Apple Considering Google-Like 'Paid Search' On App Store (bloomberg.com) 49
Apple is considering big changes to the App Store, according to a Bloomberg report. The publication claims that the iPhone maker has a team working on "paid searches" -- something similar to Google's model. Under this, the company will charge its developers for showing their apps among top search results. Apple critic John Gruber writes: This sounds like a terrible idea. The one and only thing Apple should do with App Store search is make it more accurate. They don't need to squeeze any more money from it. More accurate, reliable App Store search would help users and help good developers. It's downright embarrassing that App Store search is still so bad. Google web search is better for searching Apple's App Store than the App Store's built-in search. That's the problem Apple needs to address.
While we're doing Google comparisons ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:While we're doing Google comparisons ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Devs lie through their teeth on android review replies. I don't trust them at all.
And you see through it? What's the problem?
The problem is we're only hearing from one side, and that side is likely to misinform as well. At least with a developer followup one can hear both sides, more info is available. And if the response is BS marketing/sales stuff then that is info too.
Examples:
Cust: Doesn't do X?
Dev immediate response: We do support X, please see page YY in our manual, available on our website as a PDF.
or
Dev response two months later: We have added support for X in version 1.Z. Thank you for your suggestion.
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So in the first case the app isn't intuitive enough. The best dev response is to improve the app, not argue with the review.
In the second, the review comment will have disappeared into the "comments on older versions" section, and the fact that the feature is now in the app will be listed in the description of the
Of course customers aren't always right. Sometimes they say stupid things. But if it's a good app, they will be outnumbered, and sometime corrected by reviews from other customers.
Fact is good apps
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So in the first case the app isn't intuitive enough.
That's a BS answer. Some apps are more complicated than a flashlight app. And see your own caveat below "Of course customers ...". A dev response allows for more accurate information. What is wrong with more accurate info?
The best dev response is to improve the app, not argue with the review.
Its not a debate of opinion, its a statement of a fact.
In the second, the review comment will have disappeared into the "comments on older versions" section,
Show comments for all versions is a popular option.
... and the fact that the feature is now in the app will be listed in the description of the
That lacks the "intuitiveness" you championed earlier. So in your opinion a user viewing all reviews needs to cross reference all software update descriptions, rather than a simply re
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That's a BS answer. Some apps are more complicated than a flashlight app.
An argument that only makes sense if you think that only flashlight apps can be intuitive. It suggests you couldn't design a good app to save your life. Which is why you want the ability to explain or make excuses when customers can't understand your app.
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That's a BS answer. Some apps are more complicated than a flashlight app.
An argument that only makes sense if you think that only flashlight apps can be intuitive.
No, you completely misunderstood and oversimplify. Not every element of an app can be intuitive. Look at Apple UI guidelines, they concede this and the focus needs to be on the most common operations. Look at Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Not everything is intuitive.
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No, you completely misunderstood and oversimplify.
Says the guy using a flashlight app as his example.
Focus, and not succumbing to featureitis is very much a part of intuitiveness. Mobile apps don't come with manuals. And their active time per use is typically measured in seconds rather than minutes or hours. If you can't find a way to make an element of an app intuitive, hire a UX designer who can. Or consider that the feature does not belong in the app. (It may be that it deserves an app of it's own.)
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No, you completely misunderstood and oversimplify.
Says the guy using a flashlight app as his example.
Clue: Satire.
Context: Your suggestion that everything can be intuitive.
Focus, and not succumbing to featureitis is very much a part of intuitiveness. Mobile apps don't come with manuals.
Actually some do, they are embedded, see Apple's Pages, Numbers and Keynote. And various tutorials that take place on the first run perform a similar role, as well as other methods. Why, because not everything can be intuitive. As Apple concedes in their UI guidelines.
And their active time per use is typically measured in seconds rather than minutes or hours.
Myopic. Again, you focus seems to be at the more simple end of the spectrum. Again, see Apple's Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
If you can't find a way to make an element of an app intuitive, hire a UX designer who can. Or consider that the feature does not belong in the app. (It may be that it deserves an app of it's own.)
There is no magic bullet, user confusion is inev
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Clue: Satire.
It wasn't satire. It was a line within a post were you were making a straight argument.
Context: Your suggestion that everything can be intuitive.
I never made any such suggestion. My point is that the better response to a bad review is to make the app more intuitive, rather than answer back to the review.
Actually some do, they are embedded, see Apple's Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Very much the exception. And yes, a failure.
And various tutorials that take place on the first run perform a similar role, as well as other methods.
You mean onboarding. That's an entirely different thing, and is not a failure. It's very much one of the tools in the armoury of making apps intuitive. All good games do this.
Myopic.
Clearly you aren't in the mobile development i
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Clue: Satire.
It wasn't satire. It was a line within a post were you were making a straight argument.
Whoosh ...
Context: Your suggestion that everything can be intuitive.
I never made any such suggestion.
You argued against the notion things aren't always so simple. What impression does that leave? You argue that Apple failed because they too embedded manuals in their productivity apps. You suggested complex apps be broken into multiple simpler apps. Again, things aren't always so simple.
