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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

#131

Post by zimpenfish »

stonemetal wrote: post #129
zimpenfish wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you've gone from "find the top 10, cache it once" to "find the top 10 200M times, cache it 200M times" (and 200M is lower than you need.) Say you find the top 500 apps instead and cache that. You still have to iterate over that 200M times, looking up each users list of apps (~50-100 on the average, I have 400+ in my list), intersecting them, making sure there's still a top 10, and caching the results. Either way,…

They are already tracking what the user owns, what the user has installed on the device, and needs to be updated on each device the user owns, hell if you have genius turned on they track how much you use each app, or listen to each song. But whoa buddy filtering a top ten list is way to hard? to gain what To not annoy users and gain a little bit more of that perfection they are known for. Increase purchases by a few…

I'd bet that less than 1% of users are annoyed by this. Possibly as few as 10% even notice.

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

#132

Post by mjolk »

melling wrote: post #124
mjolk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure your girlfriend is capable of searching for apps on her own.

Sure, but she's not really a big user beyond playing Words with Friends, email, the weather, and using it as a phone. I think you're failing to grasp that many normal people don't really want to go that deep with technology. People really do want simple.

I'm not failing to grasp that. Most of the software I write is meant to make relatively easy things easier. However, searching for an app? Seriously?

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

#133

Post by mgkimsal »

Sevores wrote: post #121
mgkimsal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wary of this. Would like it as an option, but I don't necessarily want my app to change between uses, especially if it's something I need to use quickly. Loading up something with a changed UI, or data changes that need to happen, or whatever, when I wasn't expecting it.... won't make me a happy camper. A notification and ability to trigger the update from in the app would be nice, and having the option of 'auto…

There is a notification and you can opt-out.

thanks.

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

#134

Post by bergie »

Jare wrote: post #87
brianwillis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find the genius lists go some of the way toward solving this problem for you. They try show things you're likely to be interested in, and don't show stuff you already own.

"Try" being the keyword there. Despite my very clear patterns of app consumption (action & puzzle games), Genius keeps suggesting me different podcast apps because I bought one 2 years ago (hint: nobody needs more than one). It has proven completely useless.

This seems a problem Amazon has as well. Because I bought an extra power adapter for my tablet, the My Amazon list is now full of various power adapters...

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

#135

Post by tehwalrus »

zimpenfish wrote: post #127
tehwalrus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user-side filter, this is actually not that difficult to implement (assuming the device caches the list of purchased app ids for the current iTunes account, or even easier just the apps that are already installed on this device). It means it'll take multiple requests to get all the results, sure, but if you weigh the initial request statistically (for the first 10, I think we'll need 12..) and so on, you can avo…

Multiple requests that the client is paying for over a possibly flaky network connection and now you have to handle all sorts of edge cases and errors that you didn't before. Why bother?

The app store (at least in the UK) has always been hideously slow and rubbish, even on a fast connection. I don't even try on cellular data anymore (to look at stuff, not even download/update.)

As I said, this wouldn't involve much more in the way of data transfer than the current setup. I assume that 15 apps instead of 10 preloading is the same order of magnitude; the latency is the kicker, not the tiny bandwidth required for metadata and icons.

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

#136

Post by programminggeek »

Um, people like top lists. It is the cheapest and easiest filter. It is the same principle that Google operates on. Make a list of the thing with the most downloads, links, etc. and that is often/usually over time the best. I'm reasonably sure that their search system works largely off of downloads, ratings, reviews, etc.

It's not an infallible system, but life isn't about being fair. It's not apple's job to ensure fairness, it's Apple's job to do a good job delivering what people want. A lot of people want what is popular, even if it's not always the best.

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

#137

Post by thwarted »

zimpenfish wrote: post #126
thwarted wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is solved in a distributed fashion. The end user machines know which apps they have, and the ordering of the top 11 doesn't change if you already have the first one. So you ship down identifiers for top 20 or 50, which, even with metadata, is going to be smaller, bytewise, than the average apple.com homepage. When you go to display them, you remove the ones the user has and display the top 10 of the remaining se…

Why do you want to ship more data to the client - which they're paying for, btw - to solve a problem that most of them seem to not care the blindest bit about? And why do more work on the server side when you don't have to? I appreciate there's a nerdy "IT MUST BE CORRECT" aspect to this but Apple are making billions - why would they bother doing work and creating potential support problems for themselves to gain may…

Nice way to move the goal posts. You said He unsuggested it after I walked through the umpteen problems involved in implementing this over hundreds of millions of accounts. which has nothing to do with how much money Apple makes, or what fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of Apple's income it would take to implement and maintain, or what kind of support problems there would be. Considering how Apple already doesn't do anything with the top 10 lists, they could continue to ignore a new implementation and have the same set of support problems/costs. There's nothing about "IT MUST BE CORRECT", in fact making it customized per user means there is no single "correct" top 10 list to show.

You're welcome to start listing the actual umpteen problems that a billion dollar company would incur rather than just talking out of your ass about "Apple's billions" to a bunch of people, myself included, who have most likely implemented similar personalization systems at countless other sites using a lot less human, financial, and processing capital than Apple has. Apple "wastes" a megabyte for a picture of a wave on their current home page. Any change here is likely to move the needle in a positive direction more than the increased sales from having a massive picture of a wave on their home page.

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

#138

Post by TheQwerty »

Google actually had, what I thought was, a very interesting session about getting discovered in the Google Play store.

They're using 80+ signals to steer recommendations including the user's install history, location, and G+ network/reviews. I'd bet Apple is doing much of the same - they may even have had similar sessions at WWDC.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Od2SuL2igA

Certainly worth a watch before agreeing with Marco that no one in the world cares about a user's experience on Android devices after they're sold.

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

#139

Post by hayksaakian »

smackfu wrote: post #120
hayksaakian wrote: post #26

Lists are pointless, all we need is good search. That's why the Web works - search is a solved problem. Search on app stores is archaic and abysmal -- you'd think Google could solve this kind of problem.

Search isn't a solution for discoverability though. A lot of people use those top lists to see "what are the new games that are out?"

How does it work on the web? You search for sites known to promote games (let's say IGN) and they link you to games.

Why does Google/Apple need to curate everything?

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

#140

Post by stonemetal »

zimpenfish wrote: post #131
stonemetal wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are already tracking what the user owns, what the user has installed on the device, and needs to be updated on each device the user owns, hell if you have genius turned on they track how much you use each app, or listen to each song. But whoa buddy filtering a top ten list is way to hard? to gain what To not annoy users and gain a little bit more of that perfection they are known for. Increase purchases by a few…

I'd bet that less than 1% of users are annoyed by this. Possibly as few as 10% even notice.

Fully agree with that, just not the technically challenging part considering they can take 100 times more data and apply much harder algorithms at their scale.
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