9 ms·

DHH: Appstore is a warehouse of shit

66 points by sbt 16y ago

jambo 16y ago
Tag as [video], please.
- jargon 16y ago
  everything at bigthink is a video.
  - bradlane 16y ago
    some people may not know that or notice the site being linked to, etc...
  - duck 16y ago
    From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title.
    - jargon 16y ago
      Yeah, I know the "rules". Point is, everything at big think is a video. Funny how I had 21 karma points before I posted that comment, which got 4 down votes and another comment got 3 upvotes, but now I have 15 karma points. How does 21 - 4 + 3 = 15?
      - judofyr 16y ago
        1) I've never heard of BigThink.com before. 2) I very often open many links without thinking about which domain it's on. 3) A post's karma will never show below -4, even though the real karma could be way lower.
        jargon 16y ago
        Months ago -8 was the limit. Really, what's the point in limiting the display to -4 if it's really minus n? Why not just show minus n?
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - mrduncan 16y ago
        A score of -4 is actually -5 karma points (since everything starts at 1 point). Here's a tip though - you can't cash it in for prizes, don't worry about it.
        jargon 16y ago
        And 1 point is actually zero. Now I'm down to 4, so 15 minus "5" plus 2 = 4 in hackernews math? For the record, I don't care about karma points, I care about whether or not the system works correctly.
        lanstein 16y ago
        Have at it http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc
        kunley 16y ago
        Looking at how your subsequent comments are rated nobody's going to believe in this..
      - whereas 16y ago
        Cache.
jfno67 16y ago
If someone has a link on a transcript, please post in the comments.
- briancooley 16y ago
  If you click the discuss links, you get a transcript. Here's the stuff on Apple: http://bigthink.com/ideas/21603 http://bigthink.com/ideas/21603
  - jfno67 16y ago
    Thanks, I would not have thought of that.
duck 16y ago
Pretty good talk by DHH, but nothing new. Seems like the end of it was just cut off though (on purpose).
gnok 16y ago
All I see is a message that says "This video is not authorized for playback on this device". I'm using an iPhone to try and view the page. Not sure what content the video has, but I'm pretty confident I'm no longer interested.
- Qz 16y ago
  Is that supposed to be ironic?
gte910h 16y ago
The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies. I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.
- antileet 16y ago
  Your point is very valid, and I would imagine that prevents really high-quality and groundbreaking applications to be built. However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality. If I was a developer and wanted to make a lot of money, I would either go ahead and build a perfect, innovative app and market it well, or basically churn out app-after-app, which is cheap, redundant and has very little difference between each one. I haven't personally used the app store much, but from what I saw, a lot of the newly produced applications were merely a bunch of titillating pictures, or a glorified unit converter. I've seen and read about people make huge amounts of money from applications and websites which offer little or no content, but capitalize on knowledge of what people are looking for - and by doing this in very large and persistent quantities.
  - refulgentis 16y ago
    The quality problem with the App Store isn't that there isn't pre-approval – the problem is that they pretty much allow anything. In all seriousness, the experience of iOS developers who play by the rules, and even those who just push them a little bit, is Apple allows pretty much anything, even if it's low quality. There were some blunders at first, but they're pretty settled now. The last mis-step was the banning of 'widget apps' on the iPad (http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejection.html http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejec...), and that was quickly reversed. (it's available on the App Store, go check) Philosophically, the idea that I have to bend over for Apple's approval is a problem, but in practice all they're really doing nowadays is making sure you're app isn't crashy, and doesn't link heavily against private APIs – hell, most of the time they'll let you use private API. Even that isn't an issue to me, because their private API is private for a reason – it's not done yet, and is subject to further revision that could break compatibility in future OS revisions, so if you're using it you're essentially screwing your customer. Your customer isn't smart enough to know you're are a lazy idiot, they'll just assume it's Apple's problem – Apple sold them the device, and the app, and made the OS upgrade. If they can exercise their power in small ways like this so they don't end up wasting engineering cycles like Microsoft (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html), disassembling apps and writing special cases into the OS to fit apps that insist on breaking the contract of private API being private. The quality issue is separate from the approval issue. The quality issue stems from the fact that everything appears on the same 'shelf', essentially. Apple can't censor what's appearing in the 'newly released' section in each category, but they can and do feature apps that are good top and center in the editorialized sections of the App Store. There's plenty of people doing great work, making great apps, and making amazing money. iTeleport (interviewed on 37signals