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>> "I already have 30 apps on my phone, some of them very good. Do I need another one? I don’t use the 30 I have." I hate seeing this argument. Why do you have

>> "I already have 30 apps on my phone, some of them very good. Do I need another one? I don’t use the 30 I have." I hate seeing this argument. Why do you have those 30? Why don't you delete them? Having 30 apps on your phone doesn't mean you don't need more apps. They aren't all the same. It's not like saying 'I have 30 cans of diet coke in the fridge why do I need another?' It's more similar to 'I have sausage and diet coke in the fridge, why should I buy these vegetables'? Because they solve a different problem than the things you already have. I think the reason people are reluctant to spend money on apps is the same reason they are reluctant to spend money on music or movies no matter who convenient it's made for them - people don't see value in digital goods as easily as they see it in physical goods.

CmonDev 13y ago
I have 100 bookmarks in my browser: OMG websites are evil.
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  How quickly can you delete 95 of those bookmarks? How long would it take you to delete 25 apps?
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Better: even my Android browser lets me sort the bookmarks by frequency of use. Hell, I don't think my desktop browsers even do that.
    - rockdoe 13y ago
      Firefox absolutely does.
  - espadrine 13y ago
    Also, how fast can you browse through and find the bookmark you need? There's a lot of useful data attached to each one of them, including a tree structure. If you lose a bookmark (or maybe you're on a different device), how easy is it to get it back? You can even choose from a wealth of great search engines! Maybe search engines will come for "native" apps. Maybe that's what OP hinted at at the end. Even then, those apps are not cross-platform.
    - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
      Faster than scrolling through pages of apps. There are search engines for native apps already, the app stores, perhaps they should be updated to "search on device" and give the subset of results that are installed on the device already.
  - CmonDev 13y ago
    That is not a fundamental issue of the apps. It's a flaw of app management. The core of my analogy remains unchallenged. Besides, there is an app for that: http://lifehacker.com/5645850/apps-uninstall-bulk-removes-android-applications http://lifehacker.com/5645850/apps-uninstall-bulk-removes-an...
    - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
      Well if that's the extent of your analogy it's completely flawed. In your analogy someone has misused the bookmark feature to save too many. In my response - I point out it's a pain to remove apps. In future, sure maybe somebody will make app managers on par with web browser bookmarking features. Bookmarking a site is not a prerequisite for using a website, whereas installing an app is. To point to yet another crummy app that performs extremely basic functionality that should probably be part of the os, is not really a sterling defense of the app model.
  - taude 13y ago
    Better yet, how long does it take to update those 95 bookmarks?
dredmorbius 13y ago
It's 30 separate applications to access what's effectively the same data type: documents on the WWW, some of which have an interactivity component. Worse: each app has its own set of rules, capabilities, and/or disabilities in terms of sharing URLs, privacy permissions to be managed, update cycles, and the rest. There's a reason we got URLs, HTTP, and HTML. It's as if you needed to use a different viewer / reader application to read PDFs from different companies. Hell, my preference is to have one uniform reader which can handle text, PDF, GS, ePub, or whatever else comes rolling my way. Not quite there yet, though Calibre begins to unify the access (its native viewers are crap, however, and I've yet to figure out how to change its PDF viewer to something vaguely sane).
- rimantas 13y ago
  > There's a reason we got URLs, HTTP, and HTML. Ok, build those 30 apps with URLS, HTTP and HTML. Ok I will drop CSS into the bag. No javascript though. Let's see the results.
  - pjc50 13y ago
    Why? (the javascript restriction) There's quite a lot of websites where the app is a mediocre replication of the website. Especially magazines.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Quite. Both counts.
  - woah 13y ago
    Cool, you write me an android app without java and we can compare
eliasmacpherson 13y ago
Perhaps the phone app interaction model causes undue mental taxation. Perhaps better integration with the OS would allow people to get over the mental barriers of having to scroll through 3 pages and decypher 30 app names to perform a task on their phone, or a more feature rich phone os that didn't leave so many basic features up to app developers.
pionar 13y ago
>> I think the reason people are reluctant to spend money on apps is the same reason they are reluctant to spend money on music or movies no matter who convenient it's made for them - people don't see value in digital goods as easily as they see it in physical goods. I wholeheartedly disagree. By your logic, people wouldn't pay money for Windows, or Photoshop, or thousands of other software packages. Oh, and Steam! People pay $20 or more on Steam for some mediocre stuff. The problem with paying for apps is two-fold: Frankly, 99% of apps out there aren't worthy of my money. Most of the few I actually pay for (Spotify and LastPass come to mind), I don't pay for for the app, it's for the service behind the app. Second, app developers have done this to themselves, in two ways - first, putting out just really shitty, awful apps (especially games) that aren't worth money. Also, in perpetuating a race to the bottom and setting the expectations way too low on price. I saw somewhere that Jobs thought the perfect price point for an app is $10 (I might be wrong on the source, but someone said it). I agree with this. If you really believe you have a great app, price that shit accordingly. If you have a great app and price it at $10, if you get a third of the downloads you'd get at $3, you're still ahead. And, your users will feel like part of an exclusive club, and invite their friends to be part of it. Of course, this is my opinion, and no one ever listens to me.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  >> I wholeheartedly disagree. By your logic, people wouldn't pay money for Windows, or Photoshop, or thousands of other software packages. Oh, and Steam! People pay $20 or more on Steam for some mediocre stuff. The mistake in his logic is generalizing to all digital goods. People are hesitant to pay for mobile goods relative to others. Look at Angry Birds. In terms of hours of enjoyment (or distraction for your kids), it is worth much more than $.99 based on what you would pay for something as basic as a Slinkee. However, it took me almost a year of playing only the demo versions to finally buy the full game. This may be a positive in terms of people resisting purchase of frivolous goods, but the point about mobile goods being valued less than their physical or non-mobile counterparts stands. What's the most expensive app to ever hit the top charts for iPhone/iPad purchases? My guess is that it is substantially cheaper than the most expensive best-selling software. Final note: I wholeheartedly agree with you that the proportion of useless to useful apps is likely the most important factor in this valuation difference.
joesmo 13y ago
From a security standpoint, the metaphor is indeed like another can of diet coke. While browsers are constantly being patched and updated, the same cannot be said for the majority of apps. The benefits of updating a browser are evident but targeting individual apps is difficult to impossible. Many apps are closed source, proprietary, and marketed by companies that have no interest in security. Even those that have such an interest can only spend so much money / manpower on security issues. Considering most of these apps offer nothing new over their browser based equivalents, this argument makes perfect sense. Once money comes into the mix, it simply becomes an argument against paying money for what are essentially useless apps masking security holes.
artemshitov 13y ago
It's not like diet coke and sausage and vegetables. It's more like "I have sausage, diet coke, ice cream, milk, beans, beef, eggs, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, tuna, cabbage, chicken, pork, cucumbers, corn, potatoes, artichoke, apples, cherries, oranges, cheese, bananas, shrimp, yogurt, kiwi, grapes etc. I guess I can live without that avocado you are offering."

