“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” – Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO announced less than a month ago.
I wonder how long it took McDonalds to be able to boast they’ve served three billion. I imagine it took longer than a year and a half. One could literally spend hours browsing through the available applications, both free and paid apps. Who has the time or the patience to do that? A good strategy is needed to find the right apps fast so you have time to actually enjoy them.
Browsing the App Store on your iPhone
You would think that with the huge success of the iPhone/iTouch, browsing the app store on your device would be simple. Unfortunately, it isn’t; there aren’t many options available to sort through the apps you are looking for.
Featured
Under the ‘Featured’ option, you can see applications filtered by ‘New’, ‘What’s Hot’, or ‘Genius’. You’re limited to only 30 or so applications under each filter, and you can’t separate the paid vs. free apps from one another. Apple fails to define what they consider to be New. Within the last few days, or since the iPhone was released?! You also don’t have an idea of what the scope is for most filters; is the What’s Hot list showing you the hottest apps for that specific day, week, month, all time? You don’t really know what the parameters are. The Genius feature offers some promise, but without the ability to separate free and paid apps, and the hit-or-miss results it gives you, it can hardly be called Genius for now.
Categories
Here you can sort apps through different categories defined by Apple. There are even subcategories for games. For each category/subcategory, you can filter results through the ‘Top Paid’, ‘Top Free’, and ‘Release Date’ options. At least here you can browse through free or paid apps separate from one another, but again you aren’t sure what their parameters are for determining what app is considered Top in a specific category. Filtering by categories is misleading as well; often you will find the same app in multiple categories, which kind of defeats the purpose of separating apps by categories in the first place. Sure, several apps could be considered to fit into many different categories, but if that is the case, shouldn’t Apple do more to make each category distinct from the next?
Top 25
Here again you are able to filter apps by paid or free options, as well as browse the top grossing apps. Without parameters though, you don’t know if you’re looking at the top 25 for the day, week, month, or all-time. Apple also gives you a teaser in this section: once you get to the bottom of the list in each filter, you can continue browsing the Top 50 instead. Ooh, good one Apple…
Search
This is in my opinion the best way to search for specific apps. Through keywords, you aren’t limited to any pre-defined filters from Apple that don’t work as well as they should. But, this option has its problems as well. It would be nice to search by specific developers. If you have an app from a specific developer, chances are they have other good quality products out there you may be interested in. Most of the time if you enter the developer’s name/company in the keyword search you’ll get what you’re looking for, but you may end up getting a results you didn’t want as well. Here you aren’t able to perform a keyword search on just free or paid apps, so your results will give both.
User Reviews
Let’s be honest…how many people actually go through and rate the apps they download? Most of the time I will give a star rating only when I’m deleting an app. If it’s getting deleted, the rating likely isn’t a good one.
There are a few places that try to encourage people to submit actual reviews. Apprebates.com encourages users to submit reviews for applications featured on their site. There is a referral fee for getting others to sign up and review applications. You’re also able to earn money to be used to purchase apps. The site boasts that you don’t have to pay for the apps that you review. Really, you pay for the app, then you’re credited the cost of the app once they confirm that you’ve submitted a review. The credit stays in their system until you accumulate enough points to cash out.
Web Communities
The best way I have found to browse through the endless lists of apps is by hitting up the world wide web. There are a number of sites out there that are dedicated to reviewing new apps and are pretty good at giving solid advice. With user forums you get to hear what many different people think about the app on display. While it’s likely that several authors for the sites are receiving the apps for free and are therefore obligated to give a thumbs up review, the opinions to be found here are much more dependable than via the app store on your iPhone. Someone has put a lot of time into putting together a good quality site, and if it looks professional, there’s probably more to it than trying to con a few people into buying apps that aren’t worth it. Here are a few useful sites I frequent when app shopping:
I’d love to hear how others out there decide on what apps to download. Do you have a method to sorting through the sea of apps, or do you just browse until something looks interesting and give it a shot? Disagree with what I have to say? Talk about it, leave comments!
iPhone Apps: Over 3 Billion Served (and Counting)
“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” – Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO announced less than a month ago.
