What would make app stores better?
There was a recent discussion about the Windows App Store where people said they don't like using it. I'm in the Apple world, and people here constantly complain about the Mac and iOS app stores. I grudgingly use Steam to download games that are only available there. Everyone seems to hate using app stores, but most agree that having them is better than having to find stuff on the web or in bricks and mortar stores.
I don't tend to "shop." When I decide I need a product, I do research. I try to find unbiased sources, though that's problematic in itself. But I don't go browsing for anything because it's largely pointless and tends to drive you towards what the company that's best at selling wants you to buy rather than what's best for your needs. So for the most part, my interaction with app stores is searching for a specific program and either finding it or not.
What do people think would make app stores better? Complaints I've heard include:
- Too hard to find a product you want when you don't know the specific name of a particular one (like you want a photo editor that can make a photo mosaic, but don't know the name of a specific photo mosaic app)
- You search for a specific product and the top hit is a paid placement for a competitor
- Stores are full of crapware with similar names and similar keywords
- Top apps are all games
How could app store makers improve the situation? What would make using an app store a joy for you?
For me, somehow promoting quality reviews would help.
For example, for games, Rock Paper Shotgun is the only review site I like. I even like their reviews of games I’ll never play, because they give me an idea of why a thoughtful gamer might like that game. I’m not sure anything similar exists for mobile games? I will probably cancel my Apple Arcade subscription because I’m not interested in most games and won’t find anything I like.
As it is, I usually learn about apps outside app stores and only use them to install things. The reviews are somewhat useful for avoiding bad stuff, but there’s a lot of noise.
I'm surprised that Apple and Google haven't bought a dying internet media company dedicated to reviewing tech and just had them work on written, manual curation and reviews they promote directly on the app store. Seems like it would be fairly cheap but make the app stores more friendly to use to have a built in wirecutter equivalent.
Well, would you trust a site owned by the company who's offerings are being reviewed? I think you'd just end up with only positive reviews from them. What company would hire a team to write reviews that potentially push people away from giving that company money? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?
Yes, Apple and Google's own apps are a minority on the app store and to be honest don't really need to be reviewed since they come preinstalled typically anyway. I would trust them, moreso really than most independent reviewing sites, on 99.9% of the app store, and more like 100% of the time when I'm looking for something.
OK, fair enough. I guess I could see that.
Google bought Zagat for restaurant reviews but later spun it off again and it seems to be a shadow of its former self.
Wirecutter seems like a more successful acquisition for the New York Times, but we’ll see.
Sure, but Wirecutter isn't reviewing things that the New York Times sells, is it? It would be like if BestBuy bought Wirecutter, I would probably trust it less because I would assume they're just writing good reviews of whatever gets them the biggest sales commissions.
Do you mean something like having a "this review was helpful" button that other users could click to score a review as being a good one? Or do you mean something more like having someone either at the company or some unbiased 3rd party rating the reviews? Or do you mean links to things like Rock Paper Shotgun's reviews?
I mean encouraging and linking to more substantive reviews, but I don’t know how it would be done. Rotten Tomatoes summarizes both user and professional critics, but there are a lot more games than movies.
Oh, that's a really interesting idea. I like the idea of a Rotten Tomatoes for app reviews, and Apple does actually include Rotten Tomatoes ratings for movies, so it's not out of the question that they could do something like that.
Here's my requirements, without which I am going to hate your app store:
And here are the wants:
You get a gold star for this:
Nobody gets all of this right. The closest is Apple, but they obviously fail my very first requirement on 3/4 platforms.
Linux package managers are probably the closest, and other App stores should copy them. Easy automatic or manual updates, with the option to downgrade or lock versions at-will. CLI control for minimal interface and/or scripting. Not sure about others, but OpenSUSE and GNOME's extensions have full blown '1-click install' functionality from the web.
The biggest problem for them really comes down to integrated discovery and curation, which I admit would be a nice value-add.
Notably missing from this list is the ability to purchase commercial software and actually having all the software people want, and those are the missing parts for most Linux package managers. So while they do get the gold star, they're missing a lot of what I would like to have.