CmonDev 13y ago

I have 100 bookmarks in my browser: OMG websites are evil.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago
How quickly can you delete 95 of those bookmarks? How long would it take you to delete 25 apps?
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Better: even my Android browser lets me sort the bookmarks by frequency of use. Hell, I don't think my desktop browsers even do that.
  - rockdoe 13y ago
    Firefox absolutely does.
- espadrine 13y ago
  Also, how fast can you browse through and find the bookmark you need? There's a lot of useful data attached to each one of them, including a tree structure. If you lose a bookmark (or maybe you're on a different device), how easy is it to get it back? You can even choose from a wealth of great search engines! Maybe search engines will come for "native" apps. Maybe that's what OP hinted at at the end. Even then, those apps are not cross-platform.
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    Faster than scrolling through pages of apps. There are search engines for native apps already, the app stores, perhaps they should be updated to "search on device" and give the subset of results that are installed on the device already.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  That is not a fundamental issue of the apps. It's a flaw of app management. The core of my analogy remains unchallenged. Besides, there is an app for that: http://lifehacker.com/5645850/apps-uninstall-bulk-removes-android-applications http://lifehacker.com/5645850/apps-uninstall-bulk-removes-an...
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    Well if that's the extent of your analogy it's completely flawed. In your analogy someone has misused the bookmark feature to save too many. In my response - I point out it's a pain to remove apps. In future, sure maybe somebody will make app managers on par with web browser bookmarking features. Bookmarking a site is not a prerequisite for using a website, whereas installing an app is. To point to yet another crummy app that performs extremely basic functionality that should probably be part of the os, is not really a sterling defense of the app model.
- taude 13y ago
  Better yet, how long does it take to update those 95 bookmarks?

