Recommended: Gear Diary Spots (The Bad Kind of) App Store Killer App
Wayne Schulz over at Gear Diary has a very good post up today “ pointing out a potentially very, very bad precedent for App Store apps. It highlights a new ‘app ‘ that apparently is very little more than an advertisement for a real estate firm.
Wayne raises some fine questions about apps of this kind being accepted into the store:
Do we really need an App that does little more than email a business or direct a user to the company web site? If this is an approved application can a few hundred thousand ‘call me ‘ copycats be far behind? This could make the ‘pull my finger smell my fart ‘ Apps look ‘mission critical ‘ in comparison.
And has some solid suggestions as well
Apple should be reviewing their acceptance guidelines to be sure applications in the store have some value beyond simply promotion.
If an application is purely advertising – create a separate class for these (if they don ‘t outright refuse them). Allow users to bypass the advertising applications as an iTunes preference.
All these points make sense to me, and I definitely agree that the acceptance of any of these sort of apps “ without shunting them off into a separate area and / or giving us easy options for skipping them via settings “ is very bad news.
Check out Wayne ‘s full post HERE, for lots more detail on this worrying subject
I don't agree with the criticism. There is nothing wrong with this type of App.
I won't install it, but if someone finds it useful then great.
If no one downloads these types of Apps then they will go away.
I am in favor of letting the market decide.
sfmitch – I can see your point too, and generally I think that's right – but it would be easier to feel this way if Apple would start doing a little more with sections and areas in the App Store I think. A 'Promotional Apps' section would fit these well as Wayne suggested, and a 'Novelty Apps' section seems needed as well. Then if they'd let us opt in and out of viewing sections of the store, things would be much better I reckon …