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Apple's App Store Needs a Radical Revamp; How Would You Go About It?
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes Given the hundreds of thousands of apps currently on offer, it's hard for any one app (no matter how well designed) to stand out on Apple's App Store, much less stay atop the bestseller charts for very long. In an August 10 blog posting, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée offered Apple CEO Tim Cook some advice: Let humans curate the App Store. 'Instead of using algorithms to sort and promote the apps that you permit on your shelves, why not assign a small group of adepts to create and shepherd an App Store Guide,' he wrote. 'A weekly newsletter will identify notable new titles, respond to counter-opinions, perhaps present a developer profile, footnote the occasional errata and mea culpa.' Whether or not such an idea would effectively surface all the good content now buried under layers of Flappy Bird rip-offs is an open question; what's certain is that, despite Apple's rosy picture, developers around the world face a lot of uncertainty and competition when it comes to making significant money off their apps. Sure, some developers are making a ton of cash, but the rising tide doesn't necessarily float all boats. If you had the opportunity, how would you revamp/revise/upgrade/adjust/destroy the App Store to better serve the developers who put apps in it?
Moderation and meta-moderation solve all problems. :/
wrong/wrong. developers serve.
Whup, there's your problem. App Store is not designed to serve developers. It serves Apple. That's all.
Is it that I need a weekly newsletter to help me figure out what apps I want to download? Haven't noticed the need as an app store consumer myself.
Is it that I need more choices than what I have now? Haven't noticed a shortage of apps to try and buy, personally.
OH, the feeling is that the app store should be serving the DEVELOPERS, not the CONSUMERS.... Yah, good luck with that - not putting the consumers first and foremost is always a winning business strategy.
I would aggressively punish apps that demand overly broad access to your data.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1. Remove Apple from having it's name on the App Store (or just allow anybody to set up their own store)
2. Removing Apple's 100% control of what apps are listed (Or just allow anybody to set up their own store)
Having an APP rating system might be nice, one where users rate the app for content similar to video games as well as a user overall satisfaction score. However, just doing the first two things would fix it.
But we all know Apple won't forgo the revenue stream and will NEVER give up editorial control because now it requires rooting your phone and voiding the warranty to set up any app store besides Apple's.
So I guess, it's really just one thing... Allow anybody to set up their own store and not require user to root their device to load apps from it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Why is the burden on Apple? If you want better marketing for your apps then figure out a way to advertise your product just like everyone else does. Do not try to lean on Apple to advertise your product because they (probably) don't care about you.
The second you hand storefront management over to a human you open yourself up to a million lawsuits from people alleging unfair business practices.
How can Apple retain total, maniacal control by giving up some control?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
it's hard for any one app (no matter how well designed) to stand out on Apple's App Store, much less stay atop the bestseller charts for very long.
Is this really a problem? Why would users want any particular app to do this?
Allow and encourage third parties to run their own app stores. Make it easy for users to add competing app stores to their phones just like they can add "search providers" to their web browsers.
Support side loading applications without ANY limitations.
Provide options for filtering search results by app demands for permissions. These options should be long term set and forget knobs which do not require constant attention while searching the store.
Fragment the heck out of any rankings don't just have one global rank create tens of thousands of views able to be influenced by a smaller subset of overall user base. This lets word of mouth rather than momentum dominate global trends.
I would do nothing to fix it because there is nothing broken with it.
Of this: http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...
Good ole' slashdot....
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Instead of arbitrarily promoting one application over another, let users rate the applications on how well they conform to providing vertical functions that they claim to. So instead of being based on number of downloads or anything arbitrary like that, it's based on how well it provides functionality.
Of course that takes away from the focus of it being a "store" and focuses on the services the apps can provide, which is probably the direct opposite of what a money-grubbing corporation wants to do.
Then again there is the question of how one can rate the "quality" and "functionality" of a fart-noise app... :P :P :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Apple's current approach seems to parallel what they're doing with iTunes which really favors the labels over the artists. What they should look at is, instead, creating a community for social discovery and interaction - in short, what Amazon has done a fairly good job of (all review systems have faults and can be gamed, but it's clear that the average App Store review is generally of a lower quality than your average Amazon product review).
While I do like seeing "featured" stuff, I also like seeing what others buy based on what I bought, and whether there are any reviews.
Part of this may revolve around making reviews more seamless [1] while also putting down the ban-hammer on apps that have fake/bought reviews.
Also, I'd suggest Apple also adopt a "return period" - they support this for some jurisdictions (S.Korea? HK? I forget).
Absent this kind of reform, the App Store is simply a device for pushing the interests of publishers, not developers, let alone users.
