Comments on: Thoughts on the App Store experience

By: On the iPhone as a closed platform | Wooost Blog

On the iPhone as a closed platform | Wooost Blog — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:51:51 +0000

[...] quite a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post about the iPhone App Store, so this one comes as a bit of an addendum. I typically don’t [...]

By: Nicolas Cohen

Nicolas Cohen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:42:42 +0000

I’ve been installing the apps straight from the phone and its a lot simpler. I too had an issue understanding the whole “unauthorized” thing. But when installing stuff straight from the ipod touch, it’s pretty straightforward. I would argue that it’s not really clear that pressing “FREE” means: “show the install button for this app”.

By: Guillaume

Guillaume — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:57:23 +0000

Hello,
I’m just sharing my favorite apps ;)
Well, I like the accelerometer and GPS sensors. I really feel like I own a small pocket satellite; so my favorite apps are so far:

-The flashlight. Genius.
-The jedi light saber. Creative.
-The iPint. Fun.
-Midomi, the singing search engine. Original.
-Evernote. Search for text, OCR-style, in your business cards snapshots (if you can focus properly with the crappy built-in camera).
-Waiting for a true location-aware social network, like wizi or loopt to come on over at portugal.

However, the best app, besides the app store, is the safari browser. Sweet!

Cheers,

By: Webreakstuff » On the iPhone as a closed platform

Webreakstuff » On the iPhone as a closed platform — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:19:07 +0000

[...] quite a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post about the iPhone App Store, so this one comes as a bit of an addendum. I typically don’t [...]

By: Will

Will — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:03:17 +0000

I’ve experienced a world of FAIL with the 2.0 update and app store. Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept here, but overall the app content is a little underwhelming and the store via iTunes is way too confusing.

First, apps I added after 4 days of use with everything would just crash. The older apps worked great. I had to delete my entire app store content and wipe the phone to fix it. Next is the fact that it’s impossible to navigate. If it’s this crummy with 500+ apps, whats it going to be like when it’s well over the thousands? And why are there like 25 flashlight apps for the initial launch of everything? Last, the app store is soooo slow. I have a few apps which we’re updated to Apple a few weeks ago, and still haven’t made it to the store. I’d like my bug fixes please! and not a month later.

By: Kevin Arthur

Kevin Arthur — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:31:46 +0000

It’s been a little smoother for me, probably because I’ve only connected my iPod Touch to one Mac for syncing. I’ve had a couple of glitches where I tried to install an application when on wifi and it failed. It downloaded okay later when I was connected, but only after a confusing message or two like you posted above. Updating applications is also a bit unintuitive in iTunes.

I have noticed that syncing takes an awful long time now because it’s “backing up” stuff.

And of course crashes are an annoyance. Lots of apps and even built-in stuff have crashed on me. Hopefully that gets fixed in a firmware update.

All in all, though, I’m pretty happy — enough not to mess with jailbreaking.

By: Carlos Ouro

Carlos Ouro — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:33:07 +0000

That’s what’s so exciting about the Android project – when running on an iPhone like hardware it can really shake up the cellphone market. Android might be able to run on the iPhone itself ( http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/c55b1a57f175c75f ) or some other cool hardware company might come into play ( http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/02/16/rumors-alienware-working-on-android-based-iphone-killer/ ).

The “open apps for all” strategy of Android takes out most licensing limitations and hardware bounds that iPhone tries to hold on to. If it gets nearly as “pretty” as my iPhone, i could give up on it.

By: Shimoda

Shimoda — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:57:55 +0000

Completely agree with the experience. I was also expecting another kind of workflow and suffered the same absurdities, which even reached new heights when you try to use your iPhone with a couple of computers (is it really that uncommon?) The apps suddenly disappear and have to be redownloaded, resynced, reauthorised.

I’ve come to expect a different experience from Apple, but sadly the whole 2.0/MobileMe roll out has been a royal pain in the ass. Stuff I couldn’t even imagine in the Tiger Era… I’ve even considered rolling back to 1.1.4, but the truth is it’s very hard to let go of 3rd party apps (Gutar ToolKit is a must for guitarists, btw), so we’ll have to wait for an OS update, much like when Leopard rolled out.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:18:48 +0000

Agree with you, though I can begin to understand Apple’s perspective as well. Re: authorization… Apple wouldn’t be able to track number of installs (unless they called home, in which case privacy would become the issue). Re: drag apps to/from a phone… Apple wouldn’t be able to prevent developers from offering apps directly from their own website, potentially bypassing Apple’s ability to take a cut of any non-free apps.

By: Fred Oliveira

Fred Oliveira — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:37:14 +0000

Eric: Yup, naturally, I’m not saying its a crap product – I love it, and I almost (almost!) gave up on third-party apps (through jailbreaking – I do admit) because of it. But there’s these issues – like the one you describe – that just seem wrong, and so un-Apple-like. You know, sometimes you just want the experience to be like unwrapping one of their laptops, or the iPhone. Picture perfect.

Hopefully these things will get fixed.