If Andy Ihnatko Wants a Better App Store, Shouldn't We?

I love MacBreak Weekly, a weekly podcast on all things Mac hosted by Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, and Andy Ihnatko.  These are all very smart, highly technical individuals, but Andy Inhatko is perhaps the wittiest of the group.  

On MacBreak Weekly episode 139: "Deploy the Ponytail", Andy expresses his frustration about the App Store. Starting at 1:08:00, he says:

This underscores why I think that the App Store needs a total revamp on how they organize things.  Most of the cool apps that I find out about from the App Store, I find out about through either people recommending them to me, or through press releases, because...  I just do not have the energy in this frail mortal body to simply look through the app store for cool stuff anymore.  There's too much stuff, and I can't buy 5 apps trying to figure out which one of them is worth the... one half of the money they're charging for it.

Thank you, Andy!  You've really said it quite well... despite stuttering a bit in your empassioned excitement ;-)  

Decomposing the Rant

Most people find apps through blogs/reviews/press releases or through their friends.  Some people find apps by browsing the store but, as most iPhone developers will attest, apps are hard to discover there.  They are seldom seeing all of their options in a given type of app.

The deficiencies that Andy specifically pointed out are:

• Too much volume, poorly organized
• No mechanism for personal recommendations
• Reviews system is not trustworthy

We aim to solve these in our social app store with the following features:

• High quality search (vertical discoverability)
• Other recommended, similar, or "goes well with" apps displayed on each app page (horizontal discoverability)
• Social features and friend lists imported from various social networks allowing for: 
  • personal recommendations
  • review/rating filtering to only my friends
  • display of who is using, quit using, regrets buying, or recommends each of the apps in my search results

Help Wanted

We are on a mission to make this happen! We are a growing community of people who want to take Apple's invitation to design and build the ideal app store. 

As it stands today, we are a small but talented group.  We're making significant progress, but looking for some more members of our community.  So, if you can envision a better app store, and want to pitch in, please get in touch!  We're open to idea people, designers, business geeks, programmers, frustrated consumers, frustrated iPhone developers, or anyone else that has a desire to see this happen in the world.

Meanwhile, keep listening to MacBreak Weekly for some good app picks - you'll be glad you did.

Comments

[David Marsh]

I wish you the best of luck! I can't wait to see the ways you guys come up with to discover apps, I think it would be a great example to apple - as well as a very useful tool.

[Don Lorenzet]

I agree with this post and with Andy Inhatko. I sincerely hope a better store scheme can be found. I truly think the current store is holding back the platform.

[Benjamin Cox]

I appreciate the support, David and Don. We're working hard to make sure we're not stuck here forever.