“Ninety percent of everything is crap, science fiction author Ted Sturgeon once said. That’s certainly true of the crud passing for ‘software’ in Apple’s new App Store,” Sascha Segan reports for PC Magazine.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s even more true of the personal computer market.
Segan continues, “This makes me worry about software development in general. Mobile computing platforms are the future primary PCs for much of the world.”
MacDailyNews Take: Ironically, Segan is helping to provide definitive proof that Sturgeon’s saying also rings true for PC Magazine and tech articles in general.
“The App Store is beautiful, comprehensive (by fiat), and well designed. For the first time, you can actually get an overview of all the applications available for a computing platform and easily acquire them. It’s an idea that a lot of other people have had before, but Apple has done it with more polish and ease of use,” Segan writes. “But what do we get? …About 10 percent of the apps are great. Ninety percent smell like old Sturgeon.”
MacDailyNews Take: What is Segan complaining about? “Ninety percent of everything is crap” isn’t just a saying, it’s a truism. It’s that way in the software market in general (and the automotive, restaurant, apparel, music, film, etc. markets), so it logically follows that it’ll be that way in the App Store, too.
We imagine PC Mag staffers sitting around in their morning meeting:
Staffer One (Beavis): “Duh… ‘App’ rhymes with ‘Crap’ …uh, huhhh huhh huh…”
Sascha replies: “Beavis, you’re one pathetic piece of crap…”
Beavis: “Shut up, Butt-head!
Sascha: “But I think I can make it work!”
Beavis: “Uh, they should have a name for these kinds of articles.”
Sascha: “They already do, Beavis: ‘crap.'”
Segan continues, “Of course, it’s not as if Apple encourages app developers to think outside the box. IAmRich.com [sic: wrong name, wrong site; it’s “I Am RIch” and the minimal website, including screenshots, is here: audio-sandwich.com. Next time, Sascha, pause the virus scanning, fire up a browser and do at least one second of research] was a German avant-garde art project in the form of an iPhone app. It wasn’t malware. Apple yanked it from the App Store just because the company didn’t like its face. That’s a great message to send to developers: We might kill your app if we think you’re a little weird.”
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, a little pearl inside a rotting oyster. We’re 100% agreed. Apple blew it by pulling “I Am Rich” which did exactly what it promised buyers it would do.
More in the full article which seems to be little more than a bunch of words strung together in order to support a headline where PC Rag could do a little hit-whoring by rhyming “crap” with “app” — Think before You Click™ — here.
MacDailyNews Take: This article is not recommended. Sascha, you can do much better.
So, 95% of this article is crap then too…
Can’t we say the same thing about the music on itunes, too? And just music in general? In fact it’s probably more like 98 percent crap.
The very same can be said of my local library. Or any supermarket. Or the NASDAQ. Or any political party.
Actually, the world IS 94% crap; thank Gawd for the elite 6% who bring quality of thought and production to the fore.
It’s true that 90% of the apps are crap. However, when sifting for gold one has to sift through a lot of sand to find the nuggets.
MDN once again looks like an idiot with it’s childish comments every couple of sentences. Then again once in a while MDN has good comment so you have to sift through 90% of the crap MDN writes to get to the 10% of useful comments LOL
If 90% of crap is crap, what’s the other 10%?
behold the harvest of society….
a generation of programers have been taught by microsoft that “innovative” means “a cheap knock off of someone else’s 4 year old bad idea.” they have also learned from the music industry that a single good song and 8 filler tracks are a good way to make money.
…and thus we have the $9.99 flashlight app.
look, all i am saying is, you reap what you sew. if you want to pick apples, don’t plant weeds.
Apple is a software company…it’s obvious there will be compelling Apple apps in the Appstore. Verizon might as well create a VCAST iPhone app and get it over with
What is this, “Useless” “Crap” Day? (See other MDN post(s))
Hypocrite.
“That’s certainly true of the crud passing for ‘software’ in Apple’s new App Store”
“It wasn’t malware. Apple yanked it from the App Store just because the company didn’t like its face.”
Too much crap. Apple pulls crap. Damned if you do . . .
