iPhone developer: App Store rewards "crap" apps - Page 2

Where are the adverts he is making the money from? Inside the app?

Although they might do this, I would rather see them focus on actual performance and feature based filtering than simply popularity.

The stuff I would like to see weeded out is:

- Apps that just take you to a website (this is not an app people)
- Apps that are simply shortcuts and not actually apps (friend dialers)
- Apps that are advertisements or ad platforms (it's not an app if the purpose is actually the ad.)
- Apps that are really just books or movies (also *not* apps!)

Those four rules alone would probably clear out thousands of apps and (IMO of course) no "good" apps would be deleted at all.

I just posted this in the MacWold forums too...

We just launched our Expense Reports app at $14.99. Yes, 15 times 99 cents. It includes sync with our servers and a full Ajax web interface for those that want to combine iPhone with Mac/PC editing through a browser (and yes of course, it syncs both ways).

#1. I think other developers at other times have pointed out that what we'd like is the ability to set a "trial period" on our apps...a simple select on our management interface that allows us to say "7 days" or "14 days" or "31 days". Right now the workarounds are "Lite" versions, videos, etc., but nothing so simple and elegant as a trial period. This way all apps could be evaluated before purchasing...resulting in a more informed decision as to whether the app is worth it.

#2. I want to be able to charge for upgrades. No other software distribution process restricts this, but other than putting out a new version as a new app, we cana't charge for version. Yes, absolutely, there should be a "version history" link in the App Store that shows the pricing history for an app (meaning a buyer should check to ensure the vendor isn't charging every week). Maybe even a computed 12-month "total cost" so that consumers can see the trend (if any) before they buy.

Maybe Apple could also tweak the algorithms for "Top Apps" to incorporate a weighting factor for price. However, this just my idle speculation at this point. #1 and #2 would be really big for us.

Thanks...Neil, CEO, neil@nexonia.om (we have a personal one-charge expense report system called Expense Reports and a subscription one called Nexonia Expenses as a corporate solution).

Very interesting post and discussion. We just posted an article about exactly this:

http://chillix.wordpress.com/2009/01...e-crapp-store/

Perhaps splitting the store in 2, one half including real, paid apps and the other containing jokes, games etc. A try before you buy feature where the app can be started 10 or so times before asking you to either buy or delete it would be an obvious option too..

Well - Apple wanted to be a more mainstream company, they weren't happy with discerning nerds as their main customer base. Be careful what you wish for! The iPhone customers are clearly very different people to the Mac customers.

By that logic, Britney Spears is "sincere" music and McDonald's food comes "straight from the heart."

I'm surprised at how many people here are hard at work legitimizing an eDump. There is a gargantuan difference between intelligent simplicity (Apple) and fart simplicity (Sound Grenade). Just because it's monetarily successful doesn't make it a positive thing. I do hope you can all recall more than a few examples.

I prefer the term "crapplications".

Billions of flies eat horse manure, it must be good.

I'd like to state that I currently sell an app on the iTunes store for $9.99 and I do fairly well. No--you won't find it at the top 100 as it doesn't fart, it doesn't make annoying sounds and worse it does not make you drink a virtual beer. It also would never support me so I have to keep my day job.

What it does do is save people money who use it. What I have to do to make it work is spend many hours of development time on it. Those hours are not free (even if my time is) as the work I do requires graphics, testing and sometimes extra programming talent when I need an expert. These people demand to be paid real hard dollars.

This same desktop application would sell for $15-$20 on the web but because it is running on a physically small device people think it is somehow less work. The truth is quite the opposite. Working in the confined spaces of the iPhone creates a much higher test & design burden. Whipping out the same app on the desktop is easier as memory is never an issue. Data storage & management is never an issue and you don't ever have to worry about being interrupted (and shut down) by the OS when it runs out of memory or whatever. If you want to post a bug fix--well that is quick and easy too.