[1] https://medium.com/@hliriani/r...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Allow and encourage third parties to run their own app stores. Make it easy for users to add competing app stores to their phones just like they can add "search providers" to their web browsers.
This doesn't solve the problems listed, it makes them worse. By having multiple stores you decrease each apps visibility, unless the developers do much more work to list their apps in every store. Taking time that would otherwise be devoted to developing more or better apps.
It would inevitably lead to some developers of accusing Apple of playing favorites.
What they could do instead (or in addition) is allow 3rd parties to easily obtain information on the most recent submissions, upgrades, etc and let them supply users with information on what is new and noteworthy.
It's good for Apple to surface really valuable apps, but it's not their job to do the marketing for every developer nor to make sure that everyone turns a profit. They've made a huge change in the industry by making virtually all the apps available for a popular platform available from a single place. This has had both positive and negative effects on developers. It was great for awhile when there weren't that many developers and all it took to get your app in front of millions was to submit it. Now your app is competing with hundreds of thousands of others.
It could simply be that the market is saturated and no amount of App store revamping is really going to fix that.
Apple is famous for two things:
1. Having a walled garden.
2. Cultivating the wall and leaving the garden to fend for itself.
Possibly mimic GoodReads, which Amazon uses to great effect as a marketing and curation tool?
Letting the App developers take more of the gelt home would also help. More of them might
be able to support themselves instead of feeding the iMaw.
There are apps that were put up years ago, presumably were not much of a success, and remain, never updated. All they do is clutter the store up, and make it harder to find the good, up-to date stuff. They should be removed. It's not obvious how...
Perhaps when sales have faded to almost nothing. Perhaps remove any that are still using deprecated APIs.
Perhaps remove any that are not using iOS 7 design features.
Perhaps increase the yearly charge for being on the store... maybe decoupling it from the charge to be a developer. And make the charge per app, such that no hoper apps are voluntarily given up.
They did a report on Too Many Games, which was really about bad store UIs. Steam is the 'least bad' of the biggies, but that's not saying much.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
This approach fails for the same reason communism cannot work (yet). A small group of humans lacks the understanding, wisdom, foresight, and a whole host of other epistemic terms to decide how to organize and prioritize within such a vast system. What they do will work for some people. It will utterly fail for others. The only way to deal with something like this is to have a computer to it (same with communism, btw). I won't defend Apple's algorithms. They probably need a lot of work. Maybe the organization scheme needs to be changed. Whatever. The fix won't be having some humans do it.
This doesn't solve the problems listed, it makes them worse. By having multiple stores you decrease each apps visibility, unless the developers do much more work to list their apps in every store. Taking time that would otherwise be devoted to developing more or better apps.
I don't agree, Basil. More app stores means more/different lists of most "popular" apps, and more diverse bodies of users who will be looking for something different. It's not very Apple, but it is true. Does this mean developers have to choose which market/appstore to be sweet to? Yes. This is simply "humans" managing the App store, as Tim Cook pretended to propose. He meant "Apple employees who do what we tell them," but we are suggesting more truly independently run App stores.
You seem to be pursuing a dream where Apple drives customers to independent Apps. That was a fine dream when iOS was fledgling. Now, it's a behemoth. New stores, new markets, new risks, new rewards for new developers.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
There are any number of sites that rate and recommend apps. But I doubt anyone takes those recommendations seriously any more than they would take recommendations from Apple staffers. Everyone knows money talks...
I want radio buttons I can use to drill down my search...
sort by what permissions they're after. ...
sort by what percentage of people are still using the app after having downloaded it.
sort by price
sort by in-app purchases or not
etc
The biggest problem both the App Store and the Play Store have is searchability. There is no way to filter on anything other than high-level category and keyword, and whatever the result-based ranking algorithms on both stores uses, is horrible, always returning junk and crap instead of what you really want.
This makes finding the kinds of apps you want even when you KNOW what you are looking for EXTREMELY ANNOYING AND OVERLY DIFFICULT, way more so than it has to be.
It is very ironic that Google whose main business is search can not cobble together the resources to make a decent search for Android over the past 5 years.
Why can't you just have different places supply different ratings, - maybe even specialize in certain types of app, but the apps themselves still come from the same store?
I think the app store should be organized for hundreds of thousands of applications better categorized. In particular searching by verticals, searching by interconnections to other applications, searching by level of sales... Mostly though I think the app store works pretty well the issue for most applications is they are yet another version of something for which better apps exist. The problem app developers are having is they aren't going after verticals which is where they should be in a more mature market.
The basic complaint of the poster seems to be that in a store of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of titles, only a very small number ever get discovered and successful. Huge numbers of very worthy apps never get a chance.