What a wanker.
Oh I get it… Crap rhymes with App!
Kinda like Feces Magazine.
90 percent crap … isn’t that microsoft’s market share?
There is some truth to the headline. I mean, how many tip calculator options do we really need? The only killer app I’ve downloaded and used with regularity is the Apple Remote app.
Beyond that, everything seems to be almost novelty based. Almost functional, but falls short of the mark. I can only hope Apple is working on additional killer apps, while the dev community is churning out tip calculators.
Yeah, this is an odd article, clearly written in a way to state the obvious while getting the Fan boys upset and it seems to be working.
As MDN indicated, 90% of all the software out there, especially in the PC world is crap.
With just a bit of observation though, one might conclude that there is something special about the iPhone App store because developers were able to generate so much crap so fast! That is an indication of promise.
There is always a ratio of crap to good stuff, so let’s just assume 10% is great software.
That’s an awful lot of good stuff for a nascent platform in so short a period.
Apple did the correct thing by pulling the I am Rich application.
Only a say-anything-anytime-you-want hack journalist like MDN is want unbridled apps on the App store … they equate it with free speech.
Wake up. The App Store is not a outlet for free speech. Apple wants to keep shit out of it like I am Rich apps. They don’t take a vote, they don’t check with their lawyer, they don’t give a shit about free speech. This is business … you dont like it, then carry your ass.
Then 90% of posting on MDN are crap. Calling ZuneTang.
So 90% of Sascha Segan is crap!
“I mean, how many tip calculator options do we really need?”
It’s not about what you really need. In what book is it written that we should only have one tip calculator available to us?
I get sick and tired of people dumping on the tip calculators. Some of them have a terrible interface and others work nicely. What if the ones that sucked were the only options available?
If only we could get that kind of variety when it comes to other utilities such as American dictionaries. There’s only about three and I don’t like any of them. Maybe we should get the tip calculator developers on it.
My advice to Segan: Go bite a fat hog in the ass!
I’m Victor Meldrew and I approved this message.
One thing that I am not fond of in the App Store are the reviews. It seems most of the reviews are written by people who have not purchased the App. Very annoying.
ForeFlight Mobile is a perfect example. It’s an application for pilots that has detailed information about every airport in the US, aviation weather, file flight plans, and more. It’s a replacement for a book that we pilots must buy and replace the paper pages every time something changes at an airport, or simply order a new one every year or so…
There are reviews on there saying, “this should be $4.99”, or “why would anyone want this?” with a 1 star rating. It’s ridiculous.
This is probably one of the best-made apps on the store, and the pilots that have bought it are in awe.
My suggestion to Apple is to only allow reviews to be written by people who have bought the app.
The only reason why people are able to assess the App Store in such a way, no matter how wrong they may be, is because Apple put it all together in a single easily accessible area. If Microsoft did the same for Windows Mobile applications, there’d probably be 300 tip calculators.
Only difference is that they’re scattered all over the place and the last thing Sascha Segan would do is some real journalism by researching the apps of other platforms. That’s far more work than sitting down with his iPhone and browsing the App Store.
“Go bite a fat hog in the ass!”
Or as Ballmer calls it, “playtime.” The safety word is developers.
Holy gesundheit, somebody wrote something funny right here in the Reader Feedback on MDN. I’m serious.
“If 90% of crap is crap, what’s the other 10%?”
I’m going to spend my day pondering this one. And who knows? I might just do a little research and discover a golden turd. Heck, it’s worth a try.
Yes, 95% of this MDN article is crap and 95% (at least!) of the feedback is crap also. Crap is crap, and the whole world is made of crap. Has this simple fact really not been established yet?
“If 90% of crap is crap, what’s the other 10%?”
Perfectly good corn.
A crap app to one person is a useful (or fun level) app to another.
I only label an app as “crap” if it doesn’t work properly for the specific function it was designed to carry out.
It all depends on what level your needs are, for some people a quick, cheap & dirty app completes the task they need done, others need a full blown $$500+ app. to get desired results.
