The Sims 3

Dear Electronic Arts,

No, I'm not removing all your games outright from my iDevices, but if you pull shit like this again I will. I just got an annoying pop-up alert advertising some random useless shit in your app's store. This has nothing to do with functional gameplay. This was not an alert to remind me that there was something in the game that needs my attention (like those "your tomatoes are ready to harvest" alerts from RandomFarmGame26). No, this was a stupid alert yelling at me that I should load The Sims 3 and go purchase a pink dress for my character.

FUCK OFF YOU ASSHOLES!

I allow you to use the notification system to tell me about important things that I care about. NOT ADVERTISEMENTS! I get enough junk mail at home through USPS, and I get a fair amount of spam through email. I don't need this kind of bullshit interrupting my otherwise enjoyable iDevice experience.

Congratulations, EA. You assholes just got The Sims 3 removed from my iPhone. Also, I'm now defaulting to not allowing any of your apps to use notifications at all (I've already gone and turned notifications off for the other games).

Note to App devs. iDevice alerts are *EXTREMELY* intrusive. This isn't Android where notifications are handled well, this is iOS and Apple totally botched the job. As a result, if you use the notification system for adverts, they will get in the way of *EVERYTHING* the user is trying to do, no matter what it is. In general, I think notifications should not be used at all, ever. But if you are going to use them make damn sure it is for something important.

So goodbye The Sims 3. It was fun but I'm not going to reward that kind of bullshit behavior. Oh, and EA: The Sims 4 has a guaranteed one less customer now. Good job, you jackasses.

BeEarthed & e-Pig Rope

Mind you, I have a few "thou shalt not" areas which will get an otherwise perfect app deleted without hesitation. I should probably list these out some day just as a checklist so it makes these summaries quicker to type up. Till then, I'll use words.

BeEarthed is a fine example of one primary rule for me. I'm real keen on an App not forcing me to do anything I don't want to do. Game devs have a very nasty habit of letting their ego convince them that their music or sound effects are just so damned awesome that there is no entity in the universe that wouldn't want to listen. As such, they make it *IMPOSSIBLE* to entirely disable all the noise generated by their app. For some apps this makes sense (Pandora is a perfect example of an app where the noise it makes is the whole point of the thing), but for most games the noise they generate is entirely secondary to the game. BeEarthed will let you turn the music down to zero, but the sound effects have a minimum level that is still quite audible. I tried, over and over, to move the "sfx" slider to zero and couldn't. I scanned the iPhone "Settings" app to see if BeEarthed had a hidden "shut the fuck up" option there, to no avail. In the end, if I wanted to play this game, I would have to tolerate some absolute garbage of sound effects.

No thanks, you're gone.

e-Pig Rope, sadly, never even got that far. The instructions were terrible (by the time I had figured out how to control the pig, I had already lost two of three lives), but the worst part is they forgot this is a touchscreen device. *Touch*, as-in, with a *finger*. When you are tapping away trying to control the pig, your finger covers up rather crucial elements on the screen. I don't know if the dev intended for your finger getting in the way to be a part of the "challenge" of the game, but it's annoying as hell. I don't have time for an app that puts important (time-sensitive) information in areas where it will be obscured by the finger.

Sorry, you're toast.

The Impossible Test SPACE: I felt like trying this out primarily to remind myself how pointlessly stupid these "impossible test" type things are.

d'ART: Fun enough pictures, but the jigsaw pieces are huge, and there is no need to rotate them. Just drag them to an area moderately close to where they should be. Boring.

On crappy iApps

With the preponderance of apps available in the iTunes App Store, I am finding myself increasingly reminded of Sturgeon's Law (the second one). For the unfamiliar, it's actually quite simple:

90% of everything is crap.

Over and over, I will read a review of some iApp where the reviewer was positively gushing about this little wonder's ability to cure cancer and feed the masses. I then try the program myself and am left wondering if perhaps the 'developer' (if they can be called that) bribed the reviewer with money laced with LSD. Clearly my standards differ from those of the popular reviewers.

Hence why I have now decided to start listing the many iApps I am churning through and why I no longer use them. I hope to include a brief statement on why I felt this creation did not live up to my standards. I do this for future personal reference, as I currently have over 1300 programs I've downloaded and only the worst of the bunch scar my memory so greatly that I can recall why I am refusing to pollute my iPhone's storage with their bits. Also, I'll try to restrict this list to negative experiences. I don't want to be just some other random voice on the intertubes raving about how great some app is. There are enough blogs for that. Plus, I know why I like the apps I keep using, since I keep using them. I'm trying here to avoid re-loading and being again disappointed by some crappy piece of software I tried a year ago but simply forgot how terrible it was.

Thus, I'll be labeling these posts Why I Deleted Your App.

a post

more than just a stick in the mud.