I agree, it does come off a little whiney from the outside... but let me ask you, how long have you been publishing to the AppStore?

It's a lot easier to be a contributor to the problems than it is to show restraint and professionalism for your peers given the state of the store. Please make no mistake about it, there's nothing stopping us from playing the same game except our commitment to be a provider of quality. Obnoxious penny-scraping behavior is not something we intend to be apart of out of respect for other developers. We could very easily repackage our apps 10 ways to Sunday, submit faux updates every few days, game the ratings/reviews, etc. and would certainly be a lot better off fiscally.

I'm not trying to sound like an AppStore Hero here either, this is something that a number of developers have all agreed upon to attempt to set an example and respect each other.

My snide remarks aside — I think it's perfectly acceptable for people to have a few novelty apps under their belt for no other reason than to have fun — we have one and I'm sure we'll make another one at some point in the future. But to have 40+ (I've seen some devs with 60+ of useless crap) just because "you can" is a gluttonous, self-serving assumption that deserves no respect. Sorry, call me an whiney ass for all I care. It's no different that email spammers.

I think my preference would be a completely open-market for iPhone applications that's disconnected from the AppStore, whereby the AppStore only contains applications that Apple hand-picks if developers are inclined to give up 30%. It would seemingly solve all the problems, aside from the burden Apple shoulders of dealing w/ customer support for their iPhone/iPod due to 3rd party crapware.

I'm not an iPhone developer, I don't even own an iPhone, so this is all coming from the outside.

Obnoxious penny-scraping behavior is not something we intend to be apart of out of respect for other developers.

That idealistic attitude is honorable but a bit out of this world, too. It's somewhat akin to entering the tiger's cage and asking him: "Can't we just be friends?".

Okay, maybe the tiger will fall into your arms, cry, and tell you how he has waited all his life for this moment. Then you'll be watching TV and killing a sixpack for the rest of the night.

But I think more likely is that the tiger will fall into your arms and do something else entirely...

It's not idealistic, it's realistic and Apple will -hopefully- put a stop to the gaming sooner rather than later because I know for a fact that it's killing their approval process (every update has to be approved), among other things. Application updates use to take 2-3 days, they are now taking 5+ days and more, and new apps are being stalled by weeks/months on end.

For the last 3 months, two of our products been Top 50 in Social Networking. That's pretty difficult to do for an indie shop not leveraging an established/existing brand (ie: twitter client), yet we've maintained a position without gaming the system. Things are changing now because devs are putting their apps in Social Networking section, even though their app shouldn't even be there in the first place, and obviously it's those guys that focus their time on exploits rather than the product. The health & fitness charts are filled with top apps that are ONLY in their respective place because they're being gamed, not because it's a quality product that deserves that spot.

These people don't want to work hard, they just want easy money cause they got caught up in the fool's gold. It's easier to post a fictitious update in 2 minutes, than it is to spend a week building a new feature and improving.

Honestly, I could go on and on but I'll just stop. I'm becoming redundant explaining the problems of the AppStore to people that don't get. You can call me idealistic or a whiner, but I have 4 months of daily sales and marketing data across multiple products and monitor the AppStore on a daily basis. I've been living and breathing this since August and its frustrating to say the least.

ps. Apple has promoted 3 of our products, and I'm still whining because the economics of the AppStore are flawed and hurting more people than it helps.

Well, you entered their (Apple's) game, you play by their rules. Their rules allow for, or are at least not resilient to, cheating.

You make it sound here as if Apple had some kind of obligation to turn the AppStore into a fair market. They don't. Their obligation is to make profits and to push the platform forward. If a fair app-market helps with that then they'll do it. If an unfair app-market helps with that then they'll do that.

Tough luck I say. You could also build desktop applications or develop for a more open mobile platform (Android?).

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.

Thank you <3, so well said:

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

I understand the criticism of the process and the products. But there is a market for these types of apps, and you develop for what the user wants. There definitely needs to be a good way to search for the shining stars, so a search service akin to Google for the AppStore needs to be developed. But until then, you develop what the user wants and is willing to pay for.

Things that are never criticized will never get improved. I frown upon your disdain for critical thinking.

I give up. What's the difference between whining and critical thinking?

"Whining" is a label for "critical thinking" that the labeler doesn't approve of.