What's the deal with all the rubbish at the AppStore?
Have you had quite enough of the rubbish floating around the AppStore? Michael Arrington alights on one example—yet another zippo-style lighter app—but it fires up a wider issue.
There are no less than ten different virtual lighter apps in iTunes, which is what I’d call a saturated market. And it gets better, because Sonic Lighter costs $.99. The official Zippo iphone app is free. The basic functionality of all of these is similar - you have a virtual lighter, you light it and when you move the iPhone the flame moves around.
The trick this time is that every use of the lighter app is piped into a database, meaning it can be visualized to create interesting social-networking digital crack.
As sympathetic to developer freedom as we are—and as aghast at Cupertino's ludicrous control-freak attitude to iPhone development—it's about time someone put out an honest-to-God rant about all the garbage being released for Apple's cellphone. In his piece, Arrington veers quickly into a straight-up corporate profile of the lighter app's developers, and so the promise of his angry headline is never fulfilled.
Though not an iPhone user, I see and hear an abundance of junk: the attention it gets rivals and often surpasses that of more serious matters, like the rejection of extremely useful programs for arbitrary reasons. Is it a mirage? Is it all that bad? That clever-dick and his $1,000 picture of a jewel was quite enough—must this sort of thing be turned into an enterprise? Just reading about these things is enough to turn me to the dark side and criticize Apple for not culling hard enough.
What Is The Deal With This Stupid Lighter iPhone App? [TechCrunch]
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http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/07/21/3-ibeer-about-as-dri.html
Hmm... ^_^'
I had my beer goggles on!
As a loyal iPhone user I am utterly disgusted by Apple's negligent attitude towards this issue.
HEY JOBS, THE TIME TO STOP THIS IS BULLSHIT IS NOW.
I apologise for any offence my harsh words may cause, but I feel very strongly about this issue.
Peace love and unity to all my fellow Apple enthusiasts.
Yours in Gaia,
Prunesquallor
Official Zippo app?
*pulls up store*
Ugh, lame!
Shitty looking, flickering flame, barely responsive to the accelerometer at all, and worse looking when it is.
Seriously, I haven't regretted a penny of the 99 I spent on iLightr. Every time I pull that app out, it gets a laugh and somebody tells me it's awesome.
I suspect that if Apple culled any harder, even on the "trash" apps, then folks would REALLY come down on them, instead of just whining.
Why does a preponderance of trash offend you?
Personally, if I had paid up my $100 to write real apps, and I thought that my lighter app (or flashlight app, or beer app, or whatever) was better than the other ones, I'd want to put it up there and see if anyone buys it...is that so wrong?
Trash bothers me on the appstore more than it does in an open ecosystem, precisely *because* it's being aggressively curated.
The thought is, "You killed podcasting and tethering, but let this shit through?"
It suggests Apple is not much interested in quality, if nothing else.
Well, when odds are that Apple is going to pull your useful app from their store because it competes with their inferior app, you're left making crApps like lighters and virtual beers...
I'd really like to see the App Store start grouping things by SUBcategory as well.
That way, you could put all the rewrites of flashlights, sudoku, lighters, magic 8-balls, iBeer, bubble-wrap, etcetera into their own categories so when you're scrolling through looking for something else not on that list, you won't have to scroll half as much to find it.
I also wich the App Store app would *always* remember where I was in the list when I flip back from checking out a description or downloading. I hate when it intermittently loses my place and I have to scroll back through all the flashlighs, sudoku, lighters, magic 8-balls, iBeer and bubblewrap all over again.
So Apple has successfully managed to have one of the biggest problems usually found in open platforms (clutter of crap apps) AND maintain the classic problem of closed platforms.
I am realistic enough to know that most anything comes with with at least one hurdle but now with Apple I can get all the hurdles in one device - no wonder people love them so much.
Have you had quite enough of the rubbish floating around the Internet?
The problem with the app store is organization. Its a terrible awful mess any way you look at it. If Apple wants to run a closed store--- then they should do some of the shelf rearranging and marketing like a real store does. Put the crappy apps in the back... bring the cream to the top. As it is now, its like going to some garage sale looking through every box for something shiny to buy.
"aggressively curated"? Isn't that a bit exaggerated? I'm trying to imagine the App Store as you seem to envision it, where Apple quashes the flashlights and iBeers and so on like some killjoy schoolmarm confiscating spitball shooters, and turns a blind eye to apps that are likely to ruin its business plan... not much of an improvement, IMO. If you really want your tethering apps, go ahead and jailbreak your iPhone.