iOS 18 could 'sherlock' $400M in app revenue

I say this as the maker of 3rd party add-ons to an existing platform;

Add-on makers should have no expectation that the value they have captured will not be captured by the platform at some point.

Yes, platforms add features. Yes those features may be domething previously supplied by a 3rd party. There is no way, to stop this, and stopping this would be very bad.

The platform might be an OS, a browser, some web site, a programming language, whatever. It doesn't matter. They are growing and their growth will overlap you at some point.

Should we not have Developer Tools in the browser because Firebug? Or Search on a Mac because Watson? Or Windows on DOS because of earlier windowing systems?

I get the angst of a developer when some revenue-generator becomes obsolete, but writing something doesn't mean you "own" a feature for ever - that's not how it works, nor should it.

Building on another's platform has risks. This is one of them.

This is a sensational exaggeration. Apple maps new trail feature only covers selective few national parks. Knowing apple nothing will be crowd sourced so it's really can't compete with most trail apps out there.

Nobody is paying for trail apps just to see the trails. That’s not a paid feature, and the data is just scraped from OSM anyways - it doesn’t have value.

People are paying for access to the social data layer on top of that - the reviews, the ride logs, the recommended routes, the reports of trail conditions and closures. And apple can’t just take that, because that’s the data that takes years to build up.

How would Sherlocking make financial sense for Apple? Ostensibly it picks a share of these 400m that it wouldn’t when these are iOS features. Do I get this wrong?

I’ve always felt that writing apps for Apple devices is more like creating phone accessories than building products.

Apple cares about selling iPhones and other devices. If your idea can help them sell more, and they can do it better, they will.

I think that’s perfectly natural and OK - and what’s more, I think it’s on the app developers to understand this and to plan for it.

You might get a few years head start on Apple, but you gotta be able to read the tea leaves.

I also think the premise here is a bit weird.

There's lots of talk about downloads for some app categories, but the $ amounts all seem to be estimated ... not sure what it is based on.

And as other's have noted Apple isn't going to 'sherlock' these apps and then charge for them.

I don't really sit comfortably with the tone and phrasing. Giving it a cutesy name does not change what this would be referred to if done by other companies.

That it is given a euphemism is tacit support of this behaviour: platform abuse.

Thing is Apple barely supports these features after the first iOS release cycle.

Interesting. I would have never thought that trail making apps would be the lion's share of revenue of this group.

For password managers, however, I'm a big believer that those shouldn't be a required 3rd party purchase. Effective password management should be a built-in feature of every OS. (And for the love of God, every browser should use core OS password management so you can switch browsers and still easily log in to websites.)