As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for.
I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going to be a happy buyer.
You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user.
For a community all about entrepreneurship and building things for others you'd think we'd figure out by now that we are not the customer (unless you run some business directed directly at tech savvy people but you get my point).
Also, I am astounded at the hubris people display when faced with minor annoyances like this. Don't like the new App Store design? Well then it's fucking broken!
We are all a bunch of nobody's trying to scream louder than all the other nobodies about how smart we are and how we'd do a better job but most of the time its all bullshit. It takes some balls to think you're smarter and can do better than the most valuable company on earth. Every time someone is annoyed by something someone inevitably comes out and says its the wrong way to do it. Well there's an easy way to test if you're right or not. If the App Store stops making money any time between now and, let's be generous, the next time they change the App Store UI then you'll be right. But as long as they're making billions off this thing I feel pretty confident in saying they're doing something right and I sincerely doubt they'd do anything to harm their baby.
Think about it: it you run a company and have a successful product why would you change it? You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do.
I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark.
And one more thing: did you notice it? Someone did. Something changed and then someone complained about it (even going as far as to say its broken). Of course. Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change. Because change is scary and involves learning a new thing and what if you're not good at the new thing and the cycle of anxiety provoking thoughts begins...
"Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change."
I really hope people just stop with this. Every single change to any website makes that website not allowed to be criticized at all because its just us sheep being afraid of change. Fuck giving evidence for problems, talking about design implications or anything like that. Just give the simple line that humans are scared of change, pretend like that is the entire cause and feel good that you were able to imply people aren't smart because they made well reasoned arguments and you had a canned line ready.
How this comment got a single upvote is mindboggling to me.
No, this sort of blindly pro-Apple bull shit is what's wrong with current conversation around Apple. Are we supposed to roll over and shut up because the almighty Gods at Apple decided this was the best way to do? This notion that we should get down on our knees and pray (or otherwise please) the overlords is just wrong-- is it really so crazy to assume that Cook & co. could make a mistake? Yes-- large, publicly traded corporations generally look into many options, accurately predict the outcomes of each, and then make an educated decision that is likely to have the best outcome-- but that doesn't make them infallible. Questioning Apple isn't hubris-- it's human.
Tangential: Why do I as a developer have to assume that users don't want what I want? Is it so wrong to think that a user might want to be able to see and evaluate 5 different apps at a time instead of 1? The past couple of years in tech have been spent wondering how to simplify UI for the sake of the user, to the point where we can't even trust them to have settings-- we need to know what's best for them before they log on to our websites or launch our apps, but is that really valid? It's easy to imagine that in 1983 when Microsoft Word was first announced, people needed total simplicity-- these "personal computer" things (probably a fad) were brand new and only available to the elite-- but this is the twenty first century and we have a whole generation of digital natives who will ask Google for an answer before they get in the shower-- and they're users too.
It's equally fair to say that there is a lot of blindly anti-Apple articles that make the front page here.
"Are we supposed to roll over and shut up because the almighty Gods at Apple decided this was the best way to do?"
No. But by the same token claiming something s broken within hours of it's release and without any measurable data is hyperbolic and at this stage in the game somewhat OTT. Much the same is true with mapping. As another poster has said, don'rt buy their products, or if you are developer, don't develop for the platform. Of course multinationals make mistakes. It's far too early to claim that this is the case.
"...this is the twenty first century and we have a whole generation of digital natives who will ask Google for an answer before they get in the shower-- and they're users too." And I'm willing to bet that they are still not representative of the majority of end users. It's not as if these users aren't catered for either - Android is an excellent mobile OS that is far more friendly to the end user that wants that level of control. No, the biggest issue we have now is the over inflated sense of entitlement that the many on the internet seem to have.
This is just an incredibly weak appeal to authority. Billion dollar companies make major mistakes all the time, in design and in every other area of business. In fact, Apple is a multi-billion dollar company precisely because of design and business oversights made by IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, and other billion dollar companies in the past.
Even if these app store changes are a good tactical decision, in that based on user data, they are likely to increase immediate revenues (which shouldn't go without question simply because OMG it's Apple), it could still be a poor strategic decision if it begins pushing indie developers and the particular brand of innovation that they provide to other platforms. What platforms will the Angry Birds and Instagrams of the future build on first if it costs $250k in marketing get noticed on the App Store? Maybe Apple doesn't give a shit about that and is content to milk its money farm for all its worth, to hell with the long term consequences. That attitude has certainly been fashionable in American business lately, but that doesn't make it a wise approach. No company is immune to future innovation if it rests on its laurels. IBM wasn't. Microsoft wasn't. Apple isn't.
"I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons."