That problem can't be solved by any reasonable reorganization. We users (I use the Play store, but the same situation applies) have only so many minutes of time to spend looking for and using new stuff. However you make new apps visible to users, you're punishing apps that would have been visible otherwise. Competing for user attention time is a zero-sum game.
The Play store "people you know" ratings are surprisingly helpful. Unlike general user ratings this is not easy to game by the developers. But of course, those people may only have tested that one app because it was already more popular already.
I guess the only way to really fix it is to show each user only a random 0.1% subset of all apps. That would give every app a good chance of being seen and tried. But it would rather annoy all those people looking for irritated avians and not finding them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
1. There's nothing stopping someone from creating their own curated portal which links directly to the per-app download page within Apple's App store. These portals could have reviews & social media or whatever. Why haven't these sorts of portals emerged?
2. Android doesn't have the walled garden--are the Android app stores wildly easier to use or better at promoting good vs. bad content?
It was Jean-Louis Gassée proposing. He's not worked for Apple since the 80s or 90s - before he created Be and BeOS.
I think this is an issue of the paradox of choice. There's already too much chose facing consumers. Multiple stores only multiply the choice, making it harder still.
Your suggestion of mode/different lists is already possible and already done. The lists don't have to be on the store - they only have to link to it.
You seem to be pursuing a dream where Apple drives customers to independent Apps.
Not at all. Developers have to take control of their own marketing. But multiple stores just add to the amount of work needed, whilst delivering no benefit.
Moderation would work better if you could hear both sides. Let developers respond to a review like on Google Play.
Many people seem to use reviews as an alternative to contacting customer support. For legit problems there is some fairness in doing so. However there are times when a user is confused and the develop has no way to contact that user. It would also be useful for developers to respond indicating when a real problem is fixed.
an app that you install from the app store.
When Wal-Mart decides to sell a new brand of dish soap, it isn't their job to ensure the product is a smashing success. All Wal-Mart cares about is that when you need dish soap, Wal-Mart is where you buy it; it doesn't really matter to them which one you buy. If DishSoapCo is depending on Wal-Mart to convince consumers to buy their soap, they will be sorely disappointed. (Of course, with no marketing plan, Wal-Mart is unlikely to carry the product to begin with, but that's because they have limited shelf space; the App store has no such limitation.)
In the same vein, as long as you keep buying devices and apps from Apple, they don't really care which ones you buy. Developers that are relying on nothing more than the App Store storefront to do their marketing for them are probably not going to succeed, and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
This doesn't solve the problems listed, it makes them worse. By having multiple stores you decrease each apps visibility, unless the developers do much more work to list their apps in every store. Taking time that would otherwise be devoted to developing more or better apps.
Let me ask you another question. In the real world here on earth do you think we would all be better off if all stores and malls were replaced by a single entity offering one global channel with one set of take it or leave it rules for buyers and sellers?
What makes the app environment different? Why is one channel for apps viewed as acceptable yet any talk of making a single entity like Amazon or Umbrella Corp the one only channel for purchase of physical goods viewed as lunacy of the highest order?
What really holds back app stores and the platform in general is placing the OS vendors, developers and carriers above the users and resulting market distortions caused by having control and extracting value across the whole channel.
In a world of multiple app stores distribution channels would naturally arise allowing interested venues to pick up apps which best serve their customers creating an environment where word of mouth and popular demand controls distribution rather than shady algorithms or the jackass with the spyware app who successfully suckered a few million people into downloading it.
Lots of app developers hate this because most of them by volume are in fact bottom feeders who seek to collect payment without doing much to provide value in return and an honest to god real functioning market would put an end to their bullshit.
For 20 years we had nothing but Microsoft (DOS, Windows) on PC's and somehow we survived. Now we need someone to curate the app store? Why not submit your app for review, like in the olden days? The reviewing, rating and recommending of apps should be a separate function than publishing...
Because working for Apple is an intense spiritual discipline.
duh... subcategories... if you click on business apps to see the top 48... if you click see all you are dumped into paginated view 2212 apps... with the option to sort by name or release date... well thanks for nothing...
also
* White text on gray buttons is hard to read ... tired of finding out that the UI doesn't behave in a rational way or that the screen shots and description didn't accurately explain how the app works.
* gray text on gray background is hard to read
* reflections on star ratings looks more busy than neat
* truncated... app titles should be revealed on hover or should wrap instead of truncating
* videos demonstrating features
Nerval's Lobster needs to die. How would you go about killing this fuck?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
#1, quit requiring an Apple/iTunes login to download free apps. Which Apple will never do.
#2, filter by "free". Which Apple will never do.
#3, filter by "requests no privileges not directly related to its function". Which Apple will also never do.
