS app I’ve ever used, and I’ve used plenty. It’s not unrealistic to think it will become successful and relevant, maybe even contribute to a resurgence of RSS and bring in new users, given enough time.

liamcardenas• 6 years ago

Or the Mac market is so much smaller that the iOS market that there is practically no competition for an in-demand RSS reader on Mac and barely any space to enter the market on iOS.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

Isn't that weird though? Isn't reading the news the sort of thing you'd do on your phone more often than your computer?

crooked-v• 6 years ago

The overwhelming majority of people don't even know that RSS readers are an option to read the news.

_jal• 6 years ago

This was my first thought. Especially as I would guess that Mac users who use RSS readers are extremely likely to have both Macs and iPhones and install their RSS reader on of them.

(I fall in to this bucket.)

anoncareer0212• 6 years ago

Apple fan/dev here: he's an old school Mac influencer who got famous for writing the first popular Mac RSS client, and blind to the effects his particular narrative would have on those numbers - it's the same 30,000 people who are hip to Mac blog culture, not independent discovery on two separate platforms

webwielder2• 6 years ago

The Venn diagram of people who use BBedit and NetNewswire is roughly a circle.

oefrha2• 6 years ago

Pretty sure BBEdit has wider appeal than NetNewsWire. For one thing BBEdit is the only decent text editor on Mac App Store (not that it’s a high bar to clear).

jolux10• 6 years ago

What am I missing about BBEdit? I’ve tried to get into it a few times and it just seems archaic and weird and less capable vs even my emacs setup, let alone something like Visual Studio Code these days.

withakay• 6 years ago

As, I expect, is the Venn diagram of those that use NetNewswire on macOS and those that use it on iOS.

Klonoar2• 6 years ago

Ah, yes, the same crowd that wonders why people won't write native Mac Apps but then rarely acknowledges the documentation is utterly lacking in significant places.

I say this as someone who writes those apps.

coliveira• 6 years ago

Not only documentation is lacking, but Apple has the annoying tendency to change their frameworks every few years. Writing a MacOS app is a fight against the constant changes.

larrik• 6 years ago

Yes, the iOS app has more downloads, and it got there in only a few weeks. But if the iOS market were so much larger than the Mac market, you’d have expected this to happen within a day or two of launch day.

Based on what logic? Everything about this article feels like it's based on vague and incorrect assumptions.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

I feel like being on Hacker News sometimes warps the context of a personal blog post.

If I put out a tweet that said "Huh, my app got about the same number of downloads on iOS and Mac, I think the market's about the same for certain types of apps" would you say my tweet is full of vagaries and incorrect assumptions?

throwqwerty2• 6 years ago

the difference between your hypothetical tweet and this article is that humble qualifier "I think".

what I've seen hn (and startup culture in general) distort is people's confidence in their own opinions. this is probably because it is repeated ad nauseum that you cannot start a successful startup without being an iconoclastic innovator.

what isn't repeated ad nauseum is that you should save that kind of arrogance for your vc pitch rather than take it on as a mantle.

pvg• 6 years ago

sometimes warps the context of a personal blog post

That's true but those blog posts end up making poor HN posts. This one is very short, contains a little bit of data and would not have been hn-noticed other than for the deliberately provocative title which then becomes the central topic of the HN discussion. People familiar with the author/blog don't have any trouble recognizing their chain is being playfully tugged; on HN it's just a bombastic one-liner sitting on the front page, demanding rebuttal.

A lot of tweets that are perfectly fine tweets make bad HN posts for similar reasons.

ilikehurdles• 6 years ago

Any iOS app has a ton of competition within its category for a many-times larger audience. Any macOS app has very little competition for a tiny audience. 36k downloads can mean that you've captured a larger audience on one platform than the other, and that seems more reasonable than the conclusion that the audience sizes are the same.

Wowfunhappy10• 6 years ago

And, given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days, a Mac app could be more profitable than an iOS app.

And you can charge more for a Mac app.

monadic2• 6 years ago

Markets for RSS app developers^

obarthelemy2• 6 years ago

Actually, when Apple launched the Airbuds, I computed that it was very likely the AirBuds would generate more profit for Apple than Mac hardware.

IIRC assuming 70% profit on the Airbuds and 30% on the Mac (because lots more R&D, lots more support, lots more warranty, lots more dev...), a 30% attach rate made the Airbuds more profitable.

jurmous• 6 years ago

AirPods

ksec2• 6 years ago

Um, what has this got to do with this article?

