

"Worse is Better" in the Google Play Store - mattspitz
http://mattspitz.me/post/69914048749/worse-is-better-in-the-play-store

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rayiner
> I hope that Apple sees the App Store’s model of infrequent, monolithic
> releases as a competitive disadvantage and finds some way to tighten the app
> development iteration cycle.

I hope they don't. Problems that a technical user might consider to be small
shortcomings are a huge source of frustration to less technical users, who
assume they did something wrong, or quickly come to distrust the product as a
whole.

I observed this recently when I saw my wife play with a Windows Phone. The
camera app was being difficult, and she quickly put it back on the display and
turned to leave the Microsoft Store. My comments about the great display and
the technical specs of the camera fell on deaf ears. To her, the experience
quickly conveyed to her that the product won't be something she can trust,
especially since she isn't comfortable enough with technology to feel
justified in taking the time to develop workarounds.

In contrast, she loves her iPhone because it rarely lets her down. It's not
bug free, but Apple appears to be very rigorous in stress-testing the paths
non-technical users are most likely to encounter. My Lumia 620, which I like
quite a bit, will sometimes stop responding to touch input when unlocked to
answer a call, and will sometimes not respond to voice input while paired with
the Bluetooth system in my car. These are easily worked-around (e.g. simply
locking and unlocking it will make it responsive to touch input again), but to
my wife they'd be deal breakers because she doesn't have a good mental model
of the extent and scope of the bugs.

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mattspitz
Well-said.

My point was more on shipping new features quickly, not shipping buggy
software. It's up to your engineering process to ship solid software. The Play
Store just enables your product team to figure out product/market fit ASAP.

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ricardobeat
Worse is worse. It's still much easier to find great apps in the App Store vs
foraging from the sea of crap and copycats in the Play store.

It might be a pain for developers, but their approach clearly works for users.

~~~
mattspitz
This assumes that everyone has equal access to distribution in the app/play
store, which is not the case.

Most apps grow organically at first, and at that stage, swift iteration is
critical.

Also, there's a difference between shipping buggy software and quickly testing
new features.

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dublinben
I've only found consistently high quality apps in the free software Android
market, f-droid. I think the Play Store has been overrun with crappy, ad-
infested apps since it was the Android Market.

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adamkochanowicz
Why are we renaming Lean/Agile development? The "New Jersey" approach?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development)

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redthrowaway
The link provided in the article [1] shows the MIT/NJ distinction _far_
predates any conception of agile development.

[1]
[http://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html](http://www.dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html)

And sorry for the downvote, that was accidental.

~~~
adamkochanowicz
Good point. As for downvoting, I didn't even know that was possible.

~~~
redthrowaway
It becomes available after you pass a certain karma threshold. It's just as
annoyingly small and easy to accidentally hit but hard to intentionally hit as
the upvote.

