The Middleman

Apple's App Store has been out for just over 9 months and has garnered relative praise. It has done a phenomenal job at purveying applications and transforming the role of mobile phones in popular society.

But the style with which Apple has implemented the App Store leaves some things to be desired. The fact that Apple is the sole legitimate means by which users can acquire applications means that they are the middleman, and the only middleman.

The advantage of this is clear: the purchasing experience is the same for every app. With Apple, the experience tends to be pretty darn good. Aside from complaints regarding the abundance of low cost fart apps driving prices down; the exposure, ease of purchase, and universal compatibility have been real successes.

The downside however is that because Apple sells the apps, the developer is removed from the purchasing equation. Users never have to have any contact with a developer to acquire an application, and because each app is downloaded without any supporting materials, it's extremely difficult for developers to effectively publicize any support avenues they may have established. Some developers have included this information within the app itself, but by breaking the link between the developer and user, it becomes far more likely that a user will miss important information regarding known problems.

Take the example of the Ego app by developer Garrett Murray:

A little over a week and a half ago, Google blocked Ego from getting XML reports from Analytics. Every user's GA widgets stopped working (they started reporting all zeros). I panicked, tried to figure out how to get around this problem, and eventually talked to Google and they helped me solve it [...] I submitted the update to Apple. Now, of course, I wait.

and:

But my favorite part of this whole experience is that there's no way for me to respond to reviews as the app creator. So I can't go in and say, "Hey, by the way, version 1.3 fixes all this and we're just waiting on Apple's ridiculously slow and convoluted approval process!"

Murray's case is not unique; there are doubtless hundreds of applications which have bugs, or as in Murray's case, suffer when some 4th party code is changed. Murray and others have several options: they can publicize problems and solutions on their own site or use a 3rd party solution, they can embed bug fix notes in the new application versions when they're released, or they can reach out through other sources such as Twitter.

But none of these solutions offer Murray what he needs: a direct line to communicate with customers that goes through Apple. Apple does not and should not handle the actual tech support, but they should provide a direct means for developers to communicate with their users and vice versa. Developers should have the opportunity to provide as much support as they desire without requiring users to visit their website. Every iPhone and iPod Touch user has access to the App Store either through their device or through iTunes; it's the one avenue that developers can absolutely count on for each person using their application.

Murray comments that perhaps the types of users attracted to App Store are somewhat undesirable, and he's probably not wrong. But that's not something for which Apple should be held accountable. There will always be users who would rather leave a nasty comment and tell their friends just as there will always be users who would seek out the developer and properly report a bug or other concern. Apple can't control the types of people who purchase apps, but they can (and should) provide a means for maintaining the dialogue between the user and the people responsible for the actual performance of the app.

One simple solution would be for Apple to push application update notifications out to users automatically. Rather than having to launch the App Store from an iPod or iPhone (or manually check for updates through iTunes), users would at the very least be able to see which applications have updates, and provide a field for developers to indicate exactly what's new in this version from the last version.