here: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2421-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-iteleport http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2421-bootstrapped-profitable-...), has cleared over $1 million selling VNC software which isn't even probably the most 'popular' on the store. OmniGroup sold over $1 million worth of OmniFocus for iPhone copies some time ago (I can't find a link), and must really like what they're seeing because they've spent the last 6 months working around the clock on apps for the iPad (OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniFocus). tap tap tap earned ~$150k on Convert in it's first month almost a year ago, and they have a wide portfolio of similar quality utility apps. I have no idea, but they're probably clearing at least $250k/month with the expansion in the number of iOS devices and their portfolio over the last year. For every 100 apps that some crapware developer is pushing out, there is 1 absolute gem available. Another problem is, if you're not a talented developer, it's much easier to dump piece of crap after piece of crap on the store and just hope someone dumb enough to search for random stuff on the store and buys it. Personally, this isn't fulfilling to me, so after releasing 3 relatively simple apps in 6 months, about a year ago I started heavily investing my time in writing software that allows iOS devices to act as networked point of sale machines for restaurants. It's been a rough 9 months since I only have my income from the App Store and working as a waiter to go on, and my income from the App Store dropped off the map after I stopped investing time in working on my old apps. However, when I'm done with this, there's a possibility to make tons of money given the poor state and technology of the point of sale industry, and even if I don't make it, an app selling 2-3 copies a week for $20 a pop makes me a hell of a lot better off than trying to make money selling crapware at $0.99.
protomyth 16y ago
"Have you so little faith in the marketplace?" The whole Adobe saga has greatly influenced Apple's thinking on the cross-platform that I think they have more faith in their belief that 3rd party companies will make economic decisions on development that keep the unique features of iOS from being used. Forcing a set of tools to be used removes this choice from a bean counter. Do I really like this situation? No, not really. I like Objective-C, C++, and C, but I would like some more choice. The crux is that any platform improvements (from what seems to be Apple's point of view) need to be supported fully in the tool. I am encourages by the ability to embed Lua, but I would love to see other things. Just a theoretical, I do wonder sometimes if a person were to add a language to clang would it get added to the shipped tools from Apple.
WiseWeasel 16y ago
The headline is flamebait, but the content of the interview is quite insightful. I agree completely that serious competition (both in unit sales and user experience) is badly needed, and sorely lacking at the moment. Here's hoping HP is able to bust some moves with the WebOS platform; shake things up a bit.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > sorely lacking I think you forgot about android.
  - WiseWeasel 16y ago
    Nope, handset vendors are screwing that platform up, with junkware you can't delete, customized interfaces (often for the worse), locked down firmware, reluctance to support Android OS updates, etc.
    - patrickaljord 16y ago
      Android is not doing that bad really: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/android-sales-surge-surpass-iphone-updated/2019 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/android-sales-surge-surpa... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367313,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367313,00.asp
ars 16y ago
I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_Law is pretty applicable here.
dieterrams 16y ago
I broadly agree with DHH, but the "warehouse of shit" argument is a bad one, and has been whenever anyone has tried to make it. The argument basically goes like this: - Apple restricts what languages can be used to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Therefore, the restriction does no good, and should be abandoned. The problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. The restriction is undoubtedly effective at preventing even more crap from entering the App Store. Just because the store isn't over 50% gold doesn't mean it isn't fulfilling its purpose. From Apple's perspective, the restriction is a particularly efficient one, because it prevents a lot of crap from entering, not just the App Store, but the review process. Because violating the language restriction can be easily and objectively determined, hardly anyone will try to get away with it. Imposing higher standards for app quality, by comparison, requires lots of subjective judgments, which are far less effective at deterrence and generate far more controversy. The existing standards and their enforcement are frustrating and arbitrary enough as it is. To his credit, DHH emphasizes letting the marketplace work things out over the "warehouse of shit" argument, which I consider more persuasive. It's just too bad the latter is getting the attention.
- silvestrov 16y ago
  That was a 'religious' statement from DHH, not a rational argument. Wonder why he wanted to bash it like that. To misuse DHH's statement: to use the word "fascist" when describing an app store is sign of being backed into a corner. Otherwise, you'd be more elaborate. I've heard the Android store has even more crap and way less restrictions. If that is true, it certainly doesn't help DHH's argument that abandoning the restrictions will help quality.
