
The reports of Windows Phone lacking in apps are greatly exaggerated - joshuacc
http://subvert.ca/Blog/windows-phone-apps
======
rodh257
I own devices across the 3 major platforms, and have been using a WP7 for a
couple of months. The problem with the apps isn't that there isn't enough, its
that the isn't enough GOOD ones. Sure there may be equivalents of your iOS and
Android apps, but chances are they won't have feature parity, or be as
polished as their counterparts. And why would they? Until there is a good
market share it's hard for developers to justify anything other than an
obligatory WP7 app. Time is better spent elsewhere for now.

WP7 will grow, at present there is no disputing that the app market place is
inferior.

~~~
gdharries
I wrote my blog post because I believe, for the apps I use, there are good
enough, or better, alternatives. That may not be the case for everybody, but
it's sufficient for me.

------
untog
I have a Windows Phone, but I strongly suspect I'm going to return it
tomorrow. Most of the important apps I need are there (excluding Words With
Friends, my guilty pleasure) but some of them are horribly broken- Rdio, for
one, doesn't even play music I sync to my phone. The maps app is also utterly
atrocious.

It's not so much the apps that are missing, but the OS hooks. WP has a super-
slick integration of Facebook/Live chat into the Messaging pane- it's how
every phone should do it. But I use GChat, and AFAIK there is no hook for
another service to add itself to the Messaging pane. Instead I have to make do
with a pretty shoddy third-party app.

~~~
gdharries
I don't use much in the way of Google-branded apps, so that category of
integration isn't important to me. I know for others, like yourself, it is and
I recognize that gap.

------
Samuel_Michon
Alright, I searched the WP Marketplace for the apps I use most often on my
iPhone:

 _Reeder, Instapaper, Evernote, Highrise, Dropbox, Nebulous, Bento, Pages,
Numbers, Delivery Status, Soundhound, Articles, IMDb, WhatTheFont, Roambi,
WolframAlpha, Tax Pro, PCalc, Soulver, MailChimp, myPantone, Prizmo, PicTools,
Skype, Colloquy, Instacast, TextExpander, OmniFocus, and 1Password._

Out of those 28 apps, only four of them (!) are available in the WP
Marketplace: Soundhound, IMDb, 1password, and Evernote (which, according to
the reviews, is unstable).

Microsoft's approval process isn't perfect either, I noticed some pretty dodgy
apps. For instance, there's an app that uses the Tumblr name but doesn't work
(according to the reviews) [1].

Sure, there must be some replacement apps on WP7 for writing, calculation, and
editing spreadsheets and databases. But not the apps I like, and which are the
result of 3 years testing and learning many different apps.

Oh, and from the article:

 _"TSN Mobile: On iOS, you can install an app. On Windows Phone, just go to
the TSN website and pin it to your start screen. Internet Explorer Mobile is a
terrific web browser this way.

CBC News: Again, you don't even need an app. Simply go to CBC News and pin it
to your start screen."_

That's hilarious. In an article that promises to show that WP Marketplace has
more native apps than is widely believed, the author ends up trying to
convince us that web apps are better than native apps. In Internet Explorer,
no less.

[1] [http://www.windowsphone.com/en-
CA/apps/37bdda4e-1c03-e011-92...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en-
CA/apps/37bdda4e-1c03-e011-9264-00237de2db9e)

~~~
gdharries
You're right, you got me. As I'd mentioned in my blog post, these aren't
crucial apps to me and so I've been fine to just pin the mobile web version to
my phone's start screen. I've since updated the article to include apps that
I've previously used and enjoyed: ESPN ScoreCenter, ScoreMobile and Globe &
Mail. All solid choices.

And by the way, IE 9 Mobile is pretty darned sweet, as is the desktop version.

------
astrodust
This is a pretty weak-sauce blog post to go on about how Windows Phone is
actually really good, yet simultaneously posts _only_ iPhone screenshots.

~~~
underwater
WP7 does not have inbuilt screenshot functionality.

 _Edit:_ The spartan design of Metro apps generally doesn't look that
impressive in screenshots. The polish is more apparent in both the animations
and UI elements (like the panorama view) which don't translate into static
screens. This is the reason most WP7 ads feature "screen shots" that look like
this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wp7_musicvideo.jpg>

~~~
melling
What else is missing from the phone? Microsoft simply doesn't care enough to
provide the polish that Apple is overly neurotic to care about. It just has to
be good enough.

Hopefully, Android goes the extra mile. It's getting better minus the crappy
browser. Google has the best browser in the world. Why it's not on the phone
is beyond me. Over the holidays a couple of my relatives had traded in their
Android phones for iPhones. The details really do matter.

~~~
kooshball
> Microsoft simply doesn't care enough to provide the polish that Apple is
> overly neurotic to care about. It just has to be good enough.

Have you ever used a WP7? It is very well polished. The parent you're replying
only mentioned the polish is more clear when there's animations since that's a
huge part of the design.

------
icefox
It is "lacking in apps" because the iphone has more apps, plain an simple.
There is nothing that can be done to change this. App count is the CPU score
for phones. Users buy iphones because of it and developers make apps for it
because of that, cyclic hell. What I don't get is why no manufacture has tried
to avoid this arms race. There are a half dozen different ways you could go
about this, but _change the discussion_ so it isn't about the total number of
items in an app store.

Even Blackberry's AppWorld has a lot of apps these days (or in Blackberrry
management speak tonnage), so is BlackBerry lacking in apps greatly
exaggerated?

Disclaimer: these thoughts are my own and not my employee.

------
larsberg
I think a much better post may have been tell people to check for their apps
in the marketplace first because there are a huge number of common apps.

But, they might not have _your_ apps, if your apps include Pandora, Uber Cab,
or Bump, for example.

It's like using a text editor with an "emacs keybindings mode" --- it's not
inferior if it doesn't have all ~1200 bindings from my default org-mode. It's
inferior if it doesn't have the particular subset that I use daily.

