Pictured above are 24 tip calculating applications in the App Store. They do the exact same thing. Will each be around in the store next year? Yesterday MacRumors wrote about the fat money some developers are making on the App Store. The story talked about one of the applications designed to create crossword puzzles which had banked $1,800 in one day for the developer. That’s not bad! My thinking is that the App Store is going to cool down - and fast. It’s way too crowded with “Me Too” programs. Is there any way that we need 24 different programs that all claim to help you calculate tips?

This morning while scanning for new applications, I noticed yet another Tip Calculating program becoming available. A quick scan of the App Store uncovered too many programs all doing the same tip calculating task.

Do people really not know that the iPhone has a built-in calculator which will split bills and compute tips quite readily? Or maybe people buying these programs because they are so clueless that they don’t know what percent to tip?

I don’t think that it’s any of these things.

Rather it’s the newness of the shiny iPhone 3G and the integration of App Store which is giving an artificial blip to the program sales. Once the newness dies down, we’re going to be left with a bloated App Store with 75% of the Apps becoming abandoned “me too” programs that the developer stopped caring about.

I’ve experienced this phenomena on the Palm side so I don’t think it’s too far fetched.

In it’s heyday when Palm was king of the hill they had just about the same amount of application frenzy. There were new programs popping up ever day that performed similarly stupid tasks like calculating tips or tracking your biorhythms.

The problem that you encounter is a lot of these applications are created by part time developers. These developers devote a short burst of energy to the development, then for whatever reason lose interest and the application is no longer updated.

My question is this.

Will Apple develop a way so that when I go into the App Store I an be assured that the program I’m thinking of buying isn’t “abandonware”?

Right now I can see when it was released. I can look to see when the last comments were posted about the application. There’s really no other way to tell if the application is being actively developed and bugs being fixed, etc.

Granted it’s not an issue now - but in a year when the shiny newness of App Store wears off - I bet this issue moves to the forefront and I hope there’s an easy way for iPhone users to tell whether the App they’re buying is actively being developed and bugs fixed or if it has been left in the App Store to gather residual sales.