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> Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, drinking games, and Ka
by herpderperator 5y ago
> Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, drinking games, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already.
I had to double-take to see if this was really a statement from Apple... It was.
- colejohnson66 5y agoBefore Apple added the flashlight feature into their OS, flashlight apps were flooding the store. IIRC, this is the exact text they added at that time
- analog31 5y agoOn Android, it's guitar tuners.
- ryantgtg 5y agoMy MIL still uses a flashlight app on her iPhone, because she doesn’t know the difference between a feature and an app, and because each time she gets a new phone all her apps are ported over. Whenever she turns on her flashlight a huge ad blazes across the screen (and the screen doesn’t seem to turn off), and I keep meaning to tell her she doesn’t need that app.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 5y agoIntroduce her to the built-in flashlight (“It’s right on your lock screen and a long press on the symbol turns on the flashlight”) and remove the third-party app.
- ryantgtg 5y agoMaybe you can introduce it to her for me.
- bradly 5y agoApple hired/acquired the developer of one of the top flashlight apps in in the app store.
- unraveller 5y agoAnd apple calls itself an innovative company. They say no more lightbulb apps forgetting it took Edison 5000 filaments to find the best one. Naturally if you trust one dev for one job, and not to ruin the app, you will likely trust them for another, category saturation be damned. I don't see much benefit for users when the manufacturer dictates what developers are not to build for users based on some archaic first in best dressed system from 2008.
- viraptor 5y agoIn many cases it would make sense, but flashlight apps? They're literally an on-off switch for a single system resource. There's nothing that you can add to them to improve the experience.
- ofrzeta 5y agoHow about a timer that switches the "flashlight" off after a configurable period of time? :-)
- albert_e 5y agoOr an app that switches on flashlight based on ambient light sensor or phone movement gestures using gyroscope
- mod 5y agoUsing the screen as a light Dimming the screen Different colors on the screen Calculation of how long light will last SOS signaling Strobe setting Light in response to some kind of input, like audio or camera Blinking light with adjustable frequency Yeah, there's probably more features that could be put into a flashlight app.
- viraptor 5y agoYes, those are features you could add to a flashlight app, and you'd likely concentrate on those features instead. I would argue that each of those is very different than a flashlight app which turns the camera light on/off and would be unlikely to be even called a "flashlight app". There's tons of flashlight apps which only do the on/off switch and the only differentiation is how they try to get money off of you or what data they want to steal.
- whoopdedo 5y agoProposal: When a new app is submitted in a saturated category, poll the oldest N apps for usage and developer activity. If one of them is below a threshold of relevance then mark it for removal and allow the new app to replace it.