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How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls
- michaelt 7y agoThe algorithm examines 42 different signals, they said, including an app’s relevance to a given search, its ratings, and its popularity based on downloads and user clicks. [...] If you searched for “podcast” in May 2018, you would have had to scroll through as many as 14 Apple apps before finding one made by another publisher. [...] “We make mistakes all the time,” Mr. Cue said. “We’re happy to admit when we do,” Mr. Schiller said. “This wasn’t a mistake.” I have to say, it stretches credulity to claim any non-faulty algorithm would put Apple's "compass" app as the second result in a search for "podcast" It's difficult to make any sense at all of such a result.
- OJFord 7y agoRanking by count the all apps installed by users who have previously searched for <term> might do it. Not saying that's a good algorithm, but one _might_ be tempted to think that with enough users it should be fine. The 'bug' being that all Apple's users are Apple users, so Apple apps would get pushed high for any search. I'm certainly not suggesting that's what happeened (or even that it would be something so simplistic), but it gives me an idea at least how something that, when presented only with the symptoms, seems so unbelievable.
- HelloMcFly 7y agoAgreed, but the end result is that their algorithm pre-fix was clearly faulty and should be considered a mistake. Their gymnastics to the contrary just come across as either a bad-faith argument or self-delusion.
- Bud 7y agoWhat comes across as cherry-picking to me is pointing out a single random inconsequential web search and the result it used to have in a previous year.
- yyyk 7y agoNot a single search, but many searches done repeatedly over time, proving the result is highly unlikely to be happenstance. Oh, and the results only happened to changed after Spotify launched an official complaint. The WSJ article the NYT links to is even more detailed.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoShouldn't "Facebook" also turn up near the top, in that case?
- bobwaycott 7y agoFor those on mobile/small screens, a better formatted quote: > The algorithm examines 42 different signals, they said, including an app’s relevance to a given search, its ratings, and its popularity based on downloads and user clicks. ... > If you searched for “podcast” in May 2018, you would have had to scroll through as many as 14 Apple apps before finding one made by another publisher. ... > “We make mistakes all the time,” Mr. Cue said. > “We’re happy to admit when we do,” Mr. Schiller said. “This wasn’t a mistake.” For those on desktop, please stop formatting quotes like code. They’re just impossible to read on anything but a very wide screen.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoWhat gets me is that if you do it now, Overcast is about 9th and Pocket Casts is 25th or something. Those are two very popular podcast apps. I stopped scrolling looking for Castro.
- toyg 7y ago42 different signals, really? Smacks of trolling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)
- kurttt 7y agocompass, podcast [+] Both 7 letters [+] Both contain "c", "o", "p", "a" and "s"
- gcatalfamo 7y agoCan I go a little off-topic and comment how really well done this webpage is? Very mobile optimized and nice the “scroll to discover” kind of behavior. Haven’t noticed how long NYT has been doing this kind of stuff but very well done.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gumby 7y agoInteresting: I feel precisely the opposite: reading text is incredibly efficient and having to mess around to uncover the content is distracting and annoying. I'm not trying to say "you're right, I'm wrong", or the opposite: different strokes and all that. I found your excitement about the design quite interesting.
- gothroach 7y agoI'm in the same boat as you, but in addition I was having trouble with scrolling up and down messing up their presentation.
- Verath 7y agoI agree! The graphics is what made me read the rest of the article. This article has "interactive" in the URL. Note sure, but I think this is some special articles they do with a focus on just that? I believe there have been some other examples posted here previously, like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quic...
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI appreciate Apple offering its own apps, as I don't trust anyone else with my data.
- amelius 7y agoApple just made a mistake handling its own app store data, so that should at least put a little crack in that trust.
- jeromegv 7y agoSearch relevancy != data being sent to 3rd party analytic firms. Let's be serious, those are 2 separate issues.
- kemayo 7y agoThe story isn't particularly about Apple offering its own apps -- it's about it throwing lots of its apps into the top of search results when they're questionably relevant, and then doing its best to avoid saying there might have ever been anything suspect about the correctness of that behavior.
- helpPeople 7y agoYou should not be trusting anyone, including Apple with your data. The same company that won't admit hardware flaws won't admit they use your Data.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoIf there was an easier way for me that didn't involve a third party, I would. Unfortunately, it's the best option I have given my circumstances.
