Exploring Manipulative Techniques in App Store Rankings

Special guest David Barnard joins the show. Topics include the App Store — past, present, and post-DMA future — and the excellent new update to his app Weather Up.

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Links:

• Weather Up.
  • On the App Store.
  • Screenshot of two Weather Up widgets showing somewhat different forecasts via two different weather sources.
• RevenueCat.
• Sub Club Podcast.
• “How to Game the App Store” — an unfortunately still-relevant piece David wrote back in 2018.
• Trip Cubby — first link on Daring Fireball to one of David’s apps, in September 2008 (just two months after the App Store opened).
• March 2008 Apple event announcing the iPhone SDK and App Store.
  • Apple Newsroom post.
• WWDC 2010 keynote: iPhone 4 and iAds announced.
  • Apple Newsroom post.
• Aaron Hillegass’s acclaimed books on Objective-C and Cocoa programming.
• Ben Bajarin, Creative Strategies.
• Fakespot — Mozilla’s tool for identifying scams and fake reviews.
• City on Fire — Ringo Lam’s 1987 Hong Kong action movie, starring the great Chow Yun-fat, that inspired Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
• Apple’s nearly ruinous “Look and feel” lawsuit against Microsoft in 1994.
• “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
• David, in a blog post from 2011: "Great Developers Steal Ideas, Not Products".
• David, on Twitter/X, with a more accurate ballpark estimate of Meta's average revenue per user (ARPU) in the EU: roughly $4 per user per app per quarter. They could pay Apple's €0.50 per app installation per year Core Technology Fee without breaking a sweat.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.