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App Store Improvements: Is Apple Listening?

Since the App Store first launched, it has been met with heated backlash by many, joyous praise by others, and the inability to be matched by any of Apple’s competitors. Even though the App Store, and the business model surrounding it are great, the development community continues to brainstorm ways to make it better.

The bottom line is that Apple owns the App Store. As hard as it may be to face, Apple can pick and choose how to run the store, what applications to allow, and what gets rejected. It’s for this particular reason that the App Store has been met with such voracious criticism. However, without a devoted development community cultivating and populating the App Store, it would not have reached such levels of success so fast. Of note, the App Store recently passed the 500 million mark for downloaded apps.

As the current market evolves, Apple’s App Store will need to grow and adapt new practices better served to suit the community. Developers and consumers alike have interesting ideas on how to better the App Store, increase usability and overall deliver a more diverse experience. “A way for developers to address feedback/reviews in the app store would be great. Newegg allows its product manufactures to connect with reviewers to improve their services and products,” explains Shannon Atkinson from Njection, developers of Speed Trap finder app Njection mobile.

As the San Francisco Chronicle recently explained, Apple has in fact responded to some concerns over visibility in the App Store. They have added categories such as Staff Picks and What’s Hot, New and Noteworhty lists, and increased the lists to 100 applications per category.

“The challenge is discoverability,” said John Poisson, founder and CEO of Tiny Pictures, which recently released its Radar mobile picture app on the iPhone. “You can’t count on your apps being visible because there are too many apps.” We’ve been hearing requests for most recent week and most recent month categories for quite some time now. While the addition of new categories is welcomed in some scenarios, it’s a fine line between clutter and actually improving the ability to find new applications.

An iPhone developer who opted to remain nameless, refuses to concentrate his efforts on the iPhone until Apple releases concise iPhone development guidelines. “Until we get a clear set of development guidelines that states exactly what features are explicitly banned, we remain hesitant to dump significant money into any iPhone specific project,” the iPhone developer explains. “We will continue to develop for other mobile platforms, but nothing iPhone specific until we receive guidelines.”

Speculation over the the app store going social can be found sprinkled through forums and publications. Beyond simply sending recommendation links to friends, incorporating the iTunes genius and allowing highly targeted sharing between apps is something some are wishing for. “I’m really looking forward to something like what Xbox Live does, where your friends or your contacts can see what you’re playing,” said Walton, who has sold more than 250,000 copies of Retronyms’ Recorder app. “It’s like an automatic word-of-mouth recommendation.” Additionally, the idea of micro-payments or subscription services is something Walton says he’d like to see.

Analyst Jack Gold from J. Gold Associates expects Apple to incorporate many developer suggestions over the next 18 months. However as of now, he believes there is no real threat from any of Apple’s competitors, and we agree. Aside from needing new features and ways to discover applications, Apple needs to open up and be more vocal on how it’s dealing with potentially unethical scenarios, the issue of apps questionably being banned, and long-standing missing features such as background notifications.