Today while navigating the new Windows Store apps that arrived today, I ran across something that sort of broke my heart. I found dozens of copies of the same app from the same developer. Not identical, mind you. Subtle differences in how input boxes are laid out, as well as different names, colors, and application icons. Take a look at FlourMill here:

and then Personal Recipe Book here:

The developer, under the name LunaPlena, has submitted 118 apps in the last two weeks. Almost all but 3 of them (the three oldest) are effectively identical. They are the same “data input” application, with subtle design changes. It would be akin to Microsoft offering a version of Access for hair stylists, another for nail salons, etc. If you have a Windows 8 or Windows RT device, do a search for LunaPlena and you should see an innumerable number of Windows Store apps from the last week that are effectively identical.

This isn’t the only developer doing this, either – though the app is so similar, I have to wonder the relationship between the two. Developer Prafull Kelkar has 89 apps in the store. A few are actually an interesting “quiz-style” application like ADONetQuiz, but most of them are kindred spirits to MyProperties:

or GiftIsGot (which is of course ever so slightly different from GiftIsGave):

I guess in many ways, this isn’t that different from the cadre of developers I’ve seen submitting “quote” applications on the Windows Store (or the Apple App Store for that matter) where the engine of the app is identical, but one can choose a distinct app for each individual they want to find quotes for. Except here the engine is the same, and the candy shell for entering data changes. For what it’s worth, this also isn’t a problem unique to the Windows Store by any means. I’ve seen the same on the Apple store, and Microsoft even mentioned it in their Windows Phone Marketplace blog earlier this year, referring to it as “bulk publishing”, but not outright frowning on the process. I do distinctly recall Microsoft saying they frowned upon developers submitting multiple seemingly identical applications in the Windows Store, yet here we are, seeing exactly that.

Seeing developers do this is disappointing to me for a multitude of reasons. First, because it wastes time – Microsoft has to sort through a tedium of apps that will only ever be downloaded by a handful of users, when developers with a broader spectrum of consumer applicability get stuck in a queue behind them. Second, because it’s nonsensical. Customers with data entry needs would be better suited with one app that was more like Access, FileMaker (or even more likely, Bento), rather than almost 200 data entry apps that are subtly tweaked to each task. It shows a developer trying to flood the store, rather than one who truly crafts an application with broad appeal. Inundating the Windows Store with “fraternal twins” like this doesn’t help Windows 8/RT users find the applications that will make Windows 8/RT valuable to them, and it doesn’t help developers make money (heck – these are free apps we’re talking about here). Clusters of apps like this also make me feel even more that application counts – of anybody’s store are an emperor’s clothes comparison. Yet another reason why I have been de-emphasizing counts.