I know that Ubuntu was trying to do this for a while, and they did have one of their package manager programs with the ability to purchase software through it, it was also the worst performing package manager I had seen at that point in time. I don't know if it's anything like that anymore, though; it's been a while since I used that specific distro.
Thing is, I think it'd be pretty easy to bolt-on commercial software to existing package managers. Many software packages, especially ones that target Debian, often maintain their own simply for faster updates. There's nothing preventing a company from creating a private repository URL that only paying customers get access to, heck you could generate it per-user and/or per-app if desired.
Cydia did exactly that by adding payment and donation options for their jailbroken iOS device app store in 2009 (IIRC), before eventually shutting the system down in 2018 due payment processor issues and a declining interest for commercial jailbroken apps. I used it to purchase and donate to quite a few apps and mods in that time though, and it's really a shame that (AFAIK) no linux package managers have offered similar services, since it's a great way to help support independent developers.
The ElementaryOS team tried to roll that sort of thing out ~5 years ago. It was met with a lot of hostility, so I'm not sure if it's still happening, but it was a decent idea. Pay-what-you-want for FLOSS apps with donation portals. They ran into a bit of trouble on the PR front, since they were taking a small cut of those donations.
That seems like a pretty dumb thing to meet with hostility, especially if the cut was reasonable. The level of purity that many hardcore FOSS communities and advocates seem to demand of everyone is a bit ridiculous to me. IMO, it winds up making perfect the enemy of good, and hampering progress purely for the sake of trying to uphold unrealistic ideological principles.
They were also praised for that in a number of reviews. So IDK if that was so bad for them.
Perhaps. Especially in terms of Linux distribution popularity, I feel the impact of positive reviews is much less than the impact of negative word of mouth.
I think most of the issues you laid out come down to improving the search engines/indexes.
It would be super nice if the platforms that offer app stores could force devs to publish accurate, uniform metadata that could be indexed so that search would actually work well. There is so much metadata that app stores require, but I think it's mostly grown organically and most isn't user-facing.
Like, I've heard a lot of complaints about Steam users on macOS who are very aware that most of the library isn't compatible, but even Steam's own metadata about OS compatibility is unreliable. Sometimes games marked not macOS compatible actually are, and sometimes those that are marked compatible are not, or are only compatible with specific macOS versions. So, in this case, while Steam does attempt to give someone browsing the store offerings the appropriate information, they are not enforcing this metadata accuracy from the developers (or unable to enforce accuracy/consistency).
I also think that there's sometimes too much noise in the metadata around app store offerings. Like, I don't think I've ever seen an app review/rating system that was more useful to other users than to the developers. I'm sure the reviews are helpful to the developers, but making that info user-facing as well I think is not actually super helpful. And, the way the iOS/iPadOS/macOS stores present this info split based on the version of the app, it is way too much work to sort through as a user to find anything helpful. The app was 5 stars at launch, 7 years ago, but is basically abandonware now? Well, maybe there should be some sort of policy to remove such listings? Or maybe there is a totally separate item in the store now that is really a new version, but doesn't share the version history of the original listing, so maybe they could link to the latest one?
Anyway, I think this is a huge problem space, and virtual storefronts of all kinds (including Amazon, eBay, etc.) are really relatively immature I think. It's an enormous problem-space, but there are so few actually popular storefronts, and they aren't totally unusable, so there isn't a lot of pressure to optimize them. I feel like it's a similar thing to search engine n-opolies. There's just an overwhelming amount of data and metadata to sort through as a user, but the amount of investment it would take to fundamentally improve the search engines beyond merely being minimally functional may not actually end up getting people to make more purchases, just spend less time sorting through the crap. The cynical take would be that the platforms actually have a disincentive to improve app store search engines because if users are more efficiently directed to exactly what they're looking for, they will spend less time in the store.
That's not to mention the amount of work just to filter bad actors/junk to begin with.
Yes, I've directly experienced this. You run the app and the first thing it does is pop up an ad for a different game. (Don't get me started on how user-hostile that is!) The one or two times I've accidentally clicked on the ad, it's for a platform I don't have. Well, thanks for wasting my time, Steam!
Yeah, it's weird because I've seen apps where the app store didn't show any reviews because there weren't enough reviews yet, but then I've seen other apps where there are a ton of reviews for an older version, so the review might not even apply anymore. Very frustrating, I agree!
