So we’re at last escaping the dirty world of retail, embracing freedom of distribution and the walled garden trend of app stores is already strong on our ass to make us again some kind of slaves.
Fuck it. No, I don’t want that. I understand it for mobile devices, for convenience of use. But on a computer, never.
Thanks to the digital distribution freedom of today, users and services are growing up. There are digital stores and there will be more. The distribution with the web is easy, from Linux (packages) to Windows (ClickOnce) nobody can say that it’s complicated to install a new game or a new app on a computer today (while consoles are now far from the plug and play of the 8/16 bits generations). There’s 11 million people updating WoW without problem, people who don’t understand how it works but are able to click an icon and at worse a few menus.
What I hate the most is that this trend tries to really make believe that users are stupid, when they’re not. They learn everyday, they get better and it’s kind of disrespectful to claim “here stupid, your top 10 apps you should get; don’t install anything from the evil outside. It’s warm and sedated here don’t move”. While for developers dealing with that store thing is much worse:
- Lose of freedom.
- 30% cut on profits.
- Back to the Hit or Miss broken and unsustainable business model (it succeeds yes, for a really small amount of people). Be smart, don’t go this way…
People want and love convenience, yes. It’s happening without trading it against all of the above! Why would developers or users be happy with walled garden sprouting like venomous mushrooms?
Hell I’m sure not.