[BBMak]

Bear in mind that this is a type of marketing by RIM. This quick money thing introduces BB10 platform to small developpers. thats all.

[notfanboy]

This is one of the reasons why "it's all about the user experience" is just RIM marketing speak.

First off is the undoubtedly dubious quality of these port-a-thon jobs. RIM undertandably wants to inflate the app numbers to minimize the inevitable reviews about the paucity of the app store. While this is a good strategy to preempt the objections of potential buyers, it is but a short term win as the experience will fall apart when the new owner start using those apps.

Furthermore, RIM is pushing three different UI paradigms to their users. The quality of Apple's iOS apps is because they pushed for one consistent paradigm, the HIG. Apple even policed HIG compliance in the app store. RIM on the other hand is simultaneously encouraging:
1) Cascades
2) HTML5 web apps - since these will be developed to be cross-platform, developers have no reason to follow Cascades conventions.
3) Ported android apps -

This is a dog's breakfast of user interface conventions. A user would open an app and wouldn't know which UI convention to use. I'm taking RIM's commitment to the user experience with a grain of salt.

[kill_9]

Like or not, rubish or not..gotta have that number of apps to survive this market. It's all about apps and market shar nums

In which case RIM could develop a separate "app" for each porn and fetish site on the Internet and fill the BlackBerry AppWorld with hundreds of thousands of "apps."

[SparkyBC]

BB world for the last month has been flooded with totally worthless garbage apps. Including those crappy home made RSS feed apps that take 4 minutes to make using the BlackBerry App Generator. Just one person alone flooded it with over 30 of the same useless apps but for different soccer teams.

All tools like this will do is flood the store. So it's much like the iOS app store where a person has to sort through pages of junk to find a gem. There are tons of garbage android apps that i am sure will take advantage of the $100. RIM should have only offered this for NATIVE written apps, to keep the quality not quantity race. But since people think the success or failure is an apps race they are filling it up with a lot of crap to appease small minds.

[Brian Scheirer]

If it makes you feel any better, I am a new developer and the Port-a-thon they did 2 weeks ago (All Aboard Port-a-thon) got me to code 10 Native Cascades Apps. That $1000 is a huge motivation to somebody like me to keep at it. And I'm sure there's others who made Native or WebWorks apps, believe they said there were ~4000 apps submitted for that port-a-thon.

Feel free to take a look: Brian Scheirer - BlackBerry App World Sure they are aren't all gems, but I'm still learning and have some plans for bigger/better apps. Not to mention, I spend time writing tutorials to help others too.

[BB_Bmore]

If it helps with the numbers i do not care. Anway you look at it there is going to be trash in the ecosystem. This is true for every platform and thats just the way it is. As long as the top apps are there i could care less about the garbage. Ios has it Android has it windows has it and Rim will have it. No use in complaining about it.I like the idea of the Android player. They are chasing jelly bean code and im sure the Android player will only get better and better. Until devs are jumping over each other to code native apps for Rim this is how it has to be.

[LuvULongTime]

The Android Player is a waste of time and money. It also takes the full potential of BB10 OS away. Really disappointed in RIM in this aspect.

An Android port would be an easy first step. I'm sure the various devs have stats breaking down the number of users they have on each platform. If an Android port proved to be successful then I think we would see a native version follow eventually. I really don't blame devs for taking this approach. I probably would too.

With the above said, I think the Android player is good to have. It opens the door where it otherwise wouldn't have been. Once RIM can build up a quality app library then I am sure they will pull the plug on the Android player forcing any leftovers to convert or get shut-out. It's a slow process that will take time.

[LuvULongTime]

Unfortunately, your premise has not been proven by the experience in the Playbook. Developers have not used their Android apps as evidence that people want native apps nor have they gone on too subsequently release native versions of their apps to appease those individuals who only want native apps. In fact, the opposite has occurred whereby an app went from native to android during an upgrade - one of the speech translation apps whose name I forget as I deleted it once it did this.

I understand what are you are suggesting but I just don't believe it works. If developers are testing the waters with android versions of their apps only to find that consumers will not Download them because they are android, these developers were flawed from the beginning. They should be testing the waters with natively designed apps, using the tools that RIM has provided, and then making a decision as to whether consumers will support them.

Don't use the playbook as your yard stick. Sales of the PB are weak at best. There was really never any incentive to develop apps for it, Android player or no Android player. This situation changes drastically once we start talking about 80 million current BB phone users that may convert to the new platform.

[LuvULongTime]

This is one of the reasons why "it's all about the user experience" is just RIM marketing speak.

First off is the undoubtedly dubious quality of these port-a-thon jobs. RIM undertandably wants to inflate the app numbers to minimize the inevitable reviews about the paucity of the app store. While this is a good strategy to preempt the objections of potential buyers, it is but a short term win as the experience will fall apart when the new owner start using those apps.

Furthermore, RIM is pushing three different UI paradigms to their users. The quality of Apple's iOS apps is because they pushed for one consistent paradigm, the HIG. Apple even policed HIG compliance in the app store. RIM on the other hand is simultaneously encouraging:
1) Cascades
2) HTML5 web apps - since these will be developed to be cross-platform, developers have no reason to follow Cascades conventions.
3) Ported android apps -

This is a dog's breakfast of user interface conventions. A user would open an app and wouldn't know which UI convention to use. I'm taking RIM's commitment to the user experience with a grain of salt.

RIM, nor any other company can control how an HTML 5 app will look on their device, so this is a problem that will plague Android and iOS. Criticizing RIM for making a great browser that can handle HTML 5 is disingenuous. Would you be happier if they introduced a weak browser that struggled with HTML 5?

