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Comment by frankieim_111 | Hacker News Reader

The artist in me finds your shovelware business model sad, although my inner accountant nods approvingly. I guess profitability trumps a lot of other concerns, since you can't put out too much software if you're bankrupt.

I don't understand your point (6) - intuition and a small amount of experience tells me that users judge software overwhelmingly by its design - can you elaborate on this?

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My inner artist actually struggles a lot with it as well, however it has allowed us the runway to invest in larger, higher quality projects.

Regarding (6): Users judge by design, if design is all your app has. If you are providing an enormous amount of content thats of value to the user, design becomes secondary.

For example, 2 of our highest performing apps (about 70-100k per year) have poor interfaces, but killer content that specific users really want access to.

Regarding (6): Spot on. "The lower your product is on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the crappier it can look." http://engineering.gomiso.com/2012/02/01/youre-overthinking-...

since you so kindly share with us -- can you please name some of those apps? I would love to download (pay if needed), play with it, see the value with my own eyes. Thanks!

I think what he meant is that design guidelines, libraries, and UI frameworks provided by OS resonate perfectly well with majority of the userbase. Yet every app that comes out of Valley seems to need to redefine basic navigation patterns and color themes.

Your disapproval of "shovelware" business model and the related shallowness of design does make sense; however, failing fast and often does not imply the malicious intent as you imply. Think of this as a search for an anchor point, a good business, so that the whole enterprise can take a breath. If you hit the spot in the first try, all power to you! Chances are even when you have a good hunch, some unlikely/unforeseen thing will block the way to success. Why feel sorry for having all the eggs in one basket, when there are many things in place that would make it possible for you to do otherwise, e.g. several easy ways to reach customers, in several countries, and relatively untapped markets etc. This may not be valid for big companies with lots of spare money to cover the losses until the app has the power to take off, or developers who are in love with an idea to the point that they will sacrifice themselves until giving it a real push.

The artist in me finds your shovelware business model sad, although my inner accountant nods approvingly.

It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market. If people want to pay $2 for a piece of software, most of that software is inevitably going to be least-common-denominator tat aimed at getting noticed and scoring a quick buck from enough people before it gets lost in a sea of other tat.

It doesn't really matter any more whether it started because of the app store model, or the early developers choosing very low prices like many other new businesses even though they could have charged more, or dare I say cynically pitching instant gratification to a market full of young people with shiny new phones and some but not very much money. The culture today says mobile apps are cheap, and the market will get what it pays for.

It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now. Then again, perhaps that is for the best, and software that solves harder problems or provides deeper functionality or offers large volumes of good quality content is better presented via some other medium anyway.

> It's important to recognise that we're talking about a shovelware market

This. Where $3 are considered a high price you realistically can only produce apps that are worth their low price.

If you try anything different - making a great polished product and trying to strike a hit - all power to you. But then you are playing a lottery and not doing business.

> It's a shame that making any kind of high-end and higher-priced mobile app is probably a non-starter now.

This is what drove us (luckily I must say now) away from mobile to web based SaaS. When we build a mobile app now it's only a complement to our SaaS service and usually is given away for free to get users for our service.

Sadly the geek in me hates the web development stack ... but my inner business guy keeps the geek at bay ;)

Curious - why does the geek in you hate the web dev stack?

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