Quoting John Gruber

Simon Willison's Blog 04/15/26, 05:13 PM News

apple app-store developer-ecosystems ios macos third-party-apps

Summary

John Gruber discusses how Apple's competitive advantage is diminishing as fewer developers are motivated to create exclusive, high-quality native apps for Apple's platforms, causing third-party software quality to regress toward industry average.

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Cached at: 04/20/26, 08:27 AM

# A quote from John Gruber Source: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/15/john-gruber/ 15th April 2026 > The real goldmine isn't that Apple gets a cut of every App Store transaction. It's that Apple's platforms have the best apps, and users who are drawn to the best apps are thus drawn to the iPhone, Mac, and iPad. That edge is waning. Not because software on other platforms is getting better, but because third-party software on iPhone, Mac, and iPad is regressing to the mean, *to some extent*, because fewer developers feel motivated — artistically, financially, or both — to create well-crafted idiomatic native apps exclusively for Apple's platforms. —John Gruber (https://daringfireball.net/2026/04/piece_android_iphone_apps)

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