For a while now, especially small iOS developers face hard times in the App Store and the chance is high, that you are affected yourself. One of the main reasons are changes Apple made in the App Store and it's search after acquiring a company called Chomp last year. Since then it has become much harder for users to find our apps, especially for paid ones. Other recent changes even disadvantage regular updates as our hard earned reviews vanish from the visibility of potential costumers. WE CAN ASK APPLE TO FIX THIS!!! and according to our contacts there have a very good chance to be heard. Over the last weeks we have carefully researched the biggest problems of the App Store for independent developers and are now launching http://pleasefixtheappstore.com To achieve this, YOUR HELP IS NEEDED! Only if enough of us file a similar bug report, we will get a priority within the responsible teams at Apple to resolve the issues stated. If you agree to the content of the page created, PLEASE PARTICIPATE and spread the word. Chances are high that you will help us all to get the originally brilliant App Store economy back on track and the perspective to make our living creating great apps. Thank you very much for your consideration, please feel free to contact me with any questions. Thorsten Rauser -------------------------------------------------------------- [email protected] http://thebinaryfamily.com http://thebeautifulweathercorp.com
I applaud your effort, but your solutions aren't really solutions. You have also made a number of significant assumptions without providing any evidence to back it up. I think the whole free v paid arguments aren't correct, just the fact more people download the free ones. Also apple already provide a "sticky" boost when your app is new. If you can come back with a better proposal I might support it.
Hi Destined, Thank you very much for your reply! While it is virtually impossible to meet everyones opinion right on the spot, it is important to actually do something about issues with the App Store that we all face today. A few words about us: With three app store accounts, 42 binaries (paid, free, freemium) in the market and (still) a monthly turnover of $30.000 and 300.000 active weekly users, we do have quite a good impression of what is going on out there. I am spending a lot of time in the App Store since 2008. Also, this petition has been hard work and I am happy that we did have valuable feedback from both, fellow developers as well as Apple contacts before posting it. I disagree that further "evidence" is needed – spend a few minutes in the App Store yourself and go through the issues stated, you will find them to be correct. In any case, this discussion is unlikely to be read by anyone at Apple. So if you are an active iOS developer please help to make a change by either submitting a bug report using you own words – or supporting http://pleasefixtheappstore.com. Thank you, Thorsten
I realise you cross posted this on the unity forum. For others interested having a look for there shows a number of develops giving good critical analysis of it. I think you should take the developers comments on board and reformulate. Currently I don't believe this proposal does anything to improve things for the consumer and the app store is consumer driven. Apple is doing whatever it can to please the consumer, not the developer. You need to make the proposal to be consumer centric to even get noticed. I really think you should take the feedback on board.
We need your support Hi everyone, I believe the Toucharcade forum to be an important place to discuss this. Please allow me to bring this topic to your attention again. We have now 24 developers (big names among them) that submitted bug reports and a very constructive discussion on iPhone Dev SDK http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app-store/115951-important-ios-developers-ask-apple-to-pleasefixtheappstore-com-p1.html So, if you are an independent iOS developer and want to get Apple to fix current App Store issues, please support us at http://pleasefixtheappstore.com Thank you and have a great weekend! Thorsten
Hi. New user, first post. To OP: I'll admit I don't have long experience selling on the appstore, but from what I read of the your site and letter to Apple, the only point I can readily agree to is #4. In the other points and solutions, you're not very specific. You say your sales have declined over last 15 months, but how can you automatically link this to appstore search as the cause? Maybe the increase in competition and app quality is to blame. Who knows right? I do want to point out something else which is really wrong in the appstore and worth complaining about: When you list apps by a category and then order it "By Name" (default is by release date), you get the top 100 (or 300?) apps starting with the letter A and that's it. There is NO way to get to the next page of apps*. This gives exposure to apps named "AAA My Game" for example, but not to everything else who's title starts with a later letter. It's too late for my first game already on the appstore, but I'm seriously thinking of naming all my future apps with a title that starts with A! (*Tested on ipad mini with iOS6).
As a small developer of course I'd support this, however I'm not exactly moved by the argument "chomp made it worse". I mean if you could enumerate how things got worse I would really appreciate it.
Hi ryansumo, The app store search was originally quite good and well thought out. So if you would search for a game or an utility you would get an equal share of results, paid and free. We are for example creating premium apps and our $5 trivia game would show up in the search results and people found it. However early last year Apple acquired a small company called Chomp http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/23/apple-chomp/ with the goal to further improve the search. Unfortunately is has not improved but changed for the worse since then. First thing that happened where that paid app began to disappear from the App Store search - the must current issue is that all of your reviews disappear from visibility after you do an update! We have stopped all of our updates planned as a result of that! You will find all other issues listed at http://pleasefixtheappstore.com We have now 30 developers that joined, including same big names - it's would be great if you can join in and spread the word! Kind regards, Thorsten
Didn't reviews always disappear after an update though? Or do you mean the UI changes made the reviews of previous versions harder to find?
No, that's a recent change and a real bummer. Until a few weeks ago, users could see "all reviews" if there where less than 5 of the new update. Now, you see nothing initially. That's really bad, especially for hard earned reviews in small markets (e.g. Sweden or Ireland). Unless you have huge download numbers and get tons of reviews within few days in each market, DO NOT UPDATE at the moment. We just lost 50% of downloads and the #2 position of weather in the UK with our App "Beautiful Weather for iPad" as a result. At this point, we will not update our portfolio which we planned before Christmas. Thanks, if you support the growing number of developers that have submitted a bug report - it's important that we all do it to inform Apple that this and other issues need urgent attention. http://pleasefixtheappstore.com
