With Windows 8 we gained a lovely new store. Inside this store we were promised many apps. More than an OS had ever launched with before!
Some of those apps are wonderful, beautiful, and truly useful or fun.
Others, are complete and utter garbage!
Here we call out all the trash in the hopes that someone at Microsoft is listening and can remove them.
For each app I will give a review explaining what’s so rubbish about it, and then a list of reasons why it should have failed the certification process.
If you’ve found apps you’d like to name and shame on our blog, get in contact! We’ll happily add reviews from others, just follow our format and we’ll post them up.
Generally we’re finding apps failing on the following:
Snapped mode not working:
3.6 Your app must use the mechanisms provided by the system for those features that have them
Your app must support a snapped layout. In landscape orientation, your app’s functions must be fully accessible when the app’s display size is 1024 x 768. Your app must remain functional when the customer snaps and unsnaps the app.
No store logo:
6.9 Your Windows Store app’s packages must have a correct app manifest
In each of your app’s packages, the app manifest elements must contain the correct values as described in the Package metadata requirements.
Plus, arguably, many fail on this one:
1.1 Your app must offer customers unique, creative value or utility in all the languages and markets that it supports
Windows 8 Rubbish Apps 
Search the store for “MyCoolApps” for some more rubbish…
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You’re on a crusade to remove terrible apps from the Windows 8 store, yet where is the same crusade for iOS or Android? Truth be told, ratings and reviews on apps will make useless/poor apps not surface-able once the store gets larger and other apps become popular. This seems like a worthless cause.
Interestingly, there’s a flaw in the Windows 8 store in that apps with 1 star reviews appear above those with no reviews. So all this rubbish will keep people away from the as-yet undiscovered apps which are still waiting for their first rating.
Also, there’s a difference between a few terrible apps, and large numbers which very clearly violate the guidelines, being cloned into the store by some developers. I feel that this needs to be brought to the attention of others. It is already working as 2 of the developers I contacted have since removed their crazy clones.
That’s not to say there shouldn’t be similar blogs for iOS and Android! Perhaps someone else will take up the cause on other platforms 🙂
Is it worth it to report as many of these apps as we can find? Another big one that I’ve found is apps like Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Ornithology which have content directly taken from Wikipedia and other sources with zero attribution. They also arguably do not comply with 1.1.
Search Megha in the app store, 69 apps, some of them don’t have icons, most of them have info directly copied and pasted from Wikipedia.
I’d like to know how apps like http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-gb/app/news-skysports/16faf9aa-0327-41f7-bef7-ce0adf9fc8e1 and http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/espn-mlb/e6cbd67b-d74d-4938-ab39-f865f708c57e get in the store (and seem to get a fair number of downloads) when they’re not only a bit rubbish but are also pretending to be official apps from large companies and should never have got through certification in the first place.