- JadeNB 7y ago> The same company that won't admit hardware flaws won't admit they use your Data. Although I agree that one shouldn't trust anyone, there's a difference here: certain uses of personal data come with reporting requirements, or are outright forbidden, whereas I think that there are no such requirements around hardware flaws.
- stevespang 7y agoTime for a federal Investigation on that monopoly . . . .
- evancox100 7y agoSeems like one of the fixes might be to provide a way to search for one's already installed apps without going to the app store.
- apricot13 7y agoswipe down on any homescreen page and type into the search box and iphone will do this.
- evancox100 7y agoThank you, I'm a new iPhone user and did not know that. (Not exactly discoverable)
- saagarjha 7y agoThe App Store lets people reinstall apps they've deleted as well.
- BuckRogers 7y agoIt’s a privately held platform. The apps created by Apple should be on top if they want them to be. There’s no right to equal access such as with Net Neutrality, it’s not a publicly owned or subsidized platform. The only way this could possibly be wrong is if we nationalize Apple. I’m definitely left of center economically and I have no problem with Apple placing their apps on top. It would completely align with current rules, regulations and economic expectations. At 40% market share in the US, they’re not even a monopoly, not that it would matter anyway. That’s without mentioning that on a personal level I would prefer to do business with Apple rather than giving my information to many of the third parties. They’ve earned a reputation of being trustworthy and deserving of our money.
- kemayo 7y agoYes, but the article isn't objecting to Apple listing its own Podcasts app at the top of a search for "podcast". It's objecting to it then listing Compass, Find Friends, Tips, and 12 more Apple apps that aren't related to the search query before any non-Apple app is listed. (Which issue they have since fixed.) The article is about "Apple made a mistake in its search algorithm", not about competition per-se.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sambe 7y agoThe article uses the term "stacked". It refers to a complaint to the EU about the abuse of their position as owner of the App Store. It refers to a Supreme Court anti-trust case. It repeatedly frames the discussion in terms of what Apple gained vs competitors.
- simion314 7y ago>At 40% market share in the US, they’re not even a monopoly Can someone confirm my understanding that there is no percentage like 90% and if you are over that you are a monopoly . Is more about if you abuse your dominant position to screw the competition and consumers, and in this case Apple is screwing the application developers that they compete with by abusing their dominant position.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI'm not saying this isn't a problem, but it seems pretty minor compared to the fact that: 1) Apple's apps come preinstalled on every iPhone. 2) Apple's apps have permission to do things that 3rd party apps cannot. If I search for "Web Browser" on the App Store... well, technically I'll get results from third parties, but every single one is just a UI skin around Apple's own browser. That strikes me as a much larger problem.
- frogpelt 7y agoI see it differently. Since Apple makes the hardware and the software I don't have a problem with them preinstalling their own products. However, when a user is clearly searching for alternatives on the app store, it matters how far down you have to scroll to find a 3rd party app. Spotify being the 23rd result for a "music" search is absurd.
- panpanna 7y ago> Spotify being the 23rd result for a "music" search is absurd I have hard time believing this was not intentional. Edit: on Android Spotify is at place 2-4. iTunes is nowhere to be seen but that could be explained with the horrible reviews it has received (some are even legit).
- mitchty 7y agoI have a hard time believing it was. iTunes search is wicked bad and has been since day 1. After they started allowing tags for apps it got worse, which is an impressive achievement.
- fermenflo 7y agoOk? I feel like Apple is free to promote whatever they damn please on their own platform. Are we seriously criticizing a company for promoting their products ahead of 3rd party products on their own platform? and I mean, how much money do you think Apple is making from someone having their compass app downloaded? Seems like an inflammatory and in-genuine story.
- Causality1 7y agoThe EU fined Microsoft six hundred million dollars just for including Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows by default. Apple's behavior is much worse than that.
- ceejayoz 7y agoApple does not have a monopoly in the mobile phone market like Microsoft had in the operating system market. Microsoft also had a court order to comply with that they forgot about in Windows 7. https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commission-fine/ https://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/microsoft-european-commi...
- gamblor956 7y agoMicrosoft never had a monopoly in the OS market. Plenty of businesses large and small used competing OSs like Apple, Unix, Linux, Beos, OS/2, DOS, etc. Microsoft had a dominant market position, and anti-competitively leveraged that market position in operating systems to muscle its way into the internet browser market.
