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Is the App Store Broken?

A recent post by Instapaper's Marco Arment suggests that design flaws in Apple's App Store are harming the app ecosystem, and users are suffering because of it. "The dominance and prominence of 'top lists' stratifies the top 0.02% so far above everyone else that the entire ecosystem is encouraged to design for a theoretical top-list placement that, by definition, won’t happen to 99.98% of them." Arment notes that many good app developers are finding continued development to be unsustainable, while scammy apps are encouraged to flood the market.

"As the economics get tighter, it becomes much harder to support the lavish treatment that developers have given apps in the past, such as full-time staffs, offices, pixel-perfect custom designs of every screen, frequent free updates, and completely different iPhone and iPad interfaces. Many will give up and leave for stable, better-paying jobs. (Many already have.)" Brent Simmons points out the indie developers have largely given up the dream of being able to support themselves through iOS development. Yoni Heisler argues that their plight is simply a consequence of ever-increasing competition within the industry, though he acknowledges that more app curation would be a good thing. What strategies could Apple (and the operators of other mobile application stories) do to keep app quality high?

3 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Obvious solution. by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    Become the sole developer for Blackberry app!

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  2. Re:It's not a marketplace.. by Noah+Haders · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't have time to reply to this post. I'm too busy playing the kim kardashian game.

  3. Re:It's not a marketplace.. by EnsilZah · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm too busy playing the kim kardashian game

    Is that some kind of euphemism?