Guest post by 64647
Microsoft has explained that they have removed more than 1500 apps from the store.
Every app store finds its own balance between app quality and choice, which in turn opens the door to people trying to game the system with misleading titles or descriptions. Our approach has long been to create and enforce strong but transparent policies to govern our certification and store experience. Earlier this year we heard loud and clear that people were finding it more difficult to find the apps they were searching for; often having to sort through lists of apps with confusing or misleading titles.
[…]
This process is continuing as we work to be as thorough and transparent as possible in our review. Most of the developers behind apps that are found to violate our policies have good intentions and agree to make the necessary changes when notified. Others have been less receptive, causing us to remove more than 1,500 apps as part of this review so far (as always we will gladly refund the cost of an app that is downloaded as a result of an erroneous title or description).
The upside is that the store becomes a better, less cluttered and misleading place; the downside is that the walled garden is stronger. Is a top down approach really what we want, or is there a a better, community driven, approach that could be taken?
Yahoo! 1500 down, 98500 to go!
It appears that the link I included got lost in the process. Here is the link to the MS blog post: http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2014/08/27/how-were-addressin…
It’s good to see some pro-active policing.
Apple and Google should ramp up their store sanitation as well.
Let me reiterate the question I put at the end of the post. Is this really the way we want to go about it? I seem to recall lots of complaints about draconian rules and walled gardens (on this site and elsewhere), and now we have folk calling for the walls to get higher and the rules stronger.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the stores need to be cleaned up as well, but I am not sure this is the best way to go about it.
For example, what if there were two parts of the app store, one that held anything developers wanted to submit (given some broad limitations regarding security, etc). Then a second one that has all the apps given the Seal of Approval.
This latter one would be what you see going in and searches would show those results first, then you would have to click though to see the rest. That way you get an open store, but you provide a curated experience as well.
Or maybe some kind of community based moderation and/or reputation system that allows for separating the wheat from the chaff.
If we keep pushing for more and more top down control, I fear we will get the app store we deserve…
There’s been a few articles complaining about the crap in all the app stores, unilateral or not, at least Microsoft is responding to the problem.
I think the walled garden does not apply in this case.
Title and description need to reflect what the app really is about. That should be common sense and just makes lot of sense.
The approch Microsoft picked is not a wall, not from my perspective. As I understood it the review gives feedback what needs to be improved in case the description is missleading. This doesn’t sound questionable at all for me. I would even say its a good thing to improve on that front for both, users and developers.
The quality of an application starts before downloading and with such numbers of apps its vital to know what the app is really about before downloading (and maybe even paying) just by reading the description.
A community-driven QA-review, like voting and comments, is a very good think but by no means a replacement.
Edited 2014-08-29 01:43 UTC
cdude,
…
While I agree with your overall post, cleaning up apps is important, I must disagree with your first statement that the walled garden isn’t applicable. The quality of the store is not what makes it a walled garden or not. The windows store is still a walled garden for the metro platform since users aren’t allowed to install apps outside of the windows store.
Correct, thats why I wrote not applies *in this case*. The article suggestes that the title+description requirement makes it *more* a walled garden. Thats not the case in my opinion. The walled garden case is just irrelevant for this requirment. In fact I, as user and developer, expect (and get since ages) the same from my Linux distribution / BSD flavor.
Or to turn it around: just because review didn’t care before about title, description and logo doesn’t mean the appstore was lesser of a walled garden before.
Edited 2014-08-29 08:26 UTC
Also because reviews/votes/rankings can certainly be gamed: https://www.google.com/#q=fake+reviews+app+store
RT.
Every system has faults, but I would also suggest that the current ranking systems aren’t well designed.
jockm,
I agree, these walled gardens are very troubling. It’s too much power in too few hands.
I think one solution would be to substitute “app store” with an “app mall” metaphor. In shopping malls, not everyone has to go to the same stores. We all have different tastes/preferences/needs.
