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Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

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Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#21
I agree with the sentiment in here that search in the app store sucks, but I don't think it matters much.

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"..

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#22
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is no way around it. It's a verrrry annoying strategy and I'm not sure it's worth the aggravation it causes to people like me with only a casual interest in pinterest.

Isn't there a "Continue in browser" button right under the "Continue in App" button?

Would you look at that! It wasn't there when I posted the original comment.

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.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#23
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine Apple's intent would be to potentially allow that on pinterest.com, or perhaps on any site which pays a hefty fee. 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 think they were referring to the feature on the Play store which allows you to request an app be installed on another device from the web interface, rather than being able to download APKs from the internet. 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…

I agree on its usefulness. On a couple of recent occasions I've read about an interesting Android app while at work, logged into my Google account, gone to the Play Store web interface and told it to install the apps on my tablet at home. When I got home the apps were already installed and there were notifications reminding me to try them.

I'm surprised that the App Store doesn't have a similar feature.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#24
post #13

This is a major app store problem that a lot of developers, particularly indie developers, have complained about, but Apple has seemingly ignored so far. It'd be quite amusing if the answer turned out to be "just plug Pinterest's engine into the app store"... if it was that simple. Then again, it's hardly a hard problem - it's just one that Apple has done almost nothing significant about over the years. Practically a…

It is no different from any other market.

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.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, it's hardly a hard problem Eh, I'd expect app discovery to be reasonably hard when you have a few hundred thousand developers and marketers incentivised to do anything they can to game the system.

Funny you should say that ! I came across these images less than a day ago. 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…

They probably only affect the Chinese App Store. The stores are separate, and the Chinese one is censored.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#27
post #13

This is a major app store problem that a lot of developers, particularly indie developers, have complained about, but Apple has seemingly ignored so far. It'd be quite amusing if the answer turned out to be "just plug Pinterest's engine into the app store"... if it was that simple. Then again, it's hardly a hard problem - it's just one that Apple has done almost nothing significant about over the years. Practically a…

It is brutally hard, because competition is intense, but I'd struggle to say it's in any way unfair. When complaining about the discovery problem generally the developer believes they deserve special attention, but so does everyone else.

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.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were referring to the feature on the Play store which allows you to request an app be installed on another device from the web interface, rather than being able to download APKs from the internet. 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…

I agree on its usefulness. On a couple of recent occasions I've read about an interesting Android app while at work, logged into my Google account, gone to the Play Store web interface and told it to install the apps on my tablet at home. When I got home the apps were already installed and there were notifications reminding me to try them. I'm surprised that the App Store doesn't have a similar feature.

It does, you just have to do it from iTunes.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should say that ! I came across these images less than a day ago. 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…

Couldn't that be automated with jailbroken devices?

My totally uninformed guess is - it probably was, and then Apple/Google decided to implement human-detecting measures like monitoring tapping patterns, and the market switched to employing real humans.

Re: Aiming to Ease App Discovery, Apple Pairs With Pinterest

#30
post #13

This is a major app store problem that a lot of developers, particularly indie developers, have complained about, but Apple has seemingly ignored so far. It'd be quite amusing if the answer turned out to be "just plug Pinterest's engine into the app store"... if it was that simple. Then again, it's hardly a hard problem - it's just one that Apple has done almost nothing significant about over the years. Practically a…

It is brutally hard, because competition is intense, but I'd struggle to say it's in any way unfair. When complaining about the discovery problem generally the developer believes they deserve special attention, but so does everyone else. 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 attempt…

Besides an Android, I also own an iPad and an older iPhone.

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.

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