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Most iPhone Apps Are Failing To Leverage The Network Effect

8 points by terpua 18y ago

tstegart 18y ago
Ugh, I'm tired of the "march to free" crap. There's not always a march to free. Downward pressure, sure, but free? All iPhone apps will be free just like all software will one day be free. Anyone who believes that is just not aware of capitalism and psychology. People will want to make money off their applications, and people will want to pay money for applications. People making money have more incentive and capital to make a better program than someone giving away something for free. Sure, there will be exceptions, but it doesn't mean your iPhone app will be forced out the market any time soon by a free alternative.
gcv 18y ago
I think mobile apps which do this are coming, and the iPhone SDK hasn't been available long enough for really spectacular stuff to have come out. It takes a while for a neat, massively-socially-networked (how's that for a neologism) mobile game to gestate. Here's a freebie idea for someone adventurous: a few years ago, I read about some online game, where players would sign up for some kind of a spy, murder, and conspiracy thriller. They would then periodically get emails, phone calls, faxes, and letters, to which they should react in the real world, and which advanced the plot. I don't think this was particularly multiplayer, in that I don't think that players interacted with one another. I think using the location awareness of an iPhone could make a thriller game like this incredibly exciting and immersive. Imagine a beeping device guiding you up the stairs in a building, telling you where to find the next clue? Telling you to quickly contact another investigator, because she found something and needs to share? Pitching teams one against another to follow a trail of clues in a race to find a hidden object somewhere in the city where they play? Implementing this would, without a doubt, be hard. Dealing with the liability issues alone could possibly sink this idea (e.g., how can you safely put random people in touch with one another, how can you ensure the safety of a particular building or other locale, and so on). In addition, it probably would require a fair amount of coordination and manual work by the organizers, so the game would have to cost a pretty penny to play. It would also have to have settings like "only play the game between 7 and 8:30 in the evening," which would of course be an even bigger nightmare of logistics. Of course, if someone figures all this out, it could become a huge hit.
- mwerty 18y ago
  I think the game was Majestic by EA.
trezor 18y ago
Trough third-party apps my Windows Mobile phone has automatic number-lookup, gmail, ability to look up my contacts location on google maps and what not. That is all cool. It is all subtle. I assume it's not what the author meant, but reading that, the way he phrased himself, the only thing I could think of was having reddit invading my phone and all my calls interupted because there was new Obama news. No I don't want that. I wan't application that works. If they need network or not is irrelevant. They need to work, and most importantly: I shouldn't have to go to a Apple AppStore to get them.

8 points by terpua 18y ago

Ugh, I'm tired of the "march to free" crap. There's not always a march to free. Downward pressure, sure, but free? All iPhone apps will be free just like all software will one day be free. Anyone who believes that is just not aware of capitalism and psychology. People will want to make money off their applications, and people will want to pay money for applications. People making money have more incentive and capital to make a better program than someone giving away something for free. Sure, there will be exceptions, but it doesn't mean your iPhone app will be forced out the market any time soon by a free alternative.

gcv 18y ago

I think mobile apps which do this are coming, and the iPhone SDK hasn't been available long enough for really spectacular stuff to have come out. It takes a while for a neat, massively-socially-networked (how's that for a neologism) mobile game to gestate. Here's a freebie idea for someone adventurous: a few years ago, I read about some online game, where players would sign up for some kind of a spy, murder, and conspiracy thriller. They would then periodically get emails, phone calls, faxes, and letters, to which they should react in the real world, and which advanced the plot. I don't think this was particularly multiplayer, in that I don't think that players interacted with one another. I think using the location awareness of an iPhone could make a thriller game like this incredibly exciting and immersive. Imagine a beeping device guiding you up the stairs in a building, telling you where to find the next clue? Telling you to quickly contact another investigator, because she found something and needs to share? Pitching teams one against another to follow a trail of clues in a race to find a hidden object somewhere in the city where they play? Implementing this would, without a doubt, be hard. Dealing with the liability issues alone could possibly sink this idea (e.g., how can you safely put random people in touch with one another, how can you ensure the safety of a particular building or other locale, and so on). In addition, it probably would require a fair amount of coordination and manual work by the organizers, so the game would have to cost a pretty penny to play. It would also have to have settings like "only play the game between 7 and 8:30 in the evening," which would of course be an even bigger nightmare of logistics. Of course, if someone figures all this out, it could become a huge hit.

mwerty 18y ago
I think the game was Majestic by EA.

trezor 18y ago

Trough third-party apps my Windows Mobile phone has automatic number-lookup, gmail, ability to look up my contacts location on google maps and what not. That is all cool. It is all subtle. I assume it's not what the author meant, but reading that, the way he phrased himself, the only thing I could think of was having reddit invading my phone and all my calls interupted because there was new Obama news. No I don't want that. I wan't application that works. If they need network or not is irrelevant. They need to work, and most importantly: I shouldn't have to go to a Apple AppStore to get them.