ENOUGH!!!! With this baby Apps B&N!!!

[cattie2thecat]

This apps are a joke!!, The tablet its intended for adult use!!, I mean, some apps for whoever got babies to keep them entertain SOME days, not all the time, its good enough!! Focus your apps on US the adults, the book readers.

[flyingtoastr Scribe]

Contrary to popular belief, BN doesn't make the apps, nor can they force "adult" developers to design apps for their platform.

[MarvinQ]

I agree, the apps are very limited! 

when the NT came out, it was announced a whole lot more apps but now it seems a like a bunch of graphic comics and no real apps for grown ups except for the word games like scrabble and others.

I love the Nook and BN so please open up the market a bit more!

[roustabout]

FT writes "Contrary to popular belief, BN doesn't make the apps, nor can they force "adult" developers to design apps for their platform."

BN does, however, decide which app developers to work well with and which to ignore.  Devs can't submit an app to BN to let them just run it on their hardware.  Before BN can see an app, they need to have vetted a dev and sent the dev the keys to the walled garden.

Thus, there's no way for good "over the transom" submissions to be sent to BN.  As a result their app store is pauperized compared app stores which can accept unsolicited submissions (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.)  

Also, they still haven't realized that when I want to look for an app, I don't want to look for a book.  That's just stupid.  Filtering database queries isn't hard, and preserviing the unified bookstore metaphor in the UI probably sounded great at the meeting where the vision team introduced it, but it's worked out looking goofy a lot of the time in practice.   

[LarryOnLI]

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roustabout wrote:

FT writes "Contrary to popular belief, BN doesn't make the apps, nor can they force "adult" developers to design apps for their platform."

BN does, however, decide which app developers to work well with and which to ignore.  Devs can't submit an app to BN to let them just run it on their hardware.  Before BN can see an app, they need to have vetted a dev and sent the dev the keys to the walled garden.

Thus, there's no way for good "over the transom" submissions to be sent to BN.  As a result their app store is pauperized compared app stores which can accept unsolicited submissions (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.)  

Also, they still haven't realized that when I want to look for an app, I don't want to look for a book.  That's just stupid.  Filtering database queries isn't hard, and preserviing the unified bookstore metaphor in the UI probably sounded great at the meeting where the vision team introduced it, but it's worked out looking goofy a lot of the time in practice.   

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Don't include Apple in that unsolicited app submission category.

I don't think anyone has read the entire Apple developer/itunes store agreement. The thing is so long that if anyone waited for their lawyer to finish going over it before submitting their app (which has to then be approved by Apple, and that can take a long LONG time) the iPhone might still be waiting for it's first third party app.

[roustabout]

"Don't include Apple in that unsolicited app submission category."

Is the statement closer to correct if I rephrase it as "Google, Amazon and Apple have processes for app submission which do not require manual intervention by market staff until it is time to review the app for acceptability?"  

I understand that one needs a dev kit from Apple and certificates baked in, etc.  I had been under the impression that you could obtain everything  you needed without an Apple staffer needing to press a button.  Once your app was ready to queue, then you needed someone to manually process it.  

However, the tradeoff with Apple is that you pay them up front to be a registered dev.   

[LarryOnLI]

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roustabout wrote:

"Don't include Apple in that unsolicited app submission category."

Is the statement closer to correct if I rephrase it as "Google, Amazon and Apple have processes for app submission which do not require manual intervention by market staff until it is time to review the app for acceptability?"  

I understand that one needs a dev kit from Apple and certificates baked in, etc.  I had been under the impression that you could obtain everything  you needed without an Apple staffer needing to press a button.  Once your app was ready to queue, then you needed someone to manually process it.  

However, the tradeoff with Apple is that you pay them up front to be a registered dev.   

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Yes, much closer to correct

[roustabout]

OK, so the real point I'm making here is that although BN does not write the apps, app devs need a lot more early approval from BN to get their apps even an audition than on the other platform.

The bias toward kid-centric apps at BN does reflect business decisions by BN rather than some odd propensity of devs to really just want to write kid-oriented apps.   

[TnTexas]

roustabout: OK, so the real point I'm making here is that although BN does not write the apps, app devs need a lot more early approval from BN to get their apps even an audition than on the other platform.

The bias toward kid-centric apps at BN does reflect business decisions by BN rather than some odd propensity of devs to really just want to write kid-oriented apps.  

And this is one reason why I feel simply calling the new product a "tablet" is a bit of a misnomer. While it may have the form and interface of a regular tablet,  it doesn't have the function of one - at least not the kind of function Joe Q. Public is coming to expect when it hears the word. Most are expecting it to have the level of function of an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy. Unfortunately, B&N's app selection doesn't allow that; and that doesn't seem to be changing. I really think a better name would have been the Reader's Media Nook or simply the Media Nook instead of the Nook Tablet. I think that would have made their intentions for the device much clearer and avoided some of the frustration and disappointment we've seen. 

[Doreenpv]

There are def enough apps to keep a child busy for days. I said that from day 1.

[rgb75]

I agree along with many others. A Nookunlock chip is now available for the Nook Color. Although this would be a huge improvement if the same was available for the Tablet what is preventing B&N from rewriting their code and letting both the Nook Tablet and Nook Color have this advantage ? I got my Tablet as a Christmas gift and it didn't take long to come to the same conclusion. Mostly apps for kids.

[Miss_Kilman]

I bought the NT last week. I've been experimenting with it and agree that when I'm searching for an app I am not interested in books with some sort of similar title or keyword. Also, I've been noticing that a lot of reviews for actual, adult-oriented apps have reviews that have quite obviously been written by children! I was even seeing children give their age (usually 9, 10, 11) and then declaring apps "stoopid". Other times the reviews consist of threats to "punch stupid peoples in the face".

So, based on how much of this I have seen, I think a lot of parents have purchased these for their kids and simply turned them loose! If BN is paying attention to app purchase metrics, I'm sure they are seeing a lot of downloads for the simplistic games, books, etc.

The Nooks are all great products and I would really like to see BN capitalize on that fact. The poor execution with regards to wishlists, app availability, and search combined with the whole "Walled Garden" ethos seems like a recipe for disaster. Unless they are simply trying to position themselves as the "Tablet for Schools", which I admit could possibly be the case. Maybe they're hoping that parents will appreciate the walls.