iPhone App Directory

The App Store turned 5 so here's 5 things I'd like them to do ...

I know it was a little while ago, but here are a few simple things that I think would make the app store a bit easier to use ...
  1. Upgrade pricing - I don't think it should be beyond the abilities of Apple to introduce this. I know it would almost certainly add complexity and in some cases it wouldn't be popular with users, but it could help developers to continue to support apps with new features rather than the current process of having to issue a whole new version on a big upgrade.
  2. Make wish lists accessible on the iPhone and iPad. I love my wish list on iTunes but it would be so much better if I could see it and add to it on my iPhone.
  3. More categories. Just having music is not enough. I'd like to see it split down into more categories and perhaps have one just for cat pianos and similar apps, so I can avoid those. At the very least we should get a music production category.
  4. More price points and simpler pricing.
  5. Allow users to go back to a previous version. I think it would be much easier if we could downgrade apps on our devices. Not just when things go wrong, but for use with older devices too. Of course this would be especially useful when iOS7 brings auto updates.
Anything I've missed or that you'd like to see?

2 comments:

johnnyg0 said...

Happy birthday Cydia (February 2008), the original app store that forced Apple to do its own store (July, 2008) only to then block its users from using any other stores.

For the youngsters who don't remember, at the time Apple did not want people to make apps for the original Iphone (claiming it was a security problem, amongst other things).

But people wanted to make apps for the iphone so bad, and since you cannot install applications on IOS all by yourself, they came up with the original Cydia app store. Only then Apple saw the opportunity they missed and quickly came up with their own version of the app store, only to say later that everybody was copying "their" app store idea.

For years Cydia has hosted apps that were rejected by Apple. Great apps like wallpapers, skinning, multitasking, wireless sync, some good stuff that Apple later incorporated in IOS, also claiming that they had all invented those things.

Good thing Cydia still exists todays as you can still get apps rejected by Apple, apps that let you modify the core system and lets you do thing like running two apps in windows side by side (something that Android can do but Apple does not want on IOS).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db2UbDEgzEA

Adil Sherwani (Rhism) said...

As a developer, I'd prefer to avoid upgrade pricing and let "new features" be IAPs.

Upgrade pricing means that if you have users at version 3 (for example) and then you add some new features in v4 that they don't want, they will never be able to upgrade to v5 which has some features that they do want without paying for everything. Maybe you just added support for a new larger screen size (e.g. iPhone 5) and you don't want people to have to pay to get that feature, but you do want them to pay for some new whiz-bang other feature you added. IAPs offer maximum flexibility to let people buy the things they want and skip the ones they don't.