Apple
If you're a Windows or Android user, you've probably had this frustrating experience. You hear about a cool, new app. Your social media feed is abuzz with fawning users who claim this app has solved all of their problems, made them more productive and successful, and so on. But when you go looking for it, you're met with disappointment. The app is only available on Mac or iPhone. Worse yet, the developers haven't even hinted toward a release for your operating system.
Apple's App Store changed the way we get software, and the app exclusivity its users seem to enjoy can make those on the outside feel a bit like they're watching Instagram stories of a party they weren't invited to. It's easy to feel like developers who prioritize Apple's platforms are acting like short-sighted snobs. After all, Windows has literally billions more users than macOS, and Android is the most popular OS in the world, period. Wouldn't apps benefit more from a larger potential install base?
But as it turns out, Apple's platforms are simply a better proving ground for new apps than its more mainstream competitors. It all comes down to a combination of development time and user interest. Although Apple has a smaller user base for the Mac and iPhone, those products are more standardized, and the users are thought to have more disposable income to spend on software. Here's why developers often release some of the best apps on macOS and iOS before other platforms.
Apple has fewer, similar products, which means less development work
Apple
The main reason many app developers prefer to develop for macOS and iOS before focusing on Windows or Android is that it's easier. When developing an app, engineers must account for all of the devices it will run on, and Apple simply has fewer devices to worry about. If you're building a macOS or iPadOS app, you're building for Apple's M-series chips. The M5 MacBook Pro is finally ready to replace the M1, but the chips in the series all use the same architecture. Over on iOS, you only need to worry about the A-series of chips which power iPhones.
Things aren't so simple outside that walled garden. There are dozens of mainstream processors for Windows machines from Intel, AMD, and even Qualcomm. On Android, Qualcomm processors are popular, but there are plenty of devices running chips from MediaTek or Samsung, among others. Both platforms have tools to simplify the process (and sure, x86 Windows architecture is well known to developers), but there's no beating the solidity of Apple's much smaller, more curated device selections. Moreover, you might be optimizing for a few different Macs or iPhones, but Windows and Android run on thousands of different devices, all with different proportions, screen sizes, and so on.
Especially for early-career app developers, it's much easier to launch an app exclusively on iOS and macOS. If it does well on those platforms, you might be able to hire more engineers and pay them to do the hard work of porting things over to Windows and Android, or live off the income you're making from the Apple release to do that work yourself. This brings us to platform economics, another area where Apple has a surprising upper hand.
Apple customers can be more profitable
Apple
It's a shibboleth of app development that Apple users spend more money. As the thinking goes, the kind of people willing to pay Apple's notoriously high prices for hardware are those with more disposable income. If you're building a paid app, or one that requires a subscription to use, Apple customers are an attractive demographic because data shows they have much higher incomes than users on other platforms.
You might be thinking that this is where Windows and Android would shine with a larger install base. Sure, Apple customers are making it rain like T-Pain in 2010, but isn't a smaller number of people with looser spending habits going to be less profitable than a much larger number of people who spend a bit more frugally? After all, each person can only buy your software once, regardless of income level. That can be true for some apps, but keep in mind that most apps won't make money until after they launch. All profit is theoretical until it occurs.
Lower development costs for Apple platforms may enable some developers to reach a wider number of users initially, even though they haven't yet accessed the wider non-Apple market. For instance, Apple's Mac Catalyst program allows iPad app developers to easily make their apps available on the macOS App Store. That's a quick entry into the desktop market that can't be matched elsewhere. It is technically possible to run Android apps on Windows, but that isn't something the average Windows user will ever do. Ultimately, Apple has engineered its ecosystem into a Goldilocks zone for certain developers, ensuring that there will always be Mac and iOS exclusive apps for the foreseeable future.
