« And so it begins…
App Store: The update story »

App Store: Needed badly – some quality checks

The App Store in India is already beginning to look a little staid. We traded in the freedom of the Jailbroken bazaar for Apple’s App Store cathedral. Apple created this walled garden so that they could do some QA on the apps before letting them in. But I think that in the excitement of ramping up their launch numbers, somebody there set the bar a little too low. Here is an example – what are so many “flashlight” apps doing in the utilities section?

Let there be light

All these apps work on the same basic principle – fill the entire screen with white color so that there is enough light coming from the phone. Hardly novel (or should I say illuminating?). And some of them are not even free! It’ll be interesting to see if Apple tightens things in future or lets the App Store become another bazaar and lets the wisdom of crowds pushes the bad apps down.

This entry was posted Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm and is filed under iTunes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Shawn
    I agree that there are many duplicate applications. However, it would be unfair to so many developers who worked on the apps to not allow the apps in the store. Think about working for months on an app (OK, as a developer I know the flashlight app probably took a few minutes) and then attempting to publish your app only to find out someone else posted an app that is mostly the same a few hours before.

    You have to allow all apps, and let the market and reviews decide which ones will be filtered down. Many developers worked hard over the last several months and are still trying to get their contracts setup in itunes connect (the web portal used to upload apps) so they can join in on the fun.
  • I agree with you Shawn - as a developer I wouldn't want it any other way. But as a consumer I do hope that some QA/filtering is applied. Look at any other online market place that broadly follows the same principle (windowsmarketplace.com for instance) and you'll see that the market often doesn't do enough to filter out the noise. Worse - people try to game it (like Jibro tried this weekend). This is not an easy problem to crack. We'll need to strike a balance between interests of developers and consumers.
blog comments powered by Disqus