This article seems to be a counterpoint to a recent HN post asking "So where are all the AI apps?"[1]
- This was pointed out in a thread: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/47504047
App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
61–70 of 80 posts
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#62What the comments here fail to understand is that even if 80% of these is vibecoded slop, 20% of them isn't (classic Pareto), and that's still a ~17% increase of non-slop. Quite a lot. An LLM being used to generate the code doesn't say anything inherent about the quality of the app. It just changes the distribution. It's like how knowing a person is a man makes it a lot more like they're into watching team sports, bu…
You fail to take into account that both the Apple app store AND the Google Play Store are very far along in enshittifying.
You will never be shown the apps you want. Only the apps that maximally exploit your wallet. There will be attempt after attempt after attempt to make you click the revenue generating apps instead. Do an experiment. Search of "OpenAI ChatGPT" on the App Store and the Play Store.
Play Store: can I just start with making the remark that now even Google has decided allowing for search is wasting money. I mean. At least their search works (as opposed to ...), but obviously they don't want you to search for an app. They also openly deceive their users. The search on the web is very different in results from the on-device search (which is at least easier to find, but works way worse and this just isn't an accident)
Top links the search returns on mobile: "Praktika - AI Language Tutor" "Open Chat - AI bot app" (with an icon very close to ChatGPT), then the actual ChatGPT app, then "ChatOn - AI Chat Bot Assistant" (also with an obviously deceptive icon)
The Apple App Store is the same shit. Obviously Apple is no longer about actually giving users the Apps they want, but the apps that make maximum money for Apple.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#63Eventually the cost to develop app and games could drop so low that we will need to shift our mental model in how we discover and use apps. For example, TikTok revolutionized short form videos by introduced a UI where users can explore a lot more videos more quickly, and the cost of showing a bad video is significantly lower (then clicking on a long YouTube video). This eventually led to algorithmically led discovery…
Many game ads on ios are already playable, I guess we're just one step away from what you describe.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#64What the comments here fail to understand is that even if 80% of these is vibecoded slop, 20% of them isn't (classic Pareto), and that's still a ~17% increase of non-slop. Quite a lot. An LLM being used to generate the code doesn't say anything inherent about the quality of the app. It just changes the distribution. It's like how knowing a person is a man makes it a lot more like they're into watching team sports, bu…
You fail to take into account that both the Apple app store AND the Google Play Store are very far along in enshittifying. You will never be shown the apps you want. Only the apps that maximally exploit your wallet. There will be attempt after attempt after attempt to make you click the revenue generating apps instead. Do an experiment. Search of "OpenAI ChatGPT" on the App Store and the Play Store. Play Store: can I…
In one of the niches I'm in, the top apps that do rank above us are entirely free (we're freemium), so that doesn't entirely track. Your premise holds some merit, but it's not as extreme as you're saying besides extremely saturated fields.
All you're saying is really "app store search is not a viable day 1 strategy for user acquisition". In general you're right! It also has nothing to do with my comment, I didn't "fail to take it into account" because it's completely unrelated to my comment. Which is about this headline also including a significant increase of non-slop, good apps, whereas (at time of writing) this comment section mostly pretends it's all slop.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#65102 year old chiming in: I was a software engineer in the 1970s and lost the will to program. After watching tech podcasts like the one from the author of the article, I vibe coded a calorie tracking app for my dog, which is in all app stores. Life is fun again. I feel energized and productive with my intellectual wheelchair.
That sounds fun and interesting! Where can I download your app?
That is not a real account.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unicorn is indeed an exaggeration but 1-5M ARR doesn't need funding. Most in that range weren't VC funded, as by VC metrics that's considered a failure and they shut down if they can't get past it.
The problem still holds: how do you expect to make money by putting together something that anyone with no software development expertise and a $20 subscription is also able to put together? See also: dark forest hypothesis and AI.
So I’m in this situation. For the last nine months or so, I’ve been growing a super niche SaaS app in a non-technical industry. I’m right around $325k ARR right now, and I’m quite worried about defensibility. Not really worried about my customers vibe coding their own solution, or vibe coding competitors, because there are some non-trivial parts of the application that they probably couldn’t do yet. I’m more worried about other senior software engineers who might be able to catch me with AI now in a way they couldn’t have a few years ago. How do you build a software company if software becomes a low-value commodity that an experienced engineer can recreate in a month with $10k in tokens? I’m still trying to figure that out. I think sales and marketing are still pretty key skills that many engineers lack, but is that enough when you suddenly have a dozen competitors trying to undercut you on price and features? I don’t know, but I’m doing all I can to stay ahead on AI while grabbing as much market share as possible.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious to check the app out, waking up with nature sound is the only alarm I tolerate!
+1, I’d love to see the app.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/naturecalls-alarm-reminder/id6...
Two things to call out: the first is it does not work if your phone is on do not disturb or silent/vibrate. He's aware of this and it's a permissions thing you need an exception for. He's applied for the exception but it's unlikely he'll get it because it's supposed to be for stuff that's like life or death. I think for his usage he's OK with that, and he has spent a lot of time working on it the past months so he just wanted to ship it at this point. The second is that it's obviously paid. I think that's fine if he had gotten the permission unblocked but I'd be a little hesitant to recommend buying it right now.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#68This just explained the "who's on first" my wife and I went through trying to find the right wood block game. They're all nearly identical, even copying/cloning exact UIs, labels, etc.
I downloaded a cake sort game to my phone for my daughter, thinking it's the same vendor as for the one on her mom's iPad. Nope. Unrelated company - just looks the same. Shovelware, but a snow shovel, not a regular one.
There are companies that sell premade games you can buy and distribute.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I downloaded a cake sort game to my phone for my daughter, thinking it's the same vendor as for the one on her mom's iPad. Nope. Unrelated company - just looks the same. Shovelware, but a snow shovel, not a regular one.
There are companies that sell premade games you can buy and distribute.
That's disappointing. I genuinely thought they were just copying each other.
Re: App Store sees 84% surge in new apps as AI coding tools take off
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, building on top of other peoples work is fine. Taking credit for work you didn't do is not the same.
That's a valid take. I think there's substance to that claim. Maybe what I've been struggling with lately is how blurry the lines seem to be. When am I building on top of something, and when am I claiming credit I don't deserve? Along these lines, an interesting category of work is when I have an LLM do something I could do myself. I totally understand the code, I instruct it all the way, I have it redo things, revis…
To me it's about effort more than anything. If you're sharing your work with others, people want to see things in which the author put effort into. Likewise, if I put effort into an endeavour I can feel good about the result.