ranking apps

Neven Mrgan talks about the despicable “virtual currency” apps that have ascended the ranks of the Top Grossing section of the App Store:

You will not see Apple promote these apps; they know very well what the score is. If Apple wants the Top Grossing list to be at all useful, they’ll change how it’s calculated.

I fully agree that these apps are terrible, but for Apple to change the Top Grossing ranking, it would no longer be representative of its name.

And here’s my bold statement — there is no purely statistical way to rank good apps.

These poker, etc. apps have actual people continually paying money to use them. As much as we can denigrate these developers, it doesn’t change the fact that someone thinks it’s worth paying them money. Apps that we see as terrible and valueless are statistically telling us a different story. It is unlikely that Apple will ever solve this issue. I’m hoping to see some third parties solve this problem. As it stands, the App Store isn’t really a great place to discover quality software.

May 11, 2011 at 2:56 pm

@skoda on App.net @technochocolate on App.net