1) You aren't looking hard enough, go look through their app gallery. For my part, I've deployed Parse in Gaia GPS, StopWatch+, Shark Net, and it's saved me mountains of time. Gaia GPS is the highest grossing hiking app on the App Store, and Shark Net was downloaded a bazillion times as part of Shark Week.
2) Why would developers stick with Parse? Well, because the price is just negligible for what you get - there will never be a good ROI to switch away. You can use Parse at the Pro level for literally years, and it doesn't cost as much as a week of effort from an A-level developer.
Parse = $4800 for two years
Awesome Developer = easily $6000 for a week of work
3) I love Parse for how easy it is to whip up server-side stuff, where I'd like some flexibility in how it's implemented. Before, I would write features and have to ship new versions if I wanted to make a change. Now when it occurs to me to make something server-configurable, I don't heistate to use Parse - it just doesn't add any time over using strictly client-side stuff. And the web interface makes it simple to "admin" and tweak the features.
Don't even get me started on how easy Parse makes it to do Push notifications and how well that works.
2) Why would developers stick with Parse? Well, because the price is just negligible for what you get - there will never be a good ROI to switch away. You can use Parse at the Pro level for literally years, and it doesn't cost as much as a week of effort from an A-level developer.
Parse = $4800 for two years
Awesome Developer = easily $6000 for a week of work
3) I love Parse for how easy it is to whip up server-side stuff, where I'd like some flexibility in how it's implemented. Before, I would write features and have to ship new versions if I wanted to make a change. Now when it occurs to me to make something server-configurable, I don't heistate to use Parse - it just doesn't add any time over using strictly client-side stuff. And the web interface makes it simple to "admin" and tweak the features.
Don't even get me started on how easy Parse makes it to do Push notifications and how well that works.