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DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

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Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#71

Post by stevenwei »

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…

Slightly off topic, but that project sounds quite interesting. Shoot me an email at steve at stevenwei.com if you want to chat about it (I have experience in this space).

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#72

Post by jsz0 »

I can't see the video because apparently it's blocked on the iPad but in general isn't it well known that 90% of everything sucks to any one individual? I guarantee you that there's someone out there who thinks Fart Keyboard is the most brilliant must-have app ever made. If your shit warehouse is big enough you can make everyone happy.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#75

Post by credo »

gte910h wrote: post #54
credo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>These aren't assumptions.

No, they are assumptions. You are making assumptions and imo questionable conclusions.

I specifically agreed that some companies would hesitate to create apps that weren't pre-approved. So we have no disagreement on that point.We disagree on your assumptions.

You are also factually wrong on the assertion that "no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection". Look up the definition of "no one" and you'll see that it is different from "the businesses that gte910h has spoken to".

You are also wrong on your assumptions about >>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget

>You can?

Yes, several other people have also created high-quality iPhone apps.Many of them were done with budgets less than 200K.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#76

Post by korch »

I think the problem with the CrapStore isn't that there is too much crap(Sturgeon's Law afterall, it's to be expected), rather Apple's interface to search, sort and present apps completely fucking sucks. Apple really ought to at least try to be more like Google search. What's ultimately tragic is that Apple won't let anyone else make a better or even different interface for searching for apps and have it be available as an app on the AppStore. What Google gets right is that any idiot can find what they want, nearly immediately, and they don't even need to see or know just how much total crap is out there on the web.

Seriously, what the hell is Steve thinking with so many hundreds of thousands of apps? When you want vanilla apps that are simple and popular enough that you know ahead of time which app you want, then the AppStore is great. When you trek even slightly off the beaten path, maybe exploring what's out there, or looking for something very specific and rare, and for which you would be willing to pay a lot more than $0.99, well, that ends up being a lost cause. All iPhone devs know that users simply won't spend any time sifting through apps, and this is why spamming your way to the top of any category lists is just as important as being on Google SERP #1.

Case in point: tonight I went to order a pizza, and thought to myself that it might be neat to try one of the pizza ordering apps. Seconds later I'm scrolling through more than 50 different pizza apps. Half of them I can't even tell whether they are for ordering pizza, nor whether they are local, nationwide, integrated with chains or just mom & pops. If I can't figure it out, and I'm a programmer, how well will a completely non-technical person fare? Do I have 30 minutes to tap and dig down multiple menu levels on several of them, read each one's spamtastic description, then read the user reviews which are worse than YouTube comments, then install it and try it out? Then do that again 50 more times? Does Steve think I'm a moron? If you can't even create software that can semantically represent "order a pizza local to me", how the fuck can we expect them to do something more complex? I ended up going to dominos.com in Safari.

It's almost as if Apple doesn't give a shit about promoting exceptional software for the long haul over the next few years, no, they only care about churning a fast buck right now, with a horizon of just a few business quarters ahead. What Apple will end up doing is driving all of their users to the web, and then html5 is going to mop the floor with Apple's entire Objective-C walled garden. Sorry, as much as the web is flawed, it is always going to be infinitely more simple to use than apps.

Re: DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

#77

Post by gte910h »

credo wrote: post #75
gte910h wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>These aren't assumptions. No, they are assumptions. You are making assumptions and imo questionable conclusions. I specifically agreed that some companies would hesitate to create apps that weren't pre-approved. So we have no disagreement on that point.We disagree on your assumptions. You are also factually wrong on the assertion that "no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection". Look up the…

You've completely mischaracterized my comment, which is why those aren't my assumptions, as you're thinking I'm saying something more comprehensive than I am. I've shared my observations, but those aren't my assumptions.

I am merely commenting on one of many influences on the store which lead to it filling with crap, not the Unified Field Theory of Apps which explains every trend in the store. I know there are lots of OTHER reasons, which you'll see in my comments all over this page as well.

I'm in no way saying apps cost 200k. I am saying some concepts do, and the apple approval process drives them out.

Most apps cost 1-25k when done non-agency and 15-90k when done through an agency.

I am not, in any way, saying small apps can't be good, nor am I saying I'm an omniscient being. I'm saying I talk to people all day long about this, I watch them choose to go low quality over high quality sometimes, and I see the decision as they make it. It's not just companies I talk to, its companies the 100 or so other iPhone devs I know talk to. Same story all over the place.

I AM saying given the level of limited funds people put into apps, it's not surprising they chose to spend their limited budget on increasing functionality rather than making a smaller subset of functionality work very well (aka, Quality), especially since limited functionality is yet another reason your app gets rejected, no matter how pretty it is. Given the chance even if you do everything right, you will still get a rejection, it's not surprising they spend X instead of 250% of X on their app, as its a business risk. If you don't think people spending 20-50% of what they would if there was no chance of rejection effects quality, you're asleep in a haywagon.

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