Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
1–10 of 147 posts
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#2Trial mode is the most important. Everything else is secondary.
I don't care if you get rid of top list or not, because not every app can enter top list nor be selected by apple's god hand.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#3The option to trial an app is the reason I like the WP Store (lack of apps notwithstanding).
The other nice thing that WP Store has is top-rated apps (or the ability to sort by rating) while this is still subject to some of the "top downloaded" issues it's a step in the right direction.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#4Seems 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 are probably not a good way to encourage quality, but they are hardly the root of the problem and they do encourage sales in a relatively dispassionate way.
High quality trolling by claiming Google doesn't care if people hate Android phones, though.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#5maybe what we need nowadays is a curated list of categories for apps... yahoo can do that and go full circle.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#6I can almost remember a time when the Apple App Store had good enough content - it may be because I was young and had lower standards, or because the content was actually decent. I am ashamed to see so many Mafia Wars clones and DLC EVERYTHING apps in the Top section. Fortunately, Apple has made it very annoying to even look at the Top section, by making it have a horizontal scroll instead of a vertical scroll, and I almost never want to see what's there.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#7Seems 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…
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Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#8I think when people say they dislike the "Top" lists, what they're really saying is "I'm already fairly well known and could easily get editorial featuring if we moved to an editorial-only model." This type of system would actually be much worse for indie developers, I think, as they would have to have a connection somewhere to have any hope of getting featured (much like you need to know someone to get onto Steam). Most of us dont have $20-$40k to buy our way onto a top list, but knowing that we could without having to have a publisher or hookup at Apple is a great equalizer.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#9I'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.
You wouldn't go browsing in that store the way you would at a Barnes and Noble. If the deals were good enough, you might check out the Bestsellers Room and the "Recommended By Our Staff" Room. You might even stop by the "10 Bestselling Books About Home Improvement" Room, if that's what you're looking for. But there's no way you're going room to room to room to room to room in hopes finding something else.
That's the App Store we have.
Re: Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
#10I'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 keywords and get insights into where their downloads are coming from. Even buying an app feels sluggish and unresponsive. The recommendation system is crap because they recommend similar apps not complementary apps. The whole thing is just begging to be rebuilt, it's basically the same as when it first launched.
It's a huge optimization problem and it's absolutely embarrassing they are not constantly A/B testing, iterating, and improving the experience. It feels like they have no data science team at all working on this product. The fact that the App Store only changes with iOS updates shows they are approaching this product incorrectly. They should have dozens of experiments running all the time trying to drive up install rates. It's probably the biggest example I can think of where Apple really shows that they are unquestionably not Google.
It's hard to underestimate just how much of a boost Apple will see if they actually build a real, first-class, fast shopping experience into the App Store.