I can’t keep quiet any longer. MDN is wrong about Apple pulling I Am Rich. It’s their store. Any store can choose to carry or not carry whatever they want. They’re under no obligation to anyone to carry anything and everything. I Am Rich had a dangerous potential. Someone could accidently download and be out $999. Someone’s kid could download it. I’m not a big fan of protecting people from themselves, but this was ridiculous. It was a stupid app that added nothing of value. I think Apple was right to remove it, but even if I didn’t think they were correct, I acknowledge their right to do it. Once again, it’s their store. None of us have to shop there or have iPhones or Macs. It’s our choice. As in everything, you take the bad with the good. Let it rest MDN. Oh, and calling I Am Rich art is why most people scoff at art.
So is MDN saying that 90% of Apple products are crap too?
As for headlines, I can just imagine the MDN staffers sitting around in a meeting:
Staffer1(Steve1): “How can we use the word -beleaguered- in a headline today?”
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Staffer2(Steve2): “I dunno, but I got this picture of Balmer with his tongue hanging out…”
“I Am Rich had a dangerous potential. Someone could accidently download and be out $999. Someone’s kid could download it.”
That’s why Apple should’ve simply added an extra disclaimer before purchasing apps over $99. They also could’ve disabled one-click purchases for apps over $99.
As for children downloading it, that’s what the new parental control settings are for. You can put a block on new App Store purchases.
There is no excuse for the terrible precedent Apple has set by removing the I Am Rich application. MDN is right on this one.
I think it’s fair to say that no more tip calculators will be written.
Every writer of a tip calculator thought they had a killer app. Who knew everyone else had the same idea?
I am sure the crap percentage will fall as all the crappy ideas are used up.
Yes, there is a finite number of crappy ideas.
“Kinda like Feces Magazine.”
EXACTLY like that! (good one!)
I love Sacha. He’s one of the very objective dudes at PC Mag. A lot of times he defended Apple from the prey of his colleagues who mostly know nothing about Apple.
He basically bitches around on nasty things regardless of the platform. He bitches at our friends in Linux and of course he bitches more about Windows. TRUST ME. He’s nearly the opposite of Dvorak!
Really, couldn’t some of these folks say the same about the iTunes Store? What if you just listen to two or three genres of music. There’s well over 8 million songs available. If you just buy a couple of albums here and there, does that mean 90% of the iTunes Store is useless? Does that mean the iTunes Store is crap?
Like I said (or quoted I guess) in a previous post, one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure. An app you think is useless might be the reason another person finally bought an iPhone.
Should Sturgeon write an iPhone App that intuitively downloads and reads science-fiction books with ease in order to change the crap to 89 percent?
It would be a start and be far more effective than the 100 percent crap coming out of his mouth.
Since 90% of apps for every platform is crap, isn’t it great we only have to look in one place for the iPhone? What a pain it was searching for and downloading apps for the Palm or Blackberry, having to deal with different install methods, different stores, different payment methods and then keeping up with the updates!
This is why the App Store rules.
You could say the same thing back when Apple carried a list of AppleScripts on their web site. There was a pitiful amount of AppleScripts and the few that were there weren’t all that helpful. However, maybe it’s like going to garage sales and the value is up to the individual. Like anything, one man’s treasure is another man’s junk.
Does the iTunes App Store have a means of counting how many downloads a certain application got, or offered any area for comment postings like say VersionTracker or other software places offer? Maybe user feedback would be welcome to Apple and the developer community.
I agree 100% with MDN and R2.
Apple should have kept “I Am Rich” in the App Store.
Why not? “Oh, somebody might accidentally download it”. What’s the saying, think before you click? If somebody is dumb enough to enable One-Click buying of APPLICATIONS… well.
Tip calculators? Gimme a break. Good for groups of old ladies and retards. It keeps them from murdering each other over that stray 34¢.
Don’t blame Apple for crappy 3rd-party apps!
The 3rd-party developers moaned and demanded an SDK and Apple gave it to them.
If there are 500 guitar tuner apps out there, then it is not Apple’s fault.
