The future of the App Store

Today, on the tenth anniversary of Overcast 1.0, I’m happy to launch a complete rewrite and redesign of most of the iOS app, built to carry Overcast into the next decade — and hopefully beyond. Like podcasts better than blog posts? Listen to ATP #596 for more! What’s new Much faster, more responsive, more reliable, and more accessible. Modern...

Overcast’s latest update (2022.2) brings the largest redesign in its nearly-eight-year history, plus many of the most frequently requested features and lots of under-the-hood improvements. I’m pretty proud of this one. For this first and largest phase of the redesign, I focused on the home screen, playlist screen, typography, and spacing. (I plan...

Losing Steve affected me more than it probably should have, given that I never met him or had any correspondence with him. But losing him was devastating — not just to my world, but the world. He was a sort of virtual father figure: I was always hoping that maybe Steve would notice something I did. We all wanted his attention and approval, and...

Apple’s leaders continue to deny developers of two obvious truths: That our apps provide substantial value to iOS beyond the purchase commissions collected by Apple. That any portion of our customers came to our apps from our own marketing or reputation, rather than the App Store. For Apple to continue to deny these is dishonest, factually wrong,...

A summary of today’s changes to 3.1.3 Other Purchase Methods: Your app must use Apple’s in-app-purchase (IAP) system for all purchases made in the app. Unless they’re purchases for goods or services that are consumed outside the app, in which case you are prohibited from using IAP. Unless those goods or services consumed outside the app are...