The latest Panic blog post provides insight into the previous year at one of the best developers for Apple software. In 2014, Panic released a bunch of new things, including Transmit iOS — an app I believe defines the platform.

However, the more interesting part of the post goes into some depth about the challenges Panic faced, most of which were down to Apple. Without iOS upgrades, the company felt forced to issue Prompt 2 as a brand-new app (and was relieved there was no backlash); Coda left the Mac App Store, because Apple’s restrictions are too severe; and Transmit iOS lost and then got back iCloud export, in part due to a PR shitstorm — countless sites helpfully pointing out how asinine Apple’s decision had been.

Apple always argues “running to the press” is just about the worst thing a dev can do when an app is hobbled by a rule Apple might have just made up without really thinking it through, but Panic’s not alone in saying

the “bad PR” version of the app dispute process is monumentally more effective [than dealing with it offline]. Which is a shame.

And it is. This should be food for thought for Apple, as should Panic’s final challenge: low iOS revenue. Although units sold in November 2014 were roughly even across OS X and iOS, the revenue split was 83/17 in OS X’s favour. Panic had some thoughts about why:

1. We’re not charging enough for our iOS apps. Or Mac users are simply willing to pay more for apps. Or both.
2. We’re not getting the word out well enough about our iOS apps.
3. The type of software we make just isn’t as compelling to iOS users as it is to Mac users. Our professional tools are geared for a type of user that simply might not exist on the iPad — admins and coders. We might have misjudged that market.

I’d agree with 1 — although this is common with cross-platform devs, given that most price iOS apps way lower than OS X equivalents, even if they’re broadly similar —but make an addition to 3: yet. As in: “Our professional tools are geared for a type of user that simply might not exist on the iPad — yet“.

It strikes me that an iPad and keyboard remains a great set-up for doing website work, especially when away from home. But Panic’s trailblazing — the iPad still hasn’t really found its place for a lot of people, and many professionals inevitably drift back to Macs after flirting with the iPad for a while. (Personally, I want to use mine more, but I’m simply more efficient on the Mac, and with writing rates having been stagnant for a decade now, the speed at which I can write and edit copy is important. I do far less web work these days, but the same’s largely true there as well.)

I’m not sure what the solution is to Panic’s complaints and grumbles, but it should worry Apple that one of the best OS X and iOS developers is pulling away from the Mac App Store, rolling its own solutions rather than using the likes of iCloud, and mulling over the feasibility of any further ‘huge’ iOS projects.

Daring Fireball yesterday commenting on Papers, Please:

So here’s an App Store rejection that many disagree with, but which is easy to understand from Apple’s perspective. Apple tends to err on the side of running the App Store with Disney-esque family values. The company places inordinate value in its family-friendly reputation.

Maybe it’s an American thing to believe this. John Gruber, who writes Daring Fireball, is American, and so is Apple. But from the outside, I don’t see ‘Disney-esque family values’ about the way Apple treats App Store submissions. Either what Apple is actually stating in its rules is a puritanical and largely anti-nutidy/sex stance, or I’ve missed a huge number of apparently family-friendly Disney movies that, for example, feature car-jacking and drugs, running around killing people, and blood-stained horror.

Update: The developer reports that the rejection was a “misunderstanding”. He will now resubmit, and expects the app to be approved. I’m increasingly sceptical about this kind of error. Either it’s true, in which case the app review team needs more time per app and/or better guidance; or it’s false, and devs now essentially need to kick up an online shitstorm to get Apple to see sense. Neither of these things strikes me as especially good.

As reported by Eurogamer and elsewhere, Apple’s okayed Papers, Please for App Store release (on iPad) but demanded it be fixed to a ‘no nudity’ version included (but not required) in the original PC version. Half the internet has now apparently lost its shit, branding Apple fascists, and suggesting developers are now all going to flock to Android.

The decision Apple made is not remotely a surprise. It has consistently from the dawn of the App Store argued that if you want to describe or display things of a sexual nature, you should write a song or book. Such media may be branded ‘explicit’ in the store, but won’t be stopped from sale. However, games are different, suffering from a rigid and puritanical stance, and the question is why this is the case.

My guess—and I don’t really have anything other than a gut feeling to back this up—is this rule comes directly from Steve Jobs and possibly other senior execs with children, and also from the lack of a VP leading games at Apple. I suspect the people making the big decisions at Apple understand the cultural significance of music, movies and books, but remain largely ignorant of and clueless about games. Maybe they just don’t get them—at all. This would also explain wider fumbles with games (notably the initially botched and still sub-optimal iOS games controllers), despite games being one of the main sources of App Store income.

