Features we'd like to see in the Palm App Catalog 58
The App Catalog has been live in various forms for a little over a year now, and Palm has continued to add both features and applications during that time it’s gone from a measly handful of offerings to a marketplace offering over 3,000 applications, including immersive 3D titles like NOVA and Need for Speed, and the inbuilt search algorithms and overall app discovery have improved considerably.
But even with these accomplishments, Palm’s online marketplace lags behind competing offerings - namely the Android Market and the App Store - in certain key areas and needs to rapidly add functionality to bring it up to par. We’ve caught a glimpse or two of where the App Catalog may be going, and here are three features we think Palm should be sure to implement in the next version. What features would you like to see?
In-App Purchasing
There’s little question that in-app purchasing makes developers’ titles more profitable. While webOS doesn’t have an inbuilt system for such transactions, developers of the platform have figured out ingenious ways of implementing their own systems. Self-Aware games, developer of the popular Word Ace game, is a great example of how in-app purchasing can lend to greater profits.
Carrier Billing
It’s a simple equation: The easier it is for a customer to purchase an app, the more likely that customer is to buy them. Other online app stores already plan or are looking into implementing such a system. RIM is going to do it with App World 2.0, Google has made its intentions known in wanting to bring it to Android Market, and Apple is presumably thinking along those same lines. Palm's Joe Hayashi did mention the prospect of the feature coming to webOS at Palm's Developer Day.
We aren't fond of carrier billing ourselves - we prefer to have as few fingers in the app billing pie as possible. Still, it's an option that many like and we imagine plenty of developers would be happy to see it.
Bulk/Gift purchasing
Apple has started doing bulk purchasing and has been doing gift purchasing for awhile, desktop clients like Steam have done it for a while, and it’s time for Palm to implement this crucial feature. Being able to give the gift of an app is a great thing, and as webOS begins to gain momentum in areas of education and business, those organizations are going to want to purchase apps in bulk for a discount without having to hassle with contacting individual developers.
Promotion Codes / Giveaways
This is one that's been near and dear to our hearts since the App Catalog launched. We love giving stuff away to our readers, but right now there is no easy way to do it - either for us or for the developers. Whether we pay for them ourselves and gift them or Palm enables developers to generate a certain number of free codes, we know from our friends at CrackBerry that an app giveaway is a great way to promote an app and spur sales.
Other ideas?
There are plenty of other ideas that could improve the App Catalog. It might be nice to add a checkbox to allow us to anonymously share our installation data with others so that the total install counts (as opposed to downloads) are visible in the catalog. What other improvements would you like to see?
58 Comments
I want to buy Apps whatever my country is!
ditto !
I feel dirty using cracked apps !
Wanna pay !
Cmon Palm ! Wake up !
There is a WHOLE world out there !
yes, that's it! :-(
I agree completely, its a win win.
I know android has an option that would filter by top free apps. That would be nice.
Carrier Billing would be great for me,As I don't have a credit card or paypal For now I'm stuck with free apps,But there are alot of good ones
24-hour trial/return period. I would buy lots more apps if I knew I had 24 hours to make sure I like it...
I agree with that. I only use free apps for just this reason.
As a developer and user I would definitely have to agree!
X a million
I would buy/try a lot more apps IF we could do this
I agree. I would love to be able to try an app for a short time and then buy, or buy and then return within a short time.
Agreed 1000%. I was actually pretty vocal on precentral back when they were about to launch the App Catalog about wanting this, too. I think it would do wonders for improving the quality of apps and the experience of users.
android does that
This would be the best change they could possibly make.
More than the above I would love to blacklist certain vendors and/or app categories from the catalog.
I concur.
I just wonder if the reson that Palm won't do this is because it would make it that much easier to see just how many of the 3000+ apps are junk.
I'm looking at you AppBookShop.com, Dijit, SPB Software Inc., and the other app spammers.
Second that. I'm tired of seeing so many junk AppBooks. SPB atleast has that TV app which I use, but I promise I'd never buy any of that crap coming from AppBookShop.com.
Yes, please.
+1
I would like see a user defined developer blocking filter that actually removes apps from my view rather than simply graying them out.
This will never happen. Ever. It's simply bad business (with vendors/developers) to allow blacklisting. Can you think of any online marketplace that allows that sort of thing? It would piss off a lot of devs/vendors, and not just the bad ones. It would kill a lot of impulse buying, which is a major factor in sales of small ticket items, which almost all apps are.