Actually some do, they are embedded, see Apple's Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
Very much the exception. And yes, a failure.
Its not the exception when dealing with apps addressing complicated problems, apps that need to offer a wide variety of capabilities.
And various tutorials that take place on the first run perform a similar role, as well as other methods.
You mean onboarding. That's an entirely different thing, and is not a failure. It's very much one of the tools in the armoury of making apps intuitive. All good games do this.
Embedded manuals are tools too, because some things are inherently complicated. A
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If anyone is making rookie mistakes here, it's not me. I've been in mobile apps for 17 years. You don't appear to be in the mobile app development industry at all.
What makes you think only hearing one side is a benefit to the public?
Because a review writer is entitled to give their opinion without being contradicted by the vendor.
And it's not just a benefit to the public, but the developer too. Though many won't realise it. As I've tried to get across to you because it means their answer to a bad review is to make a better app rather than make an excuse or imply the user is wrong in not finding some unintuitive functionality.
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If anyone is making rookie mistakes here, it's not me. I've been in mobile apps for 17 years. You don't appear to be in the mobile app development industry at all.
Your comments suggest you may want to re-think things, perhaps contradicting Apple is not the best way to demonstrate your knowledge gained in those 17 years. I.e. Some apps do complicated things, not everything can be intuitive, sometimes an embedded manual is useful. See Apple's productivity app Pages, Numbers and Keynote.
What makes you think only hearing one side is a benefit to the public?
Because a review writer is entitled to give their opinion without being contradicted by the vendor.
You have misread, I have not suggested commenting on opinions. Only correcting erroneous information, as in feature X does not exist when in fact it does.
And it's not just a benefit to the public, but the developer too. Though many won't realise it. As I've tried to get across to you because it means their answer to a bad review is to make a better app rather than make an excuse or imply the user is wrong in not finding some unintuitive functionality.
You have got across little becau
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Your comments suggest you may want to re-think things
You wouldn't know. Given you have no experience. You are trying to align your opinion with Apple's on the basis of you having read the HIG. But I'm arguing with you, not your idea of hat Apple thinks. Apple would accept that embedding a manual in their phone productivity apps was an unfortunate compromise. One that follows from having to support editing of desktop office documents.
You have misread, I have not suggested commenting on opinions.
If you provide the facility how are you going to stop them? App Stores have enough work approving the apps themselves without ap
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You are trying to align your opinion with Apple's on the basis of you having read the HIG. But I'm arguing with you, not your idea of hat Apple thinks. Apple would accept that embedding a manual in their phone productivity apps was an unfortunate compromise. One that follows from having to support editing of desktop office documents.
The point you are missing is that the unfortunate compromise happens in complicated solutions. Its not an Apple specific thing, nor an "office" app thing. Again, your suggestion of breaking things into multiple apps demonstrates a lack of understanding of the problem. One can not always go down the ideal path, be that small simple apps or all features/functionality intuitive. And thats sometimes true for smaller apps too. The more you claim otherwise the more my flashlight app satire seems spot on.
You have misread, I have not suggested commenting on opinions.
If you provide the facility how are you going to stop them? App Stores have enough work approving the apps themselves without approving the review responses too.
Actually
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I'm not missing anything. We simply have a difference of opinion. Many years ago I might have agreed with you. Now I know better.
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Devs lie through their teeth on android review replies. I don't trust them at all.
And users give bad reviews for reasons that don't make any sense, such as a live wallpaper not having an entry in the app drawer.
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The devs will believe that the review is wrong far more often than it's actually wrong though.
Look, they're reviews. Movie and theatre makers don't get a right to reply to a bad review that they believe misunderstood the work. They just have to grin and bear it. And trust that if the work actually is any good the positives outweigh the negatives.
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Sorry but no. I picked a random app in Google Play store. You might say that there's nothing wrong with these developer comments. But they are changing the tone of the reviews section. Thanking for the feedback and giving the support email address over and over again is not adding to the experience of reviews for people reading the reviews.
It's a reviews section, it's not customer support, and it's not chat.
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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Thanking for the feedback and giving the support email address over and over again is not adding to the experience of reviews for people reading the reviews.
And that is not the type of response I offered as examples is it? Some developers do responses right, some do it wrong, and that too is information for the potential user of their products. Google does it better than Apple. They create an ecosystem where more information can be available. Apple is inferior in this respect.
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I went to take a real example rather than take one you selected or made up.
Your idea that more information is necessarily better is another clue that you couldn't design a decent app to save your life.
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I went to take a real example rather than take one you selected or made up.
Right, because some things being unintuitive in Apple's Pages, Numbers and Keynote are not real world examples.
Your statistical sample of 1 does not invalidate the idea that a developer can do feedback right. And doing so offers useful information to a user researching an app.
Your idea that more information is necessarily better is another clue that you couldn't design a decent app to save your life.
You suggested everything can be intuitive, contrary to Apple's own UI guidelines and app implementations. And now you are confusing web page type information for a user doing research on an app with what an app actually puts on its
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While we're doing Google comparisons ... how about letting developers respond to a confused, erroneous or otherwise misinformed review.