#4, just give me a damned list of apps ordered by price and rating, instead of making me swipe through every...single...hit on my search.
#5, quit disallowing apps just because they compete with your own crApple. I don't like most of the native apps.
#6, make 50% of all ratings directly based on what percent of users (try to) uninstall it within the first week.
If you think small-time developers are upset now, I can only imagine how furious they would be if Apple started doing "pay for play". BillyBobIndy would have even less of a chance to make it.
Really, Apple wouldn't make that much money from it, and the reputational costs would be too great. I could see a "sponsored" category being set up, but nothing beyond that.
I absolutely love that I can use Google Play from my PC: I read an article about or otherwise find a link to an app that sounds interesting, and I can click "Install" from there, it asks me which device (I have an android tablet and phone) and then .. that's it, it's installed within a few seconds.
With Apple, all I see is a button "Open in iTunes". I barely use my iPod touch anymore, but last I tried you basically had to re-find the app on the store ON THE DEVICE to install it, or plug it in with a USB cable. Is that still the only way to install things?
Speak before you think
The rating system on app stores are waaaayyy too generic.
And considering 90% of all the apps get like 4.5 stars, the ratings are comepletly useless.
The top downloaded lists are much better, but that makes it near impossible for a new app to get any attention.
When you are looking for apps, you usually are looking for something specific.
For example, I was looking for a professional drawing/painting tool for my kid.
About 99.999% of these apps are more like coloring books for kids.
While there were some very nice tools, none on the top 100 downloaded had the right mix I was looking for.
And some had many of the features i wanted, but were severely lacking in implementation.
A good example may be to compare two top-rated drawing apps.
They are both highly rated and have a ton of downloads, but one is geared for kids and one is geared for professional.
Which app is 'best' for me depends on what I am actually looking for. If I want something for my 6-year old to finger-paint with, I definately do NOT want the pro tools.
I think Apple and Google should driving developers to produce better apps instead of more apps.
And the best apps should be sitting on the top of the hill.
One way I would suggest would be to have a Tag/Rating system. This would allow developers to tag their apps with all the different features they want.
Then users could rate each tag separately.
So for example a drawing app could have a tag for a blur tool (among others). Users could then give a rating specifically for that feature.
Prospective downloaders could then search for apps with that specific set of features and compare apps side by side.
search for: Drawing/painting apps
pick from most tagged:
kids
professional Total score: 20
App2
professional - 4
color picker - 4
layers - 2
bucket fill - 4
brushes - 3
Blurr tool - 4
>Total score: 21
This would help developers compete by showing them what people are looking for, and where there apps need improvement.
Also, there is much logic that could be added beyond the ratings. -How often are apps USED as opposed to downloaded?
Do certain reviewers give blanket 10's? And many ways to get new apps rated.. Can I (automatically) get a free copy of this new app if I agree to rate it?
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Your post advocates a
( ) technical
( ) legislative
(x) market-based
( ) vigilante
approach to fixing the app store. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(x) Apple is doing quite well these days, thankyouverymuch, and doesn't really give a shit how you think they should be run. (You, in general, public at large, and probably you, in particular, JLG.)
(x) Scammy developers will pay people in 4th-world countries to say their app is great.
(x) Probably a bunch more reasons that I don't have the energy to think up this second.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Enforce a mandatory expiry date for any app. It gets reset when the app is updated by the author. Thus getting rid of the millions of orphan apps cluttering up the bottom of the barrel.
I love Apt. I love the whole Debian package system. I look at App Stores as a hard to search and uninformative version of the Debian package system, that's filled to the brim with Really Stupid Apps.
There are over 1 million apps in the Apple App Store! Most of which are utterly useless....
I don't think it CAN be done better. The App store is viewed as a get rich quick scheme, and hence is flooded with CRAP. Everyone reinvents the wheel. There are probably 10,000 flashlight apps, and most of them are just harvesting your data.
Garbage in, garbage out.... I suppose they could make the ratings based on how LONG you keep the app. Removing the ratings from the hands of Humans and making it based on how often an app is uninstalled, that'd be a good step.
As much as I hate Apple products, I suggest do it with a can of gasoline and a match!
Remember - for most app developers, this is all about making as much sh*t as quickly as possible and throwing at the wall and seeing what sticks. A popular app gets cloned a zillion times. We even have TV shows devoted to apps. Whatever happened to good old word-of-mouth? Make something good, give free samples to a certain segment of the user population, spend some money on marketing, and see what happens? "OMG NO THATS SOOO MUCH EXTRA WORK".
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Whenever I search for an app that does something, the results are always buried in a thousand pissy little games. I want to be able to exclude/include entire categories.
