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Speaking of, Apple is to blame for the absolute worst case of discoverability I've ever encountered: getting the iOS App Store app to list all apps labeled "Ess

by twhb 10y ago

Speaking of, Apple is to blame for the absolute worst case of discoverability I've ever encountered: getting the iOS App Store app to list all apps labeled "Essentials". Dug around, couldn't find it. Googled it, found a few forum threads where everybody concluded it couldn't be done. Went into an Apple store, gave an employee a few minutes to figure it out, and he gave up. And yet, it's possible. Rather than just tell you, I'm going to leave this as a challenge. See how long it takes you to figure this out.

the_other 10y ago
Why on this blue-green earth would you want to ask a vendor for what they consider "essential". How is this useful to you? Why would you expect the vendor to provide this for you (except to further their own sales agenda)? This is a straw man that I implore you to burn.
- supercoder 10y ago
  Apple do a lot of editorial on the App Store.
usmannk 10y ago
Searching for "essentials" seems to do the trick.
- scottmf 10y ago
  Same here. What am I missing?
thenewwazoo 10y ago
Wow. That was about five minutes of hunting, and I actually seriously considered the possibility that your comment was a troll. That was impressively unexpected.
- aparadja 10y ago
  Could you share the solution? I couldn't figure it out. Searching for "essentials" was the closest I got.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CamperBob2 10y ago
They'll never beat iTunes ("How in the ?#$# do shuffle and repeat actually work?!"), though. Those devs are master-level trolls.
coldtea 10y ago
Took me no more than 10 seconds. After noticing that the essential terms is translated into a query for apps TAGGED as essentials by Apple (Facebook, Google Mail etc), I just put the term in quotes("essentials" vs essentials in the search bar). It's a convention followed for literal matches in tons of environments (including Google Search IIRC).
rsfinn 10y ago
Perhaps the App Store has been upgraded in the last 10 hours, but I too simply typed "essentials" into the search bar and it worked fine (on both iOS and Mac, as well as iTunes). Didn't even need to put it in quotes. Perhaps actually doing the text search is the barrier you mean? Were you looking for an item labeled "Essentials" in the Quick Links section? I agree that would be preferable, but it's not like doing a search is the Riddle of the Sphinx.
- thenewwazoo 10y ago
  For my part, my surprise comes from the fact that I have to use the free-text search UI to list matches for a tag, and whether it matches free text or a tag is completely opaque. It is hostile UI when I can filter on "Games" in the category list, and search for "Angry Birds" by free text, and yet tags live in a nebulous nowhere-space. If I wanted to find apps titled "<Language> Essentials", I'd be pretty annoyed to find them disappear behind an unexpected magic keyword-to-tag search. In this case, there is no good place to put tag search because tags aren't first-class citizens.
yoz-y 10y ago
Well, I remember having to search for "OK Google" in Google Maps to save the current view for offline viewing...

by twhb 10y ago

the_other 10y ago

Why on this blue-green earth would you want to ask a vendor for what they consider "essential". How is this useful to you? Why would you expect the vendor to provide this for you (except to further their own sales agenda)? This is a straw man that I implore you to burn.

supercoder 10y ago
Apple do a lot of editorial on the App Store.

usmannk 10y ago

Searching for "essentials" seems to do the trick.

scottmf 10y ago
Same here. What am I missing?

thenewwazoo 10y ago

Wow. That was about five minutes of hunting, and I actually seriously considered the possibility that your comment was a troll. That was impressively unexpected.

aparadja 10y ago
Could you share the solution? I couldn't figure it out. Searching for "essentials" was the closest I got.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

CamperBob2 10y ago

They'll never beat iTunes ("How in the ?#$# do shuffle and repeat actually work?!"), though. Those devs are master-level trolls.

coldtea 10y ago

Took me no more than 10 seconds. After noticing that the essential terms is translated into a query for apps TAGGED as essentials by Apple (Facebook, Google Mail etc), I just put the term in quotes("essentials" vs essentials in the search bar). It's a convention followed for literal matches in tons of environments (including Google Search IIRC).

rsfinn 10y ago

Perhaps the App Store has been upgraded in the last 10 hours, but I too simply typed "essentials" into the search bar and it worked fine (on both iOS and Mac, as well as iTunes). Didn't even need to put it in quotes. Perhaps actually doing the text search is the barrier you mean? Were you looking for an item labeled "Essentials" in the Quick Links section? I agree that would be preferable, but it's not like doing a search is the Riddle of the Sphinx.

thenewwazoo 10y ago
For my part, my surprise comes from the fact that I have to use the free-text search UI to list matches for a tag, and whether it matches free text or a tag is completely opaque. It is hostile UI when I can filter on "Games" in the category list, and search for "Angry Birds" by free text, and yet tags live in a nebulous nowhere-space. If I wanted to find apps titled "<Language> Essentials", I'd be pretty annoyed to find them disappear behind an unexpected magic keyword-to-tag search. In this case, there is no good place to put tag search because tags aren't first-class citizens.

yoz-y 10y ago

Well, I remember having to search for "OK Google" in Google Maps to save the current view for offline viewing...