Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What a shame. One of my first App Store purchases and a genuinely useful one at that. It’s utility has only grown as we’ve moved more into online shopping. A godsend when expecting multiple deliveries from multiple companies. I have noticed some vendors stopping playing ball with them alright. For example dpd “shipment can only be viewed online” in particular. Annoying as hell.
 
All you READ. And you apparently haven’t read it all because you can’t defend your apparent confusion between criminal and tort law. Nor can you defend your claims that Apple (or A.N.Other payment provider) should sit on your payments for at least a year before paying the developer - just because you think that’s fair.

You‘ve also failed to defined what “secured rights” means (this was also YOUR TERM). In fact, you’ve failed to defend most of your replies.

It’s clear from your posts that you seem to lack the basic understanding of so many aspects of this and, with this being your reply, it also demonstrates you have no defense.

And this is not “my kingdom”. This is REAL LIFE and FACTS.

And again - I do NOT use this app. I stopped when they went subscription.
Your defense of industry practices and claims of tenure suggest otherwise.
 
Your defense of industry practices and claims of tenure suggest otherwise.

My defense, as you call it, was me pointing out all the fallacies in your arguments (of which there was a veritable smorgasbord).

Will you concede the critical items such as tort vs criminal law?

Listen, I’m sorry you posted a whole slew of items that were based on a dreamworld that had no basis in real life, but you were, after all, the person who posted them and now refuse to continue defend any of them.

Which is, of course your right.

In the meantime - and I’ll say this one more time to it’s crystal clear: I used to use the Deliveries app - I had purchased a license for it from the app store.

When the developer decided to change to a subscription app I decided to delete it instantly because I personally didn’t feel it was worth the extra cost.

In the meantime I had the use of of it for about a year and I used it during that time a lot.

So yeah, I had skin in this game. And I was disappointed in the developer for moving to a subscription based model, but I didn’t complain about it - I just stopped using it and refused to contribute to their new pricing model.
 
My defense, as you call it, was me pointing out all the fallacies in your arguments (of which there was a veritable smorgasbord).

Will you concede the critical items such as tort vs criminal law?

Listen, I’m sorry you posted a whole slew of items that were based on a dreamworld that had no basis in real life, but you were, after all, the person who posted them and now refuse to continue defend any of them.

Which is, of course your right.

In the meantime - and I’ll say this one more time to it’s crystal clear: I used to use the Deliveries app - I had purchased a license for it from the app store.

When the developer decided to change to a subscription app I decided to delete it instantly because I personally didn’t feel it was worth the extra cost.

In the meantime I had the use of of it for about a year and I used it during that time a lot.

So yeah, I had skin in this game. And I was disappointed in the developer for moving to a subscription based model, but I didn’t complain about it - I just stopped using it and refused to contribute to their new pricing model.
Your defense is only pointing out issues you have with change. If there are problems with my point find ways to support it, stop knocking down people who are trying to make things better.

I have defended them. Provide support or admit you are only disagreeing to protect existing interests.
 
Your defense is only pointing out issues you have with change. If there are problems with my point find ways to support it, stop knocking down people who are trying to make things better.
“Trying“ to make it better, like expecting Developers to not be paid for anywhere from 1-2 years…

How does that make anything better?

”Trying” to make it better like wanting tort law to be changed to make ”contract breaches” criminal.

Yeah, right.

Sorry, but none of your posts have shown your want to make things better. All you seem to be interested in your posts is how to make this better for you, personally, and to heck with anything or anyone else.

If you want to start making things better, then start being objective in your issues and come up with reasonable responses. What I’ve read from you here have been anything but reasonable.

And you seem to think I’m against any form of software change - fear far from it. I do agree that EULA’s are skewed heavily in favor of the corporations and 60 pages of legal waffle is more than can be seen as reasonable.

I’d like to see realistic change - some of it I feel is doable today. Apple, for example, I’d like to see being more responsible for stale apps. I do not personally feel they should be taking payment for apps that haven’t been updated in over 2 years. I think that is morally wrong because there’s a good chance the app is now no longer being developed.

That said, I also don’t expect apps to be constantly developed if I’ve paid almost nothing for them. $0.99 on an app that stops working a year later is OK by me.

