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Seems Microsoft's app review is seriously lacking oversight or any personal at all
SourceBoth Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 suffer from the reduced number of apps available in their stores, and it's no secret that Microsoft itself acknowledged and tried to address this by convincing more developers to port apps to its modern platform.
But one of the issues that are still affecting the Windows store is the overall app quality, as the amount of spam and the number of useless apps that are listed for download are absolutely shocking.
For instance, today we came across some apps created by a developer called “Thao Plus,” who, according to the statistics published in the stores, has a total of 16 items listed for download.
All of these apps follow the same pattern and promise you to offer a tutorial for famous software or games in exchange for a very small fee, in most of the cases two or three bucks. If you click on any of these apps, there's no description, no app information, only a few screenshots, and obviously a buy link to make you purchase the app.
Seems Microsoft's app review is seriously lacking oversight or any personal at all
Windows ‘Modern’ apps are pretty bad. They are not just basic, but what I would call sub basic (I.E. they lack even the most basic of features). And that includes big name apps like the official Twitter app, which for example won’t even do something as basic as show in-line photo thumbnails on the time line, etc.
It’s a pretty poor user experience when someone goes to the effort of trying out these new Windows apps, only to find they’re better off just using the website because the website is not only more functional, but also has a better user interface. Microsoft apps seriously need sorting out, it’s just not good enough for companies to just stick a rubbish app in the store and then claim they have a ‘Windows app’.
The next problem is that the permissions for what the app wants to access are too vague. For example, if an app says it wants to access your location and contacts list, it could be for legitimate reasons for example to remind you to call XYZ when you get to a certain location and then display their contact info on your screen, or it could just be mining all your data.
I also have very little trust that Microsoft are carrying out sufficient checks on what they allow in their store and get the impression they just want quantity over quality at any cost. It’s a mess. And to make things worse, because they’re supposed to be vetting apps, it gives consumers a false sense of security when installing them. If you look at the below screenshots, the ‘best-rated’ app in the Windows Phone store is an app called ‘Now Music Stream’. But if you drill down and actually read some of the comments, it appears to be a rogue app that asks people to rate it 5 stars first to unlock special features. Doesn’t exactly instil much trust in Windows apps. Also, why does it need to access all the following...
appointments
contacts
phone identity
owner identity
video and still capture
location services
maps
music library
photos library
media playback
microphone
data services
phone dialer
push notification service
SD card
movement and directional sensor
web browser component
Basically as far as I am concerned Microsoft is too late. Android and Apple have the phone markets sown up. I am also not the only one who thinks this was as sales figures sort of prove my point. Why on Earth does Microsoft just go back to basics and produce a Great OS and productivity software (Office, Map Point, Encarta) and Games and forget about this market. Tablets and fondleslabs are already in decline as they were a passing fad.
What people fail to get is that the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store are also full of crApps. Yes, there are more good apps. But there are tons of terrible apps in all of the stores.
So lets bash Apple and Google too.
Not sure what the criteria is for the Store beta but in some cases the actual app has gone leaving only these useless scam things...All of these apps follow the same pattern and promise you to offer a tutorial for famous software or games in exchange for a very small fee, in most of the cases two or three bucks.
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At this point the store is a mixed bag and you really have to keep the reviews in mind when you go to install an app, well I do at least. So far I only have a few apps: Games, weather and news but as the apps improve I'll make use of more.
MS needs to monitor who submits an app and the quality of said app. But that's not going to happen overnight or even a year.
Jeff
Microsoft are two late to rectify problems in the Store. The monitoring, which was promised with the introduction of Windows 8, is non-existent.
I am not a prolific Apps user, but gave it a go, in order to join in feedback on forums. I chose four "free" apps, and two other Apps at random. All four Apps turned out to be free to try, with an option to purchase. This could not be seen until the programs were installed and run. Maybe I was unlucky, but the other two would not run.
The process of even browsing was tedious, with about 500 Apps in the "Free" category. Admittedly I could narrow it down with a little search filtering. but, in my case, if I had a defined idea of what I was looking for, I found it quicker to google on a browser, which led me to the same App, but in a shorter time.
At this stage, MS have my sympathy if they intend to clean up, but they have left it so late, I can only see it as an impossible task.