Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Then again, it's hardly a hard problem - it's just one that Apple has done almost nothing significant about over the years. Practically any solution is better for developers (and users) than the current status quo.
Then again, it's hardly a hard problem
Here is an image of what looks like a worker in China manipulating App store rankings using an array of some hundred 5Cs.
http://i.imgur.com/EWyVh0X.jpg
And here is an image purportedly showing the prices for a Top 10 spot in Apple's App Store, achieved through ranking manipulation.
http://i.imgur.com/TZuf1iP.jpg
[1] This disturbing image of a Chinese worker with close to 100 iPhones reveals how App Store rankings can be manipulated
http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-shows-how-fake-app-stor...
Back when we used to sell stuff via operator (carriers) portals people would still use tricks like starting game names with the letter A to appear at the top of the lists, so attempts to game any system are not a new phenomenon.
Ultimately you have to play the game you find yourself in.
As a user, compared to Google Play, the iTunes App Store really sucks. Besides the discoverability issue, the Apple's store isn't even showing me reviews because Apple is limiting those reviews to reviews of locals only and in my country there aren't that many iPhone users that would be interested in the apps that I am interested in or that care to contribute reviews. And basically I end up installing junk in the hope that it's any good, or do searches on Google for recommendations - oh, the irony.
In any shop I go to, there are endless equivalent products to choose from.
The one I end up buying depends on price, marketing, visibility in media, word of mouth and so on.
Selling stuff is hard.
Not much better now though. Now the bottom half of the screen is covered by "continue/login" overlay and the top third is covered by fixed toolbars, leaving a sliver of peephole for the actual content. They really go out of their way to annoy the hell out of anyone without an account, don't they? You'd think they'd learn a thing or two from Quora's ill-fated experiments.
"Applications that include filtering, bookmarking, searching or sharing recommendations are not considered significantly different from the App Store, therefore they cannot be approved by Apple." http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/11/appidemia-shutting-down-aft...
I never see analysts charging Apple with sheer negligence in these things.
It's not for the lack of resources. They have warchests both here and offshore. Why they don't get behind these pesky problems beats me. I mean these are elementary things. Using your competitor to search for apps in your store has to be downright cringe-worthy.
The only explanation for this has to be that Apple is shoring up every last nickel for something much much larger. In the years to come we shall likely see Apple heading into complete virgin product territories.
Apps, phones and tablets must seem like a distraction - a sideshow if you will - to the people in the know at Apple. A distraction from the real mother lode of things they have been working on.
If proven true, this has to be the greatest execution of strategy secrecy and misleading of onlookers and industry watchers alike, every seen at a corporation.
Nothing else explains why such scant attention is paid to basic things like search, voice recognition (Siri which is again a laggard compared to Google Now / Cortana) or maps or any other facets of the Apple ecosytem.
I wasn't even too far off when I predicted this. Looks like Apple has hundreds working on the car,per WSJ.[1]
[1] Apple Has Hundreds Working On An Electric Car Design, Says WSJ
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/13/apple-car/
[2] Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars
http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-titan-car-project-to-chal...
My initial guess was that it must be quite high but a little research [0] turned up some interesting results. It turns out the app review team is pretty understaffed and has to deal with absolute trash all the time. It also clarified the pornography policy, which, according to the article, is a way to expedite the review process. I wonder if the strictness of the policy came about because of the clogged app review process or just happened to help alleviate that particular process after the fact.
Of course, this is relatively anecdotal, coming from one former employee, and published in 2012 but I found it interesting. I do respect Apple's unwillingness to compromise on quality here.
[0] - http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-it-really-sucks-to-...
> Pinterest’s philosophy is that it can help nudge people into doing things — be it buying a coffee maker or trying a new recipe — by letting the site’s 70 million estimated regular visitors search for and save for later the things that interest them. If I’m looking to buy a good espresso machine, for instance, I could head over to La Marzocco’s website and pin a link to the $7,000 GS/3 to my Pinterest board to buy it later.
Pinterest is the online version of that.
It's also very similar to vision boards (actually, I think the similarity is stronger, and may be where the "pin" metaphor comes from).
The closer we can get to selling apps directly on websites, the more the app store becomes irrelevant. You still have to go through review to get the file signatures, but perhaps you can pull the binaries from a different source.
That would be a really interesting vertical.
I find it a really nice touch when I've been linked to an app from another site to be able to instantly get it installed on my mobile without having to fish it out of my pocket and do something silly like take a photo of a QR code.
I'm surprised that the App Store doesn't have a similar feature.
If I've heard or read about some specific app, I can find it by name pretty easily. For everything else, google and the web works just fine. Right, it's an extra click or two but I don't really think that qualifies as a "problem"..
Between app store search, google searches for specific features or integrations, apps that come with devices like activity trackers, reviews in blogs, and occasional promo actions in Starbucks, I think I have it covered.
Despite the phenomenal FUD, no one ever says they can't find an app they want. They try out the top 5 and pick one. Or make their own if they are industrious.
Huge numbers of shovelware apps aren't really a problem, but realize its time to focus on marketing that mediocre app if you want it to sell better.
The market is dictating the success of all those mediocre app developers properly: relegation to 2nd class and app obscurity.
#1 is Twitter's official app. So they get a point for that.
#2 is Instagram. Close but no cigar.
#3 is TwiGrow which looks like some kind of scheme to get more followers.
#4 is Pic Jointer, an app to join photos together.
#5 is Happy Park, a theme park game.
It doesn't get any better after that. Waze, Flipboard, emoji keyboards. I don't know how far you have to get down the list to actually find another twitter client.
Its a twitter client, it works, why bother with anything else?