What One Change You’d Like
Here’s the result of the final question in our survey (check the archives if you want the rest), as well as the winners of the gift cards.
To the question: “What one change would you like most to see in the iTunes App Store?”, over 60% of you picked free trials. I guess given that so many of you indicated that you bought apps regardless of price (or at least didn’t just buy the $1 and $2 ones), trials makes a lot of sense. 18% opted for better categorization, with just under 10% wanting better find. Specifically:
Of the “other” replies, you asked for:
- All of the above!
- All of these, app store is almost unusable
- General change to the style how people use (browse) the app store
- More serious apps like eWallet and less junk
- “Best of breed” featured apps, regardless of popularity (# of downloads)
- Better search and iTunes like search playlists (to exclude junk devs)
- Less crap!
- Moderated reviews
- Review moderation. Many reviews cite problems that are due to apple
- Dated reviews with version reviewed
- Sort by rating
- Rankings based on revenue
- Amazon.com-like functionality: wish-lists, similar-apps-bought, order-by-ratings
- A wish list to keep track of apps, music, etc. until I can decide on them
- Wish List capacity to store for later purchase
- A way to save a list of apps I am interested in.
- Robust wish list (as at Amazon)
- More game options
- Would be nice to have a VIDEO review on apps (esp games) rather than on YouTube
- Demo capability
- The original ability to see all aps by post date
- Canadian redeem codes, for the love of Bob!
I grouped those for better readability, but otherwise didn’t edit them at all.
I’m happy to see that Apple took down reviews from non-buyers late last week. I hope – and believe – we’ll keep seeing improvements to the App Store. Find and trials would be great ones!
OK, and now for the 12 gift card winners. Congratulations to: Ken M., David B., Robin C., Addison H., Gina G., Dennis B., Drew C., Terry W., Louie L., Susan L., Nicole T., and Paul T. You’ve each won a US$10 gift card. People in the U.S. will get iTunes gift cards; people outside the U.S. will get gift cards from your local Amazon site. I’ve sent out emails about these already; if you think you’re one of the winners and didn’t see one, please be sure to whitelist emails from iliumsoft.com. I’ll re-send them to anyone I didn’t hear back from.
Once again, thanks to everyone for participating!
It’s time once again for the latest monthly installment of our blog comment contest. We had a lot of great comments in February – so many helpful replies and suggestions from Ellen’s iPhone survey posts and Marc’s updates to all the exciting things we’ve got going on around here. It makes me glad I don’t have to pick the winner myself! So, let’s get on with it and find out who the computer has chosen this time around….
The Advisory Board is back! For those of you new to the blog, the “Advisory Board” is you! Here at Ilium Software we’re extremely interested in what folks have to say about our products. We take the advice we receive to heart and it plays a major role in deciding what to do in new versions of our applications.
Although iPhone, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry get the most attention around here lately, we keep a close watch on the other mobile platforms. Personally, I think this is an exceptionally exciting time for our industry. The smartphone (which frankly is just an old school PDA with a phone built in) has really come into its own. People really care about these devices, and more and more people feel like they have to have one!