Nah. All app promotion apps that are affected are ultimately sending sales to the official App Store anyway, so there's no impersonation of the payment channel.
It does affect a class of apps, including AppShopper (mine).
While that's a fair comment, the services being described here really shouldn't be affected: there is no excuse for, say, TapJoy, to mimic the App Store (and I doubt they are doing it, although I haven't seen their UI in a while)... it wouldn't even be optimal for their mission and if they or someone in a similar position is doing so they should probably look at their layout again.
However, I will then point out that the distinction you are drawing can get somewhat vague: just because you aren't accepting money, doesn't mean users aren't now confused because they think they are using the App Store's interface; as an example, they might have expectations such as trusting the validity of the reviews and ratings being shown.
Sure you can argue that. But any App Promotion App is ultimately downloaded from the App Store originally, so I'd assume it's reasonably obvious. But even so, I don't think that Apple's adding a specific clause to their App guidelines due to the very small percentage of people who are downloaded App Discovery apps and then get confused.
If I had to guess at their motivation, it would be their attempt at blocking paid-for-promotion schemes that try to game the App Store ranking systems. I think that's more likely.
Totally agreed. I tried to get that across in the interview for the article. It's pretty hard to say that the pay-for-ranking firms help users, and I think Apple's just taking a first stab at combatting them. I think there's a lot more they can do to improve the ranking algorithm in helping to combat these firms.
As a user and as a developer, I really hope these changes help move some of the blatant junk off the Top Lists.
Comments
Nah. All app promotion apps that are affected are ultimately sending sales to the official App Store anyway, so there's no impersonation of the payment channel.
It does affect a class of apps, including AppShopper (mine).
While that's a fair comment, the services being described here really shouldn't be affected: there is no excuse for, say, TapJoy, to mimic the App Store (and I doubt they are doing it, although I haven't seen their UI in a while)... it wouldn't even be optimal for their mission and if they or someone in a similar position is doing so they should probably look at their layout again.
However, I will then point out that the distinction you are drawing can get somewhat vague: just because you aren't accepting money, doesn't mean users aren't now confused because they think they are using the App Store's interface; as an example, they might have expectations such as trusting the validity of the reviews and ratings being shown.
Sure you can argue that. But any App Promotion App is ultimately downloaded from the App Store originally, so I'd assume it's reasonably obvious. But even so, I don't think that Apple's adding a specific clause to their App guidelines due to the very small percentage of people who are downloaded App Discovery apps and then get confused.
If I had to guess at their motivation, it would be their attempt at blocking paid-for-promotion schemes that try to game the App Store ranking systems. I think that's more likely.
Totally agreed. I tried to get that across in the interview for the article. It's pretty hard to say that the pay-for-ranking firms help users, and I think Apple's just taking a first stab at combatting them. I think there's a lot more they can do to improve the ranking algorithm in helping to combat these firms.
As a user and as a developer, I really hope these changes help move some of the blatant junk off the Top Lists.
Which prevents folks from creating a better way of finding apps. It really annoys me when I end up with an 'iPhone' type app on my iPad.
Do you have any indication of whether the likes of AppShopper will be impacted?
I could see it both ways - on one hand AppShopper is straight forward, isn't obviously attempting to impersonate the app store and adds value.
But I can also see how it could be read that it would be the sort of thing they're thinking of (though I've no idea why).