Let's just assume AirPods did make 3x more Net profits than Mac.

AirPod ASP is roughly ~$169, Mac ASP is roughly ~$1300, AirPods would still need to sell roughly 2.6 times more for it to be more profitable than Mac. That is 46M to 50M AirPod per year.

Even the most optimistic estimate of AirPod sales fall far below that number.

mattl• 6 years ago

# Air Bud

* Budget $3 million

* Box office $27,771,629

# Air Bud: Golden Receiver

* Budget $11 million

* Box office $10,224,116

Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch and Air Bud: Spikes Back are direct-to-DVD movies, so we don't know about their box office performance, sadly.

obarthelemy2• 6 years ago

RSS readers are a very specialized market. Around me, only techies and nerds have heard of it. Mobile Natives haven't and are using FB/I/Twitter instead (sad !). So this boils down to th enerd market on iOS and MacOS is the same size. I'd go one step furter: it's probably not only the same size, but, simply, the exact same.

ipqk• 6 years ago

You gotta control here for variables, hon.

sunkenvicar• 6 years ago

Discoverability is horrible on the iOS App Store. I have looked for a good RSS reader on there in the past and only been served shovelware.

I found out about NNW from DF the other day. Even after using and installing it, it is nowhere to be seen when I search for RSS.

Apples broken App Store system surfaces cheap crappy apps. Apple wants users to make impulse purchases so they can skim 30% off the top. It’s a bad experience and is doing tremendous long term damage. Steve Jobs would be pissed.

quesera• 6 years ago

Steve Jobs would be pissed

Discoverability on the App Store has always been horrible.

That, and App Store performance (search, page load, etc) are high on the list of things that baffle me most about Apple.

These are not hard problems to fix. There is no incentive to not fix them. Customers are suffering. FTFAS.

arvinsim2• 6 years ago

There is no incentive to not fix them.

I think there is an incentive not to. If you buy Apple hardware, you are stuck with these stores. They know you will complain but ultimately comply and accept.

lonelappde2• 6 years ago

I can't even remember where App Store hides the search button every time I look for an app (which I have to do because iOS provides no other way to search for an app already installed on my device)

pier25• 6 years ago

given that Mac apps are less complex to write than iOS apps these days

Do you agree HN?

gnachman2• 6 years ago

I write both: iOS during the day and macOS at night. iOS is significantly less buggy and has less legacy baggage than macOS. iOS has some features that macOS doesn't, so there is more to learn. I spend a lot less time working around platform brokenness on iOS than on macOS. macOS lets you do a lot more than iOS in ways that are unmaintainable (e.g., private APIs), which helps you create accidental complexity for yourself.

Both platforms have a long tail of little-known behaviors (such as accessibility features) that make it hard to create well behaved applications. But iOS mostly just works (once you know which features are toxic and avoid them), while macOS's brokenness has completely metastasized.

hellofunk• 6 years ago

I’m curious which features you would advise a dev to avoid in iOS, because their problems, i.e. toxicity. I’m getting more into iOS programming and it would be great to know some pitfalls on the roadmap.

whoisjuan• 6 years ago

Author is probably thinking about an Electron App. Otherwise I don’t see how that statement could be true.

pkamb• 6 years ago

Brent Simmons is definitely not talking about an Electron app.

cac1• 6 years ago

No I don't agree. I have written both. Based on that I think the issue of which is easier to program depends more of the complexity of the app than on the platform. I will admit there are times that macOS feels more like a hell-hole of a poorly though out or incomplete programming environment.

r_singh• 6 years ago

IMHO react native makes the latter less complex (for those with JS experience only)

ksec2• 6 years ago

News reading is probably more of an iOS thing than a Mac thing in general

I think that is where the assumption gone wrong. News Reading /= RSS. I mostly consume Social Media on my Mobile. Or easy to read, digest, bite-size information. Easily hoping on and off in the timeline. My RSS feed is none of that, for me it tends to require more focus and longer time to digest. Hence I never do any RSS reading on mobile.

supernes• 6 years ago

The way I understand it is that you can reach roughly the same amount of users on both marketplaces, which goes to show just how horrible discoverability is on the iOS store.

The iOS and Mac markets are almost the same size?

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