I’ve also gambled on lifetime purchases: I purchased the Alfred Lifetime Powerpack ‘sight unseen’ several years ago. I took a gamble that Alfred was going to be continuously developed over the next few years. That worked.

I did the same with the Collectorz MyMovies app - purchased a lifetime license there as well which worked - right up until they ceased all development of the Mac app.

It’s software, it’s not the end of the world. You seem to take this way way way too seriously.
 
  • Love
Reactions: MadeTheSwitch
So, Spotify and Apple music should be free?


Should fail? Wow. What a horrible take on the situation. And then you wonder why people don’t do things the way you think they should. You expect a developer to pony up all this money and put all this time into something that you think should fail.



Conversely, it’s not reasonable for you to expect one person to author and support multiple apps. I guess you think only big software firms should be writing apps, not any startups. But that’s not reasonable either.

* You expect a developer to make multiple apps (thereby increasing their development and support cost)
* You then expect said developer to accurately guess all future cost...forever...on each app as if they had some sort of crystal ball and charge one single lifetime price to cover it all.
* And you expect them to do all that, put out all that expense and effort, for a product that you think SHOULD fail.

That’s not reasonable at all.

You put my nickname on someone else's quote. The original poster is gravage not me

macrumors2.jpg


macrumors.jpg
 
“Trying“ to make it better, like expecting Developers to not be paid for anywhere from 1-2 years…

How does that make anything better?

”Trying” to make it better like wanting tort law to be changed to make ”contract breaches” criminal.

Yeah, right.

Sorry, but none of your posts have shown your want to make things better. All you seem to be interested in your posts is how to make this better for you, personally, and to heck with anything or anyone else.

If you want to start making things better, then start being objective in your issues and come up with reasonable responses. What I’ve read from you here have been anything but reasonable.

And you seem to think I’m against any form of software change - fear far from it. I do agree that EULA’s are skewed heavily in favor of the corporations and 60 pages of legal waffle is more than can be seen as reasonable.

I’d like to see realistic change - some of it I feel is doable today. Apple, for example, I’d like to see being more responsible for stale apps. I do not personally feel they should be taking payment for apps that haven’t been updated in over 2 years. I think that is morally wrong because there’s a good chance the app is now no longer being developed.

That said, I also don’t expect apps to be constantly developed if I’ve paid almost nothing for them. $0.99 on an app that stops working a year later is OK by me.

I’ve also gambled on lifetime purchases: I purchased the Alfred Lifetime Powerpack ‘sight unseen’ several years ago. I took a gamble that Alfred was going to be continuously developed over the next few years. That worked.

I did the same with the Collectorz MyMovies app - purchased a lifetime license there as well which worked - right up until they ceased all development of the Mac app.

It’s software, it’s not the end of the world. You seem to take this way way way too seriously.
We need to rebalance the risk and rewards of software development. That's how we make things better. Far to people think they can sell software but they don't want to do the business side, or provide support, or do proper market forecasting, or pay money upfront to secure rights to use data.

They sell features and claim it's software. They promise features that never come, or promise features that get lost. Or promise that by subscribing you can get updates that they should have provided anyway. Developers want to make money in perpetuity for something they did years ago. The most obvious solution is to make all software open source after a few years.

Developers have it easy right now. If their app doesn't generate a profit right away it costs them nothing to leave it up for sale and slowly generate profit. They don't fix anything or improve it, but they continue to allow customers to pay for it.

Sure, maybe some developers care, but they are still protected by these policies that don't hold them accountable. For every Fortnite and Deliveries app there is probably someone who is doing the right thing and still needs another job. Those are the people we help by shutting down these loopholes that allow half-completed software from being sold. I see no difference between an app that costs $0.99 and one that costs $99. If you take someone's money deliver the product.

In a world where digital is becoming more and more common, we need to establish ownership by the customer ASAP.

You fix this whole mess with first-sale ownership rights. Abolish software licenses, make DRM removable just like cell phone locks, and allow for customers to resell their copies of software they purchased. Developers make money by making a profit no one wants to sell. As soon as that isn't the case people will undercut the developer and sell their copy to customers interested in the app.
 
