Advantage is nullified

As a disclaimer, I must say I’m somewhat of an Apple fan even though a relative late comer. I own three Macs (my oldest Mac is a PowerMac G4), and three iPods. I have been seriously considering buying an iPhone for some time now. That said, I have to question why Apple can make an appealing idea turn into an unappealing one. Take for example the iPod Touch/iPhone App Store…

Following the success of the iPhone App Store, other manufacturers are falling over themselves to emulate it, including Microsoft and RIM. The App Store originally was a huge attraction to me, and as a programmer, I might be tempted to dip my toe in the water of creating something and putting it up there (I’m far too lazy for my own web site).

But the App Store is inundated with lots of useless rubbish and copycat apps, its hard to see which apps are really good and functional. Existing App Store developers are having the same problem. Take some time to read the App Cubby blog, particularly this post as its a well written, succinct description of the problems faced by committed App Store developers.

Now while I see this as discouraging, the standards which Apple use for the App Store seems random and arbitrary. They banned an update to popular twitter application (it was already on the store!) because it may provide access to profanity on the internet. The outcry from the huge user base meant that this decision was reversed; but how many apps are banned for this kind of ridiculous reason?

At the same time, there are a ridiculous number of “fart” apps (upwards of 50 when I did a search for them term in the AppStore; the things I do for science…) and innumerable variations on the theme. Could we ban these on the simple criteria that the world has enough fart apps? In short, the “standards” for the App Store need to be set so that useful applications are encouraged and useless piles of rubbish (especially ones that copy other useless piles of rubbish) are consigned to the flames of oblivion.

Now, a presentation on App Store downloads and usage rates was given by Pinch Media where the numbers are pretty clear to me; ALL apps are used by less than 5% of users 1 month after download, initial drop offs are pretty dramatic and continue at a slow rate past that – free apps fare worse unsurpringly.

All this says to me is that the App Store may be good for Apple, but a flawed model for consumers, and deeply flawed for developers interested in producing quality software.