  - borism 16y ago
    he just reflects on two separate facts: 1. app store is full of crap 2. apple being fascist to developers (and recently iPhone 4 users)
- skymt 16y ago
  I don't think your portrayal of the argument is entirely correct. Here's the one I've usually seen: - Apple claims that the language restriction is intended to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Apple knows this but still repeats their quality defense. - Therefore, Apple is being disingenuous and in fact has another motive for their restrictions on developers. I've yet to see a plausible ulterior motive, so I take a skeptical view of the whole thing.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- chwahoo 16y ago
  I think DHH shares your understanding of Apple's motives (although he stated it less precisely), but argues that -- if there is a big benefit to using Apple's tools -- someone will do that and create the better app. Why stop folks from creating a mediocre app that happens to be written in a cross-platform way? There are lots of apps that are mediocre and/or slow to incorporate new features anyway. Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written for a single platform to take advantage of the latest windows or mac os features? I don't share that view. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I think the existence of apps like Firefox and Eclipse are a strong argument against Apple's policy (at least from the perspective of end-users).
  - chwahoo 16y ago
    Sorry protomyth - yours is not the message I was replying to. I'm not sure what happened there!?!
  - tvon 16y ago
    Sorry, I decided my comment wasn't especially useful and deleted it, but I didn't see it had a response. For the record, it was: ========= > I mean, I read the supposed reasons for why this would happen, oh, if we allowed cross-platformed tools then only shitty applications will be made, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is completely incorrect. Jobs said that a cross platform app is worse at integrating with the system than native apps and slower to gain the benefits of OS updates (if they ever do). I'd like to see someone demonstrate this to be untrue, but looking at Firefox and Eclipse it seems to be dead-on accurate. =========
  - toddheasley 16y ago
    "Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written for a single platform..." Firefox and Eclipse would be worlds better if they were written for a single platform. I'd go so far as to suggest that the only gain in writing cross-platform software is that it runs on more than one platform. Everything else suffers -- or at least is limited to a common denominator. "Common" being the operative word.
josefresco 16y ago
I think the argument he makes about trusting the marketplace is laughable. I think we can all see that consumers don't always pick the 'best' solution (no this isn't a free market argument although it could be), and relying on them to decide the winner isn't Apple's strategy. In fact I'd argue it's the opposite. Apple does things their way and regardless people swoon over their products. If Apple started listening to it's customers they'd be producing garbage like Netbooks and not innovating (iPad).
hop 16y ago
You don't know crap until you jailbreak your iPhone and browse through most of the wares in Cydia.
ra88it 16y ago
Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually. Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? Does it matter? The only pragmatic argument against Apple's app store policies (IMO), is that companies cannot be confident enough to invest heavily in an application that has yet to be approved by Apple. But I don't know for sure that this is a big problem. I'm watching the Android marketplace closely, and I'm not convinced that Apple should change course yet.
- technomancy 16y ago
  > Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? Does it matter? This. The fact that Android allows you to install over HTTP is a huge win as it lets you leverage this great distributed fault-tolerant network of computors that is commonly called the Web. Pagerank is a way, way better way to determine app quality than App Store or Market reviews.
  - ra88it 16y ago
    There's nothing stopping a developer from hosting a web page for his app, which would be page-ranked. And there's nothing stopping me from making an app choice based on evidence other than the in-store reviews. Apps are linked to and discussed and reviewed in all sorts of places all over the web. It works like a charm. I would love to see side-loading become available for the iPhone, but, knowing Apple, I don't expect it and I don't think Apple should be obliged to provide it.
- bad_user 16y ago
  > Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? That's bullshit ... main difference is that the Internet has multiple choices for whatever you want and real competition in a Darwinistic sense. That argument would be valid if Apple wouldn't reject apps that "duplicate" their own functionality ... like Google Voice. When Apple stops doing that, then you might have a point. The Web also has better mechanisms for filtering out the garbage ... people rely on their search engine or on their friends recommendations (first by email, now by Facebook/Twitter), not on some central authority. > Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually. I care because people are trying to lie to me about the virtues of Apple's policies. I also care because I want to develop for multiple platforms and it's one thing to be technically hard to have cross-platform code, and it's another to ban that practice through a license. And most of all, I care because people haven't learned anything from the closed-world that was once called Wintel. When starting anything, people used to worry about the "Microsoft problem", which isn't a problem anymore because of the Internet ... but Apple is Microsoft 2.0 ... they know how to make customers happy within closed walls, even in the Internet age. So yeah, it's a worrying trend ... especially since other companies like Amazon are noticing Apple's success.