Last edited:
We need to rebalance the risk and rewards of software development. That's how we make things better. Far to people think they can sell software but they don't want to do the business side, or provide support, or do proper market forecasting, or pay money upfront to secure rights to use data.

Have you developed applications for the mobile or desktop market for sale?

If you haven’t then this reply is meaningless.

Writing software is not at all easy and involves cost and risk upfront. Then. you sell it and have to deal with users that will complain about anything from “I purchased this [accounting] app and it doesn’t play Donkey Kong” (yeah - that really does happen) to “This app is broken and I want it fixed (but I’m not going to tell you what’s broken, or when it got broken or anything else)” type issues.

Writing and supporting apps is HARD WORK. It’s not as easy as you paint it to be. The moment your product is used in “the real world” the issues come flooding in and then it’s a balancing act on what you fix and when, as opposed to developing new features.

I’ve been involved in some OSS applications and I can tell you the Issue’s section on GitHub can get busy fast.

Meanwhile app developers these days look to sell their apps for like $1.99. You need a huge amount of those $1.99’s to even start to help financially.

Until you have been involved in software development, you do not know. So instead you feel the need to impose all sorts of stringent requirements that, far from helping will utterly stifle the industry.
 
Have you developed applications for the mobile or desktop market for sale?

If you haven’t then this reply is meaningless.

Writing software is not at all easy and involves cost and risk upfront. Then. you sell it and have to deal with users that will complain about anything from “I purchased this [accounting] app and it doesn’t play Donkey Kong” (yeah - that really does happen) to “This app is broken and I want it fixed (but I’m not going to tell you what’s broken, or when it got broken or anything else)” type issues.

Writing and supporting apps is HARD WORK. It’s not as easy as you paint it to be. The moment your product is used in “the real world” the issues come flooding in and then it’s a balancing act on what you fix and when, as opposed to developing new features.

I’ve been involved in some OSS applications and I can tell you the Issue’s section on GitHub can get busy fast.

Meanwhile app developers these days look to sell their apps for like $1.99. You need a huge amount of those $1.99’s to even start to help financially.

Until you have been involved in software development, you do not know. So instead you feel the need to impose all sorts of stringent requirements that, far from helping will utterly stifle the industry.
It shouldn't be broken, and being hard isn't an excuse. Nor is an app not being profitable. If you can't make money doing it the right way, then it's not a viable product. Release it for free or make it donate-ware.
 
It shouldn't be broken, and being hard isn't an excuse. Nor is an app not being profitable. If you can't make money doing it the right way, then it's not a viable product. Release it for free or make it donate-ware.

OK, this is getting us nowhere. You’re making stuff up, and have obviously no experience in the industry - yet you somehow feel you’re qualified enough to demand changes to this - just to suit you personally.

And you also don’t seem to grasp the fundemtnal differences between tort and criminal law - which is VITAL if you wish to defend much of your previous statements.

Argue with someone else, but these posts of yours are not helping anything.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nugget
OK, this is getting us nowhere. You’re making stuff up, and have obviously no experience in the industry - yet you somehow feel you’re qualified enough to demand changes to this - just to suit you personally.

And you also don’t seem to grasp the fundemtnal differences between tort and criminal law - which is VITAL if you wish to defend much of your previous statements.

Argue with someone else, but these posts of yours are not helping anything.
How am I making stuff up? You think you are qualified despite admitting to being an industry insider. You seem to think that helps your case, but that is going against you.

I don't give two quats about tort and criminal law. Stop mentioning it.

Deliveries failed to secure API access. Public or not they should have protected their access before charging customers to use their software. Call it what you want, fraud, criminal, or morally bankrupt, but the issue is that they didn't do sufficient enough of a job on the business side prior to selling their software.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: TiggrToo
This response is how I know you don't actually read. They said, "Not everything needs to be a subscription."


Get off your horse and think about this for a moment. Why is that a horrible take? Most businesses fail. Yeah, I expect them to carry 100% of the risk because they see 100% of the reward. Why should I pay them before the product is done? Not wanting to pay for unfinished products is part of the reason so many people hate DLC. DLC, IAP, seasons, and subscriptions are different ways of getting people to prepay for a product you haven't yet made. It's gross.

