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DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

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Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#51

Post by bad_user »

ra88it wrote: post #34

Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually. Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? Does it matter? The only pragmatic argument against Apple's app store policies (IMO), is that companies cannot be confident enough to invest heavily in an application that has yet to be appro…

> Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store?

That's bullshit ... main difference is that the Internet has multiple choices for whatever you want and real competition in a Darwinistic sense.

That argument would be valid if Apple wouldn't reject apps that "duplicate" their own functionality ... like Google Voice. When Apple stops doing that, then you might have a point.

The Web also has better mechanisms for filtering out the garbage ... people rely on their search engine or on their friends recommendations (first by email, now by Facebook/Twitter), not on some central authority.

> Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually.

I care because people are trying to lie to me about the virtues of Apple's policies.

I also care because I want to develop for multiple platforms and it's one thing to be technically hard to have cross-platform code, and it's another to ban that practice through a license.

And most of all, I care because people haven't learned anything from the closed-world that was once called Wintel. When starting anything, people used to worry about the "Microsoft problem", which isn't a problem anymore because of the Internet ... but Apple is Microsoft 2.0 ... they know how to make customers happy within closed walls, even in the Internet age.

So yeah, it's a worrying trend ... especially since other companies like Amazon are noticing Apple's success.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#52

Post by elblanco »

tjogin wrote: post #47
dieterrams wrote: post #18

I broadly agree with DHH, but the "warehouse of shit" argument is a bad one, and has been whenever anyone has tried to make it. The argument basically goes like this: - Apple restricts what languages can be used to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Therefore, the restriction does no good, and should be abandoned. The problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow fro…

Right. Compare to the Android marketplace. If the AppStore is shit, what the hell is that ?

It's also full of crap. Which goes to show that Apple's method provides very little in the way of ensuring quality.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#53

Post by tjogin »

elblanco wrote: post #52
tjogin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Compare to the Android marketplace. If the AppStore is shit, what the hell is that ?

It's also full of crap. Which goes to show that Apple's method provides very little in the way of ensuring quality.

The AppStore variety of crap is a million times more tasty and nutritious than the Android marketplace variety. Calling these diametrically different things the same is a service to nobody.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#54

Post by gte910h »

credo wrote: post #46
gte910h wrote: post #10

The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies. I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.

You're making three assumptions 1. no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. 2. If an app store has 3. If Apple pre-approved apps and more >200K-budget-apps were in the app-store, the app-store would not be full of low-quality apps. The first assertion is a bit extreme. I understand that some big companies may hesitate to create apps that aren't pre-approved, but many other big companies (ra…

These aren't assumptions. These are business I have personally dealt with in my product development company who have made this exact decision for this exact reason. We always have to council iterative development, etc, instead of a large impressive release, as Apple is capricious.

I have companies who've been willing to write Apple a 20k check to get a go-nogo call on an app before developing it.

>2. If an app store has No, I'm not assuming there is junk, I can see this just by looking. I can also see companies actively not publishing apps due to the rejection risk.

>3. If Apple pre-approved apps and more >200K-budget-apps were in the app-store, the app-store would not be full of low-quality apps.

No, I'm saying it would be more reasonable to invest more in your applications. In the current rejection climate, it is not reasonable to assume 30-80k is safe if you make an app. You may have to spend 50% again to get up to whatever apple thinks is copacetic. Apple may change policies while you're developing an app (One client of mine had this exact issue).

>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget

You can? Small apps can be high quality, for sure, but are you pricing your developer time? Can you not imagine apps that involve a lot of developer time (for instance, work with lots of external API's, work with intensive processing, do something completely new).

> the presence of high-quality apps (whether low-budget or >200K-budget) isn't going to dissuade junkware publishers.

No, it's not going to dissuade them, look at the web for that. However the issue is people have a disincentive to invest in the platform, which means there are proportionately more crapware people than non-crapware people.

>The first assertion is a bit extreme. I understand that some big companies may hesitate to create apps that aren't pre-approved, but many other big companies (ranging from Volkswagen to Pizza Hut to New York Times to Microsoft) haven't suffered from any inhibitions when it comes to creating iPhone apps.

You think so? I've talked to several large companies, some of which household names, which have made the OPPOSITE decision when making apps. The companies that have made apps in general make them when they're clearly safe from rejection, which not everything in the world is.

Additionally, relatively recently, apple made a A company B Company C company D company classification system for processing rejections. This means something like PizzaHut can put out a non-standard app where RandomCo3 can't.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#55

Post by gte910h »

dieterrams wrote: post #24
gte910h wrote: post #10

The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies. I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.