Just think one brick and mortar store for shoes, computers, kitchen appliances, sports, lawnmowers, pet supplies, groceries, pharmacy, books, etc, and you couldn’t go anywhere else for anything. That’s essentially what the walled garden provides us with.
Yes we have stores that try to be everything to everyone, and they can be ok for some things, but sometimes we benefit from specialized stores that can do a better job at serving us. The central app store model deprives us of this specialization as well as app store competition. Competing app stores would have a strong natural incentive to select quality products. It doesn’t need to stock a hundred different wrenches, just one or two good ones. Some customers just want cheap products, others want high end products, let different stores cater to them. Having one-size-fits-all leads to these notoriously crappy app stores that are frustrating for everyone.
There would be a huge benefit for developers as well since we’d have far more reasonable odds at getting decent exposure in one of the many smaller stores rather than being invisible in the giant app store today. I’m loving the app-mall idea, it would give the industry the healthy free market jolt it so desperately needs. However walled gardens are here today due to corporate interests and greed…since that’s not going to go away, it’s hard to be optimistic that any of the platforms would voluntarily open up to competitors and provide the APIs & support to promote their stores.
That’s actually more or less exactly what Microsoft did with Windows Media Player… unfortunately it never got much traction though, perhaps because there wasn’t an official Microsoft “base” music store to start with. Perhaps if Microsoft opened up Windows for additional alternative stores it might work out better this time… but as you said, fat chance…
Moochman,
Interesting, I didn’t even know this about Media Player because I never used it. I’m trying to open live365 under media player, it doesn’t work (javascript errors, prompts to install flash – note flash is installed and does work generally). The store has big ads, and a humongous banner telling me to install it from the apple and google app stores.
Right now it looks like the “media player stores” are little more than links to webpages, has it always been this way? I’d probably use the web browser anyways. But it’s good to learn something new, thanks for pointing it out.
You don’t have to have walls on the device itself if you only build the walls around the app store; police and maintain strong rules in the app store, delete and remove misleading app, ban badly-behaving devs and whatnot so as to provide a safe, sane set of apps for the less-technically inclined to choose from while still allowing more experienced people to install applications from outside that store, including whole other app stores.
It’s been proven over and over again that a “community approach” to these kinds of things never work, they are simply too easy to game and a large part of the “community” doesn’t care, their vote is up for sale, they simply enjoy ruining things for other people and so upvote bad things and downvote the good ones and/or they’re entirely malicious. Humans in general are assholes, you’d still need top-down moderation to ever get anywhere.
I’ve no problem with a fully managed app store so long as you can sideload. Otherwise, I like your option of a two tier store.
In reality, if the store owner is offering money-back guarantees, we have to respect their right to cull apps that would tend to exercise said guarantees, and if they did offer a two-tier store, the unregulated tier would have to be ‘at your own risk’.
Waiting until the situation get so unbearable that the net starts filling up with articles about how bad things are is not what I’d call “pro-active”.
Microsoft is often good at listening when people complain loud enough, but they’re re-active. Especially in this case when number of apps seems to be the way to measure success, they wouldn’t have removed apps if it wasn’t a burden to keep them.
This is a regular gardening exercise, not a walled garden. Otherwise it’s the jungle – or a desert.
Edited 2014-08-29 16:24 UTC
This is the way to do it. You are not required to put stuff in the store or purchase from the store. Each company should feel free to curate the content as they see fit. I am sure we will see Apple and Google do more of this since Microsoft has taken the first step in making the store better for everyone.
Apple abd Google are already way ahead on this. Microsoft has just cleaned up a bit of the total crap that wouldn’t have even gotten into the App Store to start with
Ubuntu’s software repository is a concentric set of walled gardens. Random people don’t choose what’s in there. The distro maintaners do. If you use apt-get to install something, you can be pretty sure it’s safe UNLESS YOU’VE ADDED A NONSTANDARD REPOSITORY.
