A sundial—casting a virtual shadow on screen—app, a one-pad Pong game, a great moustaches of the world catalogue, a virtual handshaking for germaphobes, and my favourite: The You Are Here GPS app. All rejected—and fake—Microsoft Phone apps.
Obviously, Microsoft thinks that there’s a lot of crap in the iTunes App Store, so they have created this video of a fake Microsoft App Lab, where the Redmondnites test third-party developers apps for the Windows phone Marketplace. On one side, they want to highlight the stupid apps in the App Store. On the other, ridicule the iTunes App Store app approval process.
They think they got a point, but actually they don’t. Sure. it’s true, the iTunes App Store approval process can get really silly at times. But those are exceptions, not the rule. Usually, an app just gets approved, and nobody bitches about it.
And yes, there are a lot of idiotic apps in the Store. They fail to recognise, however, that many of those apps are, ironically, extremely popular. People like them and pay for them. I bet many prospective Microsoft Phone developers would like to enjoy the same success, and get loaded with a couple of days of development of one dummy—but happy—idea.
More importantly, there are still tons of good, extremely useful apps and games at the iTunes App Store, which is why it still beats any other mobile store out there by an overwhelming margin. That’s the reason that made Windows win the war against the Mac in the first place: The former software catalogue—full of serious, fun and plenty of dumb, crappy programs—dwarfed the latter.
So the question here remains the same: Does Microsoft actually have any significant number of worthy apps in store for Windows Phone users? The answer: At this point, who cares? [TechCrunch]
Ollie
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 7:57 AMPeople have a panchant to buy shit. So people produce exactly that, in vast quantities. I think Microsoft are appealing to the more reasonable audience here which I think is a good thing.
I don’t have a JesusPhone, and I never will. I actually do see the funny side of this video, it just highlights how much pure garbage is out there in a concise way.
Jamie Carl
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 9:18 AMThis article almost made me want to go off an buy another iFart app from the app store. Then I remembered that I ditched my iPhone cause they are crap.
You’re right about one thing though, Jesus. Who cares? Android is the future. ;)
ijoostin
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 11:55 AMI think Microsoft needs to stop their subtle hints at poking fun at Apple…
Their ads suck full stop – and the subtle quips are only understood by people who care and are reading into what it’s all about…
Otherwise it’s just another Microsoft ad that makes no sense whatsoever…
…they REALLY need to hire a new marketing team..
My opinion though
P.S. – Don’t say fanboy, I’m running Win7…not on a Mac
Andreas Souvleris
Friday, August 20, 2010 at 7:31 AMI agree totally, Microsoft has stolen many ideas from Mac OSX, PC Manufacturers have stolen many design features from macbooks (Seen the HP Envy? Exact Clone) and phone manufacturers, if you can’t see the blatant copying these companies are doing then you’re blind just look at how many touch screen phones are around today compared to before the iPhone, the only touch thing I remember was a palm pilot and that required a stylus!