More and better categories.
More info on what you're getting before you shell out. You should be able to preview the App right there in the App store.
Forget all about ratings and recommendations and "top" lists. The problem of people talking to each other, people publishing opinions, etc is already covered elsewhere. If you try to re-invent the wheel, you might not fail, but in the rare case where you succeed (you invent the next email or the next usenet or the next web) app stores won't be on your mind anyway.
You don't go to the theater to get movie recommendations, do you? You don't go to McDonalds and then decide, "Aha, I know: I'll have a hamburger." And you don't type "apt-get install " and hit tab to decide which app will solve your problem. In 2014 we have a thing called "the web."
A couple of folks have said it, but it bears repeating: we need hundreds of categories and subcategories. Think Amazon, not Google.
I want to look at all the diabetes monitoring apps, or all the Talmud apps, or find the BA app. A search throws up way too much junk. A browse of a category is at way too high a level. And I want to look at all the apps in my subsubcategory, and know I've seen all of them. Search doesn't cut it. Categories and browsing is needed.
Step 1 remove ALL the freaking flashlight, mirror, and fart apps. All of them.
Step 2 no longer allow any app that replicates abilities in the stock phone.
Step 3 Free ad choked apps are not allowed to be called "free" but "advertising supported"
Step 4 eliminate in app purchases.
Step 5 only apps that have no ads can be called free, groups can release open source free apps for zero cost to them.
Step 6 all apps have a 30 minute 100% refund return policy. If I buy an app and find it is crap, I can get a 100% refund and it is removed from my phone.
THAT is how you fix not only the apple store but the android and all other "app" stores.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Basically, eliminate the app store. Use it solely for fulfillment, set up an "associate" program, and let the web take over.
Create a feed to the world, announcing apps and such, and then leave it.
Basically, imagine a world where Amazon didn't have a store front. Just a checkout and shipping button.
3rd parties handle all the curating, marketing, bundling, etc. 3rd parties are rewarded for sales by getting a piece of each one.
Now everyone can have an App Store. It's dominated by a single source of supply (Apple), but it's simply a logistics and infrastructure play. 3rd party sites get to advertise, promote, hide, evade, etc. etc. whatever apps they want.
So the simplest changes would re weight apps. Smaller apps more energy efficient apps ought to rise higher in the rankings while apps with ads and in app purchasing should sink. These changes help Apple's platform shine. More radical changes would include multiple app stores. Ala linux package managers enabling other app stores may limit your warranty but a gnu app store and and amazon app store may help Apple stave off anti trust litigation. It also gives consumers a choice to abandon the cess pool of mediocrity that is the Apple apple store for a better curated app store. Yes Apple should impose some restrictions on the other app stores like thou shall use good certificates. But Apple is loosing their focus on building good products and increasing becoming about taking their cut of X Y or Z. I guess they will be joining the RIAA and MPAA next.
App means application, and the clipped form preceded the iPhone by years, especially as part of "killer app".
Other than that users of the 12 percent platform spend more money than users of the 85 percent platform?
Never complained about the apps myself, only what it costs to get one into the store, market it and sell it.
I imagine that in industrialized countries, a year's wages for a programmer far exceed the $1100 startup cost (Mac mini, keyboard, mouse, HDMI cable to your existing monitor or HDTV, iPad mini, and first 365 days of iOS developer program).
There's no good reason to have an app store. We lived without app stores for decades. We can return to not having them.
Yes. Somebody who moved from OS X application development to iOS application development will already have the Mac.
[root@itunes.apple.com ~]$ rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Seriously, how could an intelligent person NOT be offended by Apple's
policies for the App Store. Idiots need protection, smart people can fend
for themselves. Of course what Apple KNOWS is that the big bucks come
from selling stuff to idiots, because idiots are the vast majority of humans.
God damn, I miss VersionTracker and all apps being available without
dealing with a walled garden.
I've used Apple stuff for a while but I think the stuff I have now is the last stuff
I will buy from Apple. Enough is enough.
And by the way, Tim Cook is a shitty CEO, Apple has lost its way big time
under Cook's "leadership". And before you cite the increase in Apple's stock price,
I will tell you that such a simplistic and stupid argument means less to me than the last
shit I took, and that shit means nothing.
rm -rf *
If a developer uploads a new copy, then it can be moderated and meta-moderated. It should also pass a basic test before being accepted, like making sure the application actually runs.
It's one thing to be a pack rat, it's quite another to save all your trash piled up at home. The former may get you labelled as odd, but the latter can lead you to be institutionalized (after someone takes advantage of you on a reality TV show).