- greedo 7y agoWindows had 97% marketshare. MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, DOS, the various *nixes and Linux were NOTHING in that market.
- jakear 7y agoIMO, that fine is (for lack of a better term) bullshit. Does Android present a browser selection to EU customers?
- tracer4201 7y agoMerits (and anti trust possibilities) of Apple doing this aside, just a shout out that it’s another anti tech article on the NYT. They have a daily piece against one of the FAANGs. It’s at the point where I could start plotting this data over time and plastering it in its own thread. Just remember folks - NYT directly competes with many of the FAANGs. Its awfully convenient to do reporting questioning your directly rivals, especially when you never preface your articles mentioning the conflict of interest.
- rchaud 7y ago> NYT directly competes with many of the FAANGs. In what business segment? Does the NYT offer streaming TV/movies? An online retail presence? Cloud infrastructure? Computers and phones? As reported in the article, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow an anti-trust case to move forward on this issue. That's newsworthy, and IMO the article does a good job in showing the general consumer what anti-competitiveness looks like in practice, while getting comments from both Apple and companies who've been affected by these policies.
- antoniuschan99 7y agoFor anyone who isn't old enough to remember the movie Antitrust. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3TwIJjyjPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3TwIJjyjPM
- falcolas 7y agoI just tried to replicate this; I got very different results: 1) Ad (for Audible) 2) Apple Podcasts (So far so good) 3) A story (?) about podcasts (still odd) 4) The Podcast App 5) DLC for The Podcast App 6) Himalaya: Podcast Radio Player So, I'm not sure how the NY Times got that particular listing, but it's not exactly what I'd call a smoking gun against Apple.
- jasonlotito 7y ago> If you opened the App Store on an iPhone in May 2018 and typed “podcast” in the search box, you would have seen something like this. "in May 2018" > I just tried to replicate this Unfortunately, you don't have a time machine.
- falcolas 7y agoSo, we're happily crucifying Apple on a hill based on an unreproducable search done half a year ago? Sounds... less than ideal.
- jasonlotito 7y agoNo. Just because something was done in the past doesn't mean it doesn't have repercussions to this day. For example, the search result issue might have helped Apple get it's products into the hands of more users who settled for their apps rather than using a competitors apps that would have been found instead. If you are going to continue this discussion, please do so in good faith and don't continue to misrepresent what is being said.
- DedlySnek 7y ago> Spotify complained to European regulators in March that Apple was abusing its role as the gatekeeper of the App Store. By April, all but two of Apple’s apps disappeared from the top results for “music.”
- yoz-y 7y agoIf anything it seems to have gotten better since they started doing their study. Also I suppose Apple puts their apps on top to make it easy to re-install. Imagine if you removed the Music app and then were unable to find it again...
- fortran77 7y agoThat's not what I got from the article though. Maybe I misread it, but I see that it's talking about how if you say "Podcast" in the search box, you'll see pages and pages of Apple's own apps, unrelated to podcasts, before you start seeing podcast apps.
- yoz-y 7y ago> "in May 2018" If you search for podcast now you see an ad, then apple podcasts, then a story about creating podcasts, then apps. In my case I have Spotify on 3rd place after 2 popular local radio apps. The article conveniently omits a history chart for 'podcast' search to push their agenda.
- 013a 7y agoWhole Foods stacks their stores with their 365 brand products. In some cases, competitors to certain products aren't even sold. Of course, there are other grocery stores you can shop at. Just like how there are other mobile platforms you can use. (well: there's another mobile platform, singular. that's a problem). I don't understand the argument for the App Store being a monopoly. Apple can do whatever they want in their store, just like Whole Foods can sell whatever they want in theirs, or Walmart, or Target, or whoever. If an argument can be made that they're actively trying to destroy the competition in the market of mobile platforms, then we should be much more concerned. Beyond that: there's a very unique argument that the "platform" (iOS) and the "store" (App Store) are separate entities in a capitalistic market sense. If this is the case: the onus is NOT on the App Store being more open, but rather on iOS for supporting multiple different storefronts. And, again, I think that's not a very interesting argument unless iOS itself is being anti-competitive in the market of all mobile platforms, which doesn't seem to be the case.
