Walt Mossberg, writing for The Verge:
Over the past few days, I’ve methodically deleted 165 apps from my iPhone, about 54 percent of the 305 apps I had on the phone when I started culling the herd. When I was done, I had significantly decreased the phone’s clutter: I’d gone from 15 home screens to eight, and reclaimed nearly 8GB of free space, about a 24 percent gain in my case.
And:
But this isn’t one of those columns about digital housecleaning or how to free up more space on your iPhone, valuable as those are. It’s easier to save space by offloading most photos, video, and music to the cloud anyway. No, this column is really about the fact that I think the novelty of the app itself has worn off. We’ve reached peak app.
And:
Before going on, I want to make it clear that I am not against apps as a software type. Just the opposite: I believe them crucial to mobile devices. I personally find that, for many targeted tasks, a well-designed app is much better to use on even a large phone than is a mobile web browser, even if both the app and a web page are tapping the same online services.
For instance, I’d use Facebook and Twitter much less on my phone if I had to use them through the browser, partly because they make it easy to open and close referenced web pages right inside their apps, with just a click.
And it’s still possible to create a sensation with a great app that introduces genuinely new experiences — like Pokémon Go with its augmented reality interface. But one reason that Pokémon is so newsworthy is that such blockbuster apps are rarer and rarer.
It’s easier to make a wave in a pond than an ocean, and that’s where we are now. The same is true in the businesses of movie/TV/journalism production. It is harder and harder to make content that stands out in that ocean of content that you’re competing against. That is the nature of any maturing business.
I was going to comment about him having way too many apps, 305 apps on 15 screens! But then I checked my numbers on my relatively small 3 screens. I clocked in at 230 apps. Guess I have some cleaning to do.
I have 19 apps.
No need to delete any
It’s good to cull some unused apps once in a while. I’ve got about 100 apps, and most of them only get used once or twice a month, but if I haven’t used one in months I’ll usually get rid of it.
I had my 64GB iPhone replaced by Apple recently. Instead of restoring from backup, set up as new. Only installed 1/10th of the Apps I previously had – down to two screens (with a few folders), and wound up with 18GB free space! De-cluttering rocks.
I have 11 third-party apps and only a single homescreen. I refuse to keep Fandango on my iPhone for purchasing movie tickets every other month.
The customer/ consumer in me agrees. But the Indy developer in me screams…
I hope we can find a good balance between the opposing Huge budget +Arny Schwarz advertising level games and the indies, there’s so many terrible apps with huge marketing budgets and so many terrible with zero, then many diamonds in the dirt who are missing out on users and not getting recognition.
The worst new trend are the app cloners, people that take the whole app and shamelessly rebrand (sometimes not even!) as their own and some reason the App Store approval works too – maybe because ts already passed. A copy /comparison tool would e Great for preventing these scammers.