Apple's App Store is getting out of control

there is an app that produces fart noises. Any kind - wet ones, tinny ones, long ones, etc. The real question is, would anyone generally considered "sane" find ANY use for such a PoS APP?

I'd rather have one BMW than 3 Fords in my garage. Less hassle, don't have to think what car you'll drive to work. Don't have to pick out that "right" key for it. Simple and elegant. AND there is room left in the garage for extreme case-modding.

I agree and better yet, I get it and always have. It's sad how many mouth breathers and fanboys miss the whole point. I sometimes wonder how many of my fellow Americans are in that number.

Here's a clue for those still flaming.... THE ARTICLES HERE, NICK'S INCLUDED, ARE WRITTEN THAT WAY ON PURPOSE!!!!!!

If you want so called responsible reporting (Shurely an oxymoron!) then go to CNN, or BBC and enjoy the 2 or 3 DRY tech stories sandwiched between the Paris Hilton nonsense and latest Political scandals. Good luck with that..

Your comments just proved what Nick was writing about when you said you would look for what's new and popular.

Apple is the one which decides which is new/popular on iTunes and posts their favourites above the rest. Instead of looking through ALL the photo apps and reading reviews to see which one is the best, you're simply taking Apple's word for it and buying what they suggest.

Look at eBay.. it used to truly be a seller's marketplace but the big businesses slowly squeezed out all the little guys simply because they made eBay more money. Now when you search for your favourite item you can find it (but not at nearly the great prices the items used to be) or you can find a cheap knockoff in Hong Kong for $2.

Oh dear. There's that "win" word again.

This is The Inquirer - News, Reviews, Facts and FRICTION. Can't you fanbois read that? This is an IT site with humour, perhaps you could take the joke and laugh it off.

Or maybe you can buy a humour phone app, and with 250,000 apps to choose from surely there is a personality app in there for you guys! ;-)

Ignore the OS wars for a second. It's a real problem. I like music apps for the phone - ones that make music and NOT the seeming thousands of 'follow what this band is doing' that choke that category. Because it's becoming tedious I just don't bother looking that often. I can't be the only one that is losing interest.

It's NOT like a suburban book store - they don't have 100,000 titles on the shelves including 'books' that somebody scribbled on a bit of paper and left there for free.

We don't have to be absolutist but it's time for just a little quality control. For example if no one buys an app for 6 months maybe it could be retired. Yes I know that means less apps, but isn't just counting the raw numbers pretty superficial?

Disregarding the comments about apple (they're seperated by hyphens anyway), Nick still has some good points.

Going through that massive list at 6 per page and 25 before having to load new ones just going through the "Top" 25, is an immense amount of work.

Since the ratings can be put in by any user the rating system will almost always balance out every time.

The interface may be cleanish but when you have to go looking through over 10,000 lists to see every app, its a little tiring and repetitive.

And seriously don't flame Nick for this, you can easily disregard his apple comments so just deal with it fanbois.

I get dizzy just walking into Barnes & Noble. Do I want to read Romance Novels, Science Fiction, African-American literature? I haven't a clue! Oddly enough, I don't have this problem in the App Store. I know that I'm interested in photo apps, so I go to that category (not Medical or Music) and see what's new and what's popular. Hey, maybe I can apply that same logic in Barnes & Noble!

I think google is getting it right... they themselves are making some of the coolest apps and providing the means to get use them. People don't want a million apps to chooes from... they want to have access to the ones everyone else has... the best 100 apps and games. That's all you really need. Everything else is just ornamental and really doesn't matter. Apple would be smart to put some of their money into actually making more apps like itunes to go on their devices instead of relying on other software companies to make apps that can easily be ported to other platforms, reducing the value of their iphone.

Ya and for the sake of comparison maybe the internet itself is "out of control" too..

