Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ten apps is all I need

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 130 posts

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#61

Post by kkowalczyk »

One can wonder if a platform becomes successful because of a rich ecosystem of apps or if rich ecosystem of apps follows success of a platform, but the undeniable fact of life is: every successful computing platform also has a rich ecosystem of apps. Be it Windows, Mac OS, web, iphone, playstation or Commodore 64.

So reality strongly hints that you cannot have successful computing platform without a rich ecosystem of apps.

If you've read reviews of Android tablets, there was one thing that every reviewer brought up: there are no tablet-specific appsh. Applying Ockham's razor, is it because:

a) reviewers are part of world-wide anti-Android tablet conspiracy that coordinates talking points in their reviews

b) we have a freak statistical event of reviewers being in sync in their out-of-touchiness wrt. what is important for potential tablet buyers

c) people actually do care about having lots of apps to choose from

Do we really have tens of thousands gullible developers who write hundreds of thousands of apps that nobody wants or buys, or maybe, just maybe, developers are following the money and writing apps because people are actually buying and using them?

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#62

Post by rtc »

The reason that 200,000 apps is huge is not because all 200,000 benefit a single user; rather it's because 200,000 apps enables millions of people to write this exact same post, but substitute Echofon and Bloomberg (his 2 daily use apps) with App X and App Y.

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#63

Post by dave1010uk »

m0nastic wrote: post #2

I feel like he's missing the point of an ecosystem. It's fine that he only uses a few apps on his phone, and that most other people probably do the same. The problem is that those "few apps" that most other people use aren't the same "few apps" that he uses.

I have a N900, which runs Maemo 5 (Fremantle); the N9 runs Maemo 6 (Harmattan)-MeeGo. They both share many system packages and both advertise Qt as thair main development platform. The N900 was not as heavily marketed as the N9 is but there's still thousands of apps for it.

I've got over 150 apps installed but the only apps I use daily are the web browser, phone, SMS, email and the terminal (I wouldn't count commandline tools like git, vi, python, wget, ssh "apps").

My point is that even if the N9 has 1% of the number of apps available as iOS then there's still probably loads of apps to cover many people's "few app" choices.

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#64

Post by dave1010uk »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #56

I don't _need_ apps. But why would I switch from a phone that has apps for Spotify, real time updates for local buses, Facebook and Twitter to one that doesn't?

I know it's not really the point but the N9 has a Facebook / Twitter client built in. There's a few Spotify clients already for Maemo (what the N9 is based on) so I expect there to be at least one before the N9 launches.

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#65

Post by dave1010uk »

kleiba wrote: post #60

I don't have a Smartphone, but I can relate to the basic notion very much. I mainly do desktop computing, and lots of it, but pretty much all I ever need are four "apps": the shell, a browser, an email client, and Emacs. That's what I use 95% of the time. Then a PDF viewer, OpenOffice.org, and every now and then the Gimp or Inkscape. So basically, 10 apps is all I need, too. But at the same time, if I scroll through…

FYI, as the N9 is based on Debian, most of the programs you mentioned should run on it. I use OpenOffice.org and The Gimp occasionally on my phone if I really need to (the 3.5" screen is not ideal but it works).

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#66

Post by Roritharr »

cheez wrote: post #43
jdietrich wrote: post #39

The iPhone had sold millions of units before the app store launched. A significant proportion of iPhone and iPad users have downloaded less than a handful of apps. I'm very much of the opinion that apps were more effective as a viral marketing strategy than as a truly attractive feature. People talk about apps, people show their friends, but most of the non-geeks I know don't actually use anything but the built in ap…

Not so with Android. My wife annoys the hell out of me showing all the crap she can do with her homescreen.

I for one would be glad if my wife would be interested in android enough to do anything but complain that it's sometimes slow, or has bugs.

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#67

Post by tsycho »

Reminds of that other saying about most users using only 10% of features in Microsoft Excel......it's just that every one uses a different 10% of features (or apps in this case) :)

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#68

Post by MaxGabriel »

hnsmurf wrote: post #28

Also the notion of using only a few apps doesn't apply to games, which is one of the killer features of smart phones. They are largely meant to be disposable, and you assume you'll be playing new ones periodically. I might keep 7 or 8 utility apps that I frequently use, but I've got a constantly rotating selection of about 1 or 2 games I'll play, and I'm not even much of a gamer.

John Gruber ran a series of posts about this for awhile, about how iOS had significantly better 3rd party game selection, and especially from larger brands

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#69

Post by idonthack »

Roritharr wrote: post #66
cheez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so with Android. My wife annoys the hell out of me showing all the crap she can do with her homescreen.

I for one would be glad if my wife would be interested in android enough to do anything but complain that it's sometimes slow, or has bugs.

maybe you should have thought of that when you were choosing a wife.

Re: Ten apps is all I need

#70

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

Roritharr wrote: post #66
cheez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so with Android. My wife annoys the hell out of me showing all the crap she can do with her homescreen.

I for one would be glad if my wife would be interested in android enough to do anything but complain that it's sometimes slow, or has bugs.

Maybe she'd show more interest if she didn't find it slow and buggy?
Post reply on HN