nphase 16y ago
Unrelated: Has anyone actually tried using 37signals' Draft iPad app? Would rank pretty high on my "Worst $10 I've ever spent" list, if I maintained such a list.
alphadog 16y ago
DHH has exhausted the antagonist role.
gte910h 16y ago
So is the web. We just need better indexing apps, which are either human curated or have better search parameters (for instance, filter out things with less than 2 stars, etc).
hackermom 16y ago
Has he taken a look at the Android appstore?
- seymores 16y ago
  If Appstore is warehouse of shit, then I am sad to say Android Market is a POS.
watmough 16y ago
The headline refers to an 8 minute segment in a 45 minute chat from DHH. I've only watched part of the talk so far, but it is a very persuasive piece of advocacy for Ruby. DHH is a smart guy, but he seems to have had relatively light range of language experience prior to discovering Ruby. One of his examples is the ability to use 'unless'. Big deal, this is an ugly and non-intuitive (for me) perlism. I appreciate others may like it though. Despite this, I was still motivated to pull down my copy of 'pickaxe' and leaf through it. Keep in mind though, he's arguing just one perspective. Personally, the Cocoa/UIKit apis on iOS 4.0 are incredible, and have reawoken my desire and motivation to 'just code'. Objective-C rocks, because you can write nice tight C code, and yet still have pretty wide-ranging abilities to pass objects around, easily make a view into a control immediately giving you all the extra stuff from responders/controls. There may indeed be a bunch of shit in the App store, but it has everything to do with crappy programmers writing crappy software, and Apple's lax enforcement of UX standards, rather than any enforced choice of programming language. Does he really think that programmers write crappy programs because Objective-C is hard?
jsz0 16y ago
I can't see the video because apparently it's blocked on the iPad but in general isn't it well known that 90% of everything sucks to any one individual? I guarantee you that there's someone out there who thinks Fart Keyboard is the most brilliant must-have app ever made. If your shit warehouse is big enough you can make everyone happy.
code_duck 16y ago
Well, I'm pretty used to bold, profane statements from this guy now, to the point where they have no effect on me. Anyone else?
korch 16y ago
I think the problem with the CrapStore isn't that there is too much crap(Sturgeon's Law afterall, it's to be expected), rather Apple's interface to search, sort and present apps completely fucking sucks. Apple really ought to at least try to be more like Google search. What's ultimately tragic is that Apple won't let anyone else make a better or even different interface for searching for apps and have it be available as an app on the AppStore. What Google gets right is that any idiot can find what they want, nearly immediately, and they don't even need to see or know just how much total crap is out there on the web. Seriously, what the hell is Steve thinking with so many hundreds of thousands of apps? When you want vanilla apps that are simple and popular enough that you know ahead of time which app you want, then the AppStore is great. When you trek even slightly off the beaten path, maybe exploring what's out there, or looking for something very specific and rare, and for which you would be willing to pay a lot more than $0.99, well, that ends up being a lost cause. All iPhone devs know that users simply won't spend any time sifting through apps, and this is why spamming your way to the top of any category lists is just as important as being on Google SERP #1. Case in point: tonight I went to order a pizza, and thought to myself that it might be neat to try one of the pizza ordering apps. Seconds later I'm scrolling through more than 50 different pizza apps. Half of them I can't even tell whether they are for ordering pizza, nor whether they are local, nationwide, integrated with chains or just mom & pops. If I can't figure it out, and I'm a programmer, how well will a completely non-technical person fare? Do I have 30 minutes to tap and dig down multiple menu levels on several of them, read each one's spamtastic description, then read the user reviews which are worse than YouTube comments, then install it and try it out? Then do that again 50 more times? Does Steve think I'm a moron? If you can't even create software that can semantically represent "order a pizza local to me", how the fuck can we expect them to do something more complex? I ended up going to dominos.com in Safari. It's almost as if Apple doesn't give a shit about promoting exceptional software for the long haul over the next few years, no, they only care about churning a fast buck right now, with a horizon of just a few business quarters ahead. What Apple will end up doing is driving all of their users to the web, and then html5 is going to mop the floor with Apple's entire Objective-C walled garden. Sorry, as much as the web is flawed, it is always going to be infinitely more simple to use than apps.