For the Slashdot similarity its not like we can comment on ancient posts. Think about it.. would you find it beneficial to go back to Slashdot Y2K posts and add new comments? Why would you want to keep a 7 year old application that had 2 downloads? Take a picture and reminisce about the good old days if you want, I'm fine with that.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Stop being lazy and advertise.
If you want to get your product in front of consumers, market it and put some effort into generating awareness. Stop expecting Apple to do it for you.
And stop blaming Apple for your failure due to your laziness.
While I'm sure there is some money to be made, it seems illogical to think so many developers should be focusing on the phone. Making it rich off simple phone 'applications' seems naive. That said there probably are opportunities for solid applications which solve real world problems, but little games, pizza 'web' apps, 'locate my', etc are hardly worth anything to the consumer. Things that are actually worth something are more revolutionary. Good examples are fewer and farther between, but would include technology like: GPS vehicular navigation, good calendaring software (ie notifies you of upcoming appointments, automatic remote backup, encryption, etc), notes apps, etc. Despite these being worth something it doesn't mean developers aught to expect much in return from a user downloading the software. These types of applications aught to generally have been paid for by device manufacturers and integrated into the product. Other options might include having a service model or advertising, etc.
I'm not sure the premise has been established.
"Given the hundreds of thousands of apps currently on offer, it's hard for any one app (no matter how well designed) to stand out on Apple's App Store, much less stay atop the bestseller charts for very long."
Why should either of those things be easy-- especially the latter?
hiring some female minorities will fix it
Allow at most say 10 apps in a particular niche (say todo lists). Any app older than 2 years goes away (or are really buried like you don't get them in searches you have to page though them at 20 apps a page till you find them). You can still access it if you've purchased it in the past but it no longer is available for viewing/new downloads. New submissions with minor changes from existing apps are not accepted (ex: yet another tetris clone with different music or point system). There needs to be a balance between choice and chaos: you don't see every plumber in the country in the phone book because only a few are relevant to you. Similarly with software, to a lesser extent perhaps but still true: there is only so many ways to keep a list of things that makes sense when using a finger sized input device. Keep a few options and dump all the new skin clones.
If you are going to offer a curated store of apps for your platform you should really curate: pick the best or best examples of different approaches to the space and dump the rest.
why not assign a small group of adepts to create and shepherd an App Store Guide ...because there are millions of apps, and this would be a hell of a lot of effort just to piss off the majority of developers who won't receive preferential treatment.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
nuke the entire site from orbit. Itâ(TM)s the only way to be sure
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
"One App to rule them all, One App to find them, One App to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."
Apologies to Tolkien.
Aaah META - META - META
From a course on business strategy I remember looking at the business model of the European fashion retailer Zara.
One thing that sticks in my mind was that their customers kept coming back to their stores to see "what was new".
Zara are very good at keeping their offering fresh.
They do so through excellent use of technology that gives them insights on what is/isn't selling, combined with JIT etc.
The current App Store lacks only 1 thing and that is freshness.
Ever day I check my App's rankings for particular keywords and I see very little movement.
I imagine its the same for the customers on the App store.
For some search terms there are 1000's of Apps.
Rather than allowing a stagnant top 10 club there should be daily rotation based on user submitted ratings and revenue earned.
With Apple doing more to make users rate apps.
If there's anything that says the user likes an App it's them voting with their wallet.
It pains me to suggest revenue ranking but following Googles example of putting money first in search results is the norm now.
Google's update 18 months ago screwed a lot of businesses who ranked on keyword search for their services.
Immediately after dropping services websites from the search results they bombarded them with AdWord sign up emails, I know I was one of them.
It was shake down pure and simple.
This idea of creating internal Apple reviewers is just plain stupid.
It's asking for corruption by assigning great power to individuals who will also have personal tastes, philosophies and expectations.
It needs to be cold and objective which humans are not.
A 302 to play.google,com? :P
Requiem for the American Dream
Step 2 no longer allow any app that replicates abilities in the stock phone.
I currently am using Vanilla Music, Firefox for my browser and my music the stuff I actually use my phone most fo, and this is only on my new phone. I normally have different launchers and stores too. Apple is a third world platform because of the LACK of this feature.
Better categories, and many more categories. When there are too many in "games", you need to subdivide into game genres. Someone looking for a tetris-ish game shouldn't need to see shooting games or simcity clones. And so on, for other popular categories. When I look for a better "calendar", I don't want to wade through gps maps, toronto bus schedules or note-taking apps.
" Let people work for free for us .. " sure let em do the work , our guys aint worth shit .. " allrighty let's ask them for their suggestions ..
