This week saw the launch of Apple’s Mac app store, letting users buy more than 1,000 programs for download, including best sellers such as Angry Birds. As the site attracted over 1 million purchases on its first day alone, Adie Flute, founder of agency Deviate, asks if quality is being sacrificed for quantitiy when it comes to user experience…
Once upon a time, when the internet as we know it was no more than a glint in its mother’s eye, and the receiving of email was as exciting as opening the brightly coloured parcel from under the Christmas tree, applications were produced by either big corporate beasts or back bedroom boffins who would devote way more time than is healthy for any one man to be removed from sunlight and social interaction.
At the same time websites were produced in ASP with only those that could afford to do so in the club, photos were taken by professional photographers, video by professional studios and printing by… well, printers (as in those dwelling in huge warehouse-esq buildings packed with all manner of great metal mechanical Heidelberg beasts that are lithographic printing presses).
The world was in a sense simple, if you wanted something doing you went to an expert who had the knowledge, experience and backing to carry the job out.
Times change, and now if you want something printed lots of us are DIY printing on our inkjet, or laser, or simply not bothering and emailing a PDF or JPEG (produced in Photoshop Elements, complete with lens flare and Comic Sans text). For photos we use our compact digital camera, for video we’re using our iPhone 4, for websites we’ve picked up a book on WordPress for Dummies and are having a go (or employing someone fresh out of college who has read the book from cover to cover, twice) and now we have apps developed by all.
There is undoubtedly good about bringing such tools to a wider audience, but at the same time is there a price to pay in terms of quality of product – is the photo you take, the video you shoot and edit, the printout you pull off, the website you use as the front of your company as good as what you would get had we stuck with the traditional “I know a man who can” route.
I would argue not.
It appears we have moved to a world where “well it’s OK” is the best we can achieve.
And whilst there is much good about the new Mac Apple Store I suspect that App Store “Excel” won’t be as good as what would be achieved if we had not ventured down this path (albeit at a fraction of the cost). And what effect will low cost, fast turnaround apps have on the old guard? I suspect prices will lower, but in doing so will more corners be cut, will applications be rushed off even quicker than they are today (I’m old enough to remember Apple before they felt it was OK to use their customers as unpaid beta testers), will R&D and therefore progress be sacrificed?
And this is with the store overseen by Apple, who is at least attempting to filter out poor quality etc. (although I have been amazed by how many poor quality iPhone apps slipped through the net). What happens when the next app store comes along? We have to look no further than to Android to see how quickly quality can demise in place of quantity.
I should point out that I’m not totally against the store or apps or the way of the world in principle, but when the rest of the world appears to be bringing out the confetti to welcome in such things I wonder what tomorrow brings, and are we in fact celebrating too soon?
Is “good enough” really good enough?
By Adie Flute
Founder
Deviate
www.WeAreDeviate.co.uk