You'll see Flash on an iPhone before you see blacklisting.
I want to see a list of all paid apps I've purchased, regardless of whether they're currently installed on my phone, with quick links to install any that may be missing. I bought a ton of 3D games during the half-off sale, and I can name at least three of them off the top of my head that I've already uninstalled because I had to make room. A quick "redownload app" button would save me having to search again, not to mention the hassle of remembering/tracking what I've already purchased.
agree!!!
TRY BEFORE YOU BUY!! instead of irregular, and castrated, demo apps...
1) Try before you buy or return-period
2) Web-based app management. yes, you can see an app on a webrowser, but you need to text your phone with a link and buy it there. an itunes-style interface would be nice
Notifications for updates! webOS has the best notification system of all the mobile OSs there, so why can't I have a notification when there's an update for my apps?
That would be awesome! Similar to the Facebook app, it should be easy to set it to your preferred update interval. Great thinking!
dude I have tons of apps on my phone, and every day there are 2+ app updates if I click on the gift baggy thing. If they do add this, make it optional, I don't want 3 notifications a day about app updates.
The ability to sort while in a category (such as games) with sorting options for most recent, most downloaded, review scores, free/paid, etc; as well as additional sub categories.
I would try apps before buying IF THOSE D*RN APPS WOULD BE AT ALL AVAILABLE IN MY COUNTRY!
you censored 'darn'? That's funny. 8^)
These are all great. But there's one thing that I've been wanting for a long time now, and it's very simple...
Periodically throughout the day I open the App Catalog and go to "What's New" to see, well, what's new! That's great and all, but sometimes I wish I could see only apps that are newly submitted, and other times only the updates to apps (instead of them being all mixed together as they currently are).
I think it'd be very easy to implement - especially by way of the above screenshots with more menus and UI elements. But I think it'd be something that everyone would love to have. That way new and fresh apps don't get lost every time Brighthouse Labs (or some other app-spammer) chooses to do an update... :)
I like the idea of separating the New apps from the Updated ones, and more user filters on
I want to see themes in the app catalog. Firstly, because if Android is going to artificially inflate their app catalog, we should be able to as well. Secondly, theming should be easier to do and to access. It shouldn't have to be cleared for OS updates.
I'd like the ability, as I can do with the App Store, to purchase a $20 gift certficiate that my children can spend on their own w/o having to associate a full blown credit card with their accounts.
I do this for my one son's iPod Touch. Whenever he saves up $20 that he wants to spend, he gives it to me, and I buy a $20 gift card that gets credited to his iTunes account. And he spends it on whatever he wants.
But my other son who has a Pixi has no way to purchase apps w/out me having to give him a credit card and no way to limit his purchases after that.
One way to work around this is to get a Visa gift card and use that on the account. But this has an overhead of
Could get him a PayPal account. Even if the App Catalog doesn't accept PayPal directly (I don't think it does), PayPal offers a debit MasterCard at no charge.
I would really like to see more billing options such as PayPal.
I'd like to have a wishlist section so I can keep any eye on apps I'm considering to buy. Perhaps an app comparison to help pick between similar apps, ability to return an app if its deemed inferior, way to search for PDK apps, way to block certain vendors (so I can list the app spammers and never have to look at there 1000 apps of trash again (bookstore, BHL).
Yeah, I agree. I've often found myself wanting to Favorite an app (similar to "Favoriting" on Twitter) that I'm either not downloading or purchasing but want to remember to look at it later. I suppose you could "share" it to yourself, but that's keeping up with emails/sms's. I think an App Catalog solution would be nice.
The ability to add apps to a wishlist for later purchase.
Main features I'd like to see:
1. Ability to "bookmark" certain apps you haven't purchased yet, but would like to be able to quickly find later.
2. In the "My Apps" view, be able to filter or view only the ones with available updates. I don't like using the "Update all" button, but it's a pain to scroll up and down to find the ones with an available update.
3. Speaking of scrolling, I want to see scrollbars - SCROLLBARS!! yes, scrollbars. Such a pain to keep flicking and flicking and not realize you're still only 10% of the way through the list.
Thanks!
Jim
PS, did I mention scrollbars?