Let's also say that my more grandiose ideas that would require me to license content from 3rd parties is not reasonable because 3rd parties want up to 30-50% of the revenue for the licensing of their brand. We do have some branded content on the App Store--but not a lot because if you are not in the top 100 you're not going to make it at the artificial price point of $.99 or 1.99. I have some great ideas for branded App Store products but can't get interest as soon as I reveal the business model and risk.

My point is this--if the App store degenerates further what you will have is developers going for the easy money and not working on anything that requires support or extensive development as it just is not profitable. People think every developer is getting rich--the truth is quite different. It really is feast or famine. My next app will not carry the work & burden of my current app that is for sure. If you can't beat them may as well join the party. I'll be working on Super Squirtgun or something next--hope you like it!

I am not mentioning my app as I am not trying to use this post as an advertisement.

Thanks!

-mark=

I blame the consumers for the most part. The "crap" developers are just exploiting their knowledge of the customer base, which is actually a "smart" thing to do.



If apple served as an extremely strict gatekeeper for the app store, only letting "good" apps in, people would be even more upset. Apple must find a way to leave the app store "open" while promoting the higher quality applications that reward creativity and talent.

IMO, bah humbug on all the whining developers.

It's simply the nature of the beast. Is it really the App Store driving the prices down or that consumers just like cheap stuff. I always go with human psychology first and yes, consumers just like cheap stuff, especially of the digital variety where they like it free. Basically everything about our interaction with handhelds reinforces our feelings that things on it should be cheap.

It is physically small and therefore should be cheaper. And it is! It's $200 (or was $400 and $600). You don't see a MacBook for $500 do you? You don't see an iMac for $500? Heck, generally the bigger the device, the more expensive it is. Workstations are huge desktops and they aint cheap. Mainframes are essentially cabinet size machines and they are even more expensive. Hell, a supercomputer fills a room and let me tell you, you have to have some real dough to be able to afford it, staff it, maintain the hardware, maintain the software, manage the users, and be able to use it. And the users are perfectly fine forking over, say 10 cents per CPU-HR, lots of money for it. That sounds cheap, but most solutions who need supercomputing power require hundreds of thousands of CPU-HRs. 10 cents added hundreds of thousands of time adds up. And you don't even want to know the cost of licensing HPC software(it's a yearly fee on the order of tens to hundreds of thousands).

Going back the opposite direction to handhelds size, what makes developers think that their apps are worth $5, $10 or $20 to a potential buyer? The buyer will perceive any kind of software for a little device as little software and therefore should cost little money. It really doesn't matter how much effort was put into the app, value is entirely about the perception of the service provided. Handheld software by sheer human nature will be perceived as something that should be inexpensive.

If you want to know what it is like the other way around, where handheld apps typically cost 2x to 10x that of App Store apps, merely browse around handango.com:

1. Spb Mobile Shell for WM: $29.95. Err, $30 for an application launcher/home screen for WM?
2. Checkers for WM: $14.95. I would have to actually pay money for checkers?
3. Aces Texas Hold EM for $14.99. Yeah sure.
4. SplashPhoto for WM: $29.95. $30 for a photo app like the one that came with the iPhone?
5. VirtualRadio for Nokia S60: $20.50. Um, it's radio. I get that for free.
6. SmartMovie (Symbian): $27.99. Player for the phone and PC software that converts video so it can be played on the player.
7. GOLF - IntelliGolf Birdie edition for S60: $59.95. Lots of golf courses
8. eBook Mobile V2 for Nokia S60 3rd Edition: $20. Yes, just the reader.
9. OmniGSoft - 3D Mini-Dogfight (Air Combat) for WM: $19.95. Looks 3D
10. IM+ All-in-One Messenger for Windows Mobile: $39.95. The usual IM suspects

Now, consumers, you tell me if you would buy at these prices? Look at the screenshots. What value is perceived? The thing that also needs mentioning is that outside of the App Store, mobile applications development is dead or dying, with developers trying to find cheaper means to get products to market. I'm sure there are many and varied reasons for it being so.

