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There's a certain irony that readwriteweb (wrongly) call out Apple for being dismissive of "amateur" developers, then suggest a search/filtering mechanism that

by ajg1977 16y ago

There's a certain irony that readwriteweb (wrongly) call out Apple for being dismissive of "amateur" developers, then suggest a search/filtering mechanism that would inevitably result in new or alternative apps being largely ignored as users limit searches to apps with high rankings or mega sales.

wmf 16y ago
Yeah, the difference between "your app was rejected" and "your app is in the store but no one will find it" is pretty slim in a practical sense. It would probably do a lot to reduce complaints about censorship and walled gardens, though.
- scrobbles 16y ago
  It would reduce those complaints... and instead we'd get complaints from users that the store's usefulness has decreased and that they feel less confident shopping in it due to a substantial increase in crappy apps. Personally, I think the Apple store is doing the right thing by prioritizing end users over lazy devs.
napierzaza 16y ago
Their filtering mechanism is generally infeasable too. here's why (snark): "Apps that only work offline.." That's not so easy, and neither is the myriad of other attributes of any particular app. Right now tags and the title of the app contribute to the app search criteria (not the description). They're suggesting that every app (including 250,000 existing) fill out a survey on the specifics of what it does so that people can search via that attribute? This is their simple solution to the problem?
- nlogn 16y ago
  Mobile app developers already do fill out a survey on the specifics on what their apps do: they're called app store/market descriptions. I believe the author meant that these descriptions should be indexed as well.
- pwim 16y ago
  Android already indicates things like whether the app requires network connectivity. I've never submitted an android application, but it should be possible to determine whether an application uses network connectivity based on code analysis.

by ajg1977 16y ago

wmf 16y ago

Yeah, the difference between "your app was rejected" and "your app is in the store but no one will find it" is pretty slim in a practical sense. It would probably do a lot to reduce complaints about censorship and walled gardens, though.

scrobbles 16y ago
It would reduce those complaints... and instead we'd get complaints from users that the store's usefulness has decreased and that they feel less confident shopping in it due to a substantial increase in crappy apps. Personally, I think the Apple store is doing the right thing by prioritizing end users over lazy devs.

napierzaza 16y ago

Their filtering mechanism is generally infeasable too. here's why (snark): "Apps that only work offline.." That's not so easy, and neither is the myriad of other attributes of any particular app. Right now tags and the title of the app contribute to the app search criteria (not the description). They're suggesting that every app (including 250,000 existing) fill out a survey on the specifics of what it does so that people can search via that attribute? This is their simple solution to the problem?

nlogn 16y ago
Mobile app developers already do fill out a survey on the specifics on what their apps do: they're called app store/market descriptions. I believe the author meant that these descriptions should be indexed as well.
pwim 16y ago
Android already indicates things like whether the app requires network connectivity. I've never submitted an android application, but it should be possible to determine whether an application uses network connectivity based on code analysis.