You don't need to have app store administrators to limit the number of clones. The legal system does that just fine.
the traditional solution with a free/paid version clutters the appstore and loses your settings if you upgrade
Not necessarily. The developer of the application could add a mechanism to pass information from the free version to the paid version using a custom URL scheme.
I understand some people actually want a lack of selection. Those who do could always carry a Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita instead of an iPod touch.
Except there's only one store for apps if you happen to own an iOS device. This so-called market power leads to different rules that a store would have to follow. Or would you prefer that people have to carry multiple brands of phone and tablet, one for each platform's exclusive applications? Good luck shuffling your SIM among an iPhone, a Windows Phone, and gosh knows what else.
As a developer you shouldn't think of the App store as a Walmart, think of it as a distribution center for your app.
You can't just submit it and forget it, you have to market it. You need a customer list (Apple won't supply it) that is loyal to your brand. That means you need a brand. You need to understand your customer and how to reach them. You need to advertise, send emails, post ads, anything you would do for any other product that is sold. You can't expect people to accidentally find you.
Any sales you get from people wandering around the App store are just gravy. Hopefully you have a way to capture their contact information in the app (offer a newsletter, offer something free (a more detailed user's guide, hints, cheats, whatever) for their email address so you can establish a relationship.
You can offer short-term sales in the App store, use your email list to promote the sales.
If you think the App store is a set it and forget channel you might as well not bother.
Also, be honest. Like, when you use /. to conduct a survey, don't use a bogus name; use your real name, Apple, when posting in public.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Start by removing Jony Ive's ability to dictate ANY UI design on iOS or the Mac OS. He's good at Industrial Design, but HORRIBLE with User Interface design.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
How about getting rid of iTunes? It would be really nice to just drag and drop files into my iPod as can be done with every other mp3 player/phone in the world.
Moderation would work better if you could hear both sides. Let developers respond to a review like on Google Play.
Many people seem to use reviews as an alternative to contacting customer support. For legit problems there is some fairness in doing so. However there are times when a user is confused and the develop has no way to contact that user. It would also be useful for developers to respond indicating when a real problem is fixed.
Letting the developers worry about it seems like the only fair solution. Should there really be a market for apps that recreate other apps just a tiny bit better/shinier? If an app is really noteworthy, some venue outside the app store (blogs, tech news outlets, etc) will take notice and promote it.
There really is no such venue. For years I've been asking people that I run into where they learn about new apps. The answers are almost always the same. First is the App Store best seller lists. Second is friends mention it. Rarely, hardly ever actually, is some online source other than the app store mentioned.
Personally when I'm looking for an app for some task on Google Play I find the developer comments useful. When looking for an app on the Apple App Store I often wish I could see a developer's comment. Such comments are not valuable only to the developer, they are also valuable to the person looking for an app.
Lets ask the readers a question. Where, other than the App Store lists and friends, do you learn about new apps?
doubly so for iOS because of the developer fees
Keeping a roof over your head is an order of magnitude more than the $400 per year to keep current on the iOS ecosystem: a $600 Mac mini every four years, a $300 iOS device every two, and a $100 developer certificate every year.
The free alternative to Xcode is making a web application that runs in Safari. This route to market has been around since iPhone OS 1.0, making it even older than the App Store (which debuted in 2.0).
What's needed aside from better filtration tools (show only apps that are free sorted by download) is the ability to search common sense sentences. "I'm looking for an app that will help me organize receipts for my taxes." Then it would allow you to filter results by reviews, ratings, downloads, number of current users.
The App store is, frankly, a nightmare to navigate. It USED to be far easier (read faster) to look at, say, the first hundred apps which matched a particular keysearch but, even then, there were no book markers so you could flag a potential purchase during a browse.
There are many things you could do to improve the shopping experience but the #1 thing I'd personally like to see is book markers which would allow me to to mark apps which interested me and then, at some future date, easily jump back to those flagged apps to finally decide which I might want to buy.
It's almost as though Apple went out of its way to make it hard to shop and peruse; that they went out of their way to make an app store which sucks in terms of comparative shopping. Now why would they do that??
Just saying....
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Let me ask you another question. In the real world here on earth do you think we would all be better off if all stores and malls were replaced by a single entity offering one global channel with one set of take it or leave it rules for buyers and sellers?
The success of Amazon online and Walmart offline suggests that regardless of what they say they want, people actually like to have a one stop shop where they can get everything - provided the prices are kept low.
Of course it would be a bad thing if those stores were to become absolutely the only ones, but that's not what's happening with App Stores. The Apple App Store isn't the only app store, it's just the only one for iOS. And people choose to enter into the iOS ecosystem, be they users or developers. They could choose to go for the more open model of Android, but they didn't. For iOS users, the one stop curated store is seen as a feature, not a problem. And for iOS developers also.
