Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

This article points out many of apples apps a not used. And from experience I know it is very hard to sift through the chaff and find anything I want.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/18144...re_unused.html

A few hundred well done apps is much more useful to most users IMO.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Good ratings systems might help.

You can't stop people writing poor quality or niche apps. Maybe you can filter the quality, but it'd be annoying to lose niche apps which are useful to a few people.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

I have to agree that "a few hundred well-done apps are more useful" - though, we might all have a different set of a few hundred in mind (I don't bother with games on a phone/tablet - well, maybe chess).

But 100,000 gives bragging rights, and this is a marketing-fuled world, like it or not.

If I could get that health tracker I used on my N73/N75 from beta labs on the N900 I've on order, I would be happy. But that might not be of much interest to many.

So, perhaps to get a few hundred that meet a broad range of apps people regard as "good/well-done", you might need to have a library of a few thousand.

I agree that finding something among the chaff in Apple's app store is hard - but that's a categorization and search problem. A much easier problem to solve than inventory of applications.

I say this from the perspective of someone who has owned all three iPhones - and now own none.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

even a shotgun may hit bullseye from time to time...

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Can't help but to think that there could be less threads about apple...and more about maemo and the NITs it runs on.

And/or put posts like these in 'Alternatives' or whatever that sub-forum is called.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

The purpose was to show by analogy that Maemo doesn't need or want a huge app store if they merely go unused. Hence, it is very Maemo related since there has been a lot of criticism about Maemo (n900) not having enough apps. ;)

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Speaking of OS's, some users said that the number of installations of Windows 7 has already exceeded the total number of installations of Mac OS's ever.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

I also find that finding any app in the Apple Store is hard. The top 25 categories kinda help. I think we need more maemo applications rated by users.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Not from 100m away ;)

Sorry, I'm being facetious.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

In that case we should just count every possible application that works on ARM in Linux. =P

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

I have tons of apps on this iPod touch but I hardly ever use them. What app do I use most then ? You guessed it, the browser and maybe media player, youtube and google maps. The browser is the killer app !

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

ls
cp
mv
cat
more
echo
sh
ifconfig
chmod
chown
....

;)

shame that my n800s xterm doesnt show the warnign "theres xxx commands available, do you want to see the whole list?" -text. so i don't bother count that list or either write a script.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Mine kind of does, but maybe it's a bash thing. If you haven't installed it already, you should.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

100k apps, 98% of it is crap, still enough useful apps to make people wonder what will eventually end up on the N900...

Mind you, I have maybe 20 apps on my iPhone, of which I use about 8 religiously, the rest are... not as used. But having location aware apps is great. Same for IM apps that actually work well.

IM on the N900 seems to be stellar. But after that, I'm starting to draw a blank on what apps on the N900 will be "stellar".

But I am happy it's not going to be mostly crap. At least not initially.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

That only works for so long though...

If people find it harder and harder to find quality content they may lose confidence in a platform.

If people lose confidence in your platform you are at risk of a downward spiral as people stop buying/downloading things, which would mean developers stopping development.

The crap merchants would carry on developing come what may of course, but that would only make the problem even worse as they would dilute the quality content even further.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

No way; your scripts shouldn't use bashisms, and everyone knows tcsh is the best shell for interactive use. :mad:

(Hey, what better way to welcome the N900 noob influx to the world of unix than to flare up a classic flamewar? :D)

IMO, Maemo Mapper already was, and should be just fine in Maemo 5. Xournal was getting close (several months back, when I was paying attention) -- assuming that anidel now has (or has already had) some time to polish up the buggy version that languished in extras-devel forever, I think it should qualify.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

I truly disliked Maemo Mapper, kept thinking that something was truly missing. UX/UI is sorely lacking "something" imho. Probably polish.

Xournal... It's one of the first things I install - Maemo 4 that is.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Since Apple controls distribution of apps, it seems like there are tons of apps that have limited use for most people. For example, I saw one app that's sole purpose was to show stats for a local high school basketball team. That counts as an "app".

Also, it seems that since iPhones/iPod Touches have limited resolution to display the web and not a full desktop version of a browser, every website that wants attention from iPhone/iPod Touch users needs to be an app. That's a bunch of apps that could just be a good browser on a good resolution device.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

To me it's different - Maemo Mapper is the killer application that I couldn't be without (I travel to unknown places), and Xournal is an application I never had any need of. :D

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

"Competitors" is probably the right place. "Alternatives" is for running non-Maemo operating systems on 770/N8x0/N900 hardware.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

funny enough, when iphone first launched, apple was pushing like hell to have special iphone pages made.

i wonder if it had worked, if apple had provided a "central bookmarks list" much like the current app store.

basically they where pushing to app-ify the web, much like google gears and mozilla's prism project.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Yeah, back in the day I only used csh. But then I had to learn how the Linux system scripts worked. Anyway, the default busybox config of ash, dash... whatever the f*ck it is, is just a sad excuse for an interactive shell, but point taken as far as robust scripting, even though my original response was about command line completion. :)

How did bash win-out to csh? I mean, we were already programming in C. It must have been an AT&T vs. Berkeley thing. I was raised on Sparcstations so I could always count on csh just being there.

[flamethrower and flamesuit still hanging in closet]

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

i don't think there were political reasons, i believe it had much more to do with the criticisms of csh.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

<start silly rant because of getting fed up with app store hype>

It should be 100k products for purchase. Not all of these are apps.

Quickly firing up iTunes and opening app store on my iMac reveals over 10 000 books alone. How many ringtones or one song apps? How many free, simple and useless apps, whose only reason for existence is to be included as fresh entries in CVs of IT professionals who have lost their jobs due to great recession?

</end sillyrant>

Of course, the app store is still great accomplishment for Apple.

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

Well, bash specifically didn't; AUI, it's still very much a GNU (hence mainly Linux & Cygwin) thing, with other environments generally favoring some Korn variant. But as for the general Bourne vs. C, I believe it's just because of the general braindamage (four serious scripting purposes) of csh. See csh programming considered harmful. In light of that, and the advanced bourne shells all incorporating csh improvements anyhow, I suppose it would be sane to let go of the cshes for interactive use, too. But since I've been using tcsh since last millenium, I'm sticking with it. :)

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

An older article but the points still hold:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,3...9301195,00.htm

"Still, how many more currency conversion (37), recipe (67), and fart-joke (30) applications do iPhone users really need, especially if they aren't using the ones they've already got?"

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

More apps info here... (anyone find any of these worthwhile for the N900?)

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,3...9304052,00.htm

And this comment typifies my experience of most iPhone users:
"The iPhone rocks. Some of my friends just say they hate it without giving any reason, I think they say they hate it because they can't afford one.
Anonymous, Thu 5 November, 2009 11:14am"

Re: Apple's App Store: 100,000 Apps, But Most Are Unused
 

i wonder if "cant care less" have become "hate" somewhere between ears and keyboard...

oh, and is it just me, or is the word hate being used when words like dislike would be more fitting?