Not everyone can succeed, and not everyone who goes into business does so with good intentions. If all a developer wants to do is toss something on the app store and hope people pay for it, they deserve to lose. They don't though, because software development - unlike most other businesses - has little risk for the little guy. But if they put in the effort, and do the business side as well as the product side, they can put together something amazing and find exactly the right price for it.

Yes, it is. Show me one app that has regular updates and I will show you 10 that haven't pushed out a new feature in over a year, and another 10 that haven't pushed any update out in over a year. Anyone can write software, but that doesn't mean everyone should be trying to profit from it. Good software is hard, and many work hard at it, so why should we insult them by giving people a free pass for not doing it well. Why is ok for software to be sold with misleading or missing features? Why can hard work be undercut by scam developers who won't be around in six months after doing 60% of the work, just so they could undercut real developers?

Yes. Because most developers aren't continually adding to it. Bug fixes are not enough. They need to be expanding the functionality of the app.

Nope. They should do the legwork to figure out if the app can be sold at a price that allows them to finish the app. If they can't do that then no, they shouldn't expect to profit from it. If you can't finish the app before you sell it then you are moving the risk to the customer.

This is the part where I need you to really focus on reading comprehension. Most businesses fail. If they do all the work, and they recognize that their software can be built for less than what they can sell it for, then they will be more likely to be part of the group that succeeds.

It's totally reasonable: Idea -> Business plan -> Risk assesment -> Risk -> Profit or Ruin.

What we need to do is bring balance to the industry. Right now the risk is way to low. Any kid can make an app as a school project and toss it on the app store. That's gotta stop. We need a way to lower payouts over time. Say, 30% the first year but then after that, it needs to drop in price unless the developer can demonstrate they have improved the function. Have users submit bug reports to Apple. If the bug fixes are resolved within a timely period commissions are refunded to the customer until the fix occurs. If no fixes occur within 12 months the source code is released.

Not wanting to reward everyone doesn't mean I don't want to pay for software. I am more than happy to pay. But that means I expect completed software. I don't want to Patreon every app on my phone hoping that some of them finally get that one feature they came up with correct.

This response is how I know you don't actually read. They said, "Not everything needs to be a subscription."
They also said “no app is worth a $5 a year subscription.” In the same sentence. So....Setting aside your ridiculous personal attacks calling my intelligence into question, I’ll just say one thing yet again. Your views on software development are not reasonable and leave it at that.

Actually I’ll say another thing: it’s up to the consumer. If a developer wants to charge a subscription and customers see value in that and are willing to pay for it, then it really doesn’t concern you. Don’t like the subscription model? Great. Take your money elsewhere. Simple as that. We all have that choice. Some things are not worth a subscription. Some things are. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder here. Just because YOU don’t see value in it, doesn’t mean others won’t.

Especially at 5 bucks PER YEAR.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Nugget and TiggrToo
They also said “no app is worth a $5 a year subscription.” In the same sentence. So....Setting aside your ridiculous personal attacks calling my intelligence into question, I’ll just say one thing yet again. Your views on software development are not reasonable and leave it at that.

Actually I’ll say another thing: it’s up to the consumer. If a developer wants to charge a subscription and customers see value in that and are willing to pay for it, then it really doesn’t concern you. Don’t like the subscription model? Great. Take your money elsewhere. Simple as that. We all have that choice. Some things are not worth a subscription. Some things are. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder here. Just because YOU don’t see value in it, doesn’t mean others won’t.

Especially at 5 bucks PER YEAR.
Putting aside the fact that those were different sentences, you didn't quote the one you now claim to be referencing. Here is what occurred.
1. You attributed the quote to someone else.
2. You partially quoted someone, but didn't quote the part you now claim to be referencing.
3. Your objection was nullified by the part you did quote.

So when you go and just dislike a bunch of posts it comes across like you either didn't read it or didn't understand it. I am not questioning your intelligence, I am responding to what looks like a personal attack against me. Four dislikes within minutes on fairly detailed posts suggest means you didn't take time to consider what was said before you reacted to it. But that actually doesn't matter as much as what we have been discussing.

