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Friday
Mar132009

Premium iPhone Apps: App Store vs Crapp Store?

There is a rumor about Tuesday's iPhone 3.0 software announcement which says a new "premium" App Store is on the way. It is expected to contain $20 games and enterprise apps. But would this really solve the App Store's issues or just create a new one?

Honestly, I don't see this as a win at all! By segmenting the applications into two seperate piles, you create:

 

  • two places to look for users 
  • some confusion over where to look for which applications 
  • another "approval process" for folks to gripe about - "my app wasn't approve for the App Store, guess I'll have to put it in the Crapp Store" 

 

If I want a premium game, why not let me filter search results by category and price range? If the criteria for "premium" are more subtle than that, why not simply create a tag on which I can filter with a mere checkbox?

If rumors are correct, Apple would be continuing to ignore standard ecommerce practices while deciding for us how our searches will be filtered. They would also be making more work for both users and integrators (such as affiliate sites).

On the other side of the argument is the very real frustration that a lot of iPhone owners have with wading through the junk that is present in the App Store. I consider myself one of these frustrated users. But my frustration is with the App Store's lack of real features to make shopping easy and fun.

My fear is that this will be all we get... this means I will still have to wade through fart apps when searching the Crapp Store for something unrelated to flatulence that's under ten bucks.

Do you think that Apple will address this? Or is it up to the community (us) to build the app store experience we all would prefer? If it's up to us, let's hope the rumors are false... otherwise it will be that much harder for us to achieve!

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