Tip of the Iceberg

1 - Tim, you're post is right on the money. "It's the economy, stupid" was a phrase used during Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign. For Lotus/IBM in 2010 they should keep repeating: "It's the applications, stupid."

2 - @3 John, I like the widgets idea. We are looking at some plugins for 8.5 version of the client to allow "browsing" of the NotesAppStore from the Notes client as well as offering some client side apps, some of which may indeed cost $.99. So the name is not a misnomer, it is only a little early as we have not turned on all the features that we want. But stay tuned....

3 - Why do people assume that the apps in the Lotus AppStore would be exactly the same apps you would put in an NSF today? Are all the apps in the Apple AppStore exactly the same apps that you find for the Mac? No, of course not. That would be silly.

4 - Am I missing something? I havent kept up with the whole previous discussions, so forgive me if I am off base with this.

The Apple app store is where people go to buy [mostly] very cheap (like 59p-£1.99), dare I say, disposable, applications. Millions of people spending pennies on apps - and maybe using them a few times and then never again - makes billions of £. that said, I think most people are after things that are free.

Further, arent these apps that people buy to use on a phone or iPod?

This is completely opposite to what I would envisage a Notes appstore to be. Firstly, I would not envisage end users purchasing and installing apps directly. Thats not going to happen in a corporate environment. What users are wanting though *is* gadgets/widgets etc that plug in the sidebar, which can be made available to them in a widget catalog of 'apps' approved by the company/sysadmins/developers. These widgets are the equivalent of the Apple app store for most users.

The Notes app store set up by Maysoft, is not the notes equivalent of the Apple AppStore. It is a merely central place where many software vendors can place their products in a shop window. The notes app store is more akin to Salesforce's AppExchange than the apple app store. Its a place where any notes developer/admin *should* use as a starting point for research into best of breed commercial products and help the decision making when purchasing/researching new software. The Salesforce AppExchange should be the model to use, not the Apple app store.

I think there is great merit in the current Notes app store, in the same way as we now all simply follow PlanetLotus rather than handling dozens of RSS feeds, we now could just go to the notes app store as the starting point for finding that product that the organisation needs. But it only works if its adopted by many many vendors; it needs to be the goto place for apps, where vendors go up against one another in the same market hall. Doesnt this happen in the real world at Lotussphere and xLUG events?, where the likes of Ytria and Noteman and Teamstudio go up against each other in the same hall vying for the same customer.

The unfortunate thing here I think is one of naming. 'Notes app store' invokes direct comparison to Apple app store, but they have two very different purposes. Had it been called something else then this debate probably would not have happended. Notes App Store should be the Software Catalog, but we have one of those from IBM, and its largely useless (at least for Domino apps). The Maysoft notes apps store is what we want the IBM Software Catalog to be. We want somewhere where we can research, compare quality commercial apps and download working demos when possible.

As for the end-user stuff, then its widgets. We need a widget app store. Several people in the blogosphere have set some up, but if someone (maysoft?) were minded to take the initiative and set up *the definitive* notes widget app store, where end-users can look for what they want. This is where software vendors dangle the carrot. If vendors were to develop widgets for their apps, and publish them on the widget app store, so end users can easily find them in a central location, and make it easy for notes admins to grab/ publish in their corporate widget catalog, let end users install, and then perhaps subsequently 'trade up' to some full-fledged commercial application, then that would have merit in my view. We have a widget catalog on the OpenNTF site, but these are not widgets for commercial apps.

So, the debate as I see it is not apples for apples (pardon the pun). The Apple app store is aimed at end users, for personal handheld devices. The Notes App Store is aimed at Notes professionals, Devs and Admins, looking for solutions to commercial requirements. Very different.

Maysoft, change the name and the debate is over. But please, do continue down the track, since what you have done is to make it easier to access quality apps and vendors. Oh, and add a special 'widget' section.

5 - "Most Blackberry users have a Blackberry because their employer decided for them that they will have a Blackberry. The users had no choice in the matter. But do they have any influence over that decision?"

But isn't that comment (at least right now) true for Notes too? With maybe the exception of Eric's eProductivity template how many users request, or demand, Notes apps?

Does this all swing back to the eventual discussion of who or where Notes is targeted? On the face of it, Traveler is to accommodate consumer devices seeping into the enterprise. Does (or even can) Notes be made to go the opposite way, a bit like BlackBerry themselves are doing?

I also think the "vendor SDK" column is a bit misleading. On ever other platform listed I can stick with a single language. Not so with Notes (unless I build an app entirely in @functions). You still need a modicum of knowledge in formula to work with XPages.

6 - I think there needs another row "purchase maker" (and maybe even "who is allowed to deploy"), as for Notes it is not the user and there, for me, is the biggest difference.