46: Payola Problems
22 April 2013
A leaked email blows the lid off App store payola practices, Mike lays out why this is a major issue that undermines the future of the software industry. Plus getting in the zone to do your best work, breaking the bad news to your boss or client about their bad code, and the 25% problem.
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Daniel Gee:
I’ve heard that if the requirements of a codebase shift more than 25% or so, it becomes faster to start from scratch than to try to update the code. Greg Wilson brought it up in his talk “What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True”. Basically, the most costly part of coding isn’t the coding, it’s the nailing down the requirements. Once you have those, starting over is relatively cheap.
Dev World Hoopla
For example, this document shows AppGratis estimates a ~$300,000 buy will land an app in the top five slot in the US version of the App Store.
In most categories, if you either solve a new problem that a lot of people have, or solve an old problem in a new and better way, you can sell a paid app today just as well as you could in 2008. In fact, the market is much bigger now. But, as with any maturing market, you’ll need to do more to get noticed since so many problems have already been solved so well.
The bar is higher, but the market is fine.
Like Arment, I agree that the bar is higher for apps than it was just a few years ago, but I contend that the bar being higher is a problem for the average independent developer. Many of these developers simply do not have the capital required to hire a decent designer and effectively market an app.