Complete
8 days ago

The Store is being decimated by a handful of developers spamming low-effort apps

IoFace, Islandic, SunEast, Echelon, Wonderful, Saraswatches, Warm, FaceTime, Estefania83, tatu_vic

They just blatantly SPAM the heck out of the store.

This issue is now a weekly subject on /r/Garmin with hundreds of upvotes and people fuming and complaining.

This has gotta stop.

eau_de_vie
Parents
  • 8 days ago

    I recognize the problem and I personally agree with many of the assessments you've made. We use the store ourselves frequently for testing, so get to experience a lot of the same things you've all mentioned here.

    My intent wasn't to imply there are no solutions we're willing to consider—in fact, I created a ticket this morning to request the addition of client-side filtering to see if it's something we'd be willing to do. It sounds like a great idea to me. I know that we've talked about other ideas internally, but I'm not familiar with everything that's been discussed. My purpose was to simply describe our current approach and explain why all of these apps are on the store in the first place.

    Let me address a couple of questions raised by :

    • Why can't there be one central way to pay? We offer a first-party payment system that was launched last month, and I'd encourage everyone to check it out because it's a much better experience for customers. However, we still allow developers to use third-party payment systems if they prefer.
    • Some watch faces have multiple versions...It seems like it should be possible to group them together..." I know this question was about the store UX, but there's another solution already available. Build configurations can be used by developers to intelligently support multiple products in one project and avoid creating multiple versions of an app. I realize this doesn't deal with developers that don't use build configs, but it's the preferred approach.
    • Ability to filter based on compatibility. This happens automatically based on the device you're currently using. For example, if you have a fenix 7 paired with your phone and are browsing apps in the CIQ Store mobile app, you'll only see apps compatible with the fenix 7. However, if you're browsing the web store and aren't logged in you'll just see all available apps. At one point, we had a device selector but the list of compatible devices grew so large that it was removed. Perhaps we can look at doing something else to provide this functionality again.
    • "Report a problem" needs to be dramatically improved. Agreed. There are already things in the works regarding this, but I'll refrain from making any promises at this point. FWIW, this impacts me personally, so I would also like it improved. :)

Comment
  • 8 days ago

    I recognize the problem and I personally agree with many of the assessments you've made. We use the store ourselves frequently for testing, so get to experience a lot of the same things you've all mentioned here.

    My intent wasn't to imply there are no solutions we're willing to consider—in fact, I created a ticket this morning to request the addition of client-side filtering to see if it's something we'd be willing to do. It sounds like a great idea to me. I know that we've talked about other ideas internally, but I'm not familiar with everything that's been discussed. My purpose was to simply describe our current approach and explain why all of these apps are on the store in the first place.

    Let me address a couple of questions raised by :

    • Why can't there be one central way to pay? We offer a first-party payment system that was launched last month, and I'd encourage everyone to check it out because it's a much better experience for customers. However, we still allow developers to use third-party payment systems if they prefer.
    • Some watch faces have multiple versions...It seems like it should be possible to group them together..." I know this question was about the store UX, but there's another solution already available. Build configurations can be used by developers to intelligently support multiple products in one project and avoid creating multiple versions of an app. I realize this doesn't deal with developers that don't use build configs, but it's the preferred approach.
    • Ability to filter based on compatibility. This happens automatically based on the device you're currently using. For example, if you have a fenix 7 paired with your phone and are browsing apps in the CIQ Store mobile app, you'll only see apps compatible with the fenix 7. However, if you're browsing the web store and aren't logged in you'll just see all available apps. At one point, we had a device selector but the list of compatible devices grew so large that it was removed. Perhaps we can look at doing something else to provide this functionality again.
    • "Report a problem" needs to be dramatically improved. Agreed. There are already things in the works regarding this, but I'll refrain from making any promises at this point. FWIW, this impacts me personally, so I would also like it improved. :)

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