Recent Comments:
Why do crap apps still exist? They sell. {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
May 12th 2009 4:50PM @gib I don't have to imagine it, I write applications for the iPhone, Android, and a couple of pre-release devices I won't name. I used to also develop video games for a living and your cries are the same as those of every developer of video games or software for the PC. You will ALWAYS be a small voice in a sea of voices. Many times those voices will drown you out. This is what is referred to as market noise and there has always been an issue of rising out of the noise in a market. This isn't unique to any platform that people are genuinely interested in and is no different if you're writing a Windows app or XNA application. That's one of the breaks of being in this area of the market and one of the reasons why even outside the software space good products go unnoticed and many good companies die from market neglect. This is just the way of things. Should we start saying that RHEL and Slackware should have been the only two Linux distros - wait Ubuntu rose from the *considerable* noise in the Linux/Unix world and gained a space.
The simple fact is that it takes more than a good product to be successful in a market, you have to adopt a policy larger than "if I build it, they will come". Censoring or restricting the marketplace due to over population simply doesn't make any sense anymore than requiring people to charge for the applications makes sense. There are plenty of developers out there who have great applications but there is a free application that does the same thing, albeit without the same level of flash - should we ban those as well?
The other simple fact is that if your customers are genuinely looking for an application in your space, the fact that there are 200 fart applications will have no impact as they will skip right past those until the find an application in a genre that suits them. The entire top 100 could be filled with far apps, but if I'm looking for a blogging application I'm looking for a blogging application and thats all there is to it. Consumers will want what they want, and restricting them from that is counter productive and ultimately self-defeating - something Apple is likely learning from the various categories of applications that they ban. All that will result is that market of applications being absent from representation on the app store.
I wont disagree with many of the suggestions you have for Apple regarding how the store should be improved because IMO its a confused mess at the moment. It resembles a garage sale or swap meet more than it does an actual store. Consumers think of many different things as useful or innovative and so long as they are the ones "paying the bills, " they get to chose what they think is worth their money. The idea of trying to bury these 'casual applications' is silly. When you are charging 0.99 for an application such that a consumer considers it throw away, they are likely to take chances on an occasionally useful 'crap app' and that's why they are REALLY running the store. This too is a simple effect of economics and with certainty trying to push these apps 'into a corner' is not going to change that.
Why do crap apps still exist? They sell. {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
May 12th 2009 12:33PM How many word processors are there out there?
How many calculators?
How many browsers and email clients are out there?
What if we banned those for all personal computers and just had 1 or 2. would your world be better or worse for that?
Even in the world of fart apps, they are trying to outdo each other to make a better fart app. While I don't care for fart apps, there are people out there who do and they are served by fart app developers trying to outdo each other to make the one that will get money.
This is no different than any other genre or type of application out there. Somebody is always going to look at what's available and say 'wow, people are buying these types of apps - let me make one that is better than the ones that are out there.' This is one of those principles of economics - money brings competitors (entrants) which result in better products. This is a good thing. If people didn't care about fart app innovation, the genre would die as there would be no money in it and customers would leave the market for fart apps.
It is the way of things.
Why do crap apps still exist? They sell. {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
May 12th 2009 11:57AM The irony here is great. For some time now hardcore gamers have been saying that many of the iPhone games are 'crap games' and now here we are with iPhone guys saying that certain apps are 'crap apps'. I'm not sure why there is this reluctance to let people build or buy whatever they want. That's the whole rationale for having the SDK in the first place - so that we could have this colorful diversity in games and applications that we wouldn't have otherwise.
In diversity we get greatness.
Breaking News: No new app submissions unless they run on OS 3.0 {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
May 7th 2009 5:46PM TUAW I think you guys are sounding an alarm that doesn't need to be sounded. Most applications that run on 2.x of the SDK will run on 3.x. In fact the only applications that I've seen blow up have been my own 3.x applications from earlier betas.
Apple isn't being unreasonable here IMO. The transition to OS 3.0 is happening and new applications for the store should have to be vetted to ensure that they work on the new OS. They aren't saying that YOU have to run it, they are saying that if they test it and it doesn't work - they will reject it which is reasonable (though I'd imagine is horribly inefficient for Apple to take on themselves).
Hopefully soon Apple will let us start submitting applications for the store which are built using the 3.0 SDK - something they haven't come out and said they'd do just yet.
Beta 5 of iPhone OS 3 downloadable {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
May 7th 2009 3:31PM It broke for me back in Beta2.
Billboard: iTunes prices up, sales down {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Apr 13th 2009 10:53PM Exactly.... this is the most obvious and predictable response possible...
Billboard: iTunes prices up, sales down {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Apr 13th 2009 10:52PM Market response like economics tells us it would - if the studio business folks didn't realize this, they need to be removed from the shareholders...
iPhone developers will need servers to push {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Apr 13th 2009 10:13PM This is the most confusing 'non-news' that I have ever seen. We've always known that we would have to publish events to the phone. The Apple push servers couldn't "use the force" and pass our applications data on for us.
If the whole point was to allow applications to run in the background and send/receive data, how is this materially more expensive to the developers than would have been otherwise? You were going to have to push data to those those devices or those devices would have been polling from some service(s) you were running.
Love ya Erica, but you this argument doesn't make sense.
Clearwire's Clear Spot portable WiMAX / WiFi router now official, coming early April {Engadget}
Apr 1st 2009 1:49AM If only... if only it was a service offered in a major market that could actually allow them to grow... maybe this news would be worth something.
Turbo.264 HD adds AVCHD transcoding savvy {The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)}
Mar 20th 2009 4:21PM THJ, perhaps you should read Joey's response and see the reality of the market for the Turbo H.264. Initial market demand for the Turbo H.264HD would, of course, be predicated on happiness with the prior product. If the customers who purchased the older model saw no value, why should they expect that those unsatisfied customers would form a line to get the HD... or even recommend it. I would expect that the customer sat for their old product is pretty poor since, for most people, all it really did was eat a USB slot.
Given this and some basic marketing, it seems that they should want to court the old H.264 customers who saw no value in their product since they are the ones more likely to consider spending money on the new product.
In terms of your G5, I am assuming that you received some market utility out of it since you continue to buy Apple hardware? If you saw no utility, would you still be buying it?
