Hacker News Reader

End of 2022: 1,783,232 apps

End of 2023: 1,870,119 apps

End of 2024: 1,961,596 apps

Now: 2,150,612 apps, after 1.18 years.

+160k apps a year, that's only 84% above pre-AI era (safe to say that apps were not routinely built with AI in 2023 yet). Noticeable increase but doesn't feel dramatic, especially since yes, majority of those new apps are low-effort trash like those described in this thread.

Also a lot more clone ideas these days. AI has definitely empowered people to write things from scratch, either as a product to sell or as internal projects inside companies.

Heh, I guess Apple needs to better use AI to review all the AI-written apps.