Lots of unfair developers (Garmin, where are you?)

bine8x8 said:

It seems that the list of "Trending Apps" is currently being formed in a similar way - at the top are the applications that have received the maximum number of downloads of the current version

While the most objective measure for being popular would be the download count I don't think it plays a significant role. From what I've observed the download count doesn't make a (big) difference at all, it's mostly based on amount of ratings. 

Asking people to send you some stars / rate your app is a questionable action imho, but it's not something that's against "the rules" and apparently some devs are happy with that kind of (self) praise. 

Rating your own app is even more questionable action and preferably I'd like it to see implemented that devs can no longer rate their own app. Everybody thinks their own app is the best one, but the 5 stars you want to give to your own app has no relevance to other users.

Making scripts that automatically rate apps is even more questionable (despicable) and it was what the initiator of this topic wanted to have addressed and what Garmin seems to have addressed in the past week.

Lastly I do think that "trending" (or should I call it "most rated recently") is in a too prominent spot in the store. If I would design the store I would put this category at the bottom of the page and not at the top of the page where it's currently positioned.

I want to see not only new Apps for my device, but others as well. Then I can ask the developer to make an application I like for my device. And in general to see the general trends of creativity.

i made an app for apple years ago an in my experience

If garmin is base the ratings on downloads it´s a complete error, because:

1.- it happens things like this to raise apps with artificial downloads with servers

2.- new apps will never be on top, even if it is the best app on store because old apps have at least 5 years collecting downloads.

3.- it should be by rating, let the people decide with real opinions because is more difficult to write an opinion than just make a download.

4.- new apps should be promoted, and also apps rated by specialists, maybe moderators should rate apps.

Again and again

A kind of best of!

Seriously all these spam applications are watch faces. And in my opinion, the main purpose of having a garmin watch is to exercise sport and I think that there is a serious problem of the credibility of the store if you see in 90% of the cases only watch faces.

If you look on the trending app, most of them are watch faces. If we take in account that most of these applications have no functional gain and are just a copy/paste from a template code with different background, it gives the impression that the store is only a toy store.

It would be better to promote through a moderation applications which really brings an user experience. There are good data fields, application with unsupported sport activities, analysis widget, ... in this store but the visibility is bad due to the pollution of these watch faces.

There will always be more watch faces as Garmin base product is so good that only a subset of people even realise ConnectIQ data fields and apps are available. 

Case in point; with Covid lockdown, I’m getting emails from people trying to use my Covid Distance data field who had their watches for years but had never even edited a data screen!

So this would be my vote for separation of “Trending” into “Trending Watch Faces” and “Trending Apps” (to include data fields, widgets and apps).

9635560 said:

So this would be my vote for separation of “Trending” into “Trending Watch Faces” and “Trending Apps” (to include data fields, widgets and apps).

it's such a great idea! Even more "Trending Apps", "Trending Widgets", "Trending Data Fields". 

But the Garmin has anounced new categories for watch faces, like "Animals" and so on

I'm a topicstarter of this thread and I've never got any response from the Garmin about this situation. 

Seems like the Garmin is satisfied with all this trash in the store (I mean template watchfaces with diffirent backgrounds, I don't what to abuse fair developers)

It is so. The quantity is for them more important as the quality. It permits to say that they have a store with more than XXX apps.

And the situation will not change in my opinion because the FR45 has only the possibility to install watch faces. So for Garmin, promoting watch faces over useful sport applications is part of they strategy. (at least for then entry models)