News

The Ten webOS App Catalog Commandments

By: Rich Dunbar, 10/5/2011 5:19 pm | 22 comments

You don’t have to be a long term webOS user or developer to have this love/hate relationship with the webOS app catalog. It brings us joy and maddening frustration sometimes within the same five minute span. I remember the early webOS days in 2009 when I would check the catalog daily just to see what was new. The only thing I launched more often than the app catalog was Preware to see if there were new patches or homebrew apps. Relationships like these are complex and require a lot of patience and understanding.

Fortunately we are here to help you through some of those more sensitive user/developer/app/webOS issues with the Ten App Catalog Commandments. By observing these simple principles your relationship with the app catalog (and the app developers) will be filled with much more love and far less hate.

1. Thou shalt NOT contact the developer for a refund or payment issue for an app.

Developers have absolutely no control over such things. Payments, Pricing and Refunds are all handled on the app catalog side of things.

2. Thou SHALT contact webOS Support for resolution of any pricing or payment issues.

They can help resolve your billing issues. You can find them HERE.

3. Thou shalt NOT complaineth when you purchase an app at full price then days later the developer has a sale or the developer relations team decideth to offer the app in one of their free app promocode promotions.

Developers work hard to make quality apps for you, they deserve the prices they ask. If it was worth it when you bought, it is still worth it even if someone else pays less.

4. Thou SHALT take the time to provideth meaningful reviews on the merits of what an application claims to do.

These types of reviews help the developer as well as other customers who may be curious about purchasing the application.

5. Thou shalt NOT leave bad reviews for an application because it does not do what you thinketh it should.

If the application does what the description claims it will do, then review it on how well it does what it is supposed to do. If you need an app to do more, perhaps you should develop it yourself.

6. Thou shalt NOT leave bad reviews in the form of a feature request.

Contact the developer via their support contact information and make the request there. You are more likely to get the response you want or an explanation concerning it that way.

7. Thou shalt NOT leave bad reviews if an application does not download/installeth properly.

This is not the developers fault and you should contact webOS Support to make them aware of the issue.

8. Thou SHALT contact the developer for resolution of problems/errors within their application BEFORE leaving a bad review.

This is simply extending a common courtesy to the developer to address your problem.

9. If Thou hast violated commandments 5, 6, 7, or 8 Thou are in danger of Hell fire and Thou SHALT return to said bad review and update it IF the developer hast resolved Thine issue in as much as they have control over it.

It’s the least you can do to avoid Hell fire.

10. Thou SHALT purchase applications from the app catalog as often as you have need and can afford to do so, and provideth meaningful feedback to developers and webOS Developer Relations to help improve Thine app catalog experiences that it may be well with you all the days of your life.

By keeping these Ten webOS App Catalog Commandments you are certain to remain in good favor with webOS developers and gain the eternal satisfaction you seek in your webOS journey.

About Rich Dunbar

Rich is Sr. Editor at webOSroundup and mobileRoundup as well as a husband, father of 4, webOS Ambassador and webOS Developer who loves all things webOS and Harley Davidson. You can find him on Twitter as @RichDunbar

View all posts by Rich Dunbar →

Anonymous

Amen!
http://twitter.com/Andolamin Alan Stice

I completely agree! The other day I got a negative review that was not only blatantly false, but was something that I could have corrected via email. Sometimes I don’t think users understand exactly how much those negative reviews can hurt the sales of an app.
http://twitter.com/Cringer63 Jonathan

#5!!! #5!!! #5!!!
http://twitter.com/IngloriousApps Inglorious Apps

I’m gonna download these commandments to my Tablet (my electronic tablet, that is)
http://www.facebook.com/bryan.leasot fxspec06

amen, thanks, etc, good grub good god lets eat
Brik

Preach, brotha! Lmao!
David Bowser

I only pay attention to bad reviews when there is a recurrence of the same issue. I do the same when buying stuff on Amazon, Newegg, etc.

Another thing that bugs me is the 1-star review because the app was designed for the Pre/Pixi and people get ticked off because it’s not full screen on the Touchpad. Evernote is a prime example of an app that is an easy 4.5-star app, but shows up as 3.5 because of all the Touchpad users that don’t notice the “For Touchpad” or not in the App Catalog. I want Everynote for the Touchpad badly, but I think it silly to downgrade an app for that.
http://twitter.com/Rennnat Rennat

ha ha, Nice Rich!!! Love it!!! Good job :)
http://www.twitter.com/comelygrace Katie

PREACH.
http://Bungie.net TheKingOfHalo

I always leave 0 stars if I have any problem with the app.

Anonymous

You’re doing it wrong.

