I'm going to whine from a user perspective - I no longer browse the app store because of the ridiculous shit out there. I think I gave up after the first couple of weeks. Yes, now there are probably children and my boyfriend who enjoy spending an hour digging through the games to find a 99 cent one that will last them for all of like one hour of entertainment. That's...not the ideal audience for most apps. I find out about apps to buy from review sites that I end up trusting (i.e. toucharcade for games) and from friends on twitter and irc. No other source. Too much of a pain. Not even advertisements.
The difference between the app store and more traditional methods of selling software (i.e. you have a website that you sell your app through, you advertise to your audience, etc.) is that even google and the search engines will help out a "better" app and the absolute shit (i.e. fart apps) will eventually get filtered out...or at the minimum, they won't be crowding other apps out except for their own direct competitors. The app store doesn't do that so well by itself. There's about ten gazillion improvements Apple should be making to improve the whole process...at least they've just NOW started to show reviews by version number.
Now from the developer perspective...the thing that's been pretty much hammered into my head as I've gone through the experience of publishing an app on the store is that the app store itself is virtually useless unless you get into the top 10 for category (even this is questionable if you're not in games) or top 100 overall. Sales spike usually on weekends and from outside sources, although being in the top 100 for the category is probably helping for random sales (although, I must admit, they're generally unwanted sales requiring the most amount of tedious handholding of the user). If the guy in the original article is whining after not releasing a free/lite version of a (comparatively) expensive application, it's his problem for being ignorant to iPhone app marketing best practices.
If someone spent a day to work on an app times a dozen apps and makes enough money to quit his or her day job...good for them. That doesn't have much relevance to the problem overall though. Yes, people will always buy shit apps that give them little amusement for the money, but that shouldn't crowd out the wonderful and polished applications out there that aren't games or fart apps that someone would still want for their iPhone.
If someone spent a day to work on an app times a dozen apps and makes enough money to quit his or her day job...good for them. That doesn't have much relevance to the problem overall though. Yes, people will always buy shit apps that give them little amusement for the money, but that shouldn't crowd out the wonderful and polished applications out there that aren't games or fart apps that someone would still want for their iPhone.
I think the lesson here is that you can't rely on the appstore to do your marketing for you. The iFart story is tragic for what it says about the audience; the only things it really tells a developer is that the general audience has low tastes, and that it's possible to get lucky.
At this point the chances of hitting the jackpot as an iphone dev are low and getting lower. But it should be possible to build solid sustainable businesses that have a mobile app as part of their overall strategy.
If you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme this week, look twitterward :P
The difference between the app store and more traditional methods of selling software (i.e. you have a website that you sell your app through, you advertise to your audience, etc.) is that even google and the search engines will help out a "better" app and the absolute shit (i.e. fart apps) will eventually get filtered out...or at the minimum, they won't be crowding other apps out except for their own direct competitors. The app store doesn't do that so well by itself. There's about ten gazillion improvements Apple should be making to improve the whole process...at least they've just NOW started to show reviews by version number.
Now from the developer perspective...the thing that's been pretty much hammered into my head as I've gone through the experience of publishing an app on the store is that the app store itself is virtually useless unless you get into the top 10 for category (even this is questionable if you're not in games) or top 100 overall. Sales spike usually on weekends and from outside sources, although being in the top 100 for the category is probably helping for random sales (although, I must admit, they're generally unwanted sales requiring the most amount of tedious handholding of the user). If the guy in the original article is whining after not releasing a free/lite version of a (comparatively) expensive application, it's his problem for being ignorant to iPhone app marketing best practices.
If someone spent a day to work on an app times a dozen apps and makes enough money to quit his or her day job...good for them. That doesn't have much relevance to the problem overall though. Yes, people will always buy shit apps that give them little amusement for the money, but that shouldn't crowd out the wonderful and polished applications out there that aren't games or fart apps that someone would still want for their iPhone.