- gamblor956 7y agoIt's hard to explain from a mobile, but in a nutshell generally retail stores buy the goods they are selling, whether store brand or third party, so they can differentiate the products in store how they like. Suppliers can and do use leverage like withholding popular brands from stores that go too far in favoring the house brand. Apps however have no such leverage, and due to the way the store is set up, the retail defense doesn't apply.
- 013a 7y agoI'm not convinced that its so different, at least from a "we should be concerned about it" angle. Yes, retail stores have inventory that they, generally, have to purchase and hold before the sale. This is a natural limitation on the amount and variety of goods they can offer. By comparison, app stores don't have inventory. But they do have natural limitations. There's a cost to each sale, represented by the 15-30% fees the App Store charges, which is a translation of underlying fees that Apple pays to host and distribute applications, whether paid to credit card networks, engineers, cloud infrastructure providers, supporting services such as iCloud, etc. There is a per-unit cost to app store downloads; its just that most of it is paid on the purchase, download, and use of the application, not hosting. Additionally, App Store search result rankings are absolutely a limited resource which very closely resembles aisle space in a retail store. When thinking about this specific issue (which dates back over 16 months ago? and has been fixed? why are we talking about this?): I don't see a philosophical or legal problem with Apple doing this. I see a usability problem. Its just bad results that aren't delivering what customers expect or want.
- tempodox 7y agoI don't mind that at all. What bugs me much more is the complete lack of useful search and filter options in the AppStore and the resulting nonexistent discoverability. You basically only find those apps you know exist beforehand or that pop up by happenstance (if you're lucky). What point is there in boasting about how many million apps you have in your store when 99.99% are invisible for all practical purposes?
- rchaud 7y agoJobs' "On Flash" letter seems like aeons ago, (~10 years) but even then people were commenting on the obvious implications. It pointed to Adobe Flash apps as battery-intensive and riddled with security bugs (both correct), and proposed that native apps were the solution. But it went one step further by providing the casus belli against the distribution of software outside of Apple's walled garden. Create something Apple didn't approve of, and you get booted. A clear break from its desktop programs, which could be freely installed from wherever. Now the full picture is beginning to emerge. It was good going for app developers when Apple was largely a devices company, but as it moves into software and content creation/delivery, its position as marketplace gatekeeper means that everyone else will have to start paying tributes (in the form of ads, which appear above organic search results) if you don't want to end up relegated to the bottom of its search algorithm.
- gjsman-1000 7y agoHave you noticed the NYT bashing Silicon Valley more lately? Someone did an article on how it’s a strategy to save their ad money. Really.
- robwilliams 7y agoTech companies are some of the largest and most influential companies in the world, and people are just now starting to understand what it means to have their lives influenced by wide-reaching algorithms. Sounds like a great topic for journalism to me. Regardless of the motivation, NYT's recent algorithm-centric investigations (like the YouTube one a month or two back) are really interested and well-researched.
- sebringj 7y agoDoes this feel like a scramble to make up for lack of innovation lately? Apple is taking away from the community that builds them up which seems like a play to make quick profits. It would be too much to hope for an open platform that was curated by some decentralized voting mechanism via community / contributors.
- jjtheblunt 7y agoIs it not ironic that the NYT, of all companies, cites a different company for prioritizing its own agenda at the expense of being unbiased? Not that it's right for either case, just ironic.
- gimmeThaBeet 7y agoI wouldn't say I have trouble considering this issue, I know what my opinion is. The ramifications feel uncomfortable because Apple is the Goliath, it feels bizarre their behavior should need defending. The idea I get hung up on is Apple doesn't control the market, they control access to the customers companies want. And those customers made a free choice to enter apple's ecosystem. They could get an Android, they could get none of the above. The game consoles have had an incredibly locked down marketplace. nintendo had to basically build their brand on it in the wake of atari in the 80s. Why do mobile marketplaces get such additional scrutiny? The orders of magnitude more money? The pervasiveness of mobile devices? The utility of the devices? The area where I do struggle is the apple tax, they don't pay it while everyone else has to. My reflexive feeling, is that if you can't provide 20% value over what apple can provide, there might be intrinsic issues; your product might be a commodity. But for something like spotify, where the service exists way beyond the iOS platform, it seems wild that apple get 20% of anything that goes through its platform.
- damnyou 7y agoGood job answering your own question! Mobile platforms deserve more scrutiny precisely for the reasons you mentioned — the utility, the power, the importance.
