Here’s an item I was eloquently regaling the table with last night:
After the whole Apple 3.3.1 “Can’t develop with non-approved toolchains” debacle a lot of people set up a Google Docs spreadsheet to list the tons of amazing apps that would be impacted by this rule change.
There were calls for help all over twitter and the web in general. You’ll note that most of the calls are overly broad – for example, calling for an app to be listed even if it was not created with XCode, even though that is not a requirement of 3.3.1.
The Denominator
How many apps are there in the Apple app store? Wikipedia says 185,000+ this April. Let’s be conservative and roll that back to the last milestone (March’s numbers):
150,000
The Numerator
And, with all that solicitation and the not-strict guidelines, how many apps made it on the spreadsheet?
137
I’m sure they missed some, so let’s double treble quadruple quintuple add a zero and round up:
1500
The Percentage
Let’s see that’s uh … 1500/150,000. Math is hard.
1%
So under extremely generous estimates we can say 99% of the apps in the App Store will not be affected by the change.
If only I could get 1¢ for every time I’ve heard 1% thrown around in an argument against Linux.
Postumscriptum
The numbers are even less impressive if you wished to focus on a single toolchain of interest, like say – oh I don’t know – MonoTouch, which can boast almost a whole dozen entries on the spreadsheet.
#1 by Guest on April 21, 2010 - 8:34 pm
There are >60,000 apps that use Mono on the iPhone, so that list is obviously very far from complete.
And roughly 10% of the most popular apps in the AppStore use Mono either via MonoTouch or Unity3D.
Many of the MonoTouch applications are in-house applications that many companies write for their own employees. If you weren't so quick to try and belittle Mono, you'd have perhaps thought of that
#2 by Guest on April 21, 2010 - 8:47 pm
In case my previous post didn't convince you, try this link:
http://www.develop-online.net/news/30932/200-comp...
Presumably, you got the link to the spreadsheet from here:http://robterrell.com/wp-blog/archives/28
You might notice how he says that 30% of the top-selling games for the iPhone would be affected because they use Unity3D (which is Mono-based).
The spreadsheet is just something he *started* by populating it with the list of apps in the top-selling list. Not the complete list of apps.
#3 by Jason on April 22, 2010 - 6:29 am
Guest,
Thank you for your comments! I regret that I must take issue with them.
Do you have a cite that roughly a full third of all the apps in the App Store use Mono? I would be quite interested in seeing that, especially considering after a week of very public (and not very stringent) recruitment, the most interested parties couldn’t scrape together a list of 200, much less 60,000.
Fantastic! If you could just provide clear evidence for this claim, I would be most appreciative.
Splendid! If you could just explain clearly to me how the number of in-house applications applies to the argument of publicly-available apps in the App Store in a relevant manner, I will be in your debt.
Your develop-online.net link says nothing about number of applications, but is simply a reguritated press release from 2008 stating that “over 200 companies have licensed Unity Technologies’ Unity Engine”. That’s great, but doesn’t exactly bring relevant hard numbers to the table. That is to say, it doesn’t work very well in the “convincing you” department.
Except he doesn’t say that because he lists 3 games, only one of which uses Unity. The other two use Lua, presumably for internal scripting, which is less clear to fall afoul of 3.3.1.
Even if it does, you have still misrepresented what the link states.
It pains me to say that I find the quality and accuracy of your arguments consistent with that of Mono apologists.
#4 by Michael on April 23, 2010 - 11:36 am
So beating up minorities is ok now is it?
I was one of those ’1%’ of owners affected by sony’s decision to cripple the PS3 hardware years after I bought it at a huge premium – do you think my annoyance is simply invalid since i’m in a minority?
Enjoy the schadenfreude as much as you like that this playing with the devil has bitten them in the nuts, but your arguments which are simply in support of apple are quite revolting.
#5 by Jason on April 23, 2010 - 12:15 pm
I don't support Apple's decision to be closed - and it's important to note I didn't support it when it affected end-users either.
Now that developers whom had no earlier problem with Apple's draconian policies chafe under the same yoke and find it vexing, I do not cry for them. They were happy once to profit from and promote a platform that disrespects user freedom; let them now enjoy similar restraints.
The point, which seems too subtle for you to grasp, is that justifying actions based on things like popularity, pragmatism, and profit can be problematic. When you divorce actions from morals, you have no high ground to stand upon when the tables are turned.