Interesting idea!
Really? Haven't Amazon and eBay been around for at least 20 years? People have been suggesting that Amazon allow you to sort by price for literally decades, but they just refuse to. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to make some simple improvements to some of these storefronts, but it seems like the companies actively don't want to as you alluded to.
20 years isn’t that long, in the big picture. It’s all relative. As others have commented on this thread, Apple actually seems to have done a pretty good job with their stores, and they had practice with the iTunes music store before apps. There’s still a lot of headroom for improvement, though.
I dislike app stores primarily because of the lock-in potential. Their functionality is otherwise mostly-ok, but IOS is a perfect example of how that gets taken to the extreme. You have virtually no recourse to choosing what to install on your computer.
As more and more users on-board to app stores, using your computer as a general-purpose device will get harder. I'm not in the Mac ecosystem at all and can't speak to it, but if Microsoft gets their teeth in deep enough, "well 95% of our users only use the app store, so we're locking out installing non-app software without a 50/month fee for security reasons." Steam functions essentially the same way, "if you don't like it, too bad."
Android and Linux distros offer the best possible app store model: A default one, but easy access to supplement or replace with your own. It is completely optional, you can run a Linux distro without a package manager or an Android phone without an app store (hard, but doable). Pair that with the ability to "check out," where you can de-couple the apps you own from the store they're on. That will go a long way to prevent the forced integration and vendor lock-out.
I think it's worthwhile separate the reasons people dislike app stores. For instance, one reason people dislike the windows app store is that for ages (and might still be), it's just buggy. Some apps just randomly decide they're not compatible non-deterministically, sometimes installations hang, etc. This was a big deal-breaker back when Windows phones existed.
On the other hand, the iOS app store functions perfectly fine, but developers dislike the opaque fiat rule of Apple, the 30% take rate, etc. and users dislike that there still are a bunch of subscription scam apps.
I hate Steam because I think it's UI is 20 years out of date, not to mention revamping bits and pieces just makes it clash even more, I hate that the store literally just loads a page, and not even like an electron app - it's loading a templated HTML page with a built in webview, and it's slow as balls when it has no business being so. It's also buggy AF - just today, big picture decided to freeze and I had to end task to kill it. Why? Is the 32 GB of ram on my gaming/home media PC not enough for it? The Ryzen whatever that's on it isn't good enough? I HATE STEAM
In general, though, I don't think app store experiences are that bad. The idea of a centralized location for applications, that takes care of distribution and updates, with a bit of curation is also what makes package managers so good. In general, for instance, on Mac, I first look at app store now, then homebrew casks, then I begrudgingly google for it if it's on none of the above. On Linux, I exclusively use package managers (apt, then flatpack, etc.) many of which have GUI frontends which try to emulate app stores anyhow.
Yeah, for this question, I mainly want to hear from the user perspective. I'm a developer, so I am more familiar with why developers hate it.
Ugh, don't get me started on Steam. I'm right there with you!
Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about the concept in general, too. It sure beats going to the web and trying to find results. But I also know I'm not a normal user, so I was curious what other people thought.
My issues with app stores are purely ideological. I don't like them except for where they're the only great option. I don't want to be locked in to one on my general-purpose computer, with a general-purpose operating system. I don't mind their existence, and even use some stuff that is simply more convenient in Windows (Office, X410 being the only two Windows "apps" I use, the latter purchased at a steep discount), but I try to limit my use. I tolerate them on Android because it's a way of unifying the many vendor-specific walled gardens into an ecosystem, and even bought a tablet for the convenience provided by the Android ecosystem and e-textbooks.
I think I'm partially conditioned by the app store experience of Google Play, which provides for all of the major complaints you have, but it also ties into my general purpose OS experience. I generally verify any download I do anyway after getting a bunch of viruses in the mid 00s, so it's not a reach for me to try to see if a specific app is run by a legitimate group, or a fly-by-night operation (even with new legit devs, there's a huge difference). Arguably, it's unnecessary on Google Play, but I definitely check reviews for functionality, and again avoid anything that looks like a shady operation.