- judge2020 7y ago> they don't pay it There's not much they can do in this regard; they might actually pay the Apple Tax in the accounting sense, but the tax taken goes into the same bank account. They can't take less money from the $10 Apple Music charge since the tax has to go somewhere, and they can't just charge less money for their services since that would just be changing the price for the users, making competition even angrier about Apple undercutting them. The Apple tax is 30% by the way.
- xenadu02 7y agoHow is that any different than Nintendo's first-party games? They don't pay a license fee to themselves (and such an action would be a pointless accounting fiction if they did). When you buy a Switch it means you can only play games Nintendo has approved. Unlike the app store, the policies are much more restrictive there. Random Joe can't put a game on the Switch. When you develop for the Switch it means if you have a game similar to a Nintendo game _they won't sell you a license and your product is dead in the water_. People love to forget: The App Store was the first major distribution mechanism where anyone can join the program, no pre-vetting required, and so long as you obey the rules you can sell any app you want. Prior to that every distribution mechanism (sans selling it yourself on the web) was far more discriminatory, restricted, and took a bigger cut of your sales.
- cromwellian 7y agoLeaving aside the obvious problems with this, it also is just a shitty user experience. A search for “podcast” should not return a compass app. For a company that is supposed to be at the pinnacle of user experience and usability, the App Store buitin search is pretty unusable.
- pier25 7y agoIt's fine, it's their App Store and they can do whatever they want IMO. What's not fine is not being able to install a third party App Store with different policies so that users can choose whatever they prefer.
- esmi 7y agoJust out of curiosity, how do you imagine that would work in the real world? Apple's main thing is security, and one important aspect of how they achieve it is by only allowing signed code, which Apple also does some basic tests on, to be installed on the device. Many think this is a valuable service. In the third party App Store scenario, does the developer still submit an app to Apple for approval? How does Apple then make the approved app available to the third party? How is this different from a website that gives App recommendations?
- mwnivek 7y agoApple seems to balance security and freedom in MacOS, by asking if you are sure you want to uninstall unidentified software, outside of the Mac App Store [1]. Why can't they offer that same balance in iOS? Imagine how different the MacOS experience would be (particularly for small developers) if every piece of software had to be installed through the Mac App Store. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unidentified-developer-mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...
- esmi 7y agoI think the security expectations for those two platforms are very different, and that's why Apple balances them differently. MacOS gives up a lot of security for those extra abilities, and on MacOS I don't feel like I ever really had security. For example, I begrudgingly run shell injection attacks on myself every time I download some large codebase, which I am never going to review all of, or run brew, etc. It has been that way since the very beginning. Not so with iOS.
- 7y ago
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoThe executives said the company did not manually alter search results to benefit itself. Instead, they said, Apple apps generally rank higher than competitors because of their popularity and because their generic names are often a close match to broad search terms. No need to if the algorithm includes to artificially normalize having some of their apps syroketing their raning value.
- jasonhansel 7y agoRemember when the EU banned MS from shipping a web browser with their OS? Why is iOS allowed to do the same sorts of things?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoSupposedly there are other smart phones than the iPhone that have significant market share (even more than the iPhone sometimes) in Europe. The same wasn’t true for desktop OSes (at the time), Microsoft Windows had an overwhelming chunk of Europe’s market share.
- prashnts 7y agoQuick observation from the data presented in article (very well done, by the way): Beginning iOS 11, if I remember correctly, Apple finally added the ability to delete stock apps. Deleted apps could be downloaded from App Store later. Perhaps the « boost » in search rankings for the stock apps was related to that ? If the dates match, I assume they would have wanted these to be found easily and screwed up in scoring. This is assuming good faith, of course. Edit: I did not remember correctly! This feature was added in iOS 10, released in September 2016.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agothe app store is such a mess. Even finding something as simple as a good running app that stores and shows your weekly mileage is a huge challenge. All the top apps are terrible or missing the crucial weekly mileage feature or aren't free. Google search is equally terrible because they only show reviews from sites with super high "domain authority", or whatever, all i know is i get the same damn site results over and over and just gets worse after 3 pages, and I can never find the reviews I'm really looking for. Am I the only one having these sorts of problems over and over again? or I am i just an outlier?
- yyyk 7y agoNote that the article links to a previous WSJ expose, which was posted here in the past[0] (without comments). The WSJ story has more detail, and is IMHO pretty damning when it comes to the podcast app. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20535129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20535129