I've been saying "if AI is making you so productive then where is all this great new software" and I guess the answer is the software is out there it's just not great, it's terrible, and nobody is using it

[frankhghtwr@meow.social]

@eniko Mobile apps continue to be the dumping ground of all the worst of the software industry. Why am I not surprised

[ehproque@neopaquita.es]

@gabrielesvelto @eniko the good news is new versions are released every 5 minutes. The bad news is they're all bug fixes

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@ehproque @gabrielesvelto the even worse news is that the bug fixes introduce 5x as many new bugs

[ehproque@neopaquita.es]

@eniko @gabrielesvelto the sinbuglarity!

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko finally someone's doing the lord's work and killing off mobile

[mmby@mastodon.social]

@aeva @eniko
"this could have been a website" comes to mind

[toerror@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko I suspect the practical response of the shop fronts will be to increase the cost of listing an application...
<The sound of ladders being pulled up..>

[toerror@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@mmby @aeva @eniko Banking apps already killed mobile. No way I'm running [random thing] on the same device as that.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus@cyberplace.social]

@eniko Worse, it looks awfully like it might actually be depressing use (or non-use engaged enough to leave a review) across the board.

Hard to exclude confounding factors rigorously enough to be sure; but something is pummeling usage and reviews and the idea that large quantities of bot slop in the store is a "THE MARKET FOR “LEMONS”: QUALITY UNCERTAINTY AND THE MARKET MECHANISM" situation certainly has a plausible taste to it.

[tomek@mastodon.online]

@eniko so basically just like Fediverse "is just not great, it's terrible, and nobody is using it". Same situation because problem is rather network effect and BigTech gatekeepers than some software's specific quality

[youen@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko wonder what the curve of "abandoned apps that kind of work but are not maintained and are left to die on next OS breaking change" is going to look like

[workshopshed@mastodon.scot]

@eniko could also be that there are useful apps but no-one can find them because of the cruff? Or perhaps as soon as a useful app arrives many copy cats are created so that none of them get any significant numbers. Perhaps if that later case then we might see an uptick as discovery gets better.

[gurre@mastodon.nu]

@eniko
But the commercials for AI is telling me now everyone can make apps and make loads of money selling those apps!

waaaait. if everyone can make their own apps, who would be buying those apps?
Almost like there's a flaw in there somwhere.

No. The billionaires hyping AI can't be wrong, they're rich and so must be smart and benevolent and truthful!

[hacknorris@101010.pl]

@eniko WELL it did some tools for me. like this one: https://hacknorris-code.github.io/paint-game-editor/
and i think it works well enough

[sophie_talks@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko The future arrived. It generated 400,000 apps and somehow made finding a useful one even harder.

[greenmoonmoon@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@mmby @aeva @eniko well, most apps are already just websites...

[smolwaffle@union.place]

@eniko
How is "apps with significant usage" measured there? If it's based on some user count threshold that looks like the new apps are displacing old ones, but only via each one taking a couple users.

Though they're clearly all crap. That's not new for mobile, sadly - it has been the domain of shovelware for a long time
@spacehobo

[va3ekr@mastodon.radio]

@eniko they don't want great software. They want Burger-family -meal quality and they want to exploit the lower and middle class to extract more wealth

[canleaf@mastodon.social]

@mmby @aeva @eniko most apps are just skinned browser which are talking to some map apps.

[alice@mk.nyaa.place]

@eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place can confirm, same as e.g. flathub was getting fucking flooded with slop until they enacted the recent no-slop policy

and did that flood result in anything good? unsurprisingly, no, it didn't, it's all shit, nobody is using those apps and nobody is gonna maintain them once the bubble pops

edit: oh, and I'm only talking about accepted submissions here! even before the policy there was an even biigger flood of slop submissions that got rejected because they couldn't follow the most basic rules (unsurprisingly too)