“well over 1,000 submissions to the App Store every hour”

I believe it's like 80-20 or 90-10 for the ios submissions - everyone that wanted to make an app is doing it now without hiring a developer.

There's much hopium and this some of these tools are selling pickaxes.

I saw this graph on a Financial Times article. AI is destroying the marketplace.

Yes. The number of app releases is dramatically increasing, but the number of apps with significant usage is dropping — people are getting fed up with apps, canceling subscriptions, reducing app or smartphone use. Also, fewer people are leaving reviews, which could be for related reasons, or because the perception is that leaving reviews is useless because the system is so thoroughly gamed.

The answer to 'how do you stand out' is almost never more marketing -- it's a narrower target. 1,000 submissions per hour mostly means 1,000 apps trying to be the same 5 apps. An app that does one specific thing for one specific kind of Mac user -- and does it deeply, using system APIs that web apps can't touch -- doesn't compete in the same pool. The developers I've seen succeed lately are the ones who build in public, show the dev process, and treat the app as proof of capability as much as a product. The audience follows the builder, not the SKU.

I feel like a lot of the posts we see are people just being like “how can I rewrap this function” instead of “how can I rewrap this function AND make it better”

Or people who have validated their idea outside of their app, built a user base and then decided to go to the App Store. I started mobile Web app and I’m working on my iOS app as we speak. I have over 1900 active users. The problem I see in today’s world is that people think if you make the app people will come and yeah from my experience this is my second app it doesn’t work that way.

I bet 750 of those apps are pomodoro timers that the developer swears is different

Don’t forget the markdown editor that is completely different .

Would marketing the app early into building make it easier for other people to steal the idea?

To be honest I won't worry about getting your idea stolen. It's all a matter of executing your idea and building it for your needs or your target market. I've been months in building my own app that I dog food everyday until it fits my needs.

If one of them could be a decent IRC or GitLab UI that would be great.

Halloy for IRC is nice. Though not on the App Store.

We are thinking of opening a hotdog stand. Just kidding. We actually opened a woodworking/metalworking shop. On a more serious note, AI did not made everyone a developer - if anything - it just widened the gap. Everyone that was productive, just becomes 10x more productive. So putting the work, adhering to code quality standards and quality testing your software - guarantees you will not fall into the low quality submissions.

It would be interesting to see the trend over the last 2 years. I'd hazard a guess that tools like Claude Code and Codex have increased this exponentially.

It will be interesting to see if this crashes as these tools continue increasing price.

I think you're right, the consumer turned Vibe coder will get priced out of the vibe coding environment or get frustrated by lack of commercial success. After all competition is increasing and if you're not competing to win and just doing it on the side, you'll probably run dry at some point

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Wow it was already difficult ..... At least, people try to do something on their own

fuck late to this but can anyone recommend a site that lets you better growse the app store. its painful to wade through the slop