66 points by sbt 16y ago

jambo 16y ago

Tag as [video], please.

jargon 16y ago
everything at bigthink is a video.
- bradlane 16y ago
  some people may not know that or notice the site being linked to, etc...
- duck 16y ago
  From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title.
  - jargon 16y ago
    Yeah, I know the "rules". Point is, everything at big think is a video. Funny how I had 21 karma points before I posted that comment, which got 4 down votes and another comment got 3 upvotes, but now I have 15 karma points. How does 21 - 4 + 3 = 15?
    - judofyr 16y ago
      1) I've never heard of BigThink.com before. 2) I very often open many links without thinking about which domain it's on. 3) A post's karma will never show below -4, even though the real karma could be way lower.
      - jargon 16y ago
        Months ago -8 was the limit. Really, what's the point in limiting the display to -4 if it's really minus n? Why not just show minus n?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - mrduncan 16y ago
      A score of -4 is actually -5 karma points (since everything starts at 1 point). Here's a tip though - you can't cash it in for prizes, don't worry about it.
      - jargon 16y ago
        And 1 point is actually zero. Now I'm down to 4, so 15 minus "5" plus 2 = 4 in hackernews math? For the record, I don't care about karma points, I care about whether or not the system works correctly.
        lanstein 16y ago
        Have at it http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc http://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc
        kunley 16y ago
        Looking at how your subsequent comments are rated nobody's going to believe in this..
    - whereas 16y ago
      Cache.

jfno67 16y ago

If someone has a link on a transcript, please post in the comments.

briancooley 16y ago
If you click the discuss links, you get a transcript. Here's the stuff on Apple: http://bigthink.com/ideas/21603 http://bigthink.com/ideas/21603
- jfno67 16y ago
  Thanks, I would not have thought of that.

duck 16y ago

Pretty good talk by DHH, but nothing new. Seems like the end of it was just cut off though (on purpose).

gnok 16y ago

All I see is a message that says "This video is not authorized for playback on this device". I'm using an iPhone to try and view the page. Not sure what content the video has, but I'm pretty confident I'm no longer interested.

Qz 16y ago
Is that supposed to be ironic?

gte910h 16y ago

The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection. If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies. I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.

antileet 16y ago
Your point is very valid, and I would imagine that prevents really high-quality and groundbreaking applications to be built. However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality. If I was a developer and wanted to make a lot of money, I would either go ahead and build a perfect, innovative app and market it well, or basically churn out app-after-app, which is cheap, redundant and has very little difference between each one. I haven't personally used the app store much, but from what I saw, a lot of the newly produced applications were merely a bunch of titillating pictures, or a glorified unit converter. I've seen and read about people make huge amounts of money from applications and websites which offer little or no content, but capitalize on knowledge of what people are looking for - and by doing this in very large and persistent quantities.
- refulgentis 16y ago
  The quality problem with the App Store isn't that there isn't pre-approval – the problem is that they pretty much allow anything. In all seriousness, the experience of iOS developers who play by the rules, and even those who just push them a little bit, is Apple allows pretty much anything, even if it's low quality. There were some blunders at first, but they're pretty settled now. The last mis-step was the banning of 'widget apps' on the iPad (http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejection.html http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejec...), and that was quickly reversed. (it's available on the App Store, go check) Philosophically, the idea that I have to bend over for Apple's approval is a problem, but in practice all they're really doing nowadays is making sure you're app isn't crashy, and doesn't link heavily against private APIs – hell, most of the time they'll let you use private API. Even that isn't an issue to me, because their private API is private for a reason – it's not done yet, and is subject to further revision that could break compatibility in future OS revisions, so if you're using it you're essentially screwing your customer. Your customer isn't smart enough to know you're are a lazy idiot, they'll just assume it's Apple's problem – Apple sold them the device, and the app, and made the OS upgrade. If they can exercise their power in small ways like this so they don't end up wasting engineering cycles like Microsoft (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html), disassembling apps and writing special cases into the OS to fit apps that insist on breaking the contract of private API being private. The quality issue is separate from the approval issue. The quality issue stems from the fact that everything appears on the same 'shelf', essentially. Apple can't censor what's appearing in the 'newly released' section in each category, but they can and do feature apps that are good top and center in the editorialized sections of the App Store. There's plenty of people doing great work, making great apps, and making amazing money. iTeleport (interviewed on 37signals here: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2421-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-iteleport http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2421-bootstrapped-profitable-...), has cleared over $1 million selling VNC software which isn't even probably the most 'popular' on the store. OmniGroup sold over $1 million worth of OmniFocus for iPhone copies some time ago (I can't find a link), and must really like what they're seeing because they've spent the last 6 months working around the clock on apps for the iPad (OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniFocus). tap tap tap earned ~$150k on Convert in it's first month almost a year ago, and they have a wide portfolio of similar quality utility apps. I have no idea, but they're probably clearing at least $250k/month with the expansion in the number of iOS devices and their portfolio over the last year. For every 100 apps that some crapware developer is pushing out, there is 1 absolute gem available. Another problem is, if you're not a talented developer, it's much easier to dump piece of crap after piece of crap on the store and just hope someone dumb enough to search for random stuff on the store and buys it. Personally, this isn't fulfilling to me, so after releasing 3 relatively simple apps in 6 months, about a year ago I started heavily investing my time in writing software that allows iOS devices to act as networked point of sale machines for restaurants. It's been a rough 9 months since I only have my income from the App Store and working as a waiter to go on, and my income from the App Store dropped off the map after I stopped investing time in working on my old apps. However, when I'm done with this, there's a possibility to make tons of money given the poor state and technology of the point of sale industry, and even if I don't make it, an app selling 2-3 copies a week for $20 a pop makes me a hell of a lot better off than trying to make money selling crapware at $0.99.

