App Store: Does "Free" mean junk?

On the mac my favorite applications trend towards the freeware. In my experience, the worst applications (unstable, unusable) are often the highest price apps. There seems to be a middle ground where most of the high quality commercial apps are.

If there is a rating system that will help, but as per usual word of mouth and formal reviews will drive the better stuff.

i thought the premise was that Apple was vetting apps they host on the app store?

If so, I would expect that "junk" apps won't make the cut, no matter how they're priced.

Interesting problem -

If it's free, I figure I'm getting what I pay for and "buyer beware", but since Apple allowed it into the AppStore it must actually work as advertised, and if not - I just uninstall it and what have I lost.

If it's just a buck or two - I figure it's crappy, cheap, fly-by-night software that someone is trying to make a quick buck off of and good luck getting any tech support or upgrades in the future.

If it's more costly ($10 to 25)- I figure the developer is committed to this product and that it HAS TO WORK as advertised (or else!) and there will probably be free/cheap upgrades in the future... but I really REALLY have to need it to pay that much.

So the middle "Dollar-Store" area is the least desirable for me personally. Either Free (unnecessary fun stuff) or costly but NEEDED programs that I can be confident in.

It just needs one person to buy the app and put it in an Installer source and we all get it for free anyway.

I think you're wrong, Erica Sadun. Because installer.app sucks (and it does) doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it. I've been campaigning (in #iphone on irc.osx86.hu/irc.conceitedsoftware.com) for the replacement of 'categories' with 'tags'. If there were tags, one could instead scroll down a much shorter list, like 'irc', 'aim', 'msn', and only tags relevant to the app. Game could be a mega-tag for games, but I don't think we'd need one for network based apps (since their function, not the fact that they use the network, would be important).

In short: There's not really a crowding problem because there's a lot of crap, it's because there's no way to filter the crap.

I think it's going to be a hard row to hoe. Take a look at this trainwreck of a thread over on AppleiPhoneSchool regarding (the great) IntelliScreen.

http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/2008/06/05/intelliscreen-101/#comments

The internet has made selling software a tough proposition and people seem to think that just because an app is on a phone it doesn't count as a 'real' program, despite dozens of hours of programming.

I think you're spot-on Erica. Mobile devices are still such a new space, and Apple needs to maintain quality in order to earn consumer trust. When third party software causes a phone to behave poorly or gobbles up the battery, I think most consumers still blame the phone or the brand name on the front of it, not the stuff they downloaded.

Speaking of developers though, have you heard how Apple is handling entries for the iPhone SDK program? Are they letting devs in arbitrarily, or is just about everyone getting in? Do they take a long time to "proof" an app before allowing it in the store?

i'll pay for good apps but not for limited function apps.

I mean no insult to developers, but 99% of jailbroken apps are more of a demo than a finished product. I know that the developers are working for free here, but when people pay for a product, it actually causes the developer to put more work into fit-and-finish.

Fit-and-finish is usually what separates a good app from a bad one.

I think this is a very legitimate theory. If you look at things like the Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets (I know it's Windows... try and ignore that for a moment) you get about 2% worthwhile gadgets and 98% total BS. Even if they charge a dollar, I think it will increase the quality of what people write.