Apple has some work to do. It's app lists are pretty dumb. There's no way to hide things you don't want to see, which would enable other well-rated apps to percolate up. If you could take out all the games from the top 100, say, suddenly 70 apps would appear that would have been much harderto find through categories.
There are well over 800,000 iOS apps in the App Store, 300,000 of which are native to the iPad, and I'm constantly surprised and irritated at Apple's inability to helpits customers discover great apps. Of course, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who actively goes into Apple's various App Store points of entry -- iTunes, iPad and iPhone -- only to walk away without downloading anything.I also spend more time online than I care to admit, tooling around the online Apple universe -- and still, it seems like I just get lost in app reviews and news of things like Temple Run 2, which more than 50 million people managed to find and download. Maybe really great apps are all being found, and that as I look andlook and walk away vaguely dissatisfied, maybe there's something inherently wrong with me.
More Than Room for ImprovementHere's what I don't understand: Apple is a freakishly large company that's focused on creatingthe very best consumer experience. It has resources -- billions of dollars and very smart employees -- and it has a vision of excellence. All of the apps in the App Store have to be managed somehow, and they have to be managed with a database. Databases are pretty amazing things -- and yet, the front-end to the App Store is woefully dumb.Let's consider iTunes. First, Apple seems to be trying to put humans behind the discovery effort by letting editors select "Editor's Choice" apps. They also showcase acouple dozen "New and Noteworthy" apps. Then there's"What's Hot" and other topical, pithy, or fun categories like"Awards Season" or "Great Game Soundtracks."These curated app collections are pretty good. Apple does about as good a job at it as I can imagine. The company has to create tame collections that won't offend anyone, freak out parents, or be confusing to the masses.Hide? Sort? Filter?The search works pretty well if youknow what you're searching for. Search is not really for discovery though. Search isnotabout browsing. We can sort by iPhone or iPad apps. That's handy. There are about two dozen categories wecan sort through -- like education, finance, games and news. Each of these has a What's Hot and New and Noteworthy list. Plus, there are more Apple editor-curated lists, like High School Zone within the Education category.Within these categories, we can sort of drill down into 200 of the Top Paid Apps, the Top Free Apps, and the Top Grossing Apps.So why do I feel like I'm wasting my life as I search for amazing new apps? Is it that there really are only a few hundred great apps at any one time and that there arejust hundreds of thousands of appsthat are either irrelevant for most people or just so bad that no one wants them at all?The sheer effort of managing nearly a million apps is hard for most people to grasp. It's not an easy challenge. Imagine owning a small retail store in a mall and trying to find a good way to displaya few thousand products on just a single wall of shelves. Yet I think improvements are not only needed, but doable.What could be some relatively easy fixes? What might be some solutions that wouldn't require a wholesale recreation of a new AppStore?Hide That App, PleaseSome apps are immensely popular, but I know I'll never buy them and never download them. I will not download Clear Vision. I won't download Fruit Ninja. I am not going to play Scribblenauts Remix, and I'm not ever going to pimp my screen or call Elmo.If I could click or tap on a little "X" button on their icons and hide them from my view -- effectively giving a dynamic Top 200 list morespots for interesting apps to slide up into -- I would be very happy. This alone would be a huge boon.To amp up this notion just a little, how about the ability to hide all the apps you've already downloaded? Suddenly a Top 200 list would have a lot more relevance to you personally, wouldit not?What if you could hide categories that you don't want to look for? Like Games. If you could hide all the crappy games designed to create habit loops of addiction in small children . . . that would free up a heckuva lot of app discovery real estate. I'd call this an Exclude feature.Can't you already exclude Games by browsing through other categories? Yes, but the point is to be able to browse multiple categories at the same time while eliminating the categories you don't want, like Games, Weather, Catalogs and Navigation. I'm not buying any new navigation apps anytime soon. I have several apps that do what I need really well andI don't want others. Same goes for Weather. I'm sure other people wouldn't mind eliminating Finance or Sports while they're looking for something new and surprising.
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