iA Writer quits the Android market?

iA Writer is quit developing for Android as a platform:

TL;DR: Google’s odd (and expensive) demands to keep the app working with Drive, combined with shockingly high numbers of users (90% ?!) not actually paying.

And the blog post on iA Writer’s own site goes into more specifics of the challenges on developing for Android…

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This is pretty much what I’ve been saying all along about the viability of developing any complex app for Android.

My software company played with this very early on and decided the effort vs potential just didn’t come close to justifying it. Then as pointed out here, the rampant piracy just made it a non-starter.

If that 90% figure is even close to accurate, the ‘huge’ Android market suddenly becomes rather tiny.

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FWIW I’m a developer of an App that runs on Android. But mine is open source and free. I will say that refactoring the code to handle the new permissions requirements has been difficult. We haven’t ever been on the Play Store but that is a goal for this year. If not it won’t really matter to us, we’ll just make an APK available via our downloads site and move on. At least the Android development is much easier to do than iOS. I can’t even consider putting my full app on iOS due to the restrictions and the cost to be an Apple Developer is very high.

I kind of get the frustration with Google, but when I read this:

Android development, the blog said, was “a daily worsening struggle with red tape, inconsistent device performance, app store search performance gaming, and rampant piracy.” Staying on top of bugs and problems also meant buying and testing devices across thousands of types, manufacturers, Android versions, and UI skins. “And before anyone says this is the price of an ‘open’ OS—well, we don’t have this problem on Windows,” iA’s blog post said.

Okay. Well, then what’s the excuse for the Windows, macOS and iOS versions? The development is stalling for years, with the only tangible growth happening in the pricing department. Still no feature parity (it doesn’t have that many or complicated ones to begin with), while the developer is distracted by re-inventing presentation software and stationeries.

There’s some cost to being an Apple developer, but I wouldn’t categorize it as ‘high’.

Obviously if you’re only ever developing free apps it’s a cost you might not need, but for paid apps the potential return is somewhat higher and the development process much easier.

Maybe share this thread the next time someone gripes about “Where is Scrivener for the HUGE Android market.”

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Normally I wouldn’t consider it fair to use an AI summary from a search site as a source in an argument, but when both the subject and search site are Google it seems poetically justifiable.
{the emphasis in the search result is Google’s own}

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Just read their long-winded, self-pitying post. It’s the market they chose to enter, nobody forced them.

I have little respect for IA since they jacked-up their prices to obscene amounts. £50 for iOS and £50 for Mac versions, they are attracting people to pirate their software…

My heart bleeds for them, poor loves.

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Not the first time Google’s “AI” speaking its mind getting them in hot water. :joy:

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So, setting a reasonable (IMHO) price to recoup development costs and remain profitable is ‘attracting people to pirate’?

Careful, Keith. Apparently the price of Scrivener is encouraging rampant piracy also. :astonished: :astonished:

Yes, they entered it to provide a product/service and found Google’s ever changing demands and rampant pricey made it a losing proposition for them. Suddenly it’s their fault?

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Scrivener for iOS $23.99 vs. iA Whiner for iOS $49.99. (The Android version used to cost $30 something, but don’t worry, it’ll catch up to $49.99 when it returns to the Play Store).

A tiny fraction of the features for double the price isn’t exactly reasonable, if you ask me. It’s ridiculous.

And iAW isn’t even competing with Scrivener, rather Obsidian these days. Which is free if you don’t need their Sync or Publish services.

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I only looked at the Mac pricing which is the same for both iA and Scrivener, simply because until the arrival of that app which must not be mentioned, I’m not that interested in publicly available mobile apps. Yes, Scrivener iOS is functional, but…

Isn’t that an even worse comparison? By iA standards Scrivener would cost north of $2,000.

I don’t know. Some authors swear by iA Writer. It’s one app I’ve never bothered to do more than look at the web page.

Well, it’s a Markdown editor. That’s basically it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the concept, except maybe that snazzy $50 price tag.

iOS may be the more lucrative platform, but targeting the Android market was not the dumbest idea, either. It’s pretty underserved for writers (e.g. no Scrivener or Ulysses available or… iAW now, too), if you don’t count Google Docs and maybe Obsidian now.

It’s almost as if Google just wants people to use Google Docs.

:face_vomiting: :face_vomiting: :face_vomiting: :face_vomiting: :face_vomiting:

Never have, never will!

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Just a truck driver that piddles around with writing… But it strikes me that a company that makes its fortunes on mining the data that is then used to target advertising to the users using the convenience software that they seem to just give away has a pretty serious conflict of interest in producing a marketplace that does not encourage ‘free-to-the-end-user’ software.

iA Writer is in a hard place to be, Alphabet doesn’t really want Pay-Once-Use-Forever (POUF) or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps on their platform. They make the standard 30% commission from both sales models, but what they really want is Ad-supported apps, because it pads and improves their bottom line, and improves the numbers over multiple subsidiaries. And last I checked, they are allowed to operate the Play store in such a fashion as to lock out competition when it comes to ads served to ad-supported apps.

iA Writer started as a POUF app (I’ve got two different versions on my iPhone that go back before the SAAS model appeared on the app store, I can’t remember the last time I used either). Like most of their competition they got addicted to the monthly drip of money from their users. Too many recognizable apps have this little issue where they tried to transition from a paid POUF app to a ‘free’ SaaS app. I remember seeing iA Writer pop up on the Apple App store in the Golden Age that was… I paid a few dollars for it ($4.99 and $7.99 if memory serves as I paid for the upgrade) and did use it, but I didn’t ever use it daily. Scrivener is a much better fit… Alas, I digress…

I can sympathize for the need to keep a steady flow of money into the company to keep it viable. That sympathy does not extend to excusing companies resorting to the cancer that is SaaS for end users. You can make a claim that SaaS works for gig workers (who have far different needs business-wise) but even that argument doesn’t pan out because I don’t know of any company offering products that only bill you on months you use their stuff and don’t bill you on months you don’t. SaaS only works when the business has enough expenses to employ a tax accounting service to mitigate their tax obligations, just like leasing real estate for their office locations and leasing business implements. That is exactly what SaaS is, leasing the software.

When you add to this mix that the Play Store has so much crapware that is free to the end user (either by abuse of trial software or other means), asking your customers to pay is not looked upon favorably unless you have a really good product -AND- a loyal core following. Anything else, and the freeloaders will do to you exactly what has been done to iA Writer on the Play store.

Personal bias: I bought my first iPhone in 2009 and have never used any android phone for daily use. I have used Android tablets and have found the software offered for them through either Google’s Play Store, Samsung’s App store, or Amazon’s App store requires a lot of effort on my part not to get caught with a bunch of apps that only look like they work when in fact I’m just another set of eyeballs for someone’s fraud-scheme ad-farm. Don’t even get me started on the Bloatware, Shovelware, and Crapware that is preloaded on those things either. The fact remains that I am for better or worse, a more or less Apple user that doesn’t like the baggage that comes along with the tools I have mastered and still use. That and I really hate that SaaS is such a popular thing in business culture… Kinda like “turnkey” this or that was in the '90s.

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