Duplicate Apps

Apple or Android!  I was at a friendly birthday dinner the other day, and this topic was brought up, and things got ugly.  I've never been much of a "fan" in any respect of my life.  I love sports, but I don't have a favorite team.  I love technology, but I'd switch between one brand to the next without any sense of betrayal or loyalty lost. 


With that said, I am an Android user (both phone and tablet) and even more so, an Android developer.  Needless to say, I'm biased.
 
One difference between Apple and Android is the app ecosystem.  In the Apple world, before an app can be published for distribution, it must pass a review process by Apple.  In the Android world, no such barrier exists.  In comparisons between the two phone types, this is often mentioned as a plus for Apple.

Since Apple reviews apps before publication, the apps in their store will tend to be of higher quality.  Inferior apps, that drain system resources for example or simply duplicate the same features as another app, will be rejected from the Apple app store.  In contrast, when I searched for 'notepad' in the Google Play store, I got 4493 possible notepad apps. From a user's perspective, this may make the Apple seem experience better.

This feeling is pretty different from the developer's point of view (at least my point of view).  In the Android world, we are free to publish whatever we make.  There isn't a seemingly arbitrary judge who deems whether our app is good or not.  Furthermore, we are free to use free tools, which makes the bar to enter even easier to cross.

So, it seems that Apple will have a nice curated selection of apps, and Android will have a mish-mash of good apps hidden by a mountain of poor apps.  Thankfully, the Android app world has a pretty good way to help users find the best apps.  User-reviews.  These reviews make it pretty simple to identify the cream of the crop apps and skip the poor ones.

I see the Android app world as being similar to the internet.  Anyone can create any kind of website or app.  The best sites and apps will eventually be found and used, while the poor ones will not be.

Which ecosystem do you want to live in?  Do you want to be in a world with curated content (maybe like the New York Times choosing which 1000 articles are sent out each day)?  Are do you want to be in world like the internet, where there is good content, almost completely hidden by mountains of bad stuff.