BTW do you use TIWizard's Scrollbar in Browser patch? Its great. Only works in browser, (email and, yes, app catalog hopefully soon).
http://forums.precentral.net/webos-patches/241824-patch-scrollbar-browse...
Yes I use the browser scrollbar patch and it's great. (Haven't reapplied it yet after the update though). That's what made me want to see it for the app catalog also, you're dealing with some REALLY long pages there.
If you don't have this:
http://www.androidcentral.com/
google-ups-ante-voice-search-all-new-voice-actions
Then, you really don't have anything.
First I would like to be able to use the app catalog (unofficial country)
Second Paypal would be great for those of us without a usa or geman credit card.
Third the gift cards option would be great, part of Itunes success.
Learn from Apple, it is good to innovate, but there's no harm in benchmarking good business practices!!
Custom filtering. I shouldn't have to use a patch to filter out app spam. To really correct the flaws in an open submittal process we need the tools to filter for the apps we are interested in. Free/Paid/Stars aren't enough.
I am in Mexico and do not have de oportunity to by any app. You must The catalog universal and you will have more buyers
Here are a few changes that would help the popularity of the App Catalog:
1. Create a standard "try before you buy" option.
2. Palm should provide an App Catalog credit for your first few apps when you buy a new phone. This would get users started with paid apps and really help out developers and the WebOS platform in general. In order to get the credit, they would be required to register their payment method. This gives users an incentive to sign up and it makes it a no brainer to do their first purchase (after they use up their credit).
3. In the detail screen for each application, have separate sections for Application Description and Version Information. Many developers use the description to convey version/change information and this makes the descriptions hard to read.
4. Allow developers and users to respond directly back to a particular review so you don't have random back and forth comments when you're reading the reviews.
5. Allow people to "like" reviews.
6. Allow some way to filter out App spam.
Also, they can make better use of screen real estate by losing the search field at the top. After all, this is WebOS, we know if we start typing, that the search box will automatically appear, right?
Finally, on a semi-related issue, when you run the Update program and there are some apps that need to be updated, please list them all at the top so we don't need to scroll through our entire list of installed apps to find out which ones have updates.
Oh and one more thing: MORE APPS (specifically, XM Radio, Rhapsody, Skype and the ability to browse a Windows network/ftp).
That's all for now. :)
I agree 100% with a few of these:
New-Owner Credit would be cool.
Separate Description / Version info is a MUST!
Developer Communication with reviews is also necessary.
And my biggest is your "final" note - have my app updates at the top of the list (or at least separate)! I don't ever hit "Install Updates" because I like seeing what all is being updated, without having to watch for the install notifications (and I have around 350 official Palm apps, so scrolling gets quite tiresome!)
Filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter, filter! :) Filter please!
i want to have other ways of payment but creditcard payment. In order to the Apple appshop where you can buy by a service as "Click&Buy"
Swipe and Delete Apps you will never use and never want to see again,
I would like to see ALL apps I have purchased when going into the Shopping Bag Icon. I would like to see an option to view all apps/updates that are currently installed (like it has now) and an option to view all other apps you have purchased that are not installed. So this way you can see all apps you have rights too. I have purchased a lot of apps and don't have them all installed, so it would be nice to go in quickly and see which ones I own and install them again.
Add apps to a shopping cart for later purchase.
All apps should have a version change info.
Should be able to black list apps/developers so they don't show up in the list. This would help get the message across to app spam developers. Instead of them wasting our time, they will only be wasting their time and making no money!!
they should add a feature that lets you short-list apps you're interested. Maybe you're looking for a new game, so you go through and star the ones that look interesting, then you go back and buy your first pick. Want another game? Go back to your "wish list" and pick another
I would love to shop for apps on my computer via a Palm advertised site. I know there is the app feed, but why isn't Palm advertising or using that to their advantage...
I would like to FINALLY have access to the FULL (free and PAID) app catalog and see a WORLDWIDE rollout of this great feature of the Pre. Payment method is not that important for me, CC would be fine, PAYPAL OK, carrier billing the preferred way.
I agree with some of the suggestions to improve the App Catalog.
However the biggest improvement I've been patiently waiting for the last year in the UK is a Turn-by-Turn Sat Nav app.
Developers, please, develop & market one!
there's so many comments on here so I doubt anyone will see this but here are my 2 cents..
penny 1) just make a whole category just for books
Penny 2) gift cards like what Apple does with iTunes