Now if someone like Reyburn Cybertuner, which is an $800 piano tuning app on Windows Mobile, would write their graphical tuning app for iPhone for say, $99 bucks, there would be less crap apps out there, but they won’t do it because there is a low volume of downloaders.
Tis true … 90% of the Apps in the Store are crap.
As is 90% of music, videos, movies, television, games, etc.
I am going to write a taser app for iPhone with sound effects and charge $999 bucks. My goal…2 downloads…that buys me a new Macbook. I am rich crossed the flexible line for moral standards and Apple was right to yank it.
Let Micro$oft take advantage of the ignorant people, not Apple. Obama would take the middle ground on this just like he did on Russia/Georgia…sorry, I forgot I wasn’t on the Huckabee forum.
The column is basically a rallying cry so that we all demand higher quality and more interesting mobile applications. Like everybody around here (I think) I have had MORE than enough tip calculators, currency calculators that don’t download rates off the Internet, “location-based” apps that can’t search anywhere OTHER than your current location, Sudoku games, subway maps that charge you for what you can get for free, and reformatted Web sites that work perfectly well in mobile Safari anyway. The people developing those apps should spend some more time with their families. You have to dredge through a LOT of that to get to the good stuff in the App Store.
I’m trying to suss out where the real innovators are, or why they’re being held back. Not just people developing obvious things like office suites, VOIP, or other big useful stuff, but whatever the ‘killer apps’ will be that will transform the way we use mobile devices entirely. Is it a lack of ideas holding them back? Something about the structure of Apple’s SDK? Fear? Lack of VC money? I try to touch on all of that in the column.
Hey, the AppStore is a VersionTracker for the iPhone. Browse through all the apps at VersionTracker sometime. Better yet, spend a really infinite amount of time browsing the windoze side of VT and sift through that myriad of mediocrity to find a few good products, free, share, or commercial.
“As for headlines, I can just imagine the MDN staffers sitting around in a meeting:”
There’s only one MDN Staffer, but I’m sure he argues with himself.
Pachyornis,
You made my day!
LOL
Sturgeon was an optimist.
OK, you could claim that 90% of the software in the app store is crap, just like 90% of the widgets available are crap, and 90% of the podcasts are crap, and … BUT! That’s counting the 1% you need, and the 1% I need, and the 1% my daughter-in-law needs (etc) as “good”. Yeah … you need to sort through a LOT of dross to come up with a really decent app, or widget, or podcast, or …
Heck, HALF those items are near-duplicates of other like items. How many versions of a calculator do you need? How many updates are left lying around? We in Apple land should be thrilled that most of the games that PC owners get to choose from die before they get ported to the Mac. Same with other software.
So, if 90% of everything is crap, does that mean this article was 45% crap since it was half assed?
Is crap only 90% crap? Does this mean I can get 10% non crap from pure crap? Does the contents of crap have to labeled?
OH CRAP!!! My head hurts.
One man’s shit is another man’s shinola…
perhaps what he meant to say is that ‘95% of these apps have no PERSONAL relevance to my life’
To some it may be crap, to others it’s fertilizer.
I think the amount of crap in general has risen with the dawning Web 2.0. The more tools become accessible to the masses, the more crap is released. YouTube proves that point spectacularly. But that 10% (I’d argue 1%) that is good, makes YouTube worth it. What was life without the numa-numa guy, or the fat Star Wars kid?
It’s a shame that Sascha’s article is a bit light on detail.
I’d expected a discussion/rant about:
– how difficult it is to find the decent apps on the store (mentioned, but not discussed in any great detail, eg. suggestions about how to resolve this)
– how the user ratings don’t match “What’s hot” or “Staff Favorites” (proving trash vs treasure)
– how the overview pages don’t show ratings so you have to click the app to see if it’s gotten good reviews
– not enough groupings – so the 50 different versions of Sudoku or Mahjong cannot be grouped into single lists (reminds me of when I go looking for MAME games.)
– how people can review apps they *haven’t* actually purchased/downloaded (grrrrrr, this one needs to be fixed.)
– the possible future of the app store, be it smart searches, custom sorted lists of varying degrees, etc Is there even a way to search on apps rated with 5 stars?
