However, I don’t think it works that well once your software apps start to converge. What started as a simple media player or messaging app is slowly adding more and more features. The developers try to compete with everyone in every field. This results in apps that aren’t good for anything other than annoying me.
Every app is now a platform
It’s not enough for an app to only do what it became popular for. The transaction used to be simple: you create an app that does what I need, and I pay you for the app, or you make advertising money. However, it seems that once a tool becomes popular, it has to start expanding. The developers have to keep blowing it up because for some reason quantity is confused with quality.
Concept is a good example of this. This is a platform that many of my colleagues love, but there’s no denying that it’s a far cry from the focused note-taking app it once was. Now it’s “The AI Workspace that Works for You.” and there is so much functionality built in that there is inherent overhead.
I’m not saying this makes Notion bad; clearly a lot of people love it the way it is now. I say there’s a reason I just use the Notes app in macOS and iOS instead of anything special: I just need to take some notes. I don’t have to run a small company or work with a team of people.
Basic tasks are buried under functions
The more features and extensions you add to an app, the harder it becomes to find and use the features that are at the heart of that app. If you’re old enough to remember Winampyou know this was a music player that really stripped everything down to the essentials. You could bloat it yourself with plugins and poorly designed skins, but out of the box it was a pure and purposeful piece of software.
Of course, most people these days listen to music via streaming platforms, and in my case I’ve been on the Spotify train for a few years. Which unfortunately means I’ve also seen this app fall short of Spotify’s ambition to be so much more than an app you use to play music.
Every time I open Spotify now, it takes way too long to get to my playlists and just start listening to music. I’m not here for podcasts or audiobooks. I’m not here to have the latest music (probably paid promotions) shoved in my face. I just want to listen to the music I paid for.
Accounts, sync and cloud are required
Perhaps what I hate most about modern apps is the almost universal need to be connected to the internet. I know this isn’t a practical problem for most people because staying permanently connected to the internet is easier than ever. Still, there’s no reason why (for example) a calculator app needs an internet connection to perform its basic functions.
I don’t necessarily want to sync all my information to an app developer’s cloud storage by default. I almost never want to create an online account, and honestly, I’m usually happy to pay a small amount up front for that privilege.
Monetization disrupts the design
You knew it was coming, but money is a big reason why app design is so perverse these days. For starters, everything is either just a subscription, or there are a bunch of features behind a subscription that really shouldn’t exist. To give an example, years ago I paid a one-time price to own a copy of it Songsterr-a guitar tablature app.
At some point, the developer decided to switch from a one-time payment model to a subscription, but people who purchased the app were confident that the original agreement would be honored. That’s why you see this message when you try to manage your subscription.
That seems fine, except that half the time I try to use the app, it tells me to subscribe and doesn’t recognize that I own a lifetime license for this version of the app. This is so frustrating that I ended up paying the $2 “legacy” subscription anyway, because repeatedly force-closing the app until it recognizes my previous purchase is not how I want to spend the first five minutes of a guitar practice session.
Ultimately, every app I open these days tries to keep me there by jingling keys at me from all sides and shaking the begging bowl. All I want to do is pay for what I need it to do, so it does that thing, and then move on with my life. However, it seems the invisible hand of the market has other ideas.
That’s bad news for you and me, because it means a lack of control and choice when it comes to the software we use. As app store operators begin to restrict side-loading, and we become completely dependent on those stores to provide us with the apps we use, the only choice we have is to accept the bloat – and pay for it.
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