The 2016 Panic Report

Cabel Sasser:

iOS continues to haunt us. If you remember, 2016 was the year we killed Status Board, our very nice data visualization app. Now, a lot of it was our fault. But it was another blow to our heavy investment in pro-level iOS apps a couple years ago, a decision we’re still feeling the ramifications of today as we revert back to a deep focus on macOS. Trying to do macOS quality work on iOS cost us a lot of time for sadly not much payoff. We love iOS, we love our iPhones, and we love our iPads. But we remain convinced that it’s not — yet? — possible to make a living selling pro software on those platforms. Which is a real bummer!

This is what worries me most about the state of iOS. While Apple’s motives to bring the price of software down seemed like a good idea at the time — developers would make up their profits by the sheer volume of the platform — it appears that app sales are slowing, especially in the more demanding part of the market. Most people already have everything that they need and are not spending as much money on new software as in the early days. While I continue to be able to do about 90% of my work on an iPad, most don’t even try. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for iOS, hoping that it will start evolving at a faster pace, making it easier to work productively on it. Also, I’m still waiting for a full Adobe Lightroom experience on iPad, with the ability to transfer catalogs between platforms, not using Adobe’s cloud.