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Brandhouse

macrumors 6502a
Aug 6, 2014
550
882
I've never made an app, but I've been thinking about it. But can you not generate buzz on the web and with social media to drive traffic to your app via hard links?
I would have never thought to rely on Apple for exposure. I would come up with a catchy name, build a website for it and have a product launch on several social media sites... Is that not viable?

Maybe I'm off, but it sounds like developers are kind of lazy in terms of promoting their product and are expecting Apple to just put them at the top of the charts?

Maybe Apple needs to add some more charts to the App Store like "Indie" "New Releases This Week".

It's not that easy, unfortunately. I was part of a team working on an app for 18 months and getting traction is damn hard.
 

seamer

macrumors 6502
Jul 24, 2009
426
164
Its ratings have been consistently 1 star in 24 months, haven't they? I mean the app has had an overall 1-1.5 star rating for over 2 years.
But that's just still one suggested (and unresearched) criteria out of a whole range of potential options. Are they interlinked? Are some better viable as standalone requirements?
 

Mactendo

macrumors 68000
Oct 3, 2012
1,967
2,045
In short: "give us money".

Why not to discover and feature (for free) great new apps unknown to the public and sell advertisement places to 3rd parties like google ads.

Macrusomrs.com once said it doesn't make reviews for money, so somehow it still manages to stay afloat without paid reviews (if it was true).
 

malexandria

Suspended
Mar 25, 2009
971
427
I used to be really into Apps and have 300 of them in my account, but I rarely use them and now I haven't really downloaded a game in over a year because it's all Pay To Play garbage and now some of my favorite paid apps like Cloudreader is now broken because it has distracting ads all over it. Give me the option to pay a reasonable (or even premium) price to use your stupid app. I don't want advertisments and don't want half assed games that are essentially two levels repeated over and over where you have to pay to unlock other levels which end up being nearly identical to the two I just played. What a scam the App store has become.
 
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Mactendo

macrumors 68000
Oct 3, 2012
1,967
2,045
Maybe they need to great a special place for indie developers. I'm a gamer and steam launched the Greenlight project. It basically promotes indie developers and you can vote who is in the "top".

This is actually a great idea, to filter out all those Candy crash sagas and other million $ businesses.
 

springsup

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2013
1,216
1,199
Remember when free apps couldn't have paid in-app purchases? Oh those were the times.

Remember when apps weren't allowed to fill your lock screen with unsolicited notifications?

Then Facebook decided they wanted to send you multiple unsolicited messages per day. Then every app decided it wanted to fill your screen with crap if you didn't open it for a while.

Apple has been totally deaf this entire time. Quality user experience has been slipping away from them for ages. Nowadays owning an iOS device is as chaotic as an old Windows PC. The IAP model also has serious moral questions when it comes to addictive personalities and how close it gets to gambling. We've really gone downhill.
 
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springsup

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2013
1,216
1,199
Yes, the App Store catalog needs a major overhaul to much better enable searching & finding anything other than front-page apps.

At the same time, it's absolutely vital to recognize that advertising an app really isn't Apple's problem - it's the app developer who needs to get word out to the intended audience, rather than expect a single host to find that audience for each of 1,500,000 apps. Apple's primary interest is in maximizing hardware sales, not necessarily app sales total or per developer. Remember, the App Store has made a total of 30% of somewhere around $10B ... which is, for Apple, a fairly paltry take relative to their total revenue.

Get out there and advertise. Your [potential] customers are not Apple's problem.

It's not the developers job to advertise, but as users we do wish Apple would clean the store up and make discovery a thing. Right now the only things which are easy to find are the big names who have been there since forever (Facebook top free, then Messenger, YouTube, Candy Crush, etc). As users, we want a better experience which actually helps us find the (many) gems hidden in that massive pile of Apps.

You can't browse the AppStore, or do anything like that really. It's a really staggeringly bare store for a shop which sells nearly a million and a half different products.
 

springsup

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2013
1,216
1,199
Its ratings have been consistently 1 star in 24 months, haven't they? I mean the app has had an overall 1-1.5 star rating for over 2 years.

It won't hurt them because when you're on their store page, you don't also see good alternatives

On Amazon, they show me similar products to consider if I don't quite like the one I'm looking at. The AppStore really buries this information, and it's suggestions are surprising to say the least.
 
