When exactly did online stores stop caring about quality?
I’ve noticed that the old-fashioned idea about a store being some kind of assurance of quality no longer seems to apply online – if it ever did.
Browse the iTunes store for iPhone apps and you find an extraordinary amount of rubbish. This only a day after an app called something like ‘BabyShaker’ (yes, a ‘game’ where you shake a baby to stop it crying) came to media attention and was – reluctanctly no doubt – removed.
Check out ‘Football Shootout Lite’ – a game that averaged 1/2 a star out of 5 from over 8000 disgusted ratings and was utterly slated by reviewers. And that was after it’s ‘major re-architecture’. What a absolute turd. But, like all apps, no names, no people, no tangible companies behind them. A Google search for ‘TapTapMedia LLC’ turns up nothing credible or useful.
Since when did it make sense for Apple to showcase such crap for their flagship iPhone / iPod products?
Quality, as we used to know it, takes human intervention and editorial evaluation. That really messes up the ‘hands-off’ monetisation model that’s the internet’s ‘holy grail’ so it’s history.
On the plus side, the ‘ wisdom of the crowd’ prounces a pretty damning verdict on trash like ‘Football ShootOut Lite’.
What do you think?
Since the ‘amateur revolution’ allowed people to create and distribute STUFF over the internet, they have. iTunes is simply another hosting portal for more stuff. As people keep on creating this rubbish content it is becoming harder and harder to find quality. Corporations such as Apple could create successful apps based on their official status, leaving user produced apps (like ‘football shootout lite’) behind from the start. The lack of regulation within the internet means that the web and iTunes is becoming clogged up with poorly produced stuff in a time when people want to share with the world.
There is definitely an issue which needs to be addressed surrounding availability of online content. Although Apple lead the market with their ipod and iphone, iTunes is merely the distribution platform for such content.