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So where are all the AI apps?

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Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#171

Post by socalgal2 »

sputknick wrote: post #29
turlockmike wrote: post #12

I deleted vscode and replaced with a hyper personal dashboard that combines information from everywhere. I have a news feed, work tab for managing issues/PRs, markdown editor with folders, calendar, AI powered buttons all over the place (I click a button, it does something interesting with Claude code I can't do programmatically). Why don't I share it? Because it's highly personal, others would find it doesn't fit th…

This is probably my favorite gain from AI assisted coding: the bar for "who cares about this app" has dropped to a minimum of 1 to make sense. I recently built an app for grocery shopping that is specific to how and where I shop, would be useless to anyone other than my wife. Took me 20 minutes. This is the next frontier: I have a random manual process I do every week, I'll write an app that does it for me.

Even if it’s only useful to you it would be super educational to see your prompts and the result.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#172

Post by hombre_fatal »

pipnonsense wrote: post #163
hombre_fatal wrote: post #151

Maybe the top 15,000 PyPi packages isn't the best way to measure this? Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: > According to Appfigures Explorer, Apple's App Store saw 557K new app submissions in 2025, a whopping 24% increase from 2024, and the first meaningful increase since 2016's all-time high of 1M apps. The chart shows stagnant new iOS app submissions until AI. Here's a month by month bar ch…

i was curious, but I need a statista account to see it

Heh, I got a solid five seconds with the chart until the paywall popped up.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#173

Post by TimTheTinker »

shermantanktop wrote: post #60
darth_aardvark wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many execs and marketing people seem to think customers explicitly "want AI". Most people do not want AI! Only a tiny segment of Middle Managers Looking To Leverage New Technology are actually excited by AI branding. But, lots of people want software that does magically useful things, and LLMs can do that! Just...don't brand it as AI. It's like branding a new computer with more processing power as "Jam Packed with…

I’ve pointed this out to my VPs. Consumer sentiment shows a strong negative sentiment about AI, especially in unexpected places. Why are we convinced they will like an AI-forward feature? There was no real answer but I got definite you’re-being-the-turd-in-the-punchbowl vibes.

Stockholder AI sentiment hasn't yet incorporated consumer AI sentiment, it seems.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#174

Post by skeledrew »

peteforde wrote: post #95
oro44 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it’s mostly explained by the fact that most people lack imagination and can’t hold enough concepts about a particular experience to think about how to re-imagine it, to begin with. Oh and sadly, llm’s are useless for the imaginative part too. Shucks eh.

I share this particular cynicism. I have a list of ideas a mile long that gets longer every day, and LLMs help me burn through that list significantly faster. However, the older I get, the more distraught I get that most people I meet "IRL" are simply not sitting on a list of problems they simply lack time to solve. I have... a lot of emotions around this, but it seems to be the norm. If someone doesn't see or experi…

Also one of those with a mile-long ideas list that I can finally now burn through. I gotta say, it feels good!

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#175

Post by socalgal2 »

causal wrote: post #44

AI makes the first 90% of writing an app super easy and the last 10% way harder because you have all the subtle issues of a big codebase but none of the familiarity. Most people give up there.

Comprehension Debt

https://addyosmani.com/blog/comprehension-debt/

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#176

Post by deaux »

pipnonsense wrote: post #163
hombre_fatal wrote: post #151

Maybe the top 15,000 PyPi packages isn't the best way to measure this? Apparently new iOS app submissions jumped by 24% last year: > According to Appfigures Explorer, Apple's App Store saw 557K new app submissions in 2025, a whopping 24% increase from 2024, and the first meaningful increase since 2016's all-time high of 1M apps. The chart shows stagnant new iOS app submissions until AI. Here's a month by month bar ch…

i was curious, but I need a statista account to see it

https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/1020000/1020964-blank-754....

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#179

Post by freedomben »

lordmathis wrote: post #166
paxys wrote: post #28

It is incredibly easy now to get an idea to the prototype stage, but making it production-ready still needs boring old software engineering skills. I know countless people who followed the "I'll vibe code my own business" trend, and a few of them did get pretty far, but ultimately not a single one actually launched. Anyone who has been doing this professionally will tell you that the "last step" is what takes the maj…

I also experienced this with my personal projects. It was really easy to just workshop a new feature. I'd talk to claude and get a nice looking implementation spec. Then I'd pass it on to a coding agent which would get 80% there but the last 20% would actually take lot more time. In the meantime I'd workshop more and more features leading to an evergrowing backlog and an anxiety that an agent should be doing somethin…

Ha! I do this too and have also recently noticed. When scope creep is relatively cheap, it also gets unending and I'm never satisfied. I've had a couple of projects that I would otherwise open source that I've had to be realistic about and just accept it's only going to be useful for myself. Once I open it I feel a responsiblity for maintenance and stability that just adds a lot of extra work. I need to save those for the projects that might actually, realistically, be used.

Re: So where are all the AI apps?

#180

Post by ryandrake »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #143
shafyy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine and all, but how much are you ready to pay to Anthropic and OpenAI to be able to do this? Like, is it worth 100 bucks a month for you to have your own shopping app?

That is an excellent question. For me the answer is yes, but I'm unusual.

It's not worth 100 bucks a month for me to have my own shopping app, but maybe it's worth 100 bucks a month to have ready access to a software garden hose that I can use if I want to spew out whatever stupid app comes to my mind this morning.

I'd rather not pay monthly for something (like water) that I'm turning on and off and may not even need for weeks. But paying per-liter is currently more expensive so that's what we currently do.

I think the future is going to be local models running on powerful GPUs that you have on-prem or in your homelab, so you don't need your wallet perpetually tethered to a company just to turn the hose on for a few minutes.

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