App Store birthday: Apple's celebrating, but should you?

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 08 July 2009 05:30

Opinion and Analysis

The Eucalyptus e-book reader was temporarily rejected as it provided access to the Project Gutenberg 'edition' of the Kama Sutra - never mind that the same content was available to anyone using the iPhone's built-in Safari web browser.

A similar situation occurred with an app designed to display the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) RSS feed. This was rejected because an item in the feed linked to a parody video casting Hitler in the role of an entertainment industry executive, with 'the F word' appearing in a subtitle.

Another issue cited by some developers is that an application's sales are largely driven by its prominence in the App Store. Unless sufficient copies are purchased to get it onto the best sellers list, leaving from the 'new and noteworthy' category is accompanied by a rapid drop in sales.

This, they claim, means it can be more profitable to release a series of quickly developed apps than one more substantial and useful offering. It also is said to encourage unnecessarily frequent updates. (The default sort order in the App Store is release date, with the newest first.)

From the customer's perspective, the App Store makes it easy to buy software but not to choose the item to be purchased. For example, there are 161 pages of travel apps - how are you going to quickly find the right one in the absence of subcategories? The search facility isn't a lot of help.

This issue could explain reports that people's use of particular iPhone apps drops off very rapidly - is it possible that they aren't choosing carefully? If an app only costs a few dollars, not much is lost if it proves disappointing or not quite what you wanted.

But whatever its shortcomings, the App Store has proved to be a game-changer, and something other companies are apparently struggling to emulate.