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Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

marco.org

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Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#21

Post by afhof »

po wrote: post #16

I had the exact same observation but for another Apple app ecosystem: Game Center. I could not care less how I rank in the global rankings for an iPhone app. Do I care that some 10 kids or idiot savants have scored 100x higher than me? Not really. Maybe if I had actually joined a league or something I would like to know how I ranked globally but otherwise, that's not what you want to show people by default. There is…

Percentiles I think greatly help the appearance of rankings. Knowing you are in the top 95% vs. knowing you're a measly 2 standard deviations above the mean.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#22

Post by MBCook »

po wrote: post #16

I had the exact same observation but for another Apple app ecosystem: Game Center. I could not care less how I rank in the global rankings for an iPhone app. Do I care that some 10 kids or idiot savants have scored 100x higher than me? Not really. Maybe if I had actually joined a league or something I would like to know how I ranked globally but otherwise, that's not what you want to show people by default. There is…

As someone who was once ranked 81st in the world on a game, it was a blast to see that my score was that high. Maybe it should only tell you past 1000, but it's a great little reward.

Over time the app became more popular and and I lost my rank, but it was still cool.

I wish Apple would fix the rampant cheating. While my rank was 81st, it was realistically ~60th because many of the top scores were simply cheaters who scored MAX_INT when that was at least 10,000x higher than the next closest score. That is the thing I find discouraging about looking at the scores, that every game is topped by cheaters.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#23

Post by thufry »

The "Top" lists benefit Apple, which is why the feature remains. "Top Free" lists apps that have managed to get large user bases, such as Whatsapp and Facebook. These apps help Apple get their customers using more apps, which lock them into iOS. "Top Sales" and "Top Grossing" are even more obvious -- while they do encourage the skeeziest business models, they are apps that are proven to make money, and whatever money they make, Apple gets 30% of that.

"Top" lists won't go away until their presence starts hurting Apple.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#24

Post by PiersonBro »

supercoder wrote: post #12

Thats fine for someone to say with no apps in the app store. His previous app kept around 7 - 8 in his category chart and so he definitely benefited from the top charts. Giving total exposure control to Apple would be an absolute nightmare for most developers that didnt have the exposure Marco does. There are plenty of good apps, that Apple arent sometimes interested in, that users are, that do well by climbing the c…

I agree Apple shouldn't have total exposure control. That doesn't mean that Top Charts is not intrinsically broken. Third parties game the top charts just as much (Or even more) then Apple does. In fact Apple is working towards a system that doesn't have any third party or first party control, Apps Near Me.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#25

Post by PiersonBro »

gfodor wrote: post #10
pflats wrote: post #9

I'd argue that the biggest issue is simply that the App Store interface is terrible, and that results load far too slowly. The prominence of the Top List is only a symptom of that. Suppose you were at at a new bookstore, and each table of books was in its own little room, each isolated from the next. Once you think you want something, you have to unlock the book's acrylic case to take it out and read the dust jacket.…

It's stunning to me how the App Store has so many downloads and so much revenue and yet still is such a huge piece of trash. It needs to be much faster. It needs to be more engaging. The search needs to be improved. The taxonomy needs a massive overhaul. Users need to be more encouraged to review apps and the review process itself needs to be overhauled. App sellers need to be able to perform legit SEO on their keywo…

I agree with your sentiment but be factually accurate if you've looked at the iOS 6 App Store on day one it would differ in a plethora of small details then the one we have now.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#27

Post by TillE »

Kylekramer wrote: post #4

Seems to be blaming a lot of ills of the App Store that are larger or unrelated than the top list to the top list. Rich get richer is just the nature of the beast in capitalism. The rock bottom prices are more due to the elasticity of price of phone apps compared to many products. After all, you have prominently reported top lists for movies/games/music for decades and they certainly aren't getting cheaper. Top lists…

Android has at least been trying new things, though none of them are great. And they've stuck with the same bizarre game categories that have been in place since day one.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/GAME

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#28

Post by hayksaakian »

gfodor wrote: post #10
pflats wrote: post #9

I'd argue that the biggest issue is simply that the App Store interface is terrible, and that results load far too slowly. The prominence of the Top List is only a symptom of that. Suppose you were at at a new bookstore, and each table of books was in its own little room, each isolated from the next. Once you think you want something, you have to unlock the book's acrylic case to take it out and read the dust jacket.…

It's stunning to me how the App Store has so many downloads and so much revenue and yet still is such a huge piece of trash. It needs to be much faster. It needs to be more engaging. The search needs to be improved. The taxonomy needs a massive overhaul. Users need to be more encouraged to review apps and the review process itself needs to be overhauled. App sellers need to be able to perform legit SEO on their keywo…

> It's probably the biggest example I can think of where Apple really shows that they are unquestionably not Google.

I think you give Google too much credit. The Play store is about as abysmal, sans the OS-tied updates. (Search, lists, SEO, etc. are BAD).

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#29

Post by gfodor »

PiersonBro wrote: post #25
gfodor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's stunning to me how the App Store has so many downloads and so much revenue and yet still is such a huge piece of trash. It needs to be much faster. It needs to be more engaging. The search needs to be improved. The taxonomy needs a massive overhaul. Users need to be more encouraged to review apps and the review process itself needs to be overhauled. App sellers need to be able to perform legit SEO on their keywo…

I agree with your sentiment but be factually accurate if you've looked at the iOS 6 App Store on day one it would differ in a plethora of small details then the one we have now.

You might be right but until there is actual confirmation from Apple that they perform data-driven experiments to improve the App Store, based upon the many glaring problems that have been left unfixed for years I have to assume there isn't anybody at the switch performing legitimate experiments to drive these design changes.

Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

#30

Post by rictic »

pflats wrote: post #9

I'd argue that the biggest issue is simply that the App Store interface is terrible, and that results load far too slowly. The prominence of the Top List is only a symptom of that. Suppose you were at at a new bookstore, and each table of books was in its own little room, each isolated from the next. Once you think you want something, you have to unlock the book's acrylic case to take it out and read the dust jacket.…

It's not just the App Store, it's the entire iTunes store experience. It often takes half a dozen seconds or longer to load each page, and the search is bad.

Two anecdotes: I wanted to buy an Iain M. Banks audiobook. I misspelled his name Ian M Banks, zero results. No hint that he exists. I wanted to give my dad A Game of Thrones for father's day, also on audiobook. The other entries in the series were there, but it isn't. Apparently it's not available? Even following the direct link from the author's site to iTunes doesn't work: https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/game-thrones-song-ice-... (this may be excusable, if there's some weird negotiation thing going on or something, it was just surprising)

There's a lot that they do right, and I spend a lot of money in the iTunes store, but I never look forward to it because it's so slow and I experience so many errors.

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