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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

Don't take this the wrong way, but please don't contribute to the flood of low quality apps in the app store(s) that serves to drown even the better apps out there.

I know of a person (via one of the local game dev groups I was part of in a previous city I lived in) that would just crap out a "new" app every couple of days by making a super simple game (like infinite runner) and then get some artist in Romania to reskin it 4-5 different ways for $10/hour, then SEO the title for popular keywords (names like "Runner Game for boys and girls with cute bunny! Christmas edition!").

If you have an idea for a genuinely useful app or good game, something you would enjoy working on and can imagine others enjoy using, then go for it. But don't do shotgun-dev of shit app. We have enough of those already.

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This is a kind of naïveté. Experimenting at scale to sell apps and find what might be a viable business is pretty much all the AppStore offers developers. The lack of custom storefronts or advertising/marketing options makes this the only viable way to try to make money.

Just waiting til you've made the perfect app and only launching that would mean you were one of the most brilliant people in tech, having complete knowledge of your target market even before release.

And relative to your comment about not releasing 'low quality apps', you might as well tell people not to release their blogs on wordpress because all these 'low quality' websites are just re skinned versions of the same blog engine.

The value of the blog is not the engine it's the text. If their text is a blatant rehashing of someone else's content with SEO on top then yes, I would tell them to not put up crap online & try to find something of value to do.

I'm not saying don't try to release MVPs quicky to test the market, I'm saying don't log in to itunes, check out the top 10 games and then make cheap generic rip offs with different skins and optimized titles. The summery of what I'm trying to say is: do something you care about, in one way or another. It would be better for your mental health and probably also more likely to be a viable business. Don't be the ios equivalent of spammers & spyware-laden internet explorer toolbars.

I should say that I've been making a living as an independent developer for almost 3 years now so I'm not just talking out of my ass here.

Yeah but that is business. That is exactly how a good business man approaches business. Study the market, determine what is successful, emulate them but either more efficiently, to a new niche, or marketed better.

I mean the whole point of business is to maximize the return on your investment.

Now making absolute garbage may not be the right solution, and making incredible product that takes 5 years to develop is probably not the right solution either... finding the right mix is key

To me the advice sounded more like "don't spam the app store with useless crap" rather than "don't start small and experiment". Maybe it wasn't worded that great, but I agree with the sentiment.

Yes indeed!

You really don't see anything wrong with it?

I'll try not taking it the wrong way even though you're assuming that I'd be making low quality apps :) even though you don't really know my level of experience.

I was talking about doing specific niche apps by limiting their feature-set, not their quality.

You're right, sorry & no offense meant. I was talking against a phenomenon I've (personally) encountered a couple of times in my professional circles, there are of course many worthy apps that can be developed quickly.

emm, have you even tried my apps/games? These are not "low quality apps", in fact some have been 5 star apps for months (now settling at 4 stars and above). The ones that have no rating simply have not got the exposure needed to be rated. I understand the reaction to shovelware, and totally agree with you, but I'd like to think my work isn't that.

Yes, they are "low quality apps"! Good luck ever getting featured by apple with one of these apps.

So the criteria for a "high quality app" is to get featured by Apple? Everything else is crap?

I haven't tried any of your work & wasn't referring to you personally, it was aimed at something the comment above reminded me of that I've (more than once) seen attempted in my local tech circles.

Thanks for the clarification, yeah I totally understand. Its one of the bigger reasons its so hard to be seen on the app stores. The good comes with the bad I suppose.

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