6 ms·

Man...every single time I see a title like this all I can think is "Oh what a special little snowflake you are"

by NietTim 10y ago

zzalpha 10y ago
Read a bit further. It's not really about him deleting apps (his case is an absurd outlier...). It's really more about the fact that, when it comes to apps, Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware. Apple and Google are just HUGE marketplaces where you can find anything, shoveware included. We don't call Amazon the "new Atari" because you can find tons of crap books, and not just Shakespeare and awarded novelists. It's absurd to expect not to find tons of shovelware in a app stores with 1 million titles. Plus, one man's shovelware is another man's "gem of an app I use everyday". The question is whether there are a few thousands of great apps (and the answer is definitely yes) -- not whether all 1.5 million apps in there are great.
  - drivingmenuts 10y ago
    For me, the problem is having to sort thru all the shovelware to find one or two useful apps. It would be nice if: 1) there were multiple app stores 2) Apple would curate their own app store I think that approach would solve so many problems. The first would see app stores that were limited in scope (not all, but some). Some would curate, some would not. The non-curated ones would be easily avoidable. The second option needs to happen. The shovelware on the Apple app store makes me want to avoid it as much as possible. If Apple would hyper-aggressively curate their own app store, I think the overall quality would rise. Of course, I realize this probably won't happen. Lockdown of the app store is directly tied to their bottom line.
    - ac29 10y ago
      Android has multiple app stores, but they are invariably worse than the Play Store. I'd agree that there is room for a curated app store, but the question is, what criteria would be used to curate it? No one needs hundreds of weather apps, but I'm sure you'd find disagreement on which are the best 5 or 10. And if we're honest, eventually a portion of the apps would probably be "sponsored" to appear. Android also has the issue that installing from a third party app store requires enabling installing off all apps from "unknown sources", which presents a malware risk. It would be nice if you could insert trusted third party app signing keys. There is also the issue that device vendors are contractually obligated to not install any third party app stores if they want to have access to the Play store. Of course, I'm generally in favor of this, since 3rd party app stores are generally awful (and certainly people don't really want a carrier or device manufacturer based app store, which is what would happen). But, that restriction also keeps 3rd party app stores from getting any traction, which leads to developers ignoring them for the most part.
      - drivingmenuts 10y ago
        I was specifically speaking of the Apple app store (I'm sooo done with Android), but the criteria for curation would apply equally to any app store: it's up to the owner of the app store. Personally, I'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >Personally, I'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI. So, basically keep, e.g. 100 categories * 10 apps, like 1000 apps, kill the other 1499000 apps, and alienate millions of people and especially all those programmers...
    - coldtea 10y ago
      For curation, there are tons of websites that rate and review apps. Some even only ever do that -- they are specialized iOS app curation websites, and multiple at that, plus they have direct links to the App Store so you can buy in 2 clicks tops. So while it would be nice to have, I don't see anything special in having Apple curate the app store themselves.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    Apple and Google are just HUGE marketplaces where you can find anything, shoveware included. The same could be (and probably was) said about the Atari game collection.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      The Atari game collection was at best 3 orders of magnitude smaller (3000 times smaller to be precise). The iTunes App Store is reported to have 1.5 million apps, whereas the Atari 2600 game collection listing contains around 565 games (and the Atari ST, if we're talking about that 505). So, yeah, from a pure quantity perspective I'd expect quite a lot more opportunities to fall upon shovel-ware among 1.500.000 million titles than among 500. And even if both had the same ratio of good apps, e.g. 0.5% this still leaves 7500 good apps on the App Store (more than I'd ever need or could even have time to use), and about 3 good apps on the Atari collection.
      - zzalpha 10y ago
        At this point I'm not even sure what you're arguing. In both cases, the sheer quantity of total garbage content gets in the way of individuals finding high quality content that meets their needs and expectations. Whether the absolute number of quality apps is fairly high or not is entirely beside the point. This is all about a) perception, and b) accessibility. If the perception of apps is that they're garbage, and that perception is backed up by an experience that makes finding quality content difficult, that's a problem, whether there's 100 quality apps or 100,000.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >At this point I'm not even sure what you're arguing. I didn't brought up the Atari metaphor. I'm just calling it bogus for 2 reasons: you can't possibly curate and rank 1500000 items the way you could 500 (like Atari had). And you don't need to. A large amount of crap in such quantities of items is both expected and inconsequential. Nobody calls Amazon a bad shop because it sells all kinds of crap products among the good, or asks them to curate their offerings. >In both cases, the sheer quantity of total garbage content gets in the way of individuals finding high quality content that meets their needs and expectations. That hasn't been the case in any other field. There are tons of garbage consumer electronic devices, but people do manage to find and buy good stuff. Tons of bad movies and records, but people do manage to find compelling stuff they like. Tons of crap on Amazon, but people still buy all the good stuff they like. What I'm saying is, when one is talking about a "shop" with 1 million and more items, it's both totally expected and totally irrelevant that tons of it will be crap. I don't see any perception problem either. It's mainly small developers who complain about that, implying that their apps should be highlighted by the Apple Store etc -- as if that's even possible when there are 100s of thousands of devs asking for the same thing. Like with every other huge market, physical or digital, people just search and buy first and foremost the well known and trusted apps (Facebook, Google Maps, Paper, Angry Birds, whatever). Those are the ones created by big players (e.g. Google, Microsoft), the ones talked about in the media, the ones highlighted in review sites, and the ones that get word of mouth and traction for them. And they can find these easily, by name, affiliate links, etc, whether there are 100 or 10000000 other apps in the store.

