Apple app store sucks (bis)

Russell Beattie: The iPhone Crapp Store?

From the descriptions of most of them [read: applications], I’d say there’s a ton of unmitigated crud flowing into the App Store right now. You don’t read about it because the iPhone is all shiny and new, but with all those apps arriving daily the quality has to be really varied. Really, really varied. And with a few of the App developers making BANK to the tun of a quarter million in like two months, it’s just going to get worse. The sort of press those successes generate may not be good for Apple at all in the long run, as it appears the land-rush is on, and the scammers, spammers and other dregs of online society are closing in fast and I have serious doubts if the iTunes Store is really made to keep up.

+10. Exactly what I thought… to which I would add two things:

• On the down side,… from what I have seen, a good number of the app could also be done as mobile web application and not stand alone application. It would not require the developer to pay the SDK license and more importantly, when done it right, they would reach then all smartphone (ie. mobile phone with a recent/decent browser) and not only the iPhone.
• On the bright side,… I like the way my iPhone tells me when an app needs to be updated. This is made easy by the fact that it is centralized (and closed) but I guess it would be possible to integrate this feature on others platforms.