protomyth 16y ago

"Have you so little faith in the marketplace?" The whole Adobe saga has greatly influenced Apple's thinking on the cross-platform that I think they have more faith in their belief that 3rd party companies will make economic decisions on development that keep the unique features of iOS from being used. Forcing a set of tools to be used removes this choice from a bean counter. Do I really like this situation? No, not really. I like Objective-C, C++, and C, but I would like some more choice. The crux is that any platform improvements (from what seems to be Apple's point of view) need to be supported fully in the tool. I am encourages by the ability to embed Lua, but I would love to see other things. Just a theoretical, I do wonder sometimes if a person were to add a language to clang would it get added to the shipped tools from Apple.

WiseWeasel 16y ago

The headline is flamebait, but the content of the interview is quite insightful. I agree completely that serious competition (both in unit sales and user experience) is badly needed, and sorely lacking at the moment. Here's hoping HP is able to bust some moves with the WebOS platform; shake things up a bit.

patrickaljord 16y ago
> sorely lacking I think you forgot about android.
- WiseWeasel 16y ago
  Nope, handset vendors are screwing that platform up, with junkware you can't delete, customized interfaces (often for the worse), locked down firmware, reluctance to support Android OS updates, etc.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    Android is not doing that bad really: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/android-sales-surge-surpass-iphone-updated/2019 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/android-sales-surge-surpa... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367313,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2367313,00.asp

ars 16y ago

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeons_Law is pretty applicable here.

dieterrams 16y ago

I broadly agree with DHH, but the "warehouse of shit" argument is a bad one, and has been whenever anyone has tried to make it. The argument basically goes like this: - Apple restricts what languages can be used to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Therefore, the restriction does no good, and should be abandoned. The problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. The restriction is undoubtedly effective at preventing even more crap from entering the App Store. Just because the store isn't over 50% gold doesn't mean it isn't fulfilling its purpose. From Apple's perspective, the restriction is a particularly efficient one, because it prevents a lot of crap from entering, not just the App Store, but the review process. Because violating the language restriction can be easily and objectively determined, hardly anyone will try to get away with it. Imposing higher standards for app quality, by comparison, requires lots of subjective judgments, which are far less effective at deterrence and generate far more controversy. The existing standards and their enforcement are frustrating and arbitrary enough as it is. To his credit, DHH emphasizes letting the marketplace work things out over the "warehouse of shit" argument, which I consider more persuasive. It's just too bad the latter is getting the attention.

