Apple's Crap Store

Ninety percent of everything is crap, science fiction author Ted Sturgeon once said. That's certainly true of the crud passing for "software" in Apple's new App Store. While there are some useful applications in there, the vast majority of programs are half-fast, buggy, repetitive, or rehashes of useful Web sites.

This makes me worry about software development in general. Mobile computing platforms are the future primary PCs for much of the world. Yes, you'll be able to get a big screen and keyboard for these small CPUs eventually. And the iPhone is a powerful platform. It's got a 600-MHz CPU, excellent network connectivity, and a desktop-class OS. In theory, we could see the kind of apps developed for this platform that helped make personal computers as popular as they are today.

The App Store is beautiful, comprehensive (by fiat), and well designed. For the first time, you can actually get an overview of all the applications available for a computing platform and easily acquire them. It's an idea that a lot of other people have had before, but Apple has done it with more polish and ease of use.

But what do we get? Some great games. Notice that when the Wall Street Journal recently reported on Apple's app sales reaching $30 million, the only examples the Journal gave were games. There are a few good vertical business and programmer's apps, and Pandora for music lovers. But we also get a surfeit of crappy little applets like currency calculators that don't download exchange rates off the Web, social networks nobody's heard of, subway maps, way too many Sudoku games, and a vast pile of reformatted Web sites in app form. About 10 percent of the apps are great. Ninety percent smell like old Sturgeon.

I know this is beating a dead horse, but we're still waiting for apps that fill in the obvious gaps in the iPhone's feature set: office suites, video cameras, GPS navigation, or voice dialing that works properly. I know there are office suites in development, but anyway, those are old ideas. The real thrill will come from new ideas.

Of course, it's not as if Apple encourages app developers to think outside the box. IAmRich.com was a German avant-garde art project in the form of an iPhone app. It wasn't malware. Apple yanked it from the App Store just because the company didn't like its face. That's a great message to send to developers: We might kill your app if we think you're a little weird.

(full story)