Worst App Store Offenders: Graaple, Hotix Studios [Add Yours Here]
Graaple has 23 pages of apps which amounts to approx. 276 apps. Hotix Studios has 20 pages of apps, a total of 120. While I certainly don't care if you have 1 or 50 apps, what annoys the **** out of me is that every single 1 of these apps is utter utter garbage.
Both companies ALONE combined release an avg. of 25 apps PER DAY. And what is worst is that they flood completely unrelated categories. Submitting garbage to social networking, utilities, and even references. The release list now is completely useless in EVERY category.
Seriously Apple needs to do something about this. Here is hoping that someone from Apple is reading this. And with any luck both companies join Mr. Sheikh.
If you came across garbage companies please post here. Thanks!
App Store Wall of Spam:
------------------------------------ - Brighthouse Labs (4282 apps)
- Xhumans (852 apps)
- Niles Technology Group (552 apps)
- G.P. Imports, Inc (300+ apps)
- Sheryl Apps (298 apps)
- Graaple (276 apps) <---Apple removed 232 apps of theirs on 19/02/2010
- McApps (204 apps)
- m5 systems LLC (144 apps) <---Language Spam instead of localizing
- Hotix Studios (120 apps) <--Apple took them down completely on 19/02/2010
UPDATE [19/02/2010]:
Someone from Apple is reading this thread for sure. Hotix Studios is completely gone from the App Store. Graaple apps are down to 24 apps (from 120).
I would like to thank Apple for their absolutely incredible turn around time on cracking down on App Store spammers. This not only improves the quality of the App Store but also gives hope to all honest indie developers out there to keep on writing software for the platform.
Last edited by UMAD; 10-16-2010 at 06:52 PM.
Reason: setting up the wall of shame
GOLD MEDAL — Sheryl Apps (aka Ankur Gupta) with 25 pages of "apps"
SILVER MEDAL — Graaple (aka Rishi Gupta) with 24 pages of "apps"
BRONZE MEDAL — Hotix Studios (aka Vikas Gupta) with 20 pages of "apps"
OMG.. If I didn't go around checking them all out.. I would not have noticed the coincidence that they all share the same "Gupta" family name!
Seriously, can you all who are so pissed with this please send an email to Phil Schiller? Let us all do the same and see if "Mr The App Store is Pretty Well" takes any action.. his email is schiller@apple.com
They are the people who run AppMakr.com. They have a service which provides automated iPhone app development. For a hefty price, anyone can have a horrible app on the app store.
And pay attention what happens when you click the link to visit their company website (the link that's in the AppStore)...it leads you to...yeah: LOCALHOST!!!!
I must admit, they will be missed a little... I love seeing the names they come up with - its a good laugh like:
Fancy Guy
Funky Fancy Teen
Fancy Irresistible Women
Irresistible Dude
Persuasive Ladies
Awesome Top Women
Sizzling Awesome Guy
Awesome Sizzling Dude
Brainy Bold Ladies
Beguiling Doll
Persuasive Teen
Amazing Fancy Tempting Guy
Fancy Tempting Persuasive Brainy Girls
These are classics!
Hi guys, it's Daniel, I'm one of the four co-founders of AppMakr.
First, we wanted to thank you for your honest and open thoughts. We don't mean to intrude on your discussion, but to let you know that we are here to have a discussion & dialogue with you should you want one.
The parent company of AppMakr is PointAbout. We've been doing very high-end, custom (and expensive) apps for clients for about 2 years, including the Cars.com app (currently #3 on "What's Hot" in the AppStore), along with apps for large publishers such as Gannett and others.
By creating AppMakr, we're hoping to make the creation of apps more accessible to larger groups of people. For example, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, The US Coast Guard, Cambridge University and others have used AppMakr to make apps, when they otherwise would never have been able to do so. Apps through AppMakr are $199 to $499.
There are also lots of small groups like churches, universities, and many others using AppMakr to make apps.
We want to be really sensitive to any thoughts you have about these being garbage or useless apps. Our goal is to open apps up to the masses, while maintaining a very high quality of experience. If you guys would like, we can definitely reply here with some detail about how we're working to do that. But mostly, we just want to listen and hear your concerns so we can be sure to incorporate them in what we're doing. I guess the question really is this: If an app uses a common framework, but is made by individual users with their content, is that a garbage app? We totally understand how an app that is 99% the same content, look & feel but just stamped out lots of times would be very annoying. But is it annoying when it's real users using a framework like AppMakr to make their individual apps with the content that is important to them?
Lastly, many developers have been loading their Apple Developer Accounts into AppMakr, which allows them to use the AppMakr framework and make apps more quickly under their own brand. It also lets you test apps for free through AppMakr w/o paying anything. You can get some details on doing that here: AppMakr.com Support : Search
Hi guys, it's Daniel, I'm one of the four co-founders of AppMakr.
Daniel R. Odio
Co-Founder, AppMakr.com
So finally some one from the targeted company chiming in. I think what some developers think is if you can make a lot of apps, you must be producing garbage apps. And what if Apple do banned your company? Will you refund their money? I think might be a chance, Apple might ban it. If I am not mistaken, your company has also been reported.
