“Apps are dead etc which of course is not true — it seems difficult to make a living off it with such a crowded app market.”

The App Store Is Not Dead — The Mass-Market Commodity App Is Dead

The 'apps are dead' narrative confuses the mass-market commodity problem with the indie niche opportunity. Generic productivity apps, generic social apps, generic fitness apps — those are brutally competitive. But a fishing log app, a woodworking calculator, a beekeeping tracker, or a surf forecast subscription? Those niches are not crowded and the competitive dynamics are completely different. The crowded market argument does not apply when you go narrow enough.