Are you an iOS user or developer?
Lots of app developers hate this because most of them by volume are in fact bottom feeders who seek to collect payment without doing much to provide value in return and an honest to god real functioning market would put an end to their bullshit.
Trust me, it's not only a functioning market it's a difficult one. If your mobile app "doesn't provide much value", the sales will be tiny.
releases android/iOS steam store.
releases multiplatform pokemon MMO
Developer subscriptions. Just like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all feed based apps. So basically how the most popular sites all work. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills that this isn't already part of the various app stores.. See my blog post for mucho bullet points http://camsvirtualrealityreali...
TomHudson and, Barbara, not Barbie and now this BarbaraHudson one too? A memo for you and a challenge you can never meet since you are such a dunce also http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
The success of Amazon online and Walmart offline suggests that regardless of what they say they want, people actually like to have a one stop shop where they can get everything - provided the prices are kept low.
I stopped dealing with Amazon after they started enforcing minimum purchases and intentionally having "free shipping" take over a week including multiple days of "sitting" on orders before shipping...can only assume to create artificial demand for "prime" subscriptions. What always happens when companies get too big. It's after-all their "fiduciary duty" to maximally leverage their market position.
Wal-Mart is hardly one-stop shopping. They have the same lowest-bidder crap as any other department store. Anything quality oriented or slightly niche they simply don't carry.
Of course it would be a bad thing if those stores were to become absolutely the only ones
The question is why are "bad things" not also applicable to mobile phone space?
but that's not what's happening with App Stores. The Apple App Store isn't the only app store, it's just the only one for iOS.
I assume *everyone* knows Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc have their own app stores.
Anyone who owns an iPhone does not have a choice where they can purchase software or install free software for the mobile computer they have purchased.
And people choose to enter into the iOS ecosystem, be they users or developers. They could choose to go for the more open model of Android, but they didn't.
I hear mobile app developers love having to port all of their shit to multiple platforms each with different programming languages, APIs and tool-chains. Few major iOS titles exist without an Android version.
Failure here is market allowing OS vendors to get away with not treating operating systems as a commodity which could only benefit developers and users alike. My own opinion too much value is bottled up in the walled gardens for this to be sustainable over long haul. AOL will repeat itself and the castle walls will crumble under their own weight.
For iOS users, the one stop curated store is seen as a feature, not a problem. And for iOS developers also.
I've heard this very same "feature" doublespeak levied against those complaining about non-user replaceable batteries.
When customers are faced with artificial restrictions yet elect to purchase anyway they are doing so because they either don't care, are willing to tolerate the restriction or see no other viable alternative. It is NOT because they are electing to EMBRACE artificial restrictions. Successfully pushing product with restrictions should never be confused with provision of additional value to the customer.
Are you an iOS user or developer?
Never, I refuse to support vendor controlled execution environments regardless of the vendor doing it. I believe it is morally indefensible and ultimately dangerous to society for any single vendor or trio of such vendors to wield this kind of power.
At least most Android devices can sideload APKs even if device is otherwise loaded with vendor crapware, google spy shit and locked down (no root or locked boot loader)
Trust me, it's not only a functioning market it's a difficult one. If your mobile app "doesn't provide much value", the sales will be tiny.
I trust my own eyes. All app stores are loaded with ubiquitous mounds of trash and feature customers unwilling to pay more than a couple dollars (cuz evrythng elz 1s ***FREE***) even for excellent software...so ads and spyware says the long tail... This is a symptomatic of market failure of app store concept.
People generally are not inundated with listing of thousands of Cheezy B-movies now playing at the movie theatre... Gamers don't go to gamestop to be treated with walls upon walls of lame games f
"Are you an iOS user or developer?"
Never, I refuse to support vendor controlled execution environments regardless of the vendor doing it. I believe it is morally indefensible and ultimately dangerous to society for any single vendor or trio of such vendors to wield this kind of power.
OK, so that says that for you it's a moral crusade, not an interest in what works.
I trust my own eyes. All app stores are loaded with ubiquitous mounds of trash
As you are neither a user not developer of iOS apps, then I don't trust your eyes, because you have no experience of the Apple App Store. You might have glanced at it. But you haven't spent much time, nor used it as I have. You are generalizing from the Android app stores, which already provides much of the freedom you desire, and are shit as a result.
I think fart apps and assorted silliness is great for those few seeking that sort of thing. It is not so great when you have no other choice.
And there your argument really jumps the shark. There are over a million apps in the Apple App Store, not just fart apps. If you want to see the best examples see Apple Design Awards.
I'm afraid you've demonstrated you're just ranting, not taking part in a serious and meaningful discussion.