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Apr 12, 2001
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After showing off the main features for iOS 8 at its Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple announced improvements for the App Store starting with iOS 8, including app bundles, integrated beta testing, improved search and more.

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In order to improve discoverability, the App Store will soon add an "Explore" tab, allowing users to explore through categories and sub-categories easily. Search has also been improved, with the ability to see the top trending searches in the App Store and related searches.

Developers will also be able to bundle together apps, allowing users to buy multiple apps for a single discounted price. Also available to developers are previews, which allows developers to include short videos to tell users what their apps are all about.

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Finally, developers can also invite users to beta test their apps in a new service called TestFlight, which allows developers to see information about their apps from right within the service. The service is free for developers, and stems from Apple's acquisition of Burstly, which offered its own TestFlight beta management service, back in February.

Apple also announced that there are now 1.2 million apps in the App Store and nearly 300 million visitors to the App Store per week who are downloading apps. The App Store has also reached another significant milestone, passing 75 billion apps been downloaded since its 2008 debut.

Article Link: Apple to Enhance App Store with 'Explore' Tab, App Bundles, Beta Testing, and More
 

dred67212

macrumors newbie
Jun 1, 2014
21
1
boooooooooo booooooo apple I want an App Store for the apple tv along with an new ui. Roku and Amazon are years ahead of you in such a simple addition. Cookie needs to go!!!!!!
 

Parasprite

macrumors 68000
Mar 5, 2013
1,698
144
Finally, developers can also invite users to beta test their apps in a new service called TestFlight, which allows developers to see information about their app from right within the service. The service is free for developers. Apple acquired iOS beta testing program TestFlight in February.

This will be great in particular for OS X (when/if it is implemented—I'm not sure if it will be) where developers need to release betas outside of the App Store using workarounds (particularly with paid apps) and they don't always play nicely.
 

Doctor Q

Administrator
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
39,775
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Los Angeles
Perhaps they'll let us "subscribe to an app bundle", as new apps are added to the bundle by the developer.

Or give us a way to pay an incremental price to add the new bundled apps.
 

APlotdevice

macrumors 68040
Sep 3, 2011
3,145
3,861
boooooooooo booooooo apple I want an App Store for the apple tv along with an new ui. Roku and Amazon are years ahead of you in such a simple addition. Cookie needs to go!!!!!!

Yeah... it's probably never going to happen. Why? Because Apple has Airplay, and Airplay encourages consumers to buy into Apple's ecosystem.
 

Jessica Lares

macrumors G3
Oct 31, 2009
9,612
1,055
Near Dallas, Texas, USA
Apple came so close to doing the right thing. App previews and beta testing are nice... but I really think they need to implement a hybrid of the 2 and give us app demos.

Demos don't always work. Imagine making a demo for Threes, which has the same gameplay every time. You can't time limit it because sometimes it takes 30 minutes to play one round of it. Limiting it to one round will just let people play the demo over and over again. And if you limit it to just one or two rounds, it might mean that a user only gets 30 seconds to try it, which is pointless because you can't decide whether you like an app after 30 seconds.

The Windows Phone marketplace lets you check out demos, but it has lead to most reviews being about how people LIKE the game, but they aren't going to pay the money to continue playing them.

Too many people would just download them, just to check them out, and that's it.
 

KALLT

macrumors 603
Sep 23, 2008
5,355
3,375
Demos don't always work. Imagine making a demo for Threes, which has the same gameplay every time. You can't time limit it because sometimes it takes 30 minutes to play one round of it. Limiting it to one round will just let people play the demo over and over again. And if you limit it to just one or two rounds, it might mean that a user only gets 30 seconds to try it, which is pointless because you can't decide whether you like an app after 30 seconds.

The Windows Phone marketplace lets you check out demos, but it has lead to most reviews being about how people LIKE the game, but they aren't going to pay the money to continue playing them.

Too many people would just download them, just to check them out, and that's it.

Why do you assume that developers would not be able to decide whether their apps can be demoed?
 
Demos don't always work. Imagine making a demo for Threes, which has the same gameplay every time. You can't time limit it because sometimes it takes 30 minutes to play one round of it. Limiting it to one round will just let people play the demo over and over again. And if you limit it to just one or two rounds, it might mean that a user only gets 30 seconds to try it, which is pointless because you can't decide whether you like an app after 30 seconds.

The Windows Phone marketplace lets you check out demos, but it has lead to most reviews being about how people LIKE the game, but they aren't going to pay the money to continue playing them.

Too many people would just download them, just to check them out, and that's it.

Well I would suggest leaving the control with the devs. They could decide if to allow a demo, and an appropriate length of time. They could even do time-in-app vs total-time-since-download
 

milo

macrumors 604
Sep 23, 2003
6,891
522
Apple came so close to doing the right thing. App previews and beta testing are nice... but I really think they need to implement a hybrid of the 2 and give us app demos.

Sounds like they still won't have a way for devs to offer paid upgrades either.
 
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