I’m not sure what the solution is—a VP for games seems unlikely to happen any time soon; still, it might be something Apple should consider rather than digging deeper into a hole of its own making, mired in accusations of being a company full of censor-happy philistines.

Wired covers Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s interview with Henry Blodget. On covering a spat with publisher Hachette (now finally resolved) over pricing, Bezos still maintains books are overpriced:

If we want a healthy culture of reading book-length things, we’ve got to make books more accessible and part of that is making them less expensive. If you make it more affordable, it’s not going to make authors less money. It’s going to make authors more money.

The fallacy here is that an author will magically sell enough extra copies of a title at a lower rate to make up for dropping the price, because way more people prefer to pay less for whatever they buy. In reality, though, we’ve now seen a race to the bottom in apps, games and books, and although there are naturally a few winners (as ever), it’s hard to see a climate where the bulk of creative people are better off because of prices continuing to tumble. If anything, we’re furthering the decline of value in media—it’s becoming entirely throwaway, and people are trained to expect low prices (and, increasingly, no prices).

Really, Bezos should have just been more honest and said:

If we want a healthy culture of Amazon making more money, we’ve got to make everything more accessible and part of that is making everything less expensive. If you make everything more affordable, it’s not going to make Amazon less money. It’s going to make Amazon more money.

The Magazine is shutting down. Created by Marco Arment and taken over in May 2013 by Glenn Fleishman, The Magazine was a pioneer, thinking different about digital magazines. Initially inspired by Arment’s Instapaper, it stripped things back, emphasising content in a manner that chimed with an audience tired of ad-infested websites and poor digital magazine user experiences.

It turns out whatever The Magazine was doing isn’t enough; although it’s been profitable throughout its entire life (extremely rare for any publication), subscriber numbers continue to fall, to the point Fleishman believes the magazine will eventually not be sustainable. Better to go out with a kind of controlled bang than gradually sink into quicksand.

There are undoubtedly all sorts of reasons why The Magazine is closing, some of which are explored in a Cult of Mac interview with Fleishman, but Newsstand seems to be key, having transformed from a well of potential into an empty bucket of pain as far as publishers are concerned. Jim Dalrymple, editor of The Loop, pointedly commented: “Apple should just admit that they don’t give a shit about digital magazines and be done with it.”

He’s right. At one time, Newsstand was touted as Apple redefining magazines, saving an industry in serious decline. In iOS 5 and 6, it resembled iBooks, in being both an app and store, but also used a custom folder to showcase cover images, making new issues very visible. This was irksome for those who didn’t use Newsstand, left with an empty wooden shelf (as ever, Apple could really do with enabling you to disable unused default apps), but handy for publishers and readers alike.

As of iOS 7, Newsstand was overhauled to fit in with Apple’s philosophy of flat design. The icon became a generic picture of four publications, and you now have to tap this to view magazine covers. So instead of a custom folder, Newsstand now has a strange ‘apps within an app’ set-up that doesn’t really seem to benefit anyone. This also means Newsstand now behaves like other iOS apps, in that it can be stashed in a folder. Visibility of new magazine issues has been seriously hit; coupled with this, ongoing abuse of system notifications has led to many disabling them, closing off another avenue for alerting readers about new issues.

Fleishman himself reasons that these changes “did not help [The Magazine] thrive”, and he’s far from alone. In 2011, publishers were full of hope regarding Newsstand; now, pretty much every one of them I know hates it. They think Apple’s practically abandoned Newsstand and just doesn’t care — it’s turned into an afterthought product Apple feels it must have rather than one it wants to keep evolving as part of the core iOS experience.

Perhaps magazines are simply doomed—digital or otherwise. Maybe people just don’t want to pay for content bundles and either want free websites, churn-based humour on Buzzfeed, or some kind of system where they can self-edit and cherry-pick what they think they’ll like (rather than possibly discovering something new). But while some kind of magazine industry does still exist, it’d be great for Apple to do more than turn Newsstand into the publication equivalent of Stocks. Maybe iOS 8.1 should silently admit Newsstand is a failed experiment, and simply remove it entirely. Put individual magazines back on the Home screen as standard apps, with (standard-sized) icons developers can update as and when a new issue goes live and standard alert badges, and therefore provide the flexibility that might reengage readers.