Criticizing them for the Android ports is fair, however let's remember they are trying to build up their app library as quickly as possible and this is stop-gap. Once they have enough native apps built I believe the Android player will then get pulled.

[omniusovermind]

RIM, nor any other company can control how an HTML 5 app will look on their device, so this is a problem that will plague Android and iOS. Criticizing RIM for making a great browser that can handle HTML 5 is disingenuous. Would you be happier if they introduced a weak browser that struggled with HTML 5?

Criticizing them for the Android ports is fair, however let's remember they are trying to build up their app library as quickly as possible and this is stop-gap. Once they have enough native apps built I believe the Android player will then get pulled.

Didn't notafanboy just state that apple enforces standards though? As for it being a stop gap no. From all appearances RIM is committed to continuing keeping the android runtime running inside bb10, they've gone too far with it to pull it. I think the theory of getting enough native apps to pull the android runtime is flawed. That experiment failed on the PB, and even more telling a larger company like MS is still struggling to build a big app market of purely native apps for WP8. Notafanboy's point about bb10 apps being built from 3 different development styles is also something I'm not pleased with (cascades, android 2.x, and html5)

[LuvULongTime]

Didn't notafanboy just state that apple enforces standards though? As for it being a stop gap no. From all appearances RIM is committed to continuing keeping the android runtime running inside bb10, they've gone too far with it to pull it. I think the theory of getting enough native apps to pull the android runtime is flawed. That experiment failed on the PB, and even more telling a larger company like MS is still struggling to build a big app market of purely native apps for WP8. Notafanboy's point about bb10 apps being built from 3 different development styles is also something I'm not pleased with (cascades, android 2.x, and html5)

Apple can only enforce standards on anything natively developed, just like RIM can with Cascades. Apple has no control over a how a website is designed, be it in HTML 5 or Flash (lol) or anything else. Apple doesn't have to worry about Android ports.

In terms of the Android strategy being a failure on the PB, it was never going to work on the PB. Sales are far too weak. There aren't enough PB's out there to make it worth anyones while to write a native app or port one over. This all changes once we get into BB10 phones. If RIM can convert a meaningful number of their legacy users to BB10 they will have a user base that will be enticing to potential developers.

[magutwit]

The only way to have all big apps and quality apps and all the other apps is TO SELL A LOT OF PHONES. Nothing else. Android was a success because people wanted a cheap iPhone alike and they didn't care much for the apps (well they knew it's not an iPhone ), that's how they got the apps. If RIM sells well the bb10 inspite of the lack of apps....bingo. If no, all these thons won't help. This is only to make numbers while hoping for the best.

[T-Raww]

Yes they will the app will be. Stamped with a built for blackberry logo so consumers would know that it's a quality app

[omniusovermind]

Yes they will the app will be stamped with a built for blackberry logo so consumers would know that it's a quality app

I must've missed that news

[sexybabe88]

The only way to have all big apps and quality apps and all the other apps is TO SELL A LOT OF PHONES. Nothing else. Android was a success because people wanted a cheap iPhone alike and they didn't care much for the apps (well they knew it's not an iPhone ), that's how they got the apps. If RIM sells well the bb10 inspite of the lack of apps....bingo. If no, all these thons won't help. This is only to make numbers while hoping for the best.

should rim sell a lot of bb10 devices, what's stopping developers from just porting their android app over? what's stopping bb10 from forever living in the shadow of android? the only way is if bb10 manages to outsell android such that developers develop for bb10 first.

if i'm a new developer developing a serious app, what's stopping me from developing for android, converting it into bar and having some extra time to start on a new project?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[sexybabe88]

let me give you a prime example: the crackberry forums app for the pb is an android port. and it makes complete financial sense because it serves the purpose of both communities and there is no incentive to create a native app.

sometimes, taking the difficult path leads to better results. unfortunately rim decided to go with the easy route. i really wish rim would adopt the wp method. but like someone said, i fear the android player will become too deep seeded within bb10 should they continue with the launch with the player.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[torndownunit]

If it helps with the numbers i do not care. Anway you look at it there is going to be trash in the ecosystem. This is true for every platform and thats just the way it is. As long as the top apps are there i could care less about the garbage. Ios has it Android has it windows has it and Rim will have it. No use in complaining about it.I like the idea of the Android player. They are chasing jelly bean code and im sure the Android player will only get better and better. Until devs are jumping over each other to code native apps for Rim this is how it has to be.

I agree, but the problem I run into is FINDING the apps in Appworld. It's poorly laid out and the search functions seem hit or miss. There is definitely 'something up' with the ratings as well. I have left low ratings, but with very constructive descriptions, and those ratings just don't show up. There are other threads saying the developer has control over what ratings appear. So it's not as simple to just 'find the good apps' when the tools are so crappy for finding them. I rely on Crackberry to get info on pretty much all apps.

[kbz1960]

I agree, but the problem I run into is FINDING the apps in Appworld. It's poorly laid out and the search functions seem hit or miss. There is definitely 'something up' with the ratings as well. I have left low ratings, but with very constructive descriptions, and those ratings just don't show up. There are other threads saying the developer has control over what ratings appear. So it's not as simple to just 'find the good apps' when the tools are so crappy for finding them. I rely on Crackberry to get info on pretty much all apps.

They really need a better search engine. It is hard to find something unless you know the exact name including spaces etc

[darkehawke]

maybe so, but remove the android player and you can kiss goodbye to chances of growing.
you think quality alone will make bb10 succeed? it wont.
as long as there are quality apps and a decent search option then we should be fine.
choice is a fine thing, and we shouldnt seek to limit it.
also a bad app for you may be a great app for someone else

Sent from my BlackBerry 9810 using Tapatalk