www dot wheresmymind dot net

Continued…

The Bad

There’s really little bad to be said about the phone itself.  I wish Apple would mandate that apps using the keyboard would give a landscape option but right now that’s a feature a lot of apps hold out on unless you buy the upgraded app.  In the few days Ive used the phone that’s really the only negative I have about the actual hardware and once past the learning curve of the keyboard typing becomes much easier.

The gaping hole in this entire experience is iTunes.  Giant, painful, gaping, hole.  Flat out, iTunes is broken and the iPhone shines a spot light on its flaws.  Where to start…

Once in iTunes it becomes obvious that the software is bloated and has grown well beyond its intended purpose.  Apple also states openly that theyre only interested in iTunes because it helps sell iPods / iPhones which is where they really make money.  It shows.

We’ll start with the App Store.  They claim to have thousands of apps however they’re categorized into approx 15 categories.  Once you click the category you can select Free or Paid For to separate the apps further.  Beyond that… you only have access to the Top 100 Free and Top 100 Paid For apps.  You can flip through pages of apps at random but there is no way to easily search for others. If you don’t know the app specifically by name you cant find it.  Not only is this painfully annoying but you can start to deduct how this affects the entire eco-system of the store.  Highly developed apps that might cost $10+ will have serious difficulty gaining the mass-appeal needed to be in the Top 100.  So whether Apple intended to or not, the App Store puts a significant preference on Free / $.99 apps that are basically junk. Count how many Lighter / Flashlight apps are in the Top 100 and you’ll see what I mean.

You can search for apps but the search engine doesn’t use keywords so results are only based upon the name of the app.  I’m sure it creates a gold-rush for developers to secure specific words because if you have an app used to locate WiFi hotspots but cant get WiFi into the name, you’re screwed.

In my opinion, this is inexcusable.  Any online retailer has more SKU’s than what they can easily display on one page yet they’re able to be found through keywords, Browse All and a near infinite amount of ways to sort through the content (price, release dates, etc.).  Why Apple seems so far behind in this baffles me.