– interesting ideas for novel new apps (I guess people don’t like giving away great ideas anyway??)
– what does “Most Popular” mean anyway? Most downloaded? Best reviewed? Both? Something else? (although this comes under the trash vs treasure situation anyway.)
And to all those commenting and re-commenting on everything being 90% crap, well, good on you guys for perpetuating the rule.
In fact, one thing I’d like to see on the store is a way to mask things already downloaded/viewed. That way you wouldn’t have to keep seeing the same old crap over and over.
Sorry, but all you are really saying is Apple and the App Store are NO BETTER than anything we would find on a PC for a WM platform.
Unfortunately, that is true. BUT, we hold Apple to a higher standard than the low bar set by MS. If not, why are we paying a premium for Apple’s software and hardware?
App Store is a great idea, but PC mag is telling the absolute truth – 99% of its apps are pretty much worthless.
Apple can and needs to do better.
Microsoft keeps setting the bar so low that most people think crappy software is the norm.
Ok – 47 comments posted above mine
Figure that 90% crap ratio, means – 42.3 post are crap
Oh, the po fo with the point-three
Or could be less the other point-seven
AND, of course, we all know MY post is NOT crap
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So, by process of elimination
Or, the *real* crappers have yet TO post, so you above are safe due to the laws of averages
Excuse me .. now have to go ‘down the hall’ (if you know what I mean) … to, well, you know what I mean
And never forget the famous words of somebody who I can’t remember their name at this moment:
There are two kinds of people in the World
Those who think there are two kinds of people in the World
And those who know better
BC
cynic – +5 Excellent on your message.
I was trying to look at the bigger picture though. You make some good points about how to improve the shopping experience of the App Store.
I’m trying to strike to the question of why there are so many repetitive apps in general, why some big, important app categories (like an office suite) are missing from the iPhone, and whether something about the mobile app marketplace is slowing down innovation.
nyr, well, YES – that’s what that really good Dvorak column from April was saying. Maybe there’s some sort of malaise in the software industry in general. I think it shows up worst in mobile, though.
As a life long SF fan, I appreciate Sturgeon’s work. He wrote some of my favorite stories. Old Ted was a great writer, no doubt about it.
But… Sturgeon’s Law is a prime example of lazy thinking by those who typically use it today. Ted, at least, originated the idea. Those who use it today do so more as a cliche, or rather a stereotypical “thinking”, than a truism. It allows a casual dismissal of pretty much anything, without putting forth any intellectual effort into thinking about what it is that’s being dismissed.
Pretty much like all other stereotypical “thinking.”
If 90% of everything is crap, then 90% of the time that Sturgeon’s Law is recited is crap, too.
Also, if 90% of everything is crap, that doesn’t say much for democracy, now does it?
The real question is would Apple pull a ‘I Am Poor’ app that sold for $0.99 and all it did was show a fake Rolex watch?
Everybody who suggests that “accidental” download of I am rich is stupid on the downloader’s part must lead charmed lives and certainly does not have kids. As though one more button, is a good enough safety valve for a click-happy child. Spare the self-righteous parent talk – if you have kids you KNOW that no matter how much you watch them, they still may end up in harm’s way. Ridiculous. As well, just yesterday, I downloaded the wrong app accidentally and, currently being a graduate student, I am quite sure I am not a total numbskull. I am also sure I am not the first to do so. After a thousand disclaimers, most be people ignore them. $999 would, however, be a far more expensive mistake. I am liberal-minded, too and support free press and general anarchy on the internet, but such things require responsible decision-making. Apple has a responsibility to their customers. I guarantee you Jobs is not suffering from nightmares due to his decision to pull “I Am Rich.” Seriously, do you really want to argue about such an asinine offering? If that’s the case, go back to Windows – they’ll provide you with tons of thoughtless, dangerous, potentially expensive, and bad applications.
“they’ll provide you with tons of thoughtless, dangerous, potentially expensive, and bad applications.”
One of them is pronounced “frәnt pāj”.
I’ll make excuses for him: When one gets up in a daze and puts on the wrong thong then every app looks like crap.