There's a profound difference in what Gupta's are doing compared with what Appmakr are doing. I have no problem with Appmakr (as it is consumer driven), I do have a big problem with the Guptas of this world.
I think the problem people are having with AppMakr is that it's an RSS feed disguised as an app. I'm sure you're making good money charging people for them - so, good on you. You found a need and filled it, I can't really argue with it.
There's your problem, you need a new goal. All your service does is thin out the line between the app store and the internet. People download apps knowing there is a production behind it, with AppMakr's automated app development, there is no production aside from filling out a form, choosing an image or two, then watch as the very small amounts of people download their "app".
Even you, Daniel, should be able to admit that in 99% of the apps done through your service are extremely lacking quality.
I appreciate you being brave enough to ask the opinion of this forum, which consists of mostly independent developers that work weeks and months on their app store projects, and unfortunately get drowned out by "spam" apps, which your business contributes to.
Anyways, my opinion of your service is as it was: Horrible.
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"creation of apps more accessible to larger groups of people"?
There is a huge huge difference between making tools that allow people to "easily submit and create quality apps" and the "automation of garbage generation". I skimmed quickly through your forty-*******-two pages of apps and didn't find a SINGLE decent app. Almost 99.9% of the apps have a single screenshot that ain't even of anything inside the app. Just some photo that is the same like the icon.
Masses my ***!
Hopefully we can keep this thread running till these guys are out of the store. I remember the same happened till the khaled sheikh dude was kicked out by Apple.
Last edited by UMAD; 02-17-2010 at 04:09 PM.
Reason: typo. I care about 'em
We *totally* know what it's like to be a hardcore developer. We have a team of a dozen very hardcore Objective C developers. We know the sweat that goes into making a really great app; a big part of our lives is still doing high-end custom aps. I guess I just want to make sure that we know where you're coming from, because AppMakr's not meant for companies that have the budget to make a really custom app.
What we found was that, when you look at the usage stats on apps, say from Pinch (Flurry) or similar, they show that most apps are used in a very temporal fashion. People will download an app, use it for a few weeks or months, and then move on.
And so wouldn't it be great if anyone could get their message out as an app, and do it really quickly?
Yes, there's no doubt that AppMakr apps don't hold a candle to what you guys can do custom. But it's not meant to. Haven't we all had clients that *want* to do something in mobile, but just don't have a budget to do it?
We've found that AppMakr is a great way to get clients in the door at a very low pricepoint. In fact there are many developers who are using AppMakr to make apps for $499 and then reselling them to their clients for $2k+, or charging for the apps on the app store and making money that way. A great example is "RSS Monster" an app that was made using AppMakr. (RSS Monster for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store) The creator of that app is charging 99 cents for that app.
So I guess what I'm saying is that yes, we understand that AppMakr apps don't come close to what you can do custom. But at the same time, it's a way you could get an entirely new set of clients interested in mobile, and then upsell them to a more expensive custom app later. The trick is to make sure that the *minimum* of what AppMakr does isn't perceived as garbage or trash, which is exactly why we wanted to get your feedback here. Thoughts on that?
Regarding the use of RSS: We're four co-founders that all know it's important not to boil the ocean on our first release. Pick one small thing, and do it really, really well. So we chose RSS as the data transport mechanism to start. But it's actually really powerful - we can do text, audio, podcasts, video, flickr feeds, YouTube channels, Facebook fan page feeds, Twitter Feeds & a lot more just using RSS. And we've been really careful to make it so that the app is much more than just what HTML could do. The content downloads and is stored offline. We have twitter & email sharing. It's a snappy & fast app. We encourage users to put multiple tabs in their apps. We're enabling instant notifications through the app. And a whole bunch of other things.
Has anyone actually tried using AppMakr? I'd love to get your thoughts if you've actually tried it, i.e., tried loading your developer account into AppMakr and tried making & testing apps (all of which is 100% free to do). I'd also encourage you guys to try downloading some of these AppMakr apps as examples to see if you really feel that they're that terrible (yes honest opinions please!)
Regarding the use of RSS: We're four co-founders that all know it's important not to boil the ocean on our first release. Pick one small thing, and do it really, really well. So we chose RSS as the data transport mechanism to start. .
If Apple do banned AppMakr, who will get sue? AppMakr or Apple?
There's a profound difference in what Gupta's are doing compared with what Appmakr are doing. I have no problem with Appmakr (as it is consumer driven), I do have a big problem with the Guptas of this world.
Racist?
I presume you live in Bradford lol.
Some apps that AppMakr have made are fucntionless I must admit.
Guys, let's keep this thread on track. Please if you spot spammers in the App Store report them here and why you think they spam. If we get enough reports and the thread still lives, I will start editing my original post to create the app store wall of shame.
I guess they got some off the boat ghandi guys to sit there and make apps all day cus in their country they make less than a dollar a week. Get these spammers out of there please!
Worst App Store Offenders: Graaple, Hotix Studios [Add Yours Here]
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