And that last part is the user’s choice and risk. It does not bother me that these app stores are walled gardens. I feel it’s an important service. On the other hand, the fact that you can ONLY install apps from these sources is limiting.
In the case of Apple (who like to be extra-strict about this), one approach would be to provide a web service that presents certain questions and warnings, and when the user completes the quiz, they get a code to enter into their iOS device to unlock installing of 3rd party apps. This protects users from nefarious apps and creates a reasonable barrier against attackers flipping the switch willy-nilly. The switch should be flipped only when the user REALLY wants to. And once the device is unlocked in this way, the user takes most of the responsibility for the effects of installing something they shouldn’t have.
theosib,
I’m going to nitpick and point out that ubuntu (and debian, etc) is simply a “garden”, not a “walled garden” since you are absolutely free to go elsewhere. It’s absolutely not the same as true device walled garden like ios, metro, roku, etc.
I agree that stores can and should be moderated, they pick what apps they carry, no problem. The problem is having products which are locked to that store – that’s what makes it a walled garden.
This would certainly be better, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be built into the OS ala android, but even that’s not sufficient IMHO. There are more innovative ways we could offer software if it weren’t for conflicts of interest. These stores haven’t really benefited from much competition on their respective platforms and that’s the way they like it. Consumers deserve genuine store competition with multiple viable players to truly compete on merit. They need proper exposure and should not be hidden to the average consumer, this is where I came up with the “app mall” metaphor earlier. We can’t have healthy store competition when restrictions and preferential treatment are hardwired into our devices.
Edited 2014-08-29 14:59 UTC
I believe that’s called jailbreaking.
No. Jailbreaking is when you unlock it without explicit support from the vendor. What I’m describing would be the vendor enabling an expert mode.
Misrosoft is addressing the problem that software in their APP STORE IS CRAP?!?
Seems odd that they’d be worried about that when it is their “operating system,” for want of a better term for the malware they ‘sell’, that is deliberately and intentionally designed to compromise user safety and data integrity to protect their bottom line.
I don’t mean to go off on a rant here, and while I can’t technically prove this because Misrosoft has gone to extreme lengths to ensure that no one can look inside their source code, please consider the following anecdotal evidence:
What would happen if Misrosoft ever released an operating system that…
1. Worked the way it was supposed to?
2. Was stable, (meaning it consistently worked without crapping-out and having to be rebooted every day or two to keep it working)?
3. Was robust enough to handle all the tasks the user wanted or needed to perform?
4. Was secure, and not absolutely RIDDLED WITH SECURITY HOLES, like every single version of Misrosoft Windblows HAS been?
Here’s what would happen. They’d likely sell a ton of them to OEM’s, a few to system-builders who want to be able to say they paid, then they’d never sell another again. The sad truth is that Misrosoft builds insecure, unstable crapware as a method of keeping people buying their “products” because if they don’t, when they stop supporting them like they did with XP, people know it would be an act of insanity to use a computer with that now unpatched “OS” on it on the internet, which is how most are used, because you’d be hacked in a heartbeat. They force you to pay over and over again for the same thing you’ve already paid them for and their business model is predicated upon you doing that. You have to “activate” it to prove to them you paid for it, and the way they enforce that is by leaving it vulnerable to OTHER malware. If you don’t register/activate it, you’re begging to get hacked.
To make this paradigm work, their software HAS to need CONSTANT patching and it has, for nearly 20 years. By contrast, Unix and Unix-like systems are vastly more secure, and didn’t cost almost a trillion dollars to make. There’s no excuse for Misrosoft to be allowed to have done what it did, and to be allowed to keep doing it, and the only rational explanation for why the same government that broke up Bell Telephone and Standard Oil for being ILLEGAL monopolists is that that government was either bought, or was using computers with Windblows, and so feared they were at Misrosoft’s mercy, which makes more sense, and is at least comforting to think it’s incompetence on the part of our elected officials, not greed and malfeasance that has allowed the evil that is Misrosoft to continue to exist.