Anonymous

The choir may like this sermon, but the parishioners won’t. Why do customers contact developers for refunds? Because HP says they can’t do anything about it and that they should contact the developer. Why do customers ask for price matches? Because they are used to buying things in the real world, where price matches after a reasonable time are the norm. Why do they post inappropriate negative reviews? Because they found the app too hard to use, or the description confused them and they bought the wrong product. Developers may feel they deserve the price they ask, but they get what the market is willing to pay, even if it is far less or far greater than the amount of work they put into it. Like it or not developers are also businesses, and reducing negative reviews comes through more interaction with customers and making changes to meet their expectations. They way things are set up now in the catalog this isn’t easy. It may be easy to dismiss these customers as idiots, or nubes and hope they read these commandments, but do you think that’s likely? If HP put some of these things into consideration for the catalog and its service surrounding the catalog, customers would be more satisfied and reviews would get better. Problem is it’s the developers that usually get retaliation from customers who are burned by poor HP service. That said, we should put this in perspective. Overall the HP app store is still much better off than Amazon’s appstore, which is filled with negative reviews from people that don’t even download the apps.

Eileen

I agree. When I read reviews I want to know if an app is worth buying, not if it is true to it’s description. Developers, you are running a business and it is up to you to knock our socks off if you want to get our business.

Malette

Woohoo! Someone besides me said it. I get frustrated with some bad reviewers. For example those ever fun fart apps. Someone will say oh it’s lame and boring. Ok well when I read the description and it said makes a few fart noises then of course it might be boring. It’s fart noises and not a library of them either. I think a review should be based on if it does what it says and works (download issues aside) and when it comes to paid apps a factor of if it’s worth the price comes in too. Yeah you may have thought it was worth it, but maybe it didn’t do it quite the way you thought it would. That’s why I love lite versions for free. So devs don’t fret too much there are those out there that can see past those. Maybe next you need one for touchpad apps. Like someone mentioned above people complain it’s not in full screen and well it’s not HD nor does it say full screen. Overall glad to see this. Thanks for the continued news y’all.
Deane

Love it….well stated now lets see who follows the rules! LOL :-)
Joepre

Lets be a part of the solution and clear the air around WebOS apps. This is only in our best interest WebOS users!
Guest

I know we as developers don’t like it, but a lot of these things seem reasonable. We have Paypal anyway, so if the customer also has Paypal it’s not too painful to credit them the amount they paid for the app. It won’t look good if we tell them, “Not my problem.”

#3 is natural, just remember the uproar when the first price drops came, especially from the people who got the “making it right” rebate.

#4, can’t really “command” that. People will only review if they feel strongly about the app one way or another. A “commandment” won’t change that.

#5 and #6… why not? Let’s say you download a daily deals app but it doesn’t give you a way to launch the daily deals website and buy the deal? That seems grounds for a bad review because it doesn’t do what you expected it to do and because it it also a feature request.

#7… that is the most annoying thing. Unfortunately, there will be idiots who will continue to do that, whether you “command” them not to do so. Ditto with #8.

#9… WTF?

#10 culminates the general feeling of this: you’re being condescending and quite frankly, I don’t like it when someone tells me what to do.

http://www.arthurthornton.net/ Arthur Thornton

Okay, then let me “buy” your app and ask for a refund. I’ll fake a receipt email and send it off to you… You see, developers cannot tell who bought an app and as such, anyone can fake a receipt email and get a refund. Not to mention, HP takes a 30% cut of the app sale cost to pay for their costs (and there are a lot of costs associated with apps, such as the CDN, the app review team, the infrastructure, etc.), so that’s a chunk of out-of-pocket expense right there.

When it came down to some people buying my app, Voice Memos, on their non-2.x devices before it was announced that 2.x wasn’t going to older devices, I offered to refund anyone (via PayPal), knowing there was a chance I would have some people fake these emails to get free cash, possibly even some people requesting a refund when they’re clearly capable of using the app (on a Pre2, for example). Nobody requested a refund from me, surprisingly, even though my offer was fairly publicized (by WOR before I joined up).

What my point is, is that there is a good chance that people will come in to scam the developers in some way. There needs to be something in place on HP’s side to let developers provide a refund to users as well as verify that a person purchased the application, they know this. In the mean time, the developers are indeed the ones who get burned the most, not the users, however HP does get burned by their own mistakes because prospective developers for the platform find out from current/former developers about the upsides and downsides of developing for webOS.

Now, regards to your #5/6: Because if the app does not EXPLICITLY state that it does something, you CANNOT expect it to do something. If you want a feature added, use one of the “CONTACT” buttons in the App Catalog to contact the developer and request the feature. App reviews are NOT intended for feature requests OR bug reports. Remember, many developers do not have devices and CANNOT read the reviews.

BBooDoc

TouchPad s still being sold on Amazon.com at $279 ! I got one for my wife yesterday so I can get mine back, lol!
Michelle

I completely agree with these, I just wish the apps would list WHICH phones they work with for some of us less savy people! I keep trying to get stuff for my pre that just doesn’t load…not the dev fault.
RainMan_JH

Awesome absolutely perfect! Now lets all hold hands and have a prayer vigil for the App Catalog!
Tobi

Where are the Commandments for Developers?
1. Thou MUST include meaningful images!
2. Thou SHOULD describe your game in english that is NOT AUTOMATICALLY translated.
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