Users expect killer innovation in app UX design on iPad
iphone.broadersheet.com
iphone.broadersheet.com
Rather, functional and useful websites do better.
It's the same with the apps. A flashy app will get you noticed, but after the user uses the app for a while, the flashiness disappears and he's just interested in getting the result he wants from the app as quickly as possible. The rest becomes secondary.
Look at this website here that I'm typing this on. It's not flashy or particularly gorgeous, but it's very functional, and so very useful and sticky.
Software is craft, not art.
e.g. Personally speaking I consider the Ribbon to be a wonderful piece of GUI design and the implementation when used in a contextual manner is superb. They took a bloated unfriendly (but critical) set of menus and commands and made them easy to use again catering to an extremely broad demographic. Comparing something like ConvertBot (which incidentally is a lovely piece of work) to that level of HCI design is ridiculous IMO, and just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the craft.
but iphone apps are a little different. they offer functionality more often than content. functionality can't vary by orders of magnitude as content can.
so you have many iphone apps that pretty much do the same things, differing only in minor features.
if the "primary" criterion isn't enough to make the decision, people turn to UX.
feels obvious to me.
if i had two websites (your example, not mine), and both offered almost the same content, i'd pick the one that appeals to me more.
that's how i made my choice of search engine. the major ones hardly differ in the quality of their results.