That's always a problem I have with reviews - there is no way to validate their validity so I place very little stock in them unless there are a number of similar comments, pro or con, over a period of time greater than 6 months. While letting developers respond might help, most ones I have read on other sites that allow that tend to be "Sorry it didn't meet your needs..." A developer could add a review comment section on their web sit where they could provide thoughtful answers to legitimate issues. I al
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Probably won't happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Step back to brick and mortar in some ways ... (Score:3)
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Absolutely. It's not going to happen. It's just someone inventing a story for clickbait purposes.
Can I pay to make its search WORK? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate ads with a passion, but in this case, I doubt paid listings could seriously make it any worse.
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I'm thinking the same thing.
It could, at least, let some high quality titles backed by legit developers with a legit marketing budget get some visibility. While not ideal for everything it could be an improvement. (And help Apple make more money, which is why they do anything really)
Right now the app store is gamed by so much.. Crap. Just pure cash-in crap with no value at all.
Not saying some crap vendor could not pay to promote crap, but the bar would be probably raised a bit.
What's missing from the app st
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This is exactly what I have to do. Even to find Apple's own applications.
You type in the EXACT APP NAME and it doesn't come up in a search.... what the crap is with that?
current apple's 1 success is iphones (Score:2, Insightful)
iphones make the money, rest just eat it up.
once iphones sales stop growing (which is starting to happen), and there is real competition in a saturated market for so called smartphones,(with apple no longer able to fool buyers in to paying extra for its over hyped, but in reality rather average, phones) apple would be in trouble.
its unused cash-pile will not cushion it for long either.
then we will see true money grubbing colors of apple . this story is just the start.
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All of their divisions make money.
The iPhone is far from 'average'. It may not always be 'best', but average is underselling it by quite a large margin.
The unused cash pile is enormous. It would run the company for an awfully long time.
Apple makes money the same way every other company does: they put products for sale at a certain price. If people buy them, they make money. Apple has made products that nobody wanted, and those products went away. Calling them 'money grubbing' may be true, but no more true o
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Apple's non-iPhone revenue is 95% of all of MicroSoft's revenue.
So that's why... (Score:3)
So that's why I only get garbage on the results of my searches on Google Play? At best one or two relevant results and the following not having nothing to do with what I was looking for? Dammit!
And this is different how? (Score:1)
This was Version 1.0. It was soon top left on the "Best New Apps" section of the App Store's "Featured" screen, even though "We have not received enough ratings to display an average for the current version of this application." Which led me to wonder how this app could be considered "best".
How did this work, if not
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We've had a couple of our apps featured in the Best New Apps section. Apple's iTunes marketing team got in touch, in our case that led to an actual face to face meeting with our CEO. They told us they were interested in featuring our apps. A short time later we got a formal request by email for assets for the appropriate sizes to be featured, with no promise that we actually would be. Then a few days later we were featured. No money changed hands either way.
It's got nothing to do with reviews as this happen
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App store discoverability is terrible (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, discoverability is terrible in the app store. Unless I know what I want already, I don't go there - because the suggestions I get will be for Star Wars, Angry Birds, and Star Wars Angry Birds.
As a comparison, look at Steam. I buy all sorts of weird crap on Steam because they have so many ways to explore their content. One day I'm buying a AAA title for $50, the next I'm the 100th person to buy some random indie title for $2, the next I'm getting some older thing that just went on 70% - and I'm having a good experience with all those. The Queues are brilliant, their sales system is great, and their social features actually work (even though I only have a few friends on Steam, I quite often get sucked into buying something that they've played or reviewed or whatever).
Google and Apple (who both enjoy essentially monopoly status on their platforms) should both be stealing ideas as hard as they can from Valve here (who earned its popularity with users and developers by providing value to both over the long term).
Trying to monetize placement is completely backwards - it's creating win-lose situations between developers, and win-lose for Apple and consumers. Doing better work to help show people the stuff they might want is win-win-win, where the pie gets bigger, developers sell more, and consumers are more satisfied with what the stuff they get because it matches their preferences better.
Remove the app store clutter (Score:2)
Once in a while I make the mistake of browsing the app categories, just to see what's available.
I end up getting inundated with applications that all start with **11111AA, so that it appears at the top of the list, and you have to scroll pages and pages of apps before you hit something that isn't remotely junk. I don't even bother browsing anymore cause it's just a waste of time. I don't need to see 500 AAAAAAAAUseYourPhoneAsToiletPaper apps.
Not a bad idea (Score:2)
Suppose you just developed a new app. Today you have to buy ads on search engines and other places where you can only guess user interests. It's far better to advertise to users already search app store for appropriate keywords and who have matching interests. It will probably cost less money and you spam fewer Android users and others who are not interested in this category of apps.
better idea (Score:2)
Instead of that, how about you split the view into three instead of two parts? Paid, IAP and actually free?
there was a time when the "free" section of the AppStore was a great place to discover small gems, demo versions and more. Now 90% of it is FarmVille clones.