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by gcheong 6281 days ago
How exactly are you defining "junk"? I think Apple should allow all apps, beyond those that are malicious or overly resource intensive, and let the market decide what defines "useless crap". I suspect most of those .99 apps are developers getting their feet wet learning the system of how to put a paid app up which is why they tend to drop off rather quickly but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be there. What I find more annoying than anything about the app store is that Apple thinks it can be the arbiter of taste for their users when it comes to 3rd party applications.
2 comments
pxlpshr 6281 days ago
As I said above, the AppStore should not be a "free market"... it should be a PREMIUM market and the free market should exists outside of the store where developers and consumers can buy and sell iPhone apps as they see fit. (IMO)

The AppStore doesn't scale for a true free market, it just doesn't and it's certainly not designed to fit the needs of software developers who are forced to use the store. There's no relationship management tools, there's no way to track marketing effectiveness, app reviews are not like comments where developers can easily respond to mis-informed consumers (or worse, developer cronies leaving wrong feedback), etc. I could go on, really.

The more popular it gets, the more broken and junk ridden it will become without some regulation.

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mxcl 6281 days ago
Honestly, from experience I know they hardly reject any apps. There's some serious publicity surrounding a few keys app rejections here and there (hell ours was rejected once, Last.fm), but really, they reject for technical reasons. Not due to "taste", and even then they weight it up, it doesn't happen much.
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gcheong 6281 days ago
Perhaps using "taste" was too vague. My .99 app was rejected for being of "minimal functionality". So who decides what minimal functionality is? The app was of minimal functionality by design, but they felt it needed more options or interaction which I felt would just needlessly complicate the product. What I don't want to do is get into the case where I'm wasting development time trying to hit some kind of moving target of minimal features required to get an application accepted. The fact that it doesn't happen much isn't the issue, its the fact that it happens at all when there are no clear guidelines that I think is ridiculous.
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