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Health Apps Useful, But Unused

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TaoPhoenix:
Crappy category or crappy design? Interesting question.
-Renegade (January 30, 2013, 06:54 AM)
--- End quote ---

Crappy Design.
I'm becoming annoyed by the lack of quality in mobile apps. I really wish they would just make a "phone-PC", even if the specs are reminiscent of what we "used to consider okay" (PIII?)
I'm getting dissuaded from even going to the App Store because everyone is racing to put out Crippleware for the free app which makes you take a long pause before you spend between $1 and $20 (!!) per paid version.

It gets to the point where the only thing the devs make is a nice intro screen so that it looks almost sensible. (Oops, sometimes not even that. Both the SciFi collections look *worse* than a child's art project.) So les'see...

We're talking about Health apps, right? So the other night all I wanted was some ambient music to play on my headphones to go to sleep. So something like all ten of the "sleep help" apps have some 1-3 tracks, with more on sale for $3-5 each per track. Then they only have some 5-10 controls and features. Really?!

Let's try Audiobooks. I grabbed one which is literally nothing more than a front end for one/more of the Librivox SciFi collections. Streaming. They don't download for you to play for your hair raising pleasure. They *stream*. Every time. Librivox. Ever heard one of those? They're *Public Domain*. I can't think of a better app where it could sit on the table while you have dinner and download the audio books. No. They need to stream. Every. Single. Time. And 5-8 of them don't even connect. The other SciFi collection (with half the same readers, but apparently Non-Librivox editions with the disclaimer edited out) doesn't even have an audio volume adjuster or a track position slider.

So no. It's bad quality. Not to mention less than 5% of apps create anything exportable. So say you have this health app. All your data is stuck there in that app. That's because phones don't create files, remember? So overall I will never forgive that part of the phone-OS mentality. It will therefore always be a Phone with a couple extra widgets.

Looping back on topic then, why would I want to use a phone app to track something important if there were A, very few features, and B, no exportability? Yuck.

Some of y'all's "Snacks" have better quality than bunches of those phone apps.

Edvard:
Hmmm... sounds like there's still some room for quality apps after all.  I had been dissuaded from dipping my toes in mobile development water precisely because there are about a bajillion apps for everything you can imagine, but I've been finding the same thing you have; crap design or just plain false advertising for 90+% of them.

Seems health apps are something you have to maintain and folks vastly prefer anything automagic or 'set-and-forget' over something that demands attention, so it's no surprise.  Maybe if they made it in to a game, like a weight tracker that worked like a Tamagotchiw so NOT entering your info gave you a lower score in some sort of game.

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