silvestrov 16y ago
That was a 'religious' statement from DHH, not a rational argument. Wonder why he wanted to bash it like that. To misuse DHH's statement: to use the word "fascist" when describing an app store is sign of being backed into a corner. Otherwise, you'd be more elaborate. I've heard the Android store has even more crap and way less restrictions. If that is true, it certainly doesn't help DHH's argument that abandoning the restrictions will help quality.
- borism 16y ago
  he just reflects on two separate facts: 1. app store is full of crap 2. apple being fascist to developers (and recently iPhone 4 users)
skymt 16y ago
I don't think your portrayal of the argument is entirely correct. Here's the one I've usually seen: - Apple claims that the language restriction is intended to increase the quality of apps in the App Store. - But the App Store is full of crap. - Apple knows this but still repeats their quality defense. - Therefore, Apple is being disingenuous and in fact has another motive for their restrictions on developers. I've yet to see a plausible ulterior motive, so I take a skeptical view of the whole thing.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

chwahoo 16y ago
I think DHH shares your understanding of Apple's motives (although he stated it less precisely), but argues that -- if there is a big benefit to using Apple's tools -- someone will do that and create the better app. Why stop folks from creating a mediocre app that happens to be written in a cross-platform way? There are lots of apps that are mediocre and/or slow to incorporate new features anyway. Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written for a single platform to take advantage of the latest windows or mac os features? I don't share that view. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I think the existence of apps like Firefox and Eclipse are a strong argument against Apple's policy (at least from the perspective of end-users).
- chwahoo 16y ago
  Sorry protomyth - yours is not the message I was replying to. I'm not sure what happened there!?!
- tvon 16y ago
  Sorry, I decided my comment wasn't especially useful and deleted it, but I didn't see it had a response. For the record, it was: ========= > I mean, I read the supposed reasons for why this would happen, oh, if we allowed cross-platformed tools then only shitty applications will be made, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is completely incorrect. Jobs said that a cross platform app is worse at integrating with the system than native apps and slower to gain the benefits of OS updates (if they ever do). I'd like to see someone demonstrate this to be untrue, but looking at Firefox and Eclipse it seems to be dead-on accurate. =========
- toddheasley 16y ago
  "Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written for a single platform..." Firefox and Eclipse would be worlds better if they were written for a single platform. I'd go so far as to suggest that the only gain in writing cross-platform software is that it runs on more than one platform. Everything else suffers -- or at least is limited to a common denominator. "Common" being the operative word.

josefresco 16y ago

I think the argument he makes about trusting the marketplace is laughable. I think we can all see that consumers don't always pick the 'best' solution (no this isn't a free market argument although it could be), and relying on them to decide the winner isn't Apple's strategy. In fact I'd argue it's the opposite. Apple does things their way and regardless people swoon over their products. If Apple started listening to it's customers they'd be producing garbage like Netbooks and not innovating (iPad).

hop 16y ago

You don't know crap until you jailbreak your iPhone and browse through most of the wares in Cydia.

ra88it 16y ago

Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually. Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? Does it matter? The only pragmatic argument against Apple's app store policies (IMO), is that companies cannot be confident enough to invest heavily in an application that has yet to be approved by Apple. But I don't know for sure that this is a big problem. I'm watching the Android marketplace closely, and I'm not convinced that Apple should change course yet.

technomancy 16y ago
> Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? Does it matter? This. The fact that Android allows you to install over HTTP is a huge win as it lets you leverage this great distributed fault-tolerant network of computors that is commonly called the Web. Pagerank is a way, way better way to determine app quality than App Store or Market reviews.
- ra88it 16y ago
  There's nothing stopping a developer from hosting a web page for his app, which would be page-ranked. And there's nothing stopping me from making an app choice based on evidence other than the in-store reviews. Apps are linked to and discussed and reviewed in all sorts of places all over the web. It works like a charm. I would love to see side-loading become available for the iPhone, but, knowing Apple, I don't expect it and I don't think Apple should be obliged to provide it.
bad_user 16y ago
> Think about all the web pages on the internet. Does the web have a better batting average than the app store? That's bullshit ... main difference is that the Internet has multiple choices for whatever you want and real competition in a Darwinistic sense. That argument would be valid if Apple wouldn't reject apps that "duplicate" their own functionality ... like Google Voice. When Apple stops doing that, then you might have a point. The Web also has better mechanisms for filtering out the garbage ... people rely on their search engine or on their friends recommendations (first by email, now by Facebook/Twitter), not on some central authority. > Who cares about the percentage of shit in the app store? It's not like you have to sift through all the apps manually. I care because people are trying to lie to me about the virtues of Apple's policies. I also care because I want to develop for multiple platforms and it's one thing to be technically hard to have cross-platform code, and it's another to ban that practice through a license. And most of all, I care because people haven't learned anything from the closed-world that was once called Wintel. When starting anything, people used to worry about the "Microsoft problem", which isn't a problem anymore because of the Internet ... but Apple is Microsoft 2.0 ... they know how to make customers happy within closed walls, even in the Internet age. So yeah, it's a worrying trend ... especially since other companies like Amazon are noticing Apple's success.

