You know what my problem with Apple’s App Store is? All of the crap. I am a professional application wrangler. I am the pig to the applications’ truffles. My job consists of going out and finding interesting applications to recommend to other people. Apple does not make that very easy for me.
First of all, popularity is not a very good way of finding cool new apps. Bad applications often fail upwards and end up being in a top-ten situation. This perpetuates itself. It is a never ending feedback loop from hell. Bad applications beget bad applications forever and ever into eternity. Then I cry myself to sleep.
Secondly, the ratings system is FUBAR. The main problem is people rating applications for “Political” reasons or nonsense nitpicking. Sadly, human beings don’t do a whole lot of rating in the threes. We like fives and ones. HIGHEST OF THE HIGHS! lowest of the lows… No mediocrity here. No siree, Bob! No middle of the road apps here. MOVE ALONG!
Lastly, we’re being category’d to death. The App Store has twenty (TWENTY!) categories. From there, the Games category has nineteen (NINETEEN!) sub-categories. How the hell am I supposed to find something in this mess? If I don’t know what I am supposed to be looking for or searching for exactly, I have to go through pages and pages of irrelevant crap to find any useful data. This makes me very cranky.
So, how can Apple make the App Store less crappy? It is difficult to say exactly. It is incredibly easy to find what doesn’t work. Finding what does work is substantially harder. Frankly, I’d like to see even more editorial than there is already. Apple does this to an extent, but I want less power given to the masses for choosing what apps become popular. Also, I’d like to see the categories cut in half. I don’t need my categories to be that granular. If I have to sift through crap, I’d prefer to sift through it all at once instead of in twenty different sections.
Photo Credit: meddygarnet
