» The App Store is like a forest.

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The App Store is like a forest.

January 7th, 2010 by masukomi

A thought came to me this morning. Apple’s App store, and it’s apps. It’s a forest and trees kinda situation.

It’s much easier to find a tree by going to the forest.
The forest is huge filled with trees.
And the trees benefit from living close to each other.

But…

Each forest typically has only a handful of types of trees.
So, it’s not a great place to go for tree-choice.
Sure, there are plenty of trees in the forest, and they’re all unique,
but they all exist within a limited band of variation.

Then there’s the fact that a pine tree planted in a forest
isn’t really any different from a pine tree planted elsewhere.
As long as the two have the same soil, water, and sunlight
they’ll both grow up to be big strong pines.

Being in the forest doesn’t change the nature of the tree.

But, if you want more tree choices, you have to leave the forest.
Living in a forest forces certain limitations on it’s inhabitants.
You simply won’t find a Joshua tree in a Pine forest.
The soil is all wrong, and even if it was compatible soil,
the Pine trees would grow high and steal its sunlight.
The Joshua tree, if it survived at all, would wither.

Developers are a lot like Botanists.
We’ve seen beautiful trees from around the world.
We know what lives beyond your local forest.
We know the beauty that’s possible.
We know the myriad types of fruit we could consume.
But here in the Pine forest…
Well, the Pines are very pretty,
and we don’t mind pine nuts,
but we kinda crave a mango,
and an orange,
and an apple,
and…
and…

Wouldn’t you like one too?

—-

For those of you non-geeks who don’t understand the limited variation metaphor:

Apple limits any app that is sold on the App Store to a specific set of functionality. There’s a lot more your iPhone could do if you didn’t look for your trees (apps) in the Apple App Store forest. Unfortunately, to do that, you have to jailbreak your phone. Also, the app store hampers developers ability to make bug fixes. In contrast, Android apps are only limited by the phone and the Operating System (OS) that runs on it. There is an App Store equivalent on Android (they call it the Marketplace) which makes it easy to find apps. But there aren’t any real restrictions on what you’ll find there, or how quickly developers can update their apps with bug fixes. And, it’s not the only way to get an app. You can go to a web page and download an app, just like on your computer. Yes, the iPhone has a slicker OS right now, and yes, there are definitely more, and sexier apps in the App Store at the moment, but that doesn’t mean your choices aren’t being limited by Apple. It just means Apple got there first with a really nice device. Apple’s grown a great Pine forest, but it’s still a Pine forest and you’re not going to find any Mango there.

2 Responses

kirkjerk writes:
January 7th, 2010 at 12:23 pm

Ah, Kate. Why do I love playing devil’s advocate for you so? I absolutely respect your opinions and you as a person! I think there’s some fundamental difference between our approaches to life, where are you like to focus on what’s wrong so that it can be fixed, and I tend to focus on the mitigating circumstances so it can be tolerated :-)

So that said…
It might be a little misleading to say the App Store “limits to a specific set of functionality” – that would be “specific”, as in “specified”, as in prebounded and defined, and I don’t think that’s the case. Rather, in practice Apple reserves the right to have the App Store EXCLUDE whatever it sees fit.

Those exclusions seem to be in 4 main categories:
1. Stuff that Apple sees as business competition (like, another browser)
2. Stuff that Apple knows would annoy some of its carriers (like, VOIP, and bandwidth hogs)
3. Dirty/Offensive stuff.
4. Malware, which is actually a big justification for the review process

And of course the process seems arbitrary and capricious, but I think most of those cases look like they fell into one of those 4

And judging by the # of updates for apps I had waiting when I went back to iTunes (like 47), I don’t really buy the “Apple is hampering bug fixes”

And I’m not sure if I aggree with AppStore/Marketplace is how people find apps. Or at least not, find out about apps. Oh, I’m sure there are a bajillion downloads from people browsing around, but I suspect it’s more driven by word of mouth and online references, and then the appstore is just a Google for the app you already know about. (Download from anywhere ala Android sounds cool, but only really useful if I happened to stumble on info about a new app while browsing on the device itself)

I admit the latest Android devices ARE finally catching up to the iPhone. I was thinking about why I’d still be slow to switch over, and I realize it’s because I suspect I trust Apple’s upgrade path more… that over time I’l be able to get devices that are absolutely competitive, if not leading, in slickness and tech-wise, I won’t have to get a new set of apps, OR learn any new UIs – and I’m pretty conservative about not wanting to learn new UIs. Android, by comparison, doesn’t have a single front runner, and manufacturers make a lot of customization to the base OS in order to stand out, and if I got, say, a HTC hero, I wouldn’t know what my next phone is.

(I know there’s that DoubleTwist app to plug into iTunes — though I guess I’m not 100% hooked on iTunes, since I never buy music with it, and keep everything as MP3s. (though now there’s some stickiness w/ the playlists I’ve set up) Does a typical Android device have a “I’ll back up everything on your PC” out of the box?
Dachary writes:
January 7th, 2010 at 1:57 pm

Heh. I know this is a continuation of the conversation we were having last night, but I continue to maintain that the App store offers fifty zillion brands of convenience to consumers (of which I am one) and consumers are creatures of convenience – and habit. I understand that from a development standpoint, it makes more sense for developers to be able to do whatever they want, and the App store limits that…

But from a consumer standpoint, it’s super convenient to have everything there in the slick UI available via the App store. And yes, in theory, we could just use the mobile browser to find Apps, but I still maintain that it requires more sifting.

And even if you come up with some App-store equivalent software for some other device, you’d still be facing an uphill battle in convincing people to switch. As a rule, people prefer something they know to learning something new. “More apps” probably won’t convince people to switch, as many of the ‘consumers’ (not developers) I know are perfectly happy with the selection available in the App store, and even beginning to become overwhelmed by the choices as offerings on the App store continue to grow.

Sometimes more isn’t better. Sometimes more is just more. And I think that’s what people would likely think about any alternative to the App store.