We’ve long been unimpressed with Apple’s power-mad policies which leaves the company in sole control of what can and can not be admitted into their hallowed app store, but even that hasn’t stopped their store being flooded with crap apps or spammed’n’scammed.
Although Palm’s App store is tens of thousands of programs behind Apple’s voluminous beast, already the first signs of application spam are emerging there too.
Application spam is when a development house floods the store with endless slightly rejigged versions of the same application, in the hope that their splatterware approach will increase their chances of being noticed.
As the first splatterware apps start to clog up Palm’s burgeoning store, their Co-Directors of Developer Relations have been discussing the issue, with some users arguing that the company should start lobbing out iffy apps and introduce Apple style ‘gatekeeping.’
We very much liked the style of Palm’s Chuq Von Rospach response:
[…] rhetorical question — who do you want to decide what you can buy? Do you want to make that decision yourself? Or do you want someone else to start making that decision for you?
And if you do start letting someone else make that decision, what’s your recourse when that other entity starts making decision you don’t like? […]
I’d rather give an application a chance to fail in the market any time over having someone (even myself) make a decision it’s not worthy of being given a chance to succeed, and as a consumer, I always want the chance to refuse to buy something rather than being told I’m not allowed to consider it.
Be careful what you wish for. You might get it. Me, I’ll stick with being inclusive, even of stuff I might not want, and letting the market have a chance to choose success or failure for it.
We always believe the consumers should be able to decide what they put in the handsets they’ve paid for, but let’s hear your opinion!