Cook and Sweeney agree on one thing, we can't leave decisions up to the customer because they both think the customer isn't capable of making the best choice for themselves. And, honestly, they can't. Customers will tend towards perceived lower costs and immediate gratification. There is very little difference between a $5 subscription and a predatory payday loan. Customers need to be protected from themselves.
 
Last edited:
  • Haha
Reactions: TiggrToo
You put my nickname on someone else's quote. The original poster is gravage not me

View attachment 1989383

View attachment 1989384

I didn’t do anything but hit the quote button on this forum. Can’t help it if it malfunctions and attaches things to the wrong person. I have seen it do that to many other people here too over the years. Luckily it works most of the time. ?‍♂️
LOL. They falsely attributed a quote to you, and ALSO misread the quote?
See above.
You partially quoted someone
So did you. So your issue is rendered moot and your complaint towards me is thus hypocritical.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TiggrToo
UPS shows a truck on a map but in small typeface says that it means nothing and the location of the truck on the map has no basis in reality.
It seems to be fairly accurate where we live but the driver can be unpredictable. I've actually had them drive by and not drop off a package only to return a few hours later with the delivery. Perhaps the package wasn't where it should have been in the truck? Whatever the case, we have been able to consistently see the UPS truck turn on our street in the map and a few minutes later we can see it coming up the street.
 
These apps always kinda sucked for me. It's always better to track from each shipping service directly.
 
Yes, and UPS' "Follow My Delivery" is a joke. It is nothing like Amazon which shows GPS data on your delivery once is near you.

UPS shows a truck on a map but in small typeface says that it means nothing and the location of the truck on the map has no basis in reality.
I used to get emailed a link from UPS to use their ‘follow my delivery’ service but it’s since been discontinued - haven’t been emailed one of those links in a long time even though I pay the $19.99/year for UPS My Choice.

When I did use that service, it was helpful since I tend to group all of my UPS deliveries from Monday through Thursday to only deliver on Friday since I’m home Fridays at 3pm when my driver gets here.

The service would give me a heads up so that I could open my HomeKit enabled garage door before he got here. My driver always puts my packages on the back steps in my garage so that they don’t get wet when it rains/snows or get stolen.

Here is the link that I found online regarding the discontinuation of the ‘follow my delivery’ service:

 
Last edited:
It seems to be fairly accurate where we live but the driver can be unpredictable. I've actually had them drive by and not drop off a package only to return a few hours later with the delivery. Perhaps the package wasn't where it should have been in the truck? Whatever the case, we have been able to consistently see the UPS truck turn on our street in the map and a few minutes later we can see it coming up the street.
Never had that experience in my area. Amazon tracking map is 99% accurate, UPS never. I once had a package delivered notification that I knew had never arrived since I was home at the time. Later in discussion with folks from the local depot I was informed that drivers sometimes mark all packages on a street as delivered before they get there. Package arrived two hours later.

Back on topic. Sad that Deliveries is going away after the latest post. People will migrate to other apps that work with most services. FedEx is a big deal, and not having it makes the app much less useful.
 
This is so bad. All these shipping companies want to get their $ cut now. Making it difficult to provide substancial data ??‍♀️.

UPS, FedEx: Please work on your current stock apps to provide innovative features. We won’t have to rely on other deliveries app then.
A big NOPE! to the second paragraph, I want all my packages to show up in one place. I absolutely don’t want to have to check a separate app for each tracking or e-commerce service I use (especially when I oh-so-rarely use some of them).
 
  • Like
Reactions: b17777
Try Parcel app. Still seems to work fine...
Deliveries still works. The problem is the shipping providers will stop supporting APIs for apps. All tracking apps will stop working except the service's own apps which mostly suck.
 
Not only requires having gmail, but if I recall correctly, it looks through all your mail, grabbing whatever bits it thinks are relevant. Yeah, no thanks.
Check out the Tracking app, it has been working well for me and doesn’t require any account

 
I am a long time user of Deliveries and happily paid the $5/year or whatever to sync everything between devices flawlessly. Regardless I don't get the hate and "good riddance" attitude. The entitlement of some of these commenters is just eye rolling. If you don't find value, don't subscribe. It's not like this is some big corporation trying to rip people off.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.