Subscriptions are a cancer.
Best based on what?
Income for apple?
User reviews?
Genuine quality?
New tech?
Reasons.
Shoutout to Honkai Star Rail. Never thought I could get into mobile gaming, but HSR proved me wrong. It’s quickly become my most played game the past few months. Play it more than my Xbox series x, steam deck, switch, and steam library
Anyone else remember the days of browsing the App Store, especially the free top 100? Checking to see what new apps were hitting the charts. Having pages and pages of mostly useless apps but some real memorable glorified flash games were thrown into the mix. Never having to worry about anything except how much fun will this game be compared to the other.
Good times…good times… I haven’t browsed the App Store like that in probably a decade. I miss those days.
Not sure what you mean. You can still do all that today.
New app, 0.99 for life days
2023: Subscribe for $5.99 a month!
I wonder what will be the evolution of the Subscription based Model in 10 yrs time ?
Lifetime access still exists, but they want like $50+ lol
That sounds very reasonable
The best app I’ve seen was a lightsaber one that made sound when you swung your phone lol
That was peak Appstore. Its all trash and scam apps now.
Omg it’s not only me???
Developers deserve to be paid just like everyone else.
Ehhhh most of the “free top 100” still had ads
What I feel like doesn’t exist anymore is the ability to pay like $0.99 for an app like “Jelly Car” and have it hold or collective attention for months. Phone games evolved and we didn’t know how good we had it.
True, but I feel like back then an app with ads just had a banner at the bottom or something. Now “ads” means a full screen unskippable video every few minutes. No thanks.
This is what capitalism does to creativity.
Lmao go back to /r/antiwork bud
It’s economics my friend; I would go back to the Econ sub, but it’s trash here. You make apps, right, then you try to find ways to monetize them, cut costs, maximize profits and you end up with poor quality. I suggest you go back to r/Idontknowshitabouteconomics. Capitalism stifles creativity due to profit maximization and market dynamics.
Yes, because socialism and communism have always promoted creativity, amirite?
There’s a reason why most technological innovation and the most successful companies come from the United States, not Europe or China
I do. Fond memories of downloading new apps and toys every day. Sadly those days are long long gone.
I remember finding all sorts of cool, creative games since none of the big publishers were interested in the nascent App Store.
Then some smaller publishers started porting older, well known games.
Then big publishers started porting their older games.
Then some really good more recent games like Grand Theft Auto and BioShock started to appear. There were still cool indie games, but little by little I noticed games were free and wanted me to buy chests and boxes of loot to keep playing.
Then the games I liked and paid for once disappeared when iOS went 64bit and games weren’t updated. There were more games than ever, but they were either free to play or I paid for them but they were hardly updated and then an iOS update broken them.
Then I started seeing cool games again, but I need Netflix or some other subscription service to play them.
So now I just play games on my Switch.
Don’t forget the endless AI scheiss
Pepperidge Farm Remembers
iSoda, gun apps, sound buttons
The novelty apps were the bomb back in 2010.
Vampire Survivors should have won.
Honkai star rail is overrated
It’s a real shame they didn’t give iPhone app of the year to Flighty in the end. Alltrails looks cool but Flighty is incredibly useful, to the point that I really can’t imagine travelling without it anymore
Maybe I need to give it a second look. I’ve been using kayak for many years. I didn’t see what flighty offered that kayak wasn’t already doing.
Flighty is amazing. I was at ATL when they changed the plane and gate on us due to mechanical issues. You saw the dozen people with Flighty because we all got notifications at the same time and headed to the new gate before Delta had told anyone.
Flighty actually took full advantage of Dynamic Island, widgets, and Live Activities early on in some innovative ways. Even their design & interface followed Apple’s guidelines to the T. I get AllTrails is a little more original and fosters more community, but Flighty is the perfect example of an app done right. 10/10 implementation.
I was surprised by that as well. Alltrail just seems like another exercise app that doesn’t seem to have anything over other similar apps.
I think Flighty looks amazing, but I wonder in what way you use it that makes it hard to imagine to travel without it.
The App Store is filled with garbage. I’m looking forward to the day we can sideload an alternative Open Source app store like F-Droid.
