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Originally Posted by BubiSparks  What I really can't understand is that Emobistudio's apps (16 as of today) are still offerred on BB Appworld.
Surely RIM has a vetting system to ensure that only legit apps that actually do something useful get on there???
Obviously not, and that's quite shocking! |
I've been complaining about these BS apps that - at most - call a java garbage collect routine (which only *suggests* to the runtime that a gc should be performed whenever the runtime also deems it appropriate) for a couple of years. I remember digging into one of these companies 2 or 3 years ago (not sure, but I think it was the guys who published memoryup) and being amused to find that the corporate hq address came down to a house in a small suburban mid-west neighorhood on the same block as some others that sold such notable items as "reception boosting decals" that you were supposed to stick to the inside of your phone (another scam).
Take a look at my rather large post on pinstack back in August 2007
here.
If you do a couple of web searches, you'll find that knowledgeable Java developers agree that it's simply BS. Some have taken the extra step of going beyond their own knowledge of Java and have checked the BB event monitor to see what memoryup actually does...
Also check this
post for more about the misrepresentation apparent in their advertising as of April 2008.
Something for potential customers to remember: user experience with a multi-tasking OS like this is largely subjective. There are numerous studies - major ones - performed over the last 50 or so years relating to customer perception, and it's known that people will generally:
- WANT the product they buy to work, especially if it claims to produce an outcome they seek
- Will tend to believe that the product actually DOES work if the results are subtle and only subjectively evaluated
For anyone pondering the idea above, think about the multi-billion dollar weight-loss product industry and "sex enhancement" industry -- and don't forget cures for baldness too. Although study after study illustrate that these products do little or nothing except extract money from your wallet, people spend a fortune in the hope that the products will make a difference in their lives, and often convince themselves for years at a time that they're working -- and blame the failures on themselves for deviating ever so slightly from the prescribed regimen.
Fraudsters have been selling snake-oil to a naively hopeful consumer market since the dawn of human commerce.
What's also notable about products like memoryup is that NO LEGITIMATE and RESPECTED independent laboratory has evaluated these products and published results - EVER. Doesn't that make you curious? Additionally, these products are released in versions for numerous difference cell phones, meaning that they're available for literally hundreds of millions of hand-held devices in the marketplace. If they were real - and really made a difference in the performance of any of these devices, would it not make sense for a company like RIM, NOKIA, Qualcom, SONY, etc to either buy the product or produce their own version?
RIM is working on their own OS constantly, putting out new releases for all models several times a year. They've been doing this since day one and will likely be doing it for many years to come. But we're supposed to believe that the guys who write the OS (Sun and RIM), design all the internal logic of the OS, and write the API calls that products such as "memoryup" MUST call in order to do ANYTHING within the device can't come up with a product like this -- or a simple update to their own OS -- despite CONSTANTLY trying to improve the user experience in their unending quest for customer acquisition and loyalty in a multi-billion dollar competitive arena?
I'm just sorely disappointed that:
1) the managers of respected sites don't do their own investigation and publish meaningful results for their members
2) respected 3rd party labs (such as TomsHardware, ZDNet and CNET) don't pursue these and put this endless debate to bed
3) sites that sell such apps (like BB AppWorld) don't do some kind of due diligence when app vendors make suspicious claims (I'd love to see internal RIM OS developers weigh in on this and let the other department at RIM - the one that runs AppWorld - know how this really stacks up).
I'm incredibly disillusioned to see that products that appear to be scams are among the top selling apps on AppWorld, suggesting to me that it's still profitable to sell snake oil.
If I'm wrong -- and any legitimate, repeatable, scientific testing can uncontestably prove that -- and be repeated by others performing the same tests -- then I will publicly apologize for my skepticism. I'm happy to learn more, even if it means that I was wrong. But after being in software for many years, having been a developer, consultant, CIO and CTO for a long time, I can generally tell when a software product is legitimate -- and when claims about a product are bogus.
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