> The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. You're right that fear of rejection deters bigger, riskier apps from being made, but that has nothing to do with the App Store being full of crap. Bigger, riskier apps that are not crap would make up a tiny percentage of apps in the store, and Sturgeon's Law would still apply.

Part of the issue is that there aren't enough "Stores within a store". Apple needs to explicitly allow people making their own app stores that are strict subsections of the full appstore.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#56

Post by gte910h »

refulgentis wrote: post #30
antileet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is very valid, and I would imagine that prevents really high-quality and groundbreaking applications to be built. However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality. If I was a developer and wanted to make a lot of money, I would either go ahead and build a perfect, innovative app and market it well, or basically churn out app-after-app, which is cheap, redundant and has very…

The quality problem with the App Store isn't that there isn't pre-approval – the problem is that they pretty much allow anything . In all seriousness, the experience of iOS developers who play by the rules, and even those who just push them a little bit, is Apple allows pretty much anything, even if it's low quality. There were some blunders at first, but they're pretty settled now. The last mis-step was the banning…

> the problem is that they pretty much allow anything

1. That's not a problem, they just need to allow curated subsections of the appstore itself, which allow people to go through and make subsections of the store which are highly reviewed for quality.

>Another problem is, if you're not a talented developer, it's much easier to dump piece of crap after piece of crap on the store and just hope someone dumb enough to search for random stuff on the store and buys it.

That's the case with the web too. That's why there aren't comprehensive lists of the web, there is google, reddit, and hacker news. We just need the app version of those apps.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#57

Post by gte910h »

antileet wrote: post #15
gte910h wrote: post #10

The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies. I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.

Your point is very valid, and I would imagine that prevents really high-quality and groundbreaking applications to be built. However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality. If I was a developer and wanted to make a lot of money, I would either go ahead and build a perfect, innovative app and market it well, or basically churn out app-after-app, which is cheap, redundant and has very…

>However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality.

Oh I can explain that: Investment is low, therefore finacial risk is low. That's pretty much the case in any low risk investment client with any product. I mean, look at the web.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#59

Post by dieterrams »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #42
dieterrams wrote: post #18

I broadly agree with DHH, but the "warehouse of shit" argument is a bad one, and has been whenever anyone has tried to make it. The argument basically goes like this: - Apple restricts what languages can be used to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Therefore, the restriction does no good, and should be abandoned. The problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow fro…

Why would you say "The restriction is undoubtedly effective at preventing even more crap from entering the App Store". Is there any evidence that Apple's restriction on languages is preventing more crap apps? Keep in mind this isn't about Flash (or at least, not just about Flash). It means iPhone developers can't use any other languages (Lua, JavaScript, Python, etc), interpreted or compiled. You've got to have your…

> Why would you say "The restriction is undoubtedly effective at preventing even more crap from entering the App Store". Is there any evidence that Apple's restriction on languages is preventing more crap apps?

Sturgeon's Law puts the burden of proof on anybody who doesn't think it would prevent more crap apps. (Crapps?) And practically speaking, I can't imagine allowing Flash-to-iOS apps not resulting in a deluge of more crap. The restriction also implicitly weeds out programmers who can't handle a C language requiring manual memory management. That doesn't mean you won't have crap programmers, but it probably boosts the average skill of iOS app programmers by a bit.

The downside to the restriction, obviously, is that it prevents not-crap apps from making it to the App Store as well. This seems to be your real issue, but preventing not-crap apps does not imply not preventing crap apps.

> Keep in mind this isn't about Flash (or at least, not just about Flash). It means iPhone developers can't use any other languages (Lua, JavaScript, Python, etc), interpreted or compiled.

Not true. You've always been able to use JavaScript, and you can use pretty much any other language provided you get approval from Apple and don't use it to build the bulk of your app. Plenty of game devs are using other languages for scripting or emulation.

> You've got to have your head shoved pretty far up Steve Job's reality distortion field to claim that this restriction anything other than an anticompetitive move to "lock" developers into the platform.

You'd have to be pretty uncharitable to think there couldn't be any other valid reasons. For someone who supposedly has his head up Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, I think developer lock-in is a plausible motive. But nobody except Jobs, Forstall, etc. has any ability to claim that it's the only motive, or even the primary one.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#60

Post by lanstein »

jargon wrote: post #31
mrduncan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A score of -4 is actually -5 karma points (since everything starts at 1 point). Here's a tip though - you can't cash it in for prizes, don't worry about it.

And 1 point is actually zero. Now I'm down to 4, so 15 minus "5" plus 2 = 4 in hackernews math? For the record, I don't care about karma points, I care about whether or not the system works correctly.

Have at it

http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc

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