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?

Comments

economy bullshit argument

[Tom]

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.

This is why these app developers fail where Apple succeeds. They create apps for an environment they don't get. Apple is very much about this attention to detail in everything they do, and it's a huge part of why they are successful.

The "economics get tighter" argument is a strawman. Apple users are not the kind of people who drive to a different supermarket because the tomatoes are 5 cents cheaper there.

Re:economy bullshit argument

[jbolden]

For example alternative web browsers that are more than just a skin like Firefox

Apple has most certainly not banned those. They have however held interpreters to very high standards. For example they've been trying to get Microsoft to port a trident based browser to Mac. There are no engines from indy developers so they can't do more than skin one of the few engines.

If someone has an interesting idea you can guarantee that about 15 minutes later Zynga will have cloned it, and then thrown money at marketing it and probably sued the original developer for good measure.

You do realize you are coming out in favor of strong IP protection in the first clause and then coming out against it in the 2nd?

Re:Developers, developers, developers!

[jbolden]

I can't remember any exciting new product since Jobs stood down

The entirely new MacPro? The Macbook retina. The iPhone 5S including a shift to an entirely new CPU architecture? An new iOS operating system. An entire web / mobile based office suite.