What is wrong with any of the three you mention? Beyond the lack of support for them, they have all performed well. Most of the issue is getting third-parties interested.
I use Newsstand to subscribe to a car magazine from the UK (Top Gear) that would otherwise cost me >$100US/year to have delivered here. The BBC has done a great job with their magazine. There are plenty of other magazines and newspapers that fit in just fine here. But again, I think part of the problem is that magazines and newspapers overall are a dying industry - why would you want to read a magazine when you can just visit a website daily/weekly and be caught up?
Game Center is another that has had limited opportunities to shine. Partly Apple's fault because they don't integrate with Android, but a beautiful example of how to use Game Center was the Letterpress game awhile back. I believe Letterpress was an iOS-only game. If it had been a cross-platform game, where many developers go now, then GC would have been useless to them. But the features are there, if a developer decides to use them. The scoreboards and friend matches and achievements are used in many iOS games as well.
Passbook is the one that has hurt the most due to a lack of third-party interest. I personally use the Starbucks card whenever I happen to be want one of their drinks. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the MLB and airline tickets are also well done. I wish more stores with loyalty cards would release Passbook apps, but again, where is the desire for your favorite grocery store chain to create a Passbook enabled app? Hell, most grocery stores you are lucky to even see an online inventory and this week's sales on their website.
I don't confuse "perfection" with "third-party participation".
The green-felt casino aesthetic wasn't just ugly it was insulting. The new toddler bubbles theme is marginally better.
It's unreliable (it fell down repeatedly when Letterpress launched) and to this day every time I start any game I have to wait at the menu because I know if I start playing before Gamecenter loads it will lag out during gameplay. The turn notifications are all over the place, I get one then start game and where's my turn? Close app, retry, repeat. Maybe one of these times it will be there? The multiplayer model doesn't handle many different kinds of games and methods of combinging players so if you don't use similar mechanics like Letterpress you are often out of luck. Good luck relying on it for anything with more than 2 players -- half the the time it just bombs out. Or disconnects players and then freezes the game for minutes before informing the the other clients. Even basic stuff like Leaderboards went for years without the ability for developers to manage in any respect whatsover -- so every single game had a top 100 of entirely hacked scores and was stuck that way.
I use Newsstand to subscribe to a car magazine from the UK (Top Gear) that would otherwise cost me >$100US/year to have delivered here. The BBC has done a great job with their magazine. There are plenty of other magazines and newspapers that fit in just fine here. But again, I think part of the problem is that magazines and newspapers overall are a dying industry - why would you want to read a magazine when you can just visit a website daily/weekly and be caught up?
Game Center is another that has had limited opportunities to shine. Partly Apple's fault because they don't integrate with Android, but a beautiful example of how to use Game Center was the Letterpress game awhile back. I believe Letterpress was an iOS-only game. If it had been a cross-platform game, where many developers go now, then GC would have been useless to them. But the features are there, if a developer decides to use them. The scoreboards and friend matches and achievements are used in many iOS games as well.
Passbook is the one that has hurt the most due to a lack of third-party interest. I personally use the Starbucks card whenever I happen to be want one of their drinks. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the MLB and airline tickets are also well done. I wish more stores with loyalty cards would release Passbook apps, but again, where is the desire for your favorite grocery store chain to create a Passbook enabled app? Hell, most grocery stores you are lucky to even see an online inventory and this week's sales on their website.
I don't confuse "perfection" with "third-party participation".