Why Android App Inventor will be great & we needn't fear bad apps, there are lots already

Google have broken down a massive barrier to app creation by introducing a do it yourself visual app maker.. App Inventor is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get app making tool, that lets a non-techie with a bit of basic intelligence and a familarity with lego, build themselves an app for any Android-based phone. They can then upload it to their phone and sell it, if they fancy. Check out the video above.

All I can think is – amazing. This is next level phone customisation.

Others worry it will lead to a flood of poorly made apps as non-pros dive in and start making random crap apps where their cat meows once. But you know what? they really needn’t worry. There are already lots of crap apps out there already, (I get asked to review some of them) and we all get by just fine. For example, there’s one which repeats Alan Partridge slogans.

Having people making small-scale apps may reduce the average quality of an Android app, but that doesn’t really matter to most users. Nobody dredges through the whole app store anyway, they’ll just search for something that had been recommended or check the best rated or most downloaded apps. So app ratings and top fifties are just going to be much more important. The small fry are unlikely to make it up there, unless they are true gems, in which case – great!

The App Inventor will distinguish the Android Store further from the iTunes store, which is good, and will probably send the number of Android apps ballooning up to overtake the number in the Apple store.

This is what Google says about it:
“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”