asked 2017-11-07 02:24:33 +0300
the jolla app store and openwarehouse are lacking apps. will this improve in near future or decline? windows mobile app store failed, with paid apps and incentives not motivating developers.. how will jolla succeed in that department when windows couldn't? im looking for opinions from other usere? its a nice refreshing os.
answered 2017-11-07 07:00:21 +0300
It is hoped it does not "improve" into the Play Store where there are a lot of applications, but most of them are interested in serving you advertising or stealing your data. It would be preferable to yes, have paid applications, but a smaller number of high-quality applications instead of a cesspool filled with get-rich-quick attempts by 15-year-olds making fart apps.
What is it lacking for in apps? Applications of real utility or convenience such as banking applications or transportation apps are at the mercy of the firms that hold that data: banks will (or "may", depending on the bank) be interested in security and thus will want to write the application themselves, while transportation firms will require having the data publicly accessible in a usable format. Telecommunications services management applications will be somewhere in between these two requirements
On the games front, well, there is a native Gameboy emulator so there you go, thousands of games are available.
Things like Whatsapp and Skype and other social communication applications require cooperation from their respective owners of the services (again, a downfall of non-libre software platforms) and thus "improving" the Jolla application shop won't do any good.
The intrinsic motivation for app development is already here: Sailfish user has a problem and has the programming skill and thus solves the problem with their skills and usually does a very good job, and that is the beauty of the current store: most applications are either well/decently written and feedback is taken into consideration in the hopes of the utility of the application being the end result and not being on the front page of the Daily Mail with the title "This 14 year-old-girl owns three Ferraris thanks to a five-minute programming course!".
If you move to extrinsic motivation, also known as "money" there is a drive to be the first to create garbage like "I am rich" kind of useless applications and other rubbish. I would rather not have to sift through applications that are there not to solve an issue or provide utility but whose main purpose is to make the developer money.
With that said, I agree that developers should be rewarded for their work. However, once you make a store where the reward is money you end up with those driven to it with numbers over their eyes and not the ultimate purpose of mobile applications which is to add utility and convenience to the mobile device. Jamming the device full of adverts and stuffing the data connection with telemetry data does not in my opinion add to the utility or convenience of the mobile device in the vast majority of cases.
This is the difficult question of how to feed developers, but not incentivise greed.
The best approach to have more applications would probably be to get more users onto Sailfish OS, which would drive demand for Sailfish OS applications, and with demand would come the supply. Simple economics!
So, probably no, it won't "improve" in the sense of being more like the Play Store and thank goodness for that. It is already a much better experience.
Maybe you can explain what applications you want and then the community can either point you in the correct direction or think up something?
i would like to see app store with more choices then relying on android support. what i am trying to say microsoft and blackberry failed in this department and they have the financial aid necessary to involve developers to develop apps for their native os. hopefully, jolla has other plans to succeed where others failed.
erdinch ( 2017-11-07 08:04:35 +0300 )editIMHO they just did that. They (as the first company ever in the mobile devices industry?) rolled out a new model to sell their mobile devices OS Sailfish: by licensing it to customers to install it on their own hardware of choice. This is IMHO as revolutionary as Bill Gates was those days back beginning to sale DOS and later Windows for existing hardware (opposed to hardware bundled with software). Has nothing to do with providing an app store like apple or a advertising platform like google though.
naytsyrhc ( 2017-11-07 13:44:59 +0300 )editProbably, I'll never understand why people condemn the value of earning money as a proper incentive. First and foremost, most people (probably also most developers) want to earn money because they need to pay their bills, want to get some food and decent accomodation for them and their family. There is nothing bad about it and in my opinion it's absolutely fair if they want to get at least a little cash out of their hard work. This is especially true if they should implement a certain feature which is highly demanded in the user base but which they don't see the big personal need.
Fearing greed on the developer's/some evil people's side with a user base of max. a few 10'000 users is really over-exaggerated IMHO. tl;dr: We need paid apps for SFOS.
Ygriega ( 2017-11-07 15:02:05 +0300 )edit@Ygriega we DEFINITELY need paid apps for SFOS. But maybe Jolla doesn't need them (well of course they do ;-), they just seem to ignore it). I think there are several developers out there that could live with earning some 200-1000 EUR/month with selling apps through a Jolla store with offical paid apps support. Let's say Jolla has (or gets) some 50k users and about 1-2% buy an app of a certain kind for just 1 EUR, the developer would already earn up to EUR 1000,-. It's not enough to live from, but it may attract developers that want to earn some extra money.
naytsyrhc ( 2017-11-07 15:16:49 +0300 )editanswered 2017-11-07 13:30:23 +0300
I do not miss sooo much apps native. Therefore we have Aliendalvik in which users can install and use their mission critical Android apps. I think every user has another need for native apps.
For me I am missing only Threema/Telegram. Telegram has a warehouse build "Sailorgram" which works for the basic needs.
Another mission critical apps like ActiveSync and Browser work as needed. Therefore I use XperiaX as my daily driver. All I need works and Aliendalvik allow me to use also my Banking App and my app for my german Diesel tanking spots an a contract base.
Of course it would be nice t see a lot more of native apps in the Store. But ATM the store is no ecosystem and I can hardly imagine that it will be transformed for a store with payments. This is not only a technical problem. This is also a BIG thing in country specific rights a store has to respect. Think only about the "Mehrwertsteuer" in Germany and the need for the store to give you bills in the right form and tax respectation for all custer countries You may know.
Better the developers work on fixing important BUG's and let the store as it is ATM
Asked: 2017-11-07 02:24:33 +0300
Seen: 819 times
Last updated: Nov 07 '17
It's not clear what you mean by "lacking apps" and "improve". Do you mean the numbers of apps available? Then the answer is yes. It's a total useless "improvement", of course, but yes, you can safely assume that the number of apps in the store will increase as it has done in the past.
If you mean "lacking certain apps" that you depend on and if your question is if those few apps will become available: No. My assumption is that you probably have fallen into the trap of proprietary services where a company controls both the server side and the allowed client software. Those companies will not spend money on a Sailfish version of their software until SFOS reached like 10% of their relevant customers... which is not going to happen.
ossi1967 ( 2017-11-07 09:56:17 +0300 )editSorry, but isn't that a duplicate of at least two or three other questions?
See https://together.jolla.com/question/6522/harbourstore-support-for-paid-applications/ See https://together.jolla.com/question/171977/the-state-of-paid-sailfish-apps-and-app-ecosystem/ See https://together.jolla.com/question/40495/qt-license-policy-and-paid-for-apps/
naytsyrhc ( 2017-11-07 13:39:43 +0300 )edit