nphase 16y ago

Unrelated: Has anyone actually tried using 37signals' Draft iPad app? Would rank pretty high on my "Worst $10 I've ever spent" list, if I maintained such a list.

alphadog 16y ago

DHH has exhausted the antagonist role.

gte910h 16y ago

So is the web. We just need better indexing apps, which are either human curated or have better search parameters (for instance, filter out things with less than 2 stars, etc).

hackermom 16y ago

Has he taken a look at the Android appstore?

seymores 16y ago
If Appstore is warehouse of shit, then I am sad to say Android Market is a POS.

watmough 16y ago

The headline refers to an 8 minute segment in a 45 minute chat from DHH. I've only watched part of the talk so far, but it is a very persuasive piece of advocacy for Ruby. DHH is a smart guy, but he seems to have had relatively light range of language experience prior to discovering Ruby. One of his examples is the ability to use 'unless'. Big deal, this is an ugly and non-intuitive (for me) perlism. I appreciate others may like it though. Despite this, I was still motivated to pull down my copy of 'pickaxe' and leaf through it. Keep in mind though, he's arguing just one perspective. Personally, the Cocoa/UIKit apis on iOS 4.0 are incredible, and have reawoken my desire and motivation to 'just code'. Objective-C rocks, because you can write nice tight C code, and yet still have pretty wide-ranging abilities to pass objects around, easily make a view into a control immediately giving you all the extra stuff from responders/controls. There may indeed be a bunch of shit in the App store, but it has everything to do with crappy programmers writing crappy software, and Apple's lax enforcement of UX standards, rather than any enforced choice of programming language. Does he really think that programmers write crappy programs because Objective-C is hard?

jsz0 16y ago

I can't see the video because apparently it's blocked on the iPad but in general isn't it well known that 90% of everything sucks to any one individual? I guarantee you that there's someone out there who thinks Fart Keyboard is the most brilliant must-have app ever made. If your shit warehouse is big enough you can make everyone happy.

code_duck 16y ago

Well, I'm pretty used to bold, profane statements from this guy now, to the point where they have no effect on me. Anyone else?

korch 16y ago

I think the problem with the CrapStore isn't that there is too much crap(Sturgeon's Law afterall, it's to be expected), rather Apple's interface to search, sort and present apps completely fucking sucks. Apple really ought to at least try to be more like Google search. What's ultimately tragic is that Apple won't let anyone else make a better or even different interface for searching for apps and have it be available as an app on the AppStore. What Google gets right is that any idiot can find what they want, nearly immediately, and they don't even need to see or know just how much total crap is out there on the web. Seriously, what the hell is Steve thinking with so many hundreds of thousands of apps? When you want vanilla apps that are simple and popular enough that you know ahead of time which app you want, then the AppStore is great. When you trek even slightly off the beaten path, maybe exploring what's out there, or looking for something very specific and rare, and for which you would be willing to pay a lot more than $0.99, well, that ends up being a lost cause. All iPhone devs know that users simply won't spend any time sifting through apps, and this is why spamming your way to the top of any category lists is just as important as being on Google SERP #1. Case in point: tonight I went to order a pizza, and thought to myself that it might be neat to try one of the pizza ordering apps. Seconds later I'm scrolling through more than 50 different pizza apps. Half of them I can't even tell whether they are for ordering pizza, nor whether they are local, nationwide, integrated with chains or just mom & pops. If I can't figure it out, and I'm a programmer, how well will a completely non-technical person fare? Do I have 30 minutes to tap and dig down multiple menu levels on several of them, read each one's spamtastic description, then read the user reviews which are worse than YouTube comments, then install it and try it out? Then do that again 50 more times? Does Steve think I'm a moron? If you can't even create software that can semantically represent "order a pizza local to me", how the fuck can we expect them to do something more complex? I ended up going to dominos.com in Safari. It's almost as if Apple doesn't give a shit about promoting exceptional software for the long haul over the next few years, no, they only care about churning a fast buck right now, with a horizon of just a few business quarters ahead. What Apple will end up doing is driving all of their users to the web, and then html5 is going to mop the floor with Apple's entire Objective-C walled garden. Sorry, as much as the web is flawed, it is always going to be infinitely more simple to use than apps.