I think of it as store-specific, insofar as there are issues. Google Play matches all of your issues, but I can't think of a way to correct it aside from the concept of "curation," but no ideas for fair application. No single person should be the one to say "We've got too many jigsaw puzzle games." I think Steam has issues with porn, specifically hentai (check the "on sale" categories), that flood the low-price market, for example, and that this should be specifically set aside in its own, opt-in category, rather than being thrown into the discount bin because they're all below $5.
As far as the issues I feel I can describe (the prevalence of porn games, really), the major issues are accurate and thorough categorization and filtering.
I can't stand apps. They are worse versions of real software and just a way for the whole development of software to be controlled by a company that does nothing but gets a cut. I am sick of sacrificing everything on the alter of security to have a worse and worse experience. Apple store sucks compared to any real applications, same with Windows. The cell phones are even worse.
Linux is the only platform that does an app store right. Because it isn't apps, it is full blown applications and is just installing them for you.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. Can you clarify? What do you think an "app" is that an "application" isn't or vice-versa? "App" is just short for "Application" in my mind, and that of most people I know. Having written programs both before and after app stores came into existence, I am not writing anything differently than I was before. My programs have not changed in any way I can discern just because they end up on an app store.
App is a term for a light weight Application.
An Application is a full blown application.
They are not the same. Do a search on Google for: app vs application
I have never heard of that distinction in my life.
This is not correct regardless of what Google says. Adobe Lightroom on the app store is the same as Adobe Lightroom purchased directly from Adobe.
To echo what @joplin said, the term "app" is just short for application (and has been so since at least 1992).
Even if the term was more popularized after the advent of modern smartphones, it has been an abbreviated term that means exactly the same thing as "application" for multiple decades.
As more evidence, Webster's definition:
I think your understanding is not in line with the rest of the world (or at least not in line with lexicographers).
I don't understand the distinction. Phone apps have their limitations because of the sandboxing the OS forces them, it's not like app stores inherently must have those. In fact, both the Windows store and mac app store gave up on enforcing sandboxing; the mac app store just plonks the executibles in /Applications and keeps track of enough metadata to handle updates.
Like, there is no inherent distinction between the apps on the mac app store, the versions on homebrew, or the binaries the devs provide themselves.
And onto the sandboxing, I disagree; I think this is one reason why webapps have become so popular. There's a bunch of sharp edges with the traditional permissions structure of computers, and to be honest few programs really need that kind of access. The default should be sandboxed, unless you have a clear reason to need more access.
Linux, too, is on that path with things like Flatpak. Your todo list program doesn't need powerful system level API access.
When the OS vendor and the owner of the app store are the same, that is a distinction without a difference. This applies to Microsoft on desktops as well.
Flatpak is solving a very different problem. It's primarily around working around dependency hell. Proprietary software suffers this problem much worse.
It's not when we're talking about all app stores, including the windows store and mac app store. Because in that case, there is no OS that enforces sandboxing, and the app stores don't either.
Like most mac apps are cross listed on everything now, because why not. Take the famous BBEdit - you can get it from homebrew, their website, or the mac app store. All 3 are the same binaries. Hence I don't understand "They are worse versions of real software" - perhaps if you're talking specifically about mobile apps, but the topic of this post talks about the windows store, and steam, for which this doesn't really apply.
Part of the rejection of the Windows Store is because it does have this sandboxing functionality. VLC is a very different application on the Windows Store.
Windows store only supports UWP, no other APIs. Valve didn't start doing their Linux work just for fun, when Windows 8 came out, it's because they saw the writing on the wall when Microsoft announced the "Microsoft Trusted Apps" which were UWP exclusive and laid out a very real possibility of being locked-out from the platform.
That's from 2016. They have long since all but killed UWP as a concept and dropped it as a requirement.
This will be my last reply, because I can see this becoming a tiring pedantic conversation that's not even with the original person I replied, but really I find the use of "app" very confusing in the original context and that's the point.
The strict definition of "app" is just a shortening of application. That doesn't make any sense in the context, so that's not what's being used. An informal definition of "app" restricts it to mobile apps. But the context clearly refers to PC app stores as well. You could say, "any program distributed by an app store is an app" - but then the claim that "apps" are weaker or not real programs makes no sense, because as you can see from real examples, that's not the case - app store apps do not need to be sandboxed, or in any way restricted, and not even just in a technical sense - that's how most PC app stores work!
