I remember an /r/AskReddit thread years ago about 'What's your favourite free smartphone app?' (or something along those lines) and the comment that most stuck in my mind was from an iPhone user lamenting how many interesting and novel things were only available on Android, because publishing for iOS was simply too hard.

This isn't to say that the Google Play Store is intrinsically better than Apple's App Store; Google is equally guilty of this what's the cheapest thing we can pass off as due diligence? nonsense. However, it is a good reminder that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and is only getting worse.

I think the idea of the smartphone as a general-purpose computing machine is dead, and that instead phones are now the designated Muggle-safe Internet consumption platform. Apart from media streaming, ordinary people aren't using computing machinery for anything they weren't using it for twenty years ago, so I think they won't feel any loss from the stagnation of mobile apps.

The lessons for HN readers are: a) app stores exist within their platform's moat; and b) don't build your business inside someone else's moat.