What better apps are in F-Droid? Are their many crapps in there?
At yoo let’s let Europe get that side loading shit approved then throw all the republicans out of the USA and we be sailing the pirate seas once and for all. GG 🏆
It’s cute you think it’s only the Republicans who are beholden to business lobbying.
What is your opinion should AllTrails earn for organizing all the data into an app with a great presentation? And providing a way to add to the data, if the user is inclined?
Sadly this list tells you the quality of games these days is lacking.
Guess what. Not one of them is pay-once. All are subscription-based. I guess getting 30% does skew one’s judgement…
Lies of P is pay-once.
Photomator has a pay once option. Too Good To Go is literally free with no IAP. That’s just from the apps that I know about from the list, not sure about any others that aren’t subscription based or offer a pay-once option.
I just scrolled through them. All had in app payments except for the Arcade one which in itself is a subscription, and the MacOS one. Maybe it’s showing me different ones than to you. :)
A bunch of them just have a one time purchase option and some are even free.
AllTrails is a funny one. It’s founded largely on the crowdsourced notes from their community. But I wouldn’t be surprised, even expect, that the developers get 70% of the cut and Apple 30%, none of which have anything to do with this main aspect of the app that is highlighted in the App Store’s “featured app” page.
A bunch of them just have a one time purchase option and some are even free.
Not one of them is pay-once.
The Lost in Play iPad app looks like a one-time purchase.
I wouldn’t even mind it if they were more affordable, but asking me to pay €60 for a weather app or €120 or whatever for Ynab is ridiculous. I usually only start yearly subscriptions around the start of the year, for budget reasons, but that would easily add up.
I wouldn’t mind paying for some apps if they offered monthly subscriptions at the same price as a yearly subscription. I get that the whole point of yearly subscriptions is to lock people in, but they usually only offer a weekly trial, which isn’t enough to see if I’ll use the app enough to be worth its money.
YNAB pays for itself for sure. Absolutely love it.
What does the subscription weather app even do? Give you a free umbrella every time you forget yours? I don’t think there is any app worth money on mobile except for some games and professional apps.
What does the subscription weather app even do?
It funds the exorbitantly expensive costs of constantly tracking and updating weather
yea no you get enhanced radar features among other things
Lost in Play, Lies of P and Honkai Star Rail are the only non-subscription apps, and the last one has IAPs up to $100. The best apps and games on the shittiest app store.
For anyone searching for a strong puzzle game, one time payment and no IAP, please support Loco Looper: https://www.locolooper.com/
I am not the dev, but I wish people supported smaller studios who actually put out quality apps on mobile without riddling them with ads or subscription mechanics.
*best apps and games for us to make money
Star rail is actually a quite polished game I wasn’t surprised it hit #1
I don’t play it because I mostly quit gacha a few years ago, but Mihoyo really are the best at making really nice looking mobile games.
Those IAPs look gacha as fuck.
They are, but they’re completely optional and you don’t need to make any purchases to progress through the entirety of the game content. Plenty of people are pure F2P players.
I recommend Automatoys. Download full game and unlock entire thing with 1 iap. Its really sad seeing all the reviews dogging on it for “scamming them”… because it wasnt entirely free.
People just expect free games now. Even if it means its grindy as fuck, with tons of ads and IAP. People just want free.
Starrail is a gacha game tho
Star Rail and Genshin are both gacha games that are completely enjoyable as a pure F2P player. The main cast of characters plus a few of the easily obtainable F2P characters are more than enough to get you through all of the story and event content, and they even give you enough of a trickle of jades/primogems through free story and event quest rewards that you can pull a few 5* characters (though you obviously have to be a lot more selective on who you want to pull for than a paid player would have to be).
I didn’t know people still use the App Store.
As opposed to?
what? there are almost 2 billion iPhones out there, how are we supposed to download and update apps? you’re tripping dude
So, people don’t use third-party apps anymore? Doubtful.
Ehhhh most of the “free top 100” still had ads
What I feel like doesn’t exist anymore is the ability to pay like $0.99 for an app like “Jelly Car” and have it hold or collective attention for months. Phone games evolved and we didn’t know how good we had it.