You could say that apps are sandboxed programs, but again that's not how most of the app stores in the OP work!
For instance, I don't understand
What does that mean? The mac app store distributes the same applications you get anywhere else, and I've shown examples that most notable mac apps cross list on their own website, homebrew, macports, and the mac app store.
I do apologize, I didn't realize they opened up win32 on the store. But the general point I made about App and OS sandboxing restrictions still stands...the main reason I was calling out that "distinction without a difference" is because when app stores are owned by the OS owner, that is a decision that company made about both working together.
I wasn't really discussing the funcitonality of applications themselves as OP did, other app stores (where the owner is not the OS vendor) are not really relevant to the point I was making.
There is nothing preventing Apple from allowing non-sandboxed applications on the IOS app store. That is a design decision they made, and enforce by not allowing alternative ways to install applications. They could open it up anytime they wanted, IOS (and Android for that matter) are perfectly capable as general-purpose computers.
Microsoft tried for ~8 years to make UWP a thing by keeping Win32 off their app store. They wanted to force the migration to UWP, and were hoping that the Microsoft Seal Of Approval would help force that along. They could have allowed Win32 in there at any time, and only decided to open it up when they well and truely gave up on forcing Win32 into retirement (for now).
You cherry picked one app, not all apps are the same. You may well be right with that one application. The reality is majority of apps are light weight versions due to restrictions that Apple imposes to have the application in their store.
https://www.cdfinder.de/guide/blog/apple_hell.html
You are basically developing ipad like apps. Now with the M1 chips there will be no other type of app but what goes through the app store. If you started from M1 and onward then my comment will be meaningless and won't apply.
Your link is talking about something completely different, however. What that article is discussing is code notarization, which is just the new version of code signatures that Apple implemented. For one, that affects ALL macOS apps, not app store apps. Secondly, it doesn't restrict anything you do - what the new notarization scheme does do is basically if you use certain APIs, it'll pop up a notification on the user's side saying "X app wants to use Y feature, do you authorize this".
It's nothing to do with the app store, or restrictions on app store apps.
What you're probably thinking about is back when the mac app store first launched, they tried to force sandboxing like the iOS app store but all the developers were too lazy and they eventually gave up. Note, gave up - there is no difference currently.
What? That's... completely untrue in every aspect. You can download binaries, same as always. Homebrew and macports both run fine. There is nothing forcing you to use the app store.
Thank you. I stand corrected.
Are you talking about web apps? Apps published on the Mac App Store are almost always identical to apps released via other means. As for Windows, they recently added support for Win32 programs, so developers aren't forced to develop UWP apps.
This seemed like a good article to add to the conversation.
Resetting the App Store:
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/4/30/resetting-the-app-store
I think the main issue with all of them is that each one is a functional monopoly for its platform. Plus, bonus, each one is a monpoly run and locked in by the hardware manufacturers the apps are designed to run on. Throw some regulations at Them, forcing Them to fully accept and allow real competition, and 80-90% of the problems would disappear (barring, you know, some kind of under-the-table cartel).
I've never actually used any of the main app stores. Almost everything I get is from F-droid, which is the closest thing there is to competition for Google's app store, plus a few built from source, or direct from the creators. I like F-droid primarily because it is the anti-Google, and I'm happy to put up with a (very) limited selection, for that one feature.
Actual humans on the other side with the power to solve the more complex problems for their users (both buyers and developers).
That's actually true for a lot of apps, like Uber, etc.
But is this a problem with the store itself? Or the app you downloaded from the store? Do you think the store should be in the business of helping the user with an app made by a different developer? (Like if you download a game written by EA from the Microsoft store and it's having problems running on your hardware, should Microsoft be involved in helping you troubleshoot it instead of EA?)
The store itself, for sure. There should be humans to assist me with the numerous hard to solve problems that can occur in my relationship with the app store itself.
This includes app stores that are specific to game consoles and game platforms in general.
Ah, I see. Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. I agree that companies hiding behind automated replies and terrible AI are awful.