Organization

Marco, in App Rot:

Apple’s App Store design is a big part of the problem. The dominance and prominence of “top lists” stratifies the top 0.02% so far above everyone else that the entire ecosystem is encouraged to design for a theoretical top-list placement that, by definition, won’t happen to 99.98% of them…

The best thing Apple could do to increase the quality of apps is remove every top list from the App Store.

We’re not employees, so a union doesn’t make sense. But it’s still true that a group of some kind has more leverage than individual developers.

What I’d love to see is something formal where Apple listens to developer feedback about the App Store. It’s their App Store, but it’s also the only market place for iOS apps — and, because it’s the only game in town, fairness suggests that we’d have at least an advisory role (beyond kvetching on blogs and Twitter and Radar).

But how this should work is beyond me. (I grew up more on Robert Heinlein than on Ursula K. LeGuin.)