It amuses me when I hear of, for example, Apple blocking a certain application from making it into the App Store for some dodgy anti-competitive reason. So, for example, they famously blocked the (presumably) professionally programmed Google Voice, while simultaneously, in just one week, allowing ten (more) fart apps, a hundred hastily programmed 'reference' and ultra-niche utility apps and a thousand home-made games of dubious scope and playability. Which is kind of where the problem lies.
Now, I've nothing against Apple's policy - it's their App Store and they can let in, and keep out, anything they want, whenever they want. But picture the poor user of an Apple or (in this case) Nokia smartphone. Making a beeline for the App (Ovi) Store icon on their brand new device, they're bombarded with thousands (in the iPhone's case) or hundreds (in Ovi store's case) of items which essentially offer little but distraction from the really high quality content that is in there somewhere.
The iPhone App Store tries to help out by providing 'Top 25' (/50) lists (free/commercial/highest grossing), but the first two of these tend to get taken over by the current 'joke novelties' or by whichever commercial apps have been on 'sale' most recently, respectively. Outside of the top 25 charts, it's very hard to find exactly what you're looking for. So, for example, search for 'golf', or 'diet', or 'fitness', or whatever, and you simply get shown a seemingly random selection of 10 matches. Out of hundreds, if not thousands of possibles.
The Nokia Ovi Store is far more primitive still, with just a 'recommended' pane of items and a selection of (not entirely believable - e.g. 'most popular') filters. On a number of occasions, I've been looking for a particular application that I know should be in the Ovi Store and yet it doesn't show up on (the first few pages of) any of the content lists or in search results.
The problem is, you see, one of numbers. Imagine you 'fancy reading a really good new book'. You wander into a Waterstones (in the UK) - note that this is a fine bookchain and I've nothing against them - and are presented with a dozen rooms over two or three floors, with just about every book still in print somewhere on its shelves. If you're going there for a specific quality book, then it'll take you a while to find it - and if you're going there hoping to get a few ideas for what to try next then you'll be utterly overwhelmed.
Similarly at the supermarket. You head down to the jam aisle to 'get some marmalade' and are presented with 33 different alternatives, including about 20 subtly differently flavoured and quality-graded variants under the supermarket's own 'brand'. Which one do you go for?
In each case, the chances are that you'll actually walk away, since the sheer choice is too much. Or at the very least walk away with a purchase but also a sense of unease that you didn't really end up with the best product for you.
Now imagine walking into a local village bookstore - we have one near my house. One room, only about 1000 book titles stocked and a viable way to find out what's new, what's popular and what's potentially interesting without being overwhelmed. Imagine walking into your local village grocery store. Again, one room. You ask for marmalade - they stock two brands. You make your pick - that was easy.
What's needed, I contend, is far more draconian control of what makes it into each smartphone application store. Far more heavy handed quality control. What it needs are human QA controllers, discarding submitted applications (or at least filing them away in a deeply hidden 'Other' section, from which they only be accessed by the public in answer to a specific query): "No, sorry, not allowed into the main store, its interface is too amateurish". "No, only makes joke sounds, will reflect badly on the platform". "No, only of interest to about 100 people in the world - too specialist". And so on.
The applications that do make it through this severe QA would be those that look professional, serve a real purpose, aren't too specialist, are tightly coded, are well behaved, and so on. The 'presented' contents of each app store would then solely consist of the very best for each platform - no joke apps, no pointless screensavers, no 'Model X train wheel size calculators' [apologies if you own a model X train and quite like the idea!], no specialist reference apps in 20 different languages.
With such a scheme, the iPhone App Store would end up with 'only' about 1000 apps immediately presented, a far more manageable number. With such a scheme, the Nokia Ovi Store would end up (from its current catalogue) with about 150 apps immediately presented, a number which could be browsed through by newcomers in five minutes at most.
And yes, 'long tail' advocates, note that all other applications could still be 'there' in the background, available should a user dig deep and want something really specific (by name or topic). But new users and the man in the street shouldn't be exposed to the raw, seething pool of content that seems to be de rigueur in modern application stores.
Such drastic quality control would be labour intensive*, yes, at the manufacturer/platform-coordinator level, but I reckon the results would be well worth it, with more people happier at making decent discoveries and purchases, rather than recoiling from the whole app store idea in confusion and disappointment.
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 19 Nov 2009
*Ovi Store, should you be looking for a QA controller along these lines, I'm available!