Why do crap apps still exist? They sell.

It's like asking why there are bad video games, music, movies, or art. There's no accounting for taste, and a lot of people seem to want to be able to make fart sounds with their phone. Why is beyond me, but yeah, people who can spend money will.

Meh... even I'm guilty of supporting the crap app community...

I bought an app that does nothing but play a comedy rimshot whenever you tap the screen.

Did I need it? No. Do I use it anyway? Yes.

As stupid as such an app sounds, it can be a clever distraction when used correctly.

Think about it... while anyone can tell a joke and get a laugh, most normal people would not have the fore-thought to have a portable rim-shot player handy at a moment's notice. Under the right circumstances, this can be a chick magnet.

Not quite sure about the thousand or so "fart" machines though...

@gib I don't have to imagine it, I write applications for the iPhone, Android, and a couple of pre-release devices I won't name. I used to also develop video games for a living and your cries are the same as those of every developer of video games or software for the PC. You will ALWAYS be a small voice in a sea of voices. Many times those voices will drown you out. This is what is referred to as market noise and there has always been an issue of rising out of the noise in a market. This isn't unique to any platform that people are genuinely interested in and is no different if you're writing a Windows app or XNA application. That's one of the breaks of being in this area of the market and one of the reasons why even outside the software space good products go unnoticed and many good companies die from market neglect. This is just the way of things. Should we start saying that RHEL and Slackware should have been the only two Linux distros - wait Ubuntu rose from the *considerable* noise in the Linux/Unix world and gained a space.

The simple fact is that it takes more than a good product to be successful in a market, you have to adopt a policy larger than "if I build it, they will come". Censoring or restricting the marketplace due to over population simply doesn't make any sense anymore than requiring people to charge for the applications makes sense. There are plenty of developers out there who have great applications but there is a free application that does the same thing, albeit without the same level of flash - should we ban those as well?

The other simple fact is that if your customers are genuinely looking for an application in your space, the fact that there are 200 fart applications will have no impact as they will skip right past those until the find an application in a genre that suits them. The entire top 100 could be filled with far apps, but if I'm looking for a blogging application I'm looking for a blogging application and thats all there is to it. Consumers will want what they want, and restricting them from that is counter productive and ultimately self-defeating - something Apple is likely learning from the various categories of applications that they ban. All that will result is that market of applications being absent from representation on the app store.

I wont disagree with many of the suggestions you have for Apple regarding how the store should be improved because IMO its a confused mess at the moment. It resembles a garage sale or swap meet more than it does an actual store. Consumers think of many different things as useful or innovative and so long as they are the ones "paying the bills, " they get to chose what they think is worth their money. The idea of trying to bury these 'casual applications' is silly. When you are charging 0.99 for an application such that a consumer considers it throw away, they are likely to take chances on an occasionally useful 'crap app' and that's why they are REALLY running the store. This too is a simple effect of economics and with certainty trying to push these apps 'into a corner' is not going to change that.

We did a "crap app" as a test from our normal genre and are amazed at how people will pick up 'Beer Goggles - Helping You Score' over other apps we've created that actually provide value to the user. How many copies of Beer Goggles were picked up you might ask? Over 30,000 in the first week. I kid you not.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=311779712&mt=8

One man's crap apps are another man's treasure. Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be out there. I mean, the iPhone isn't *that* serious of a platform, is it?

In short, get off your high horse.

Crap apps sell because they always cost the least, usually 99 cents. It's not the crap apps they want... it's the feeling of getting a "bargain", or "sampling at the candystore" feeling they want. A feeling that paying 5, 7 or 10 dollars for an app doesn't provide. I think developers should focus more on creating specialized, low-cost apps. Keep it simple, focus on something that will actually HELP someone, and keep the price under 2 bucks. Just no more crap, please.

Farts are funny.

People who deny that are fooling themselves. And the pseudo-intellectual, mac-user disgust bit isn't working. The article comes across as sour grapes and makes me think the author's position would be different had his own "crap app" been approved.

When you point out the faults in others, you are pointing out the faults in yourself.

Considering this, an application that is useful AND make fart noises is fated for success.

Does such an app exist?

You bet: go to /Settings/Tweetie/Advanced/Experimental/Popularity Enhancer.

That's an easy one: Crap apps sell because people are morons!

The irony here is great. For some time now hardcore gamers have been saying that many of the iPhone games are 'crap games' and now here we are with iPhone guys saying that certain apps are 'crap apps'. I'm not sure why there is this reluctance to let people build or buy whatever they want. That's the whole rationale for having the SDK in the first place - so that we could have this colorful diversity in games and applications that we wouldn't have otherwise.

In diversity we get greatness.