Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–147 of 147 posts

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

#141

Post by kalleboo »

zimpenfish wrote: post #125
stonemetal wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Sounds like about 20 seconds to throw a database query together to generate the list. Cache it until the user makes a purchase or we redo the statistics. If you consider the work involved in generating the top 10 list a per user filter is next to nothing in added computation time. Especially since it is just a marketing tool not something that needs to be updated in real time.

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,…

If Google can customize the search results of the whole internet AS THE USER TYPES, Apple can probably manage to customize a top 10 list.

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

#142

Post by icodestuff »

I don't agree with one of the premises, namely that editorial picks will be more "fair". I work at a company that competes directly with Apple in many areas. The app I worked on was never featured anywhere, despite getting to the top 3 in our category, and top 15 free overall. Being in the top 10 or even top 25 is the only traffic driver anyone competing with Apple will ever have, unless you're competing with something Apple acknowledges as completely broken (ie, you're Google Maps).

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

#144

Post by ibrahima »

zarify wrote: post #85
ibrahima wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I just got an iPad for my mom, after owning several Android phones and tablets, and my sister used to use an iPod touch as well. We both agreed that the App Store is a piece of trash. It's slow, confusing to navigate around, and doesn't auto update your apps (I think I heard that's coming in iOS7?). It looks the same as it did on my sister's old 2G iPod touch. Meanwhile, the Play Store search and navigation used…

I've found pretty much the opposite for the Play Store. I like that it's relatively fast and much more responsive than the App Store (which is quite frankly terrible), but finding anything I actually want is a pretty dismal experience as well (this is unrelated to the quality of the actual apps themselves). All the navigation is counter-intuitive (What do you mean swiping to the left doesn't go back and instead takes…

Err, why would swiping to the left go back? This isn't a standard UI pattern in Android at all, and honestly I don't think it even makes any sense. The back button always takes you back to your search results in my experience, I don't know what else it would take you to.

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

#145

Post by zimpenfish »

thwarted wrote: post #137
zimpenfish wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

Every engineering problem involves the "how much effort vs how much profit" calculation. In fact, in a sane environment, it's the first problem you solve before you start thinking about intersecting millions of lists.

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

#146

Post by zarify »

ibrahima wrote: post #144
zarify wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found pretty much the opposite for the Play Store. I like that it's relatively fast and much more responsive than the App Store (which is quite frankly terrible), but finding anything I actually want is a pretty dismal experience as well (this is unrelated to the quality of the actual apps themselves). All the navigation is counter-intuitive (What do you mean swiping to the left doesn't go back and instead takes…

Err, why would swiping to the left go back? This isn't a standard UI pattern in Android at all, and honestly I don't think it even makes any sense. The back button always takes you back to your search results in my experience, I don't know what else it would take you to.

Hrm, apologies. I was at work and didn't have my Nexus on me. With the back button description I was mixing up its behaviour with the other back button (the one at the top left with the 'back' arrow). That's the one that dumps you out of your search results and back to the main category. I'm not sure if it's because I'm primarily an iOS user that I expect the 'The swiping thing was referring to the category pop-out in the main sections (Apps etc) which makes it feel like it should do something else. In retrospect I probably should have waited until I had gotten home and double checked whether what I remembered was correct before commenting. Having a flip through it, the store is less awful than it was last time I paid it any serious attention - having a decent stable of usable apps I haven't had much cause to go looking for new stuff lately.

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

#147

Post by zimpenfish »

kalleboo wrote: post #141
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,…

If Google can customize the search results of the whole internet AS THE USER TYPES, Apple can probably manage to customize a top 10 list.

But that's Google's entire raison d'etre = fast search results that are relevant. In theory, someone with faster and/or more relevant search results could steal Google's #1 place.

Who's going to steal Apple's #1 app store place if they can't be arsed doing per-user top 10 lists?

Post reply on HN