iOS 6 Breaks the App Store
Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for <i>you</i>. This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lackluster icons, app designs, and screenshots of said designs. Many apps at the bottom of the stack will be neglected. This is a good thing. I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it.<p>This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. Ugly apps aren't always necessarily bad but more ugly apps are bad than ugly apps that are good. This isn't Android. On iOS, users tend to judge an app by its icon and screenshots and they use pretty apps more than they open ugly ones. I didn't make the rules, I just play by them. Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results.<p>While its bad for developers it's great for buyers. Guess what? There are far more buyers than developers on the app store. You may argue that if developers leave then iOS will die. Not so. Again, iOS users are a different animal. They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day. Screenshots are very important in the buying process and putting them front and center like this.<p>As developers we tend to think we're the center of the universe. We place far too much importance on our role than is deserved. Witness the outrage over Twitter's API. While developers were screaming about revolt the users barely noticed and kept tweeting away. Meanwhile Twitter pretty much gave us the finger because they know we'll be back because they have the users. Developers are like parents in a way. We raise a platform then the platform rebels. We threaten to cut them off but by that point the platform is all grown up and doesn't need our help anymore. iOS won't be hurt by developers leaving. If developers leave over not being found in search results then by definition they're leaving because no one's using the app. Who's going to miss an app that never gets used?