I wonder how long it took McDonalds to be able to boast they’ve served three billion. I imagine it took longer than a year and a half. One could literally spend hours browsing through the available applications, both free and paid apps. Who has the time or the patience to do that? A good strategy is needed to find the right apps fast so you have time to actually enjoy them.
Browsing the App Store on your iPhone
You would think that with the huge success of the iPhone/iTouch, browsing the app store on your device would be simple. Unfortunately, it isn’t; there aren’t many options available to sort through the apps you are looking for.
Featured
Under the ‘Featured’ option, you can see applications filtered by ‘New’, ‘What’s Hot’, or ‘Genius’. You’re limited to only 30 or so applications under each filter, and you can’t separate the paid vs. free apps from one another. Apple fails to define what they consider to be New. Within the last few days, or since the iPhone was released?! You also don’t have an idea of what the scope is for most filters; is the What’s Hot list showing you the hottest apps for that specific day, week, month, all time? You don’t really know what the parameters are. The Genius feature offers some promise, but without the ability to separate free and paid apps, and the hit-or-miss results it gives you, it can hardly be called Genius for now.
Categories
Here you can sort apps through different categories defined by Apple. There are even subcategories for games. For each category/subcategory, you can filter results through the ‘Top Paid’, ‘Top Free’, and ‘Release Date’ options. At least here you can browse through free or paid apps separate from one another, but again you aren’t sure what their parameters are for determining what app is considered Top in a specific category. Filtering by categories is misleading as well; often you will find the same app in multiple categories, which kind of defeats the purpose of separating apps by categories in the first place. Sure, several apps could be considered to fit into many different categories, but if that is the case, shouldn’t Apple do more to make each category distinct from the next?
Top 25
Here again you are able to filter apps by paid or free options, as well as browse the top grossing apps. Without parameters though, you don’t know if you’re looking at the top 25 for the day, week, month, or all-time. Apple also gives you a teaser in this section: once you get to the bottom of the list in each filter, you can continue browsing the Top 50 instead. Ooh, good one Apple…
Search
This is in my opinion the best way to search for specific apps. Through keywords, you aren’t limited to any pre-defined filters from Apple that don’t work as well as they should. But, this option has its problems as well. It would be nice to search by specific developers. If you have an app from a specific developer, chances are they have other good quality products out there you may be interested in. Most of the time if you enter the developer’s name/company in the keyword search you’ll get what you’re looking for, but you may end up getting a results you didn’t want as well. Here you aren’t able to perform a keyword search on just free or paid apps, so your results will give both.
User Reviews
Let’s be honest…how many people actually go through and rate the apps they download? Most of the time I will give a star rating only when I’m deleting an app. If it’s getting deleted, the rating likely isn’t a good one.
There are a few places that try to encourage people to submit actual reviews. Apprebates.com encourages users to submit reviews for applications featured on their site. There is a referral fee for getting others to sign up and review applications. You’re also able to earn money to be used to purchase apps. The site boasts that you don’t have to pay for the apps that you review. Really, you pay for the app, then you’re credited the cost of the app once they confirm that you’ve submitted a review. The credit stays in their system until you accumulate enough points to cash out.
Web Communities
The best way I have found to browse through the endless lists of apps is by hitting up the world wide web. There are a number of sites out there that are dedicated to reviewing new apps and are pretty good at giving solid advice. With user forums you get to hear what many different people think about the app on display. While it’s likely that several authors for the sites are receiving the apps for free and are therefore obligated to give a thumbs up review, the opinions to be found here are much more dependable than via the app store on your iPhone. Someone has put a lot of time into putting together a good quality site, and if it looks professional, there’s probably more to it than trying to con a few people into buying apps that aren’t worth it. Here are a few useful sites I frequent when app shopping:
I’d love to hear how others out there decide on what apps to download. Do you have a method to sorting through the sea of apps, or do you just browse until something looks interesting and give it a shot? Disagree with what I have to say? Talk about it, leave comments!