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lincolntran

macrumors 6502a
Jan 18, 2010
843
471
I agree with the article in that it is very difficult for independent developers or new apps to get the exposure or traction they need to get users to download their apps. The majority of users looking for apps in the App Store just browse the Top Paid, Free and Grossing apps section, although the Featured page does help to alleviate this problem slightly. The app store is flooded with too many apps and its too difficult for the smaller app developers to get exposure. There needs to be something like a prominent 'new & noteworthy apps' type-section in the App Store to give smaller developers a chance of exposure.

There used to be a "new apps" section that list all new app, no matter the number of download. This section just cycled through and list new apps as they're approved. This gave indies a pretty good few days of exposure. For some unknow reasons, Apple removed that section from the front page!!!!!!
 

Koodauw

macrumors 68040
Nov 17, 2003
3,951
190
Madison
TouchArcade's situation may have been the inspiration, but we wanted to do a more complete story on what's been happening in the iOS games media industry, which is why we talked to folks at several similar sites.

Would we be happy if people supported TouchArcade because they saw this post? Sure...after all, we know the staff members there (some of whom work for both sites) and love the content. But it's a much larger issue that also affects developers and users, and it's something we thought merited coverage.

If we were simply looking to shill for TouchArcade, we would have done something a lot easier than putting all of this together.

But you have to admit that back when Mac Rumors was just a rumor site, and a community of enthusiasts, the site was a lot better.
 

asiga

macrumors 65816
Nov 4, 2012
1,023
1,327
I don't understand the meaning of this article. Big software companies have lots of money to waste in superbowl ads. Yes, we knew that. How does that mix with the App Store front page? No idea what they wanted to tell here. The only thing I did understand after reading this is that Macrumors has a sister publication and that developers should read it (although didn't get if it is the superbowl developers or the indie ones who are supposed to read it)
 

sniffies

macrumors 603
Jul 31, 2005
5,644
14,608
somewhere warm, dark, and cozy
But that's just still one suggested (and unresearched) criteria out of a whole range of potential options. Are they interlinked? Are some better viable as standalone requirements?
You're confusing. You suggested that an app be pulled if one of the three criteria is met (surely you didn't mean all three criteria):

1. No downloads in 12 months
2. No updates since iOS 6
3. Consistently low ratings in 24 months

Grindr falls under number 3. So it should be pulled hence my original reply to you.

o_O:confused:
 

unplugme71

macrumors 68030
May 20, 2011
2,827
754
Earth
I'm really fed up with game devs. Just charge me $4.99 for the damn game. Or 9.99 and be done with it. I see so many games with $99 purchases and tons of 1.99-9.99 options. I'm sorry but I'm not spending 2 grand on an iPhone game!!!
 
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ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
i almost never look at featured or top apps any more they never change and you never see anything new there i prefer google to find new apps however sad that is

Agree 100%. If you look at the top charts for any category, they hardly ever change. The same apps dominate most categories that dominated 1, 2, and 3 years ago. That makes the app store boring and it would seem that over time its going to make apple hardware less desirable. Having no browsing capability for new releases hurts consumers as well as small developers. Why is Apple restricting everyone to only see a handful off apps that their "editors" picks? Even those lists don't change very much.
 
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ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
They really need to come up with a better way to sort through the apps on the app store. It's so overwhelming that I find it unusable. Surely Apple can find a better way.
Apple doesn't seem to care. I think it should be setup like Amazon.com. If you search for something you have many options on how to order things (price high to low, price low to high, new and popular etc.). Apple also has very limited categories. You go to education and its dominated by stuff for 4 year olds. Aren't there any apps for college students? If there are they are buried in the morass. Also categories like reference and lifestyle have wildly different apps like religious ones and wallpaper apps. There should be subcategories to make it easier for people to find what they want, like reference->religion->Christian or whatever. Just like Amazon does. That would make it more likely for people to find apps that they want, to use apps, and be more satisfied with their devices.
 

ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
I realised this from a previous post but App developers need to consider advertising (print and online/in-app) and encouraging reviews of their apps: the App store front page is not paid advertisement. To expect serendipity to occur and your app to magically appear on the front page is naïve - even the indie bands don't complain about the iTunes store if they don't advertise their songs. :p

I guess its naive but advertising is very expensive. When Apple used to have new releases sections, indie developers could get sales. In fact it was easy to make a living by building many apps that were not hits but made steady revenue, but it depended on a good launch with the new releases section. Now it is all or nothing. Either you have a hit and make it big or you get 2-3 downloads.
 

ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
I used to be really into Apps and have 300 of them in my account, but I rarely use them and now I haven't really downloaded a game in over a year because it's all Pay To Play garbage and now some of my favorite paid apps like Cloudreader is now broken because it has distracting ads all over it. Give me the option to pay a reasonable (or even premium) price to use your stupid app. I don't want advertisments and don't want half assed games that are essentially two levels repeated over and over where you have to pay to unlock other levels which end up being nearly identical to the two I just played. What a scam the App store has become.

Excellent points, but I think there was a race to the bottom once the app store opened. First of all if you are selling apps it should be as a BUSINESS and not some hobby. You can't run a business and make a living handing stuff out for free. Unless, of course you make money from ads, but users find ads annoying (justifiably so). There was a race to the bottom so the lowest price point of 99 cents became the norm, and once advertising and in-app purchasing came about the race to the bottom continued with tons of free apps available. And now nobody but the big boys are making money. Users are far less likely to buy paid apps than they used to be. On advertising, you have to get massive downloads to make money. If you sold just 300 copies a month of one app you could build a business by putting out more paid apps. If you have a free app that gets 300 downloads a month you are not going to make jack in advertising, you'll be lucky if you get pizza money. But Apple doesn't care. The people at Apple that run the app store could care less about indie developers they just have their stupid editor picks and the same old apps up all the time. As long as they keep selling iphones and the big development companies keep raking it in so Tim Cook can get up and say how many billions they paid out to app developers Apple will not change the situation.
 
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ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
There used to be a "new apps" section that list all new app, no matter the number of download. This section just cycled through and list new apps as they're approved. This gave indies a pretty good few days of exposure. For some unknow reasons, Apple removed that section from the front page!!!!!!
Yes I do not understand why Apple removed that section. Why is it they want to restrict what customers can see? I don't think that is a very good business model.
 

Boris-VTR

macrumors regular
Apr 18, 2013
247
17
There used to be a "new apps" section that list all new app, no matter the number of download. This section just cycled through and list new apps as they're approved. This gave indies a pretty good few days of exposure. For some unknow reasons, Apple removed that section from the front page!!!!!!

I would not be suprised if big game studios pressed apple ( now we can see that some currently popular singer can push billion mogul company into corner aka swift style) to remove that section.

It's weird because Apple really does great things for us developers with great tools ala xcode so makeing apps is easy.....but all this hrd work gets totlly destroyed wih situation in app store.
 

ZiaDave64

macrumors newbie
Jun 24, 2015
6
6
I would not be suprised if big game studios pressed apple ( now we can see that some currently popular singer can push billion mogul company into corner aka swift style) to remove that section.

It's weird because Apple really does great things for us developers with great tools ala xcode so makeing apps is easy.....but all this hrd work gets totlly destroyed wih situation in app store.

Excellent observation. I actually never thought of that but it makes sense that big studios would press apple for such a change to reduce competition. Strangely however the new apps sections were removed for non-game apps first, and only in the US first. Then that spread globally and then recently they did that for games.

Again it makes no sense. How does it help consumers? It hurts consumers by reducing their choice (in effect, the new apps are still there but they are very hard to come across). But of course it helps big game studios and big developers in general, so your suggestion makes sense. Cronyism at its best.

The question is what if anything can be done about it. The article included a passage suggesting developers need to change. Need to change how? Get a million dollar loan to pay for advertising? Obviously developers can't change. You can make a nice icon etc. but what difference does it make if nobody ever sees it.

The article also mentioned flappy bird, but I will point out that the new games section was still up when flappy bird came out. You have to wonder if flappy bird came out as a new game today would it have gotten that kind of massive downloads.
 
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Parystec

macrumors member
Mar 30, 2011
62
27
UK
As an Inde Dev it is very hard to get any traction with our Apps. I have a new app in review at apple called "Pile Up" it`s a puzzle game. If everybody gets behind this we can remove the likes of Candy Crush and put Inde Devs back in front. Well if Macrumors can push TouchArcade.
 
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Manderby

macrumors 6502a
Nov 23, 2006
500
92
Ditch the "relevance" sorting and make search results sorted randomly by default.

Problem solved.

But they will not do it.
 
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