Man...every single time I see a title like this all I can think is "Oh what a special little snowflake you are"

by NietTim 10y ago

Man...every single time I see a title like this all I can think is "Oh what a special little snowflake you are"

Read a bit further. It's not really about him deleting apps (his case is an absurd outlier...). It's really more about the fact that, when it comes to apps, Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 10y ago
>Apple and Google are the new Atari: mountains and mountains of shovelware. Apple and Google are just HUGE marketplaces where you can find anything, shoveware included. We don't call Amazon the "new Atari" because you can find tons of crap books, and not just Shakespeare and awarded novelists. It's absurd to expect not to find tons of shovelware in a app stores with 1 million titles. Plus, one man's shovelware is another man's "gem of an app I use everyday". The question is whether there are a few thousands of great apps (and the answer is definitely yes) -- not whether all 1.5 million apps in there are great.
- drivingmenuts 10y ago
  For me, the problem is having to sort thru all the shovelware to find one or two useful apps. It would be nice if: 1) there were multiple app stores 2) Apple would curate their own app store I think that approach would solve so many problems. The first would see app stores that were limited in scope (not all, but some). Some would curate, some would not. The non-curated ones would be easily avoidable. The second option needs to happen. The shovelware on the Apple app store makes me want to avoid it as much as possible. If Apple would hyper-aggressively curate their own app store, I think the overall quality would rise. Of course, I realize this probably won't happen. Lockdown of the app store is directly tied to their bottom line.
  - ac29 10y ago
    Android has multiple app stores, but they are invariably worse than the Play Store. I'd agree that there is room for a curated app store, but the question is, what criteria would be used to curate it? No one needs hundreds of weather apps, but I'm sure you'd find disagreement on which are the best 5 or 10. And if we're honest, eventually a portion of the apps would probably be "sponsored" to appear. Android also has the issue that installing from a third party app store requires enabling installing off all apps from "unknown sources", which presents a malware risk. It would be nice if you could insert trusted third party app signing keys. There is also the issue that device vendors are contractually obligated to not install any third party app stores if they want to have access to the Play store. Of course, I'm generally in favor of this, since 3rd party app stores are generally awful (and certainly people don't really want a carrier or device manufacturer based app store, which is what would happen). But, that restriction also keeps 3rd party app stores from getting any traction, which leads to developers ignoring them for the most part.
    - drivingmenuts 10y ago
      I was specifically speaking of the Apple app store (I'm sooo done with Android), but the criteria for curation would apply equally to any app store: it's up to the owner of the app store. Personally, I'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >Personally, I'd hope Apple would keep only the five or ten best-of-breed apps in each category; the apps that best showcase Apple's tech and UI. So, basically keep, e.g. 100 categories * 10 apps, like 1000 apps, kill the other 1499000 apps, and alienate millions of people and especially all those programmers...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    For curation, there are tons of websites that rate and review apps. Some even only ever do that -- they are specialized iOS app curation websites, and multiple at that, plus they have direct links to the App Store so you can buy in 2 clicks tops. So while it would be nice to have, I don't see anything special in having Apple curate the app store themselves.
- zzalpha 10y ago
  Apple and Google are just HUGE marketplaces where you can find anything, shoveware included. The same could be (and probably was) said about the Atari game collection.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    The Atari game collection was at best 3 orders of magnitude smaller (3000 times smaller to be precise). The iTunes App Store is reported to have 1.5 million apps, whereas the Atari 2600 game collection listing contains around 565 games (and the Atari ST, if we're talking about that 505). So, yeah, from a pure quantity perspective I'd expect quite a lot more opportunities to fall upon shovel-ware among 1.500.000 million titles than among 500. And even if both had the same ratio of good apps, e.g. 0.5% this still leaves 7500 good apps on the App Store (more than I'd ever need or could even have time to use), and about 3 good apps on the Atari collection.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      At this point I'm not even sure what you're arguing. In both cases, the sheer quantity of total garbage content gets in the way of individuals finding high quality content that meets their needs and expectations. Whether the absolute number of quality apps is fairly high or not is entirely beside the point. This is all about a) perception, and b) accessibility. If the perception of apps is that they're garbage, and that perception is backed up by an experience that makes finding quality content difficult, that's a problem, whether there's 100 quality apps or 100,000.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >At this point I'm not even sure what you're arguing. I didn't brought up the Atari metaphor. I'm just calling it bogus for 2 reasons: you can't possibly curate and rank 1500000 items the way you could 500 (like Atari had). And you don't need to. A large amount of crap in such quantities of items is both expected and inconsequential. Nobody calls Amazon a bad shop because it sells all kinds of crap products among the good, or asks them to curate their offerings. >In both cases, the sheer quantity of total garbage content gets in the way of individuals finding high quality content that meets their needs and expectations. That hasn't been the case in any other field. There are tons of garbage consumer electronic devices, but people do manage to find and buy good stuff. Tons of bad movies and records, but people do manage to find compelling stuff they like. Tons of crap on Amazon, but people still buy all the good stuff they like. What I'm saying is, when one is talking about a "shop" with 1 million and more items, it's both totally expected and totally irrelevant that tons of it will be crap. I don't see any perception problem either. It's mainly small developers who complain about that, implying that their apps should be highlighted by the Apple Store etc -- as if that's even possible when there are 100s of thousands of devs asking for the same thing. Like with every other huge market, physical or digital, people just search and buy first and foremost the well known and trusted apps (Facebook, Google Maps, Paper, Angry Birds, whatever). Those are the ones created by big players (e.g. Google, Microsoft), the ones talked about in the media, the ones highlighted in review sites, and the ones that get word of mouth and traction for them. And they can find these easily, by name, affiliate links, etc, whether there are 100 or 10000000 other apps in the store.