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iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

pixiteapps.com

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Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#111

Post by shadowfiend »

cageface wrote: post #83
ryguytilidie wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely crazy I agree. The app store is for two people, app makers, and people who want to download apps. For app makers it is unquestionably worse, not even remotely close, an infinitely worse experience. The OP seems to imply that this shouldnt matter, because the experience for the end user is better, and then goes on to give no real reasons and even says that "it will force developers to focus on seo" as if th…

Not far from the truth there. Apple loyalties seem to produce the same kind of psychological effect as religion or politics. Rationality doesn't enter into it. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385502,00.asp

Of course you say this as if the opposite, anti-Apple sentiments, don't produce the same psychological effect.

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#112

Post by alex_c »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #18

Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for you . This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lackluster icons, app designs, and screenshots of said designs. Many apps at the bottom of the stack will be neglected. This is a good thing. I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it. This will raise the bar for dev…

>This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. [...] Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results.

Good comment, but I don't agree with this part. This does very little to help "good app developers" or encourage competition.

The app store is very strongly biased towards the first few hits for a given search result. As a small to medium developer, if you're not in the top 5-10, depending on the keyword, you may as well not exist. And that ranking depends first and foremost on your ability to drive downloads to your app, and a distant second on your app quality.

This change will make the bias that much stronger towards the first 1-3 apps. They'll tend to stay there, while other apps will have that much harder a time to move up.

I LOVE that screenshots are more visible. It's great for users, and it's great for quality apps. I have a great app currently ranking in the lower range of top 10 for my targeted keyword, and slowly moving up because - in my opinion at least - it's higher quality than the apps above. Great icon, great screenshots, app looks and behaves great. So you'd think I'd be ecstatic about this change.

Actually, I'm worried this change will stop my app dead in its tracks, and further consolidate the top 1-3 positions. Can you explain to me how that's good for either of users, developers, or competition?

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#113

Post by ryguytilidie »

shadowfiend wrote: post #111
cageface wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not far from the truth there. Apple loyalties seem to produce the same kind of psychological effect as religion or politics. Rationality doesn't enter into it. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385502,00.asp

Of course you say this as if the opposite, anti-Apple sentiments, don't produce the same psychological effect.

You mean like critical reviews using facts and logic? Yeah, those people are clearly brainwashed.

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#114

Post by tzs »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #29
tzs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for. I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going t…

You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user. For a community all about entrepreneurship and building things for others you'd think we'd figure out by now that we are not the customer (unless you run some business directed directly at tech savvy people but you get my point). Also, I am astounded at th…

> You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user.

I want search results that let me find what I'm looking for while minimizing the amount of junk I have to deal with along the way. I didn't realize that wanting search to do a good job at finding things was a sophisticated HN-user desire, out of touch with the common man. I guess that does explain all those times I've heard ordinary people exclaim while searching, "Dang! I found what I wanted too easily. I wish this thing was harder to use effectively!". :-)

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#115

Post by tzs »

Too wrote: post #73
tzs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for. I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going t…

So you only judge a book by it's cover? Or an app by its icon and name?

The icon and name are a first filter. For example, suppose I'm searching for "star chart".

When I see "Horoscope" in the name of a result, I skip it.

When I see the name is "Potty Chart" and the icon consists of a toilet with the seat up and a star hovering over the seat, I skip it.

When I see the name is "iAllowance" and the icon is a piggy bank, I skip it.

When I see the name is "Vinmeen Lite" and the icon shows a constellation, I think "what the heck is a vinmeen" and click. :-) (It turns out it is the Tamil word for "star").

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#116

Post by hnriot »

Aside from the design issues of layout and information density, for me the new store doesn't work half the time, I click links for reviews and nothing happens, or I click more reviews (because its shown me just one for some reason) and again nothing. Without some clue as to what is clickable (this is basic design stuff) it's hard to know what is supposed to work and what isn't. I'm sure the store will go through some rapid evolution in the next few weeks and there are likely some very stressed devs down in Cupertino right now, but for the moment this just looks like that were nowhere near ready to ship iOS 6. Of my dozen or so friends that upgraded their iPhones about half of them had stalled upgrades and needed to hard reset at least once.

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#117

Post by danboarder »

Timothee wrote: post #63
danboarder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@JumpCrisscross what you missed here is that "Web Albums" is the official google Picasa app for iOS. Picasa HD Lite is a low-rated knockoff optimized for appstore SEO. The author's point stands, the official Picasa app (Web Albums) should rank first.

How is it the official app? It's not made by Google but by Pixite (author of the OP): http://www.webalbumsapp.com/ Were they bought out or something? That page doesn't seem to indicate so.

Thanks Timothee, you're right. Google's name for their Picasa albums product is "Web Albums" and the one the author in OP is talking about was by Pixite (not Google). But still, it has much higher user ratings and should rank higher. reference: http://support.google.com/picasa/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#118

Post by danboarder »

MattRix wrote: post #74
danboarder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@JumpCrisscross what you missed here is that "Web Albums" is the official google Picasa app for iOS. Picasa HD Lite is a low-rated knockoff optimized for appstore SEO. The author's point stands, the official Picasa app (Web Albums) should rank first.

It's not "optimized for App Store SEO". The way the App Store works is that it ranks items by total downloads, as long as you have a certain keyword (in this case, "picasa"). The reason that "bad" app comes up first is because it's a free app, so of course it has way more downloads than a paid app would.

That sounds a lot like SEO to me, optimizing for keywords to rank higher, etc... (Perhaps "appstore search engine optimization" - ASEO?).

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#119

Post by tsunamifury »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #18

Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for you . This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lackluster icons, app designs, and screenshots of said designs. Many apps at the bottom of the stack will be neglected. This is a good thing. I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it. This will raise the bar for dev…

"I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it."

You are like a virgin trying to give advise to prostitutes on the street corner on how to improve their game. You literally have no idea what you are stepping into.

Re: iOS 6 Breaks the App Store

#120

Post by dcope »

I wouldn't say that the App Store is broken, but that it is terribly hard to use. For instance, after you've searched for something and paged through you want to view more information so you tap on it. After tapping to go back to the results, you're placed at the beginning of the results. If you want to compare applications that are deep within the results it's going to take quite some time.
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