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by anovikov 98 days ago
If AI makes people so much more productive, why aren't there much more apps on the Apple store? Mobile apps involve a lot of dirty, boring scaffolding work which AI automated first thing, 2 years ago easily. It should've been the very first place where productivity boost should've been evident, a year ago at least. But it's just not there. Why not?
3 comments
dudewhocodes 98 days ago
App Store releases are increasing due to a new gold rush on subscription apps. Review times have gotten longer as the review team at Apple is being spammed.

Most of these apps are rudimentary habit trackers, time management apps etc. so not much creativity, much more recycled ideas. More code != better ideas though.

https://www.a16z.news/i/185469925/app-store-engage https://42matters.com/ios-apple-app-store-statistics-and-tre...

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anovikov 97 days ago
End of 2022: 1,783,232 apps

End of 2023: 1,870,119 apps

End of 2024: 1,961,596 apps

Now: 2,150,612 apps, after 1.18 years.

+160k apps a year, that's only 84% above pre-AI era (safe to say that apps were not routinely built with AI in 2023 yet). Noticeable increase but doesn't feel dramatic, especially since yes, majority of those new apps are low-effort trash like those described in this thread.

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whstl 98 days ago
Also a lot more clone ideas these days. AI has definitely empowered people to write things from scratch, either as a product to sell or as internal projects inside companies.
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massysett 97 days ago
Heh, I guess Apple needs to better use AI to review all the AI-written apps.
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PunchyHamster 97 days ago
> If AI makes people so much more productive, why aren't there much more apps on the Apple store

There are more apps, and webpages, and software and whole lot of stuff.

It's just not good

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therouwboat 97 days ago
Yeah, AI people like to talk about how their kid made a mario bros game in a weekend, so big adults should be doing crysis clones in same time, right?
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