dredmorbius 13y ago

It's 30 separate applications to access what's effectively the same data type: documents on the WWW, some of which have an interactivity component. Worse: each app has its own set of rules, capabilities, and/or disabilities in terms of sharing URLs, privacy permissions to be managed, update cycles, and the rest. There's a reason we got URLs, HTTP, and HTML. It's as if you needed to use a different viewer / reader application to read PDFs from different companies. Hell, my preference is to have one uniform reader which can handle text, PDF, GS, ePub, or whatever else comes rolling my way. Not quite there yet, though Calibre begins to unify the access (its native viewers are crap, however, and I've yet to figure out how to change its PDF viewer to something vaguely sane).

rimantas 13y ago
> There's a reason we got URLs, HTTP, and HTML. Ok, build those 30 apps with URLS, HTTP and HTML. Ok I will drop CSS into the bag. No javascript though. Let's see the results.
- pjc50 13y ago
  Why? (the javascript restriction) There's quite a lot of websites where the app is a mediocre replication of the website. Especially magazines.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Quite. Both counts.
- woah 13y ago
  Cool, you write me an android app without java and we can compare

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

Perhaps the phone app interaction model causes undue mental taxation. Perhaps better integration with the OS would allow people to get over the mental barriers of having to scroll through 3 pages and decypher 30 app names to perform a task on their phone, or a more feature rich phone os that didn't leave so many basic features up to app developers.

pionar 13y ago

>> I think the reason people are reluctant to spend money on apps is the same reason they are reluctant to spend money on music or movies no matter who convenient it's made for them - people don't see value in digital goods as easily as they see it in physical goods. I wholeheartedly disagree. By your logic, people wouldn't pay money for Windows, or Photoshop, or thousands of other software packages. Oh, and Steam! People pay $20 or more on Steam for some mediocre stuff. The problem with paying for apps is two-fold: Frankly, 99% of apps out there aren't worthy of my money. Most of the few I actually pay for (Spotify and LastPass come to mind), I don't pay for for the app, it's for the service behind the app. Second, app developers have done this to themselves, in two ways - first, putting out just really shitty, awful apps (especially games) that aren't worth money. Also, in perpetuating a race to the bottom and setting the expectations way too low on price. I saw somewhere that Jobs thought the perfect price point for an app is $10 (I might be wrong on the source, but someone said it). I agree with this. If you really believe you have a great app, price that shit accordingly. If you have a great app and price it at $10, if you get a third of the downloads you'd get at $3, you're still ahead. And, your users will feel like part of an exclusive club, and invite their friends to be part of it. Of course, this is my opinion, and no one ever listens to me.

the_watcher 13y ago
>> I wholeheartedly disagree. By your logic, people wouldn't pay money for Windows, or Photoshop, or thousands of other software packages. Oh, and Steam! People pay $20 or more on Steam for some mediocre stuff. The mistake in his logic is generalizing to all digital goods. People are hesitant to pay for mobile goods relative to others. Look at Angry Birds. In terms of hours of enjoyment (or distraction for your kids), it is worth much more than $.99 based on what you would pay for something as basic as a Slinkee. However, it took me almost a year of playing only the demo versions to finally buy the full game. This may be a positive in terms of people resisting purchase of frivolous goods, but the point about mobile goods being valued less than their physical or non-mobile counterparts stands. What's the most expensive app to ever hit the top charts for iPhone/iPad purchases? My guess is that it is substantially cheaper than the most expensive best-selling software. Final note: I wholeheartedly agree with you that the proportion of useless to useful apps is likely the most important factor in this valuation difference.

joesmo 13y ago

From a security standpoint, the metaphor is indeed like another can of diet coke. While browsers are constantly being patched and updated, the same cannot be said for the majority of apps. The benefits of updating a browser are evident but targeting individual apps is difficult to impossible. Many apps are closed source, proprietary, and marketed by companies that have no interest in security. Even those that have such an interest can only spend so much money / manpower on security issues. Considering most of these apps offer nothing new over their browser based equivalents, this argument makes perfect sense. Once money comes into the mix, it simply becomes an argument against paying money for what are essentially useless apps masking security holes.

artemshitov 13y ago

It's not like diet coke and sausage and vegetables. It's more like "I have sausage, diet coke, ice cream, milk, beans, beef, eggs, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, tuna, cabbage, chicken, pork, cucumbers, corn, potatoes, artichoke, apples, cherries, oranges, cheese, bananas, shrimp, yogurt, kiwi, grapes etc. I guess I can live without that avocado you are offering."