History is filled with stories of huge companies that have failed and no longer exist today. I wouldn't use your language 'total morons', but of course the people running them made poor decisions.
While I agree with your broader sentiment about this post being more change aversion than substantive debate the logic here is circular: if "multi-bazillion" dollar companies always initiate change because they "have the data that tells [them] it's going to make [them] more money" then any decision by a large company is self-evidently correct. This is false; the large company could have overlooked things, made a logical error, or have had an idiot on the web server team pushing changes he didn't realise broke iOS's WiFi capabilities. Your argument should push deeper than an appeal to Apple's authority.
Displaying Picasa HD Lite in front of Web Albums does no good to anybody. And frankly if the developers have to do SEO because the freaking title is more important than rank+description, than the search function is definitely broken.
The example here was searching on the search term "picasa" and the search algorithm returning two applications that have that search term in their name ahead of applications that do not.
It's certainly possible that Web Albums is better than Picasa HD Lite, but c'mon. If you do a search for "photoshop" you will find competitors to Photoshop Express with higher ratings, but Photoshop Express still shows up ahead of them in the search results. Even more shockingly, when you search on the word "twitter," the official Twitter app shows up ahead of Tweetbot, and you won't believe what comes up when you search for "angry birds!"
Maybe this means the App Store is broken, or -- going out on a limb here -- it means that it's prioritizing titles that actually contain your search term over titles that don't. Maybe you think it's just completely insane that titles take priority over keywords and description text, but -- again, maybe this is just my crazy crazy way of looking at the world -- I kind of see the logic there.
If Google Search worked like this, I wouldn't be using it. The title is definitely important, however on Google the title is less important than everything else combined, and that's how it should be.
Also, from your examples all the apps you mention are above 4 stars and have massive downloads. TweetDeck may be better than Twitter, but the official Twitter is not too shabby either.
Also I'm sick and tired about apps with title-SEO. Twitter is a known brand, however if Twitter were to be launched today as an iOS app it would be called "Short-message your friends" or some crap like that.
Google have a heck of a lot more data to go on. It's not just the title of Facebook.com, it's the millions of links to it that contain the word 'Facebook'.
The app store doesn't have that data, so has to rely more on titles to try and how you a specific app if you do a specific search. If I search for 'Facebook' there's a high chance I want the official app, so it should come up high no matter if it's not the highest ranked.
Of course, it's plainly open for abuse. I wonder if they do, or could, take usage stats into account as well as ratings. If everyone is using the official Facebook app despite the fact it's crap, the user is probably trying to find it when they search for it, but it no one is using My Crappy Picassa App then it shouldn't be ranked very highly, even on a search for 'Picassa'. But then you have the bootstrapping problem of new apps being hard to find, even with exact searches. Perhaps some sort of inverse relationship between age and active users would work.
Well actually, they should have more data. The description and reviews should be available to them without an issue. More importantly, they could mine backlinks for more context.
> You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do
This is Apple we're talking about. They pride themselves on completely ignoring what "the market wants" for what they think is the best.
I largely agree with your point, but I have to respond to this:
> I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark.
Many, many large companies do have morons taking shots in the dark, based requirements and data that have little-to-no basis in reality, coupled with broken bureaucracy and individual incentives that are not even remotely aligned with what actually matters to their customers.
MS build their platform on being nice to decelopers. Apple has consistently fucked their developers over and over.
That tactic works as long as we can wipe our asses with 100 dollar bills from their sales. If that doesn't happen, we might as well go where we are wanted.
> You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user.
I want search results that let me find what I'm looking for while minimizing the amount of junk I have to deal with along the way. I didn't realize that wanting search to do a good job at finding things was a sophisticated HN-user desire, out of touch with the common man. I guess that does explain all those times I've heard ordinary people exclaim while searching, "Dang! I found what I wanted too easily. I wish this thing was harder to use effectively!". :-)
I do agree that people here scoff at things because they don't like it personally, I do think multi-bazillion dollar companies can easily be wrong sometimes. Take Buzz, Ping and the Kin for example, all three were winded down.
The icon and name are a first filter. For example, suppose I'm searching for "star chart".
When I see "Horoscope" in the name of a result, I skip it.
When I see the name is "Potty Chart" and the icon consists of a toilet with the seat up and a star hovering over the seat, I skip it.
When I see the name is "iAllowance" and the icon is a piggy bank, I skip it.
When I see the name is "Vinmeen Lite" and the icon shows a constellation, I think "what the heck is a vinmeen" and click. :-) (It turns out it is the Tamil word for "star").
I judge them by screenshots and then icons. It's certainly easier than downloading them all. Ratings on the app store don't tend to be very accurate for my tastes.
I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going to be a happy buyer.