Developers are living in a dreamworld if you think users will pay more for handheld software. The only legitimate complaint I see is the nature of the storefront in both the App Store and iTunes is limited and only top 100 apps or so can be viably looked at. Perhaps a better filtering/search/smart system could be used to make more apps discoverable like the genius thing for music, but the cheap apps are always going to be popular.

If people just want "quality" apps system instead of the free-for-all, well, I'm sure that can been done too with Apple doing an iPod like model. Don't complain about it being closed though.

At $200 an hour you could buy a Mini now, pay it off in 2 hours. In a day, or so, you would have enough money for the new Mac Pro.

That's the root level, Apple call it 'App Store'. After browsing the app store heavily for a couple of months, I find the quality of apps to be very poor. I agree with the developer, for some reason even very basic and badly done apps are making it into Apple's front page recommendations.

Most apps don't come close to the level of quality in the handful of decent apps.


I gave up on Apple's icon browsing a while ago, it's terrible for navigation. If you click on the top right browse link inside the app store, it gives you a similar view to your itunes music browsing. You can jump around categories very quickly and loads thousands of apps into a list.

You can right-click the header bar and add popularity and ratings but oddly they don't fill in properly. Plus the navigation can choke up when you click one and hit back - but it doesn't give you any indication of the loading progress.

I have no idea, I don't see them anywhere. If anyone can answer this, that would be great.

its NUMBER ONE NOW!

checked at 1230am EST

great story...wish could fall into a windfall like this one...

props to the crap app...NUMBER ONE...congrats

and you have a great name..."High Gloss"

love that name and the app...go for another one kind sir...

In all honesty, if someone is looking to jump-start their own small software company, pandering to the less sophisticated masses is a good way to generate sales/ad_revenue figures so you can get investors to give you money for your real flagship software.

Here are some unsolicited, freely given App ideas for any upcoming App store entrepreneurs reading this thread:

1. iPeen: Create an application that allows you to pull up photos from the Photo Gallery and draw various sized/shaped MS-Paint-like penises on people. Then allow you to save/email/upload the modified pictures to Flickr, Facebook, etc. Bonus feature for pay version is creating an animated gif.

2. Menstrual Calendar: Create an application that asks the user to input his/her girlfriend's age, zodiac sign, and date of onset of last period, then press a button and WHAM! The date of then the next period will begin. (the real computation being (previous Date) + (28 or 29 days (determined by some simple algorithm that generates a random number from their zodiac and age data)) = new date). Once saved, application's icon has a red badge with the Days Remaining until Onset. Throw in cheap PMS gags like links to order flowers/stuff for food cravings and you've got gold.

Ever wonder how IBM sold rubbish like the system 360 (displacing the B5000 out a year earlier) the PC, (displacing Mac out a year later), with junk like MS-DOS and then Windows 1.0, etc, etc?

The connection to this thread is tenuous at best, you're comparing a business computer with low brow entertainment.

Your PMS app idea actually inspired me to write my own iPhone app. It got me thinking about periodic cycles, and so I wrote an app about biorhythms. (I figured I wouldn't try to be too un-PC with my first app. Maybe later!)

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/M...304241137&mt=8

Total development time, 2 weeks, plus 1 week for Apple to review it. We shall see how it sells.

Amorya

Just to add: in biorhythms, the emotional cycle is 28 days long. If you can figure out where on that cycle she falls, you could use my app to do menstrual cycle predictions too

Fantastic! I see you priced it at $1.99 instead of 99cents. That might reduce the impulse shopping. But report back with your sales numbers.

Yeah, I figured it was easier to drop the price later than raise it. Also, in the UK, VAT seems to take off a fair bit of the price, so the royalties on 99p are pretty small.

On the first day, I sold 31 copies. I guess it'll drop soon, but for a first app I don't think that's too shabby

Amorya