Franco Solerio
AshtonThe Apple Creator Studio subscription has ruined once great and kid friendly iPad apps like Keynote and Pages. Half the buttons prompt you to upgrade, the subscription and premium AI features are pushed HARD.
The Apple Store near me used to run a session for kids where they made a comic book in Keynote. I can’t imagine how that session would go now.
Nick Lockwood@AshtonDev I guess the in-store apps would be pre-subscribed, so they would just not mention it at all in the session and let the kids be disappointed when they tried it at home later
@nicklockwood when we went it was bring your own or use theirs, that’ll be fun!
It’s such a contrast to Apple Arcade which I think is great, especially for kids as all the apps have no upsells or ads. In both cases Apple is selling me another subscription, but only one is done well.
John Cleary@AshtonDev I assume they’ll give all their Apple IDs used in store a free IAP subscription?
mORA@AshtonDev deleted on day 0
Wu Evar 🇪🇺🇺🇦Enshitification, the.
Josh Justice@AshtonDev @marcoarment remember back when the 30% App Store commission was enough money for Apple?
@CodingItWrong @marcoarment I thought these apps being presinstalled and free was a huge selling point 🤷 How long until they charge for the OS again, money left on the table
Arcticulate@AshtonDev @CodingItWrong @marcoarment I don’t mind paying for major OS upgrades if they go back to a proper macOS-centric UI and fix any usability issues and do other big improvements. But, if it became a subscription it would be really dangerous: I would never subscribe to an OS.
bbech@AshtonDev my toddler likes to just type and I’d let him use Pages because every so often he’d accidentally change the font or colors and it would bring him joy. When this rolled out all of a sudden he was freaking out because he wasn’t sure what’s happening. There were a bunch of watermarked image generations all over the place because they made the AI buttons purple when no other button has color
Machiel@AshtonDev @marcoarment adding the formally free Pages, Keynote and Number was just a pure anti consumer, penny pinching move.
Bob Peterson@AshtonDev Apple created a new job category. https://mastodon.social/@HootenHaller/116218347588155590
xenonchromatic@AshtonDev Wont you please have some sensitivity to Tim Cook's stock bonus?
AC@AshtonDev Weirdly, it seems like Apple chose badly when they *stopped* charging for iWork. Rather than making money from sales and turning that into new development, they stopped developing Pages to be a fantastic word processor, Numbers to be a great spreadsheet app, and Keynote to be the best presentation app. The key updates over the past decade-plus have mostly been strategic initiatives for Apple’s platforms, not the apps (iCloud sharing with E2EE, now AI flows).
I don’t for a minute think Apple can’t make these apps true professional-grade alternatives to MS Office (or, in Pages’s case, even Adobe InDesign). I don’t think for a minute that, even while doing so, Apple can’t make these apps simple enough for beginners, including children. They can do these things. They just don’t.
ChancerubbageI think I just read a news release that OS 27 isn’t going to do a damn thing about Liquid Glass.
So much winning!
Michel@AshtonDev also, in Tim Cooks letter on celebrating 50 years:
"So here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently."
It just rings so hollow these days. I'm not sure if his intention was to write Apples obituary?
jramskov@AshtonDev “We need all the money, because we need to continue to grow forever”.