Maybe while Apple figures out how to keep its numbers under control ICAAN could form a content approval committee for new website domains... I mean really there are way too many websites on the internet as it is.. and the committee should be understaffed and poorly managed too so that it takes forever to setup your own website.. but registrars could still charge a fee to "hold" your spot just in case you do get approved.

I think that less diversity and more quality is the way to go -especially when the definition of quality is decided by organizations governed by commercial or political interest. Just in terms of hardware... I mean it's not like storage space is getting any cheaper, right?

It has nothing to do with too much stock and everything to do with an irresponsible company that is slacking on navigation and UI. There's this company called Google that managed to make sense of a few billion websites.. maybe they could give Apple some pointers on a measly 300K Apps?

There are are better ways to finding apps than the 100,000 straw iTunes haystack.

Try http://appexplorer.com/ for example.

I'd hardly call this out of control. Having the most applications out there is a huge selling point. As an iPhone app addict, there are countless methods I employ to find the apps I want: Apple's site, the Genius tool, iTunes, iPhone blogs, iPhone APP blogs, word of mouth, et al. How is this a problem? It's not.

"However Apple has made a name for itself by telling its adoring customers what to do. Its Apple fanboys might see a huge catalogue of files and go into overload."

I couldn't care less about fanboy bashing, but THAT is the crux or your argument? That Apple tells its customers "what to do" and therefore a large number of choices will put them into "overload?"

Come on, man.

I think this article has raised some very valid points: it's not an anti-Apple fanboi's ranting.

Too much choice can lead to a user being unable to decide which is the best option and just walking away: it's better to get nothing than get the wrong thing. Especially when (on the App Store at least) the quality of the available options varies significantly and there's often no option to get a free trial of the functionality.

See "The paradox of choice" on Wikipedia for more...

However, I'm not convinced that the growth rate on the App Store will be as high as predicted. Apart from the approval bottleneck, I'd actually expect the rate of releases to stabilise and possibly even drop as developers realise that the per-app average revenue isn't high enough to justify the development expenses.

Note that this isn't a dig at Apple, but a general issue with a marketplace where old merchandise remains on the shelves forever. The owner of the marketplace will continue to make money as the amount of choice expands (e.g. they get the same percentage if they sell 100 copies apiece of 50 items or 25 copies apiece of 200 items) but the individual sellers will find their revenue dropping as the level of competition and churn-rate grows.

The same issue is present for Nokia, Android, XBox Live, DSWare and all the other online marketplaces. Items under heavy promotion sell well: items in the back catalog generally don't...

You're such a bunch of loser's.
Look at the big pile of apple defenders rushing to flame nick.
Shouldn't you bunch of twats be reading apple insider or mactard life or something?

You do of course realise you are knockin up his page hits, and comment hits.

a little isecret, if you click on most commented in top right of page youll see that you bunch of muppets are making Nick one of, if not the most read & commented author on the inq.
iNice 1

Get some big trucks and put all your whiney asses innit
hevyhaulage.ie

I am having fun with my new android phone and it only has a fraction of the apps but its still time consuming and laborious trying to sift through all of them reading review after review.

still, i'd rather have the choice than not.

You have to remember that Nick Farrell can barely open his mouth without excoriating Apple. It seems to be in his blood, poor bloke, or whichever part of his body it is that manufactures his droppings. To talk of journalism is to miss the point... unless, of course, you believe that Joseph Goebbels was a journalist.

Wow. Your jealousy for Apple, it's products and loyal customers is quite apparent. Is this supposed to be journalism or some jealous beeotch writing this type of crap on the bathroom wall?

Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones. That's an awful lot of "fanboys". The unbiased might be inclined to merely refer to them as "owners."

...I recently stumbled upon an app called "the BeanCounter" in that same store. If it weren't being written by some unknown company, one would believe that the guys at Apple have a great sense of humour.

The app itself is quite useful, but that's not the point.

First time I hear from a WIndows fanboy that too much choice is a bad thing...delicious!

Farrell's droppings just make people want to buy Apple product even more than before.