App Market is crap

[dean.collins]

not the number of apps but the search criteria, it should give you the ability to 'view apps you've installed'

or

search by rating

or

search by number downloaded etc.


Very poor show so far there.

 

[Stigy]

You can view apps you installed by clicking Menu > Downloads.

The other two, I agree, are needed as sorting options.

 

[keiichi25]

Well, one of the current reviews on Droid in comparison to the Apple App Store is partly due to the number of Apps for the iPhone is still 10x more. And with the backing of a Corporation like Apple where as the Droid is more open source and I am not so sure if Google is actually backing the Droid as much as Apple is... The Market might not be as 'strong' as the Apple one.

 

[Earthwalker]

At least with Android it is possable to change that. You are more then welcome to start writing your own programs. If you don't have the skills to do that you could put up some money to have a program writen for you.

At least we can fix problems and make things better.

 

[hadriel]

keichi25: no dean's not saying there aren't as many apps (there aren't yet, but that's ok) - he's sayin the search abilities suck. There's no "advanced search", basically. Kinda ironic for being from google.

Earthwalker: is that actually true? I mean can one actually write a new app for searching the Market? I thought the Market was a closed list, controlled by google and only searchable by the Market app, no? It really is a lame search tool - try finding the "Open Home" app - you'll hit 449 skins before the actual app, because they're all named "Open Home Skin blah blah". You have to know to type in "Open Home Lite", and even then it's not the top hit.

 

[medicTHREE]

Search results are keyword based, sorted by date, newest first. So, for better keyboard for instance, it is almost hte LAST result you see. Annoying, but if you understand that part, it is a little easier.

 

[keiichi25]

keichi25: no dean's not saying there aren't as many apps (there aren't yet, but that's ok) - he's sayin the search abilities suck. There's no "advanced search", basically. Kinda ironic for being from google.

Earthwalker: is that actually true? I mean can one actually write a new app for searching the Market? I thought the Market was a closed list, controlled by google and only searchable by the Market app, no? It really is a lame search tool - try finding the "Open Home" app - you'll hit 449 skins before the actual app, because they're all named "Open Home Skin blah blah". You have to know to type in "Open Home Lite", and even then it's not the top hit.

I did read that part. The point I stated, however, is that with the low number of apps and not nearly as much backing as like Apple is hardcore for, there wasn't much invested in the actual App Store. Given I looked at the current one, there is 2 other sites that seem to show more apps that are not showing on the current Android Market.

Also, from the looks of things, the droid based phones are just now taking off. Apple has had at least 2 or 3 years plus their iPods for a bit longer to really work the market to work that out.

I honestly don't know how long the android phone system has been out, but I'm betting that a large surge of Droid users were attracted by the Verizon's Droid Does based commercials. Hell, I didn't get into the Droid until I saw the commercial and got curious what the poke at, at first, the iPod and found out it was competition for the iPhone and seeing it was done by Verizon.

T-Mobile and Sprint have also Android Phones, but I dismissed them mostly cause I thought of them as a different branded Smartphones, but not iPhone Competitors.

 

[dpw2atox]

Honestly I think the App Market needs some more polish. Simply adding a feature to Sort by Rating, Downloads, Price, etc would be great.

Next I think google should require that dev's list the date of their apps release as well as what OS and/or device it was written for and supports. Then by default you should only see software that will work on your version of android and your device.

Ex: if you have a motorola droid running android 2.0, you can only see software that has been updated for 2.0 and is listed as working on the droid by default.

Finally there should be a flag or option that says "Show All Unsupported Software" and then display a warning stating this software might not work or might have unknown bugs on your device.

This would go a long way towards improving the end user experience with the App Store, but still keep it open.

 

[mth04]

not the number of apps but the search criteria, it should give you the ability to 'view apps you've installed'

or

search by rating

or

search by number downloaded etc.


Very poor show so far there.

Sorry you are liking the market. Maybe one day it will get an update for some fixes.