There have been rumors that they’re contemplating switching to a subscription model, meaning put a quarter in the slot, to make your computer work again, or don’t, and use some other computer! The reality is they ALREADY DO THIS! Except instead of paying per month, you pay every couple years when you buy a new computer. Ironically, you end up paying EVEN IF NO ONE IS USING THE OLD ONE ANYMORE, *AND* YOU’RE GETTING ANOTHER COPY OF THE SAME THING, EVEN DOWN TO THE SAME VERSION!!!
Imagine buying the Beatle’s “White” album over and over every time you replace your stereo. Ridiculous! You’ve already paid for it, you should get to use it as long as you want. They prevent this by building problems right in, thus forcing you to buy it again and again and again…
Then again, Windblows wastes large amounts of YOUR resources decrypting itself because if it weren’t encrypted, it would be TRIVIAL to see that it’s doing exactly what I’ve just said. Misrosoft Windblows is a VIRUS, MALWARE masquerading as an operating system, and if this weren’t true, how come people keep buying their software after having already bought it before, when every version after version it’s the SAME THING?!?
Sure, Windblows Vista might have looked a little different from XP, and 7 might have looked a little different from Vista, and 8 a little different from 7… and no doubt 9 will look a little different from 8.x, but at the end of the day, it’s the same buggy, security-hole ridden MESS underneath, and you’re paying for a new UI, not really a new OS, while being convinced that you’re getting a new OS, which you’re NOT.
The good news is that there’s an alternative. Lots of them now, actually. Like for example, LinuxMint, running on the vastly superior base of GNU/Linux, does pretty much everything Windblows can do, does them better, and it’s FREE! Or, if you don’t want to take the time to learn how to use your own computer, there’s always OS X, based on UNIX, a system that’s been around a LOT longer than Windblows, and will CONTINUE to be around after Windblows is nothing but a bad memory. Windblows is a rip-off of a copy of something, DOS was a copy of a rip-off of something both older and better than itself. (I might have those two backwards, admittedly, DOS was I think a copy of CP/M which itself was I think supposed to be a version of UNIX for machines not powerful enough to run UNIX, and Windblows was a rip-off of MAC OS, which was a copy of X, or maybe that constituted a rip-off too… I confess I wasn’t there so, yeah.)
Anyway, enough evangelism! Misrosoft, and here’s my point, Misrosoft is in NO position to criticize anyone else for anything when it comes to the production, distribution, or really FOISTING OFF of lousy, awful, horrible software on a credulous and unsuspecting public for WAY MORE MONEY THAN IT’S WORTH!
And then you proceed to go on a rant.
As for the rant: spreading FUD and appearing like a total raving lunatic isn’t the way to get people to use Linux. Grow up kid.
People want the freedom to put anything they want in app stores. “Let the people decide!”… But then they get pissed when the app stores are filled with garbage and crap. Sounds like some people won’t be happy no matter what happens.
The idea that Microsoft should not have final say or `police rights` in what occupies their app store, running on their servers, for use with their products/services, is amusing to say the least. It’s astonishing what people think they’re entitled to. God forbid a company actually tries to provide its customers better quality and a better experience at the expense of not allowing their store to be a dumpster just cuz some people think they have a non-existent right to use it as such..
ilovebeer,
I sincerely mean this when I say let Microsoft do whatever it wants within their store. But microsoft jurisdiction should end at their store and should not extend onto consumer devices they don’t own. It’s about having the freedom to do what we want on “our” devices without needing permission from microsoft, it shouldn’t be any of their business.
Edit: I know, I’m a broken record by now. It’s just that there wouldn’t be any controversy here if microsoft didn’t control all app installation vectors.
Edited 2014-08-30 03:16 UTC