Sascha wrote:
>> why there are so many repetitive apps in general
Perhaps it’s simply ‘cos they’re easy to produce? Or they’re obvious ideas? (I too thought of a shopping list applications, musical tuners and some others which are there. A friend came up with language translation ideas.)
In some cases, existing code-bases could be used as well, which would have sped development time (certain games in particular would benefit.)
What’s worrying is that these devs didn’t bother to convert the app to the iPhone in a way which utilizes it’s features. I smell “rushed” and being first may mean more sales from the unwary. (A certain dev for example has about 20 apps on the store, and judging from the reviews of 1 – 1.5 stars, most (90%? lol) are crap. And even his good ones only get 3 stars.)
I fully expect 3rd party websites to pop up listing the great apps if Apple doesn’t start to do so.
>> why some big, important app categories (like an office suite) are missing from the iPhone
Too early in the game I think. These apps require lots of work. I worry about the screen real estate the keyboard takes up for such apps too (esp. in the landscape orientation.)
>> whether something about the mobile app marketplace is slowing down innovation.
Interesting thought. I (we all?) hope not. It could be that again, it’s just too early to tell. Great ideas which haven’t already been done are hard to come by though.
The advantage windows users have when it comes to such a large volume of their available software being crap is that it’s much harder to find. The simplicity of the appstore is (currently) almost its own worst enemy because the crap is so easy to find.
The thing is, if 90% of everything is crap, and 90% of that crap is crap, and 90% of that crap is crap…. well after a few iterations you get down to the 0.0001% core of ultra-pure supernuclear military-grade crap. If you could bottle that and sell it… why you could have a monopoly on the PC operating system market.
App Store is a great idea, but PC mag is telling the absolute truth – 99% of its apps are pretty much worthless.
I think that could be true for an individual, but collectively I don’t know. That is like my wife (a registered nurse) saying “I don’t need or use solid modeling software, so SolidWorks, NX, ProE, etc.. are all crap”. Well, for her, that would be true; she doesn’t need or use them.
I could say the same for me (an engineer) saying “All books on heart surgery are crap”. That wcould be, from my perspective, true as I don’t use or want heart surgery books.
Just because an app isn’t something you’d use doesn’t mean it’s crap…
It’s what I do, Baby. It’s what I do.
Reminds me a chestnut:
Statistically, one out of four people is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closest friends.
If they seem ok, you’re in trouble…
It’s the same as in a book shop (I’m old enough to remember book shops): about 90% crap.
But that still leaves many hundreds of good books (or apps!) for you to browse and, after consideration and selection, plenty worth buying.
Segan sez:
“IAmRich.com was a German avant-garde art project in the form of an iPhone app. It wasn’t malware. Apple yanked it from the App Store just because the company didn’t like its face. That’s a great message to send to developers: We might kill your app if we think you’re a little weird.”
This app wasn’t ‘weird’, it as the most expensive JOKE app I’ve ever heard of.
And Apple is being derided for pulling a $999 joke out of their app store. This is Apple who FUD mongers refuse to take seriously, and this Segan FUD monger is saying Apple should put the joke back up for sale. Sheer insanity. 100% ignorable. Yet another moron disguising himself as a technology journalist. Another spawn of the Dvorak school of shock, awe and vacancy.
The PC magazines are certainly desperate for something to write about these days. It has to be August. Oh look, it is.
This guy better not have a Facebook account. You want crap apps, that’s the place to go.
@ChrisM
MDN Staffers? Try one guy who spends way too much time inside.
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So 90 percent of my crap is…….
HOLY CRAP!!!
No, 98% smell like old Segan. (That is Sturgeon entrails.)
Why is this article even here? The links in it spontaneously pop up ads for pro PC crap, including “The MoJave Experiment” and I’ll bet there are kickbacks involved. Fire the author/poster…
I am a Pc User that dose not own a mac only Ipod and Ipod Touch. I get macworld sent to my house each month because I enjoy reading it more then I do Pc World. Pc World has been going down hill for years. They no longer matter.
This is cool that people can take the business loans and that opens up new possibilities.