Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:11 ◼   ► So today we wanted to dive into some interesting developments we've had over the last week

00:00:16 ◼   ► or so about improvements Apple is making to the App Store itself.

00:00:22 ◼   ► And so if you remember earlier back in the summer, in June I think, there was a, we saw

00:00:27 ◼   ► the first phase, first parts of this, where Apple was announcing that they're doing search

00:00:31 ◼   ► ads, that they were changing the subscription rules, and now sort of at the end of the summer

00:00:37 ◼   ► we're seeing another set of these.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And we got an email and some sites on Apple's developer portal that also talk about the

00:00:43 ◼   ► changes.

00:00:44 ◼   ► But essentially Apple's doing two new things in the App Store that are kind of significant,

00:00:48 ◼   ► and significant both in terms of what they're doing, but also just signaling, I think, a

00:00:54 ◼   ► fundamental change in how Apple is approaching the App Store.

00:00:57 ◼   ► And that they are making fundamental shifts and they're okay with doing that.

00:01:03 ◼   ► And so the two things that we're getting, and we'll probably kind of split these into

00:01:06 ◼   ► the first half and second half of the show, but they're essentially going through the

00:01:10 ◼   ► App Store and making sure that old apps no longer will be present.

00:01:17 ◼   ► The exact details of this are a bit vague, but essentially they're saying that apps that

00:01:22 ◼   ► are problematic or abandoned or crash now will be removed from the store.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Previously, once an app had been approved, it was essentially around forever until you

00:01:33 ◼   ► either didn't pay your developer dues, or you pulled it from the store, or there was

00:01:38 ◼   ► some major issue with it, like a legal issue or something, where it would have been pulled

00:01:43 ◼   ► by Apple.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Otherwise, an app that you had submitted back eight years ago to the App Store that had

00:01:50 ◼   ► never been updated could still be there today if you've been paying your dues.

00:01:53 ◼   ► And that seems to be a change.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And then the second thing we'll talk about in this latter part of the show is they're

00:01:57 ◼   ► also changing some of the rules around app naming, where apps now are going to have to

00:02:02 ◼   ► be shorter.

00:02:03 ◼   ► They have to be 50 characters rather than 255 characters.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And they're also trying to do away with things like descriptions and terms that aren't app

00:02:12 ◼   ► names.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And you're going to have to remove those from the app, so you can't have the app name followed

00:02:17 ◼   ► by a big long tagline with a whole bunch of keywords anymore.

00:02:20 ◼   ► But we'll talk about that one in a second.

00:02:22 ◼   ► So first, what do you think, Marco, about this new change to go through the back catalog

00:02:28 ◼   ► and purge out the old, crufty stuff?

00:02:31 ◼   ► >> Marco: I think it's great.

00:02:33 ◼   ► If you look at the history of the web, back in the early days of the web, there weren't

00:02:38 ◼   ► that many web pages, relatively speaking.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And so search engines would brag about how many pages they had in their index.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And you would see—and this was back before Google just came out and basically just became

00:02:49 ◼   ► the only one that mattered.

00:02:50 ◼   ► This was back with Yahoo and AltaVista and HotBot and all these crazy old search engines,

00:02:55 ◼   ► very few of which are still around or are still doing their own searches.

00:03:00 ◼   ► They would brag about this number because it actually mattered.

00:03:02 ◼   ► And you would hope, like if you search for something, you would hope you would find one

00:03:07 ◼   ► page or the right page with what you were looking for.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And then over time, as the web got filled with garbage, like tons of infinite machine-generated

00:03:16 ◼   ► garbage, the number of pages in a search engines index became a lot less of a bragging point.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And then the challenge simply became, how do you let people find good stuff?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Because there's enough crap out there that the amount of crap we have is no longer a

00:03:29 ◼   ► selling point.

00:03:31 ◼   ► And so I think the same thing has happened with the App Store very clearly, where in

00:03:35 ◼   ► the App Store, back when the App Store launched and then as the app ecosystem war started

00:03:42 ◼   ► heating up with Google and as other platforms tried to challenge it, like Blackberry and

00:03:47 ◼   ► Windows Mobile and Palm, the number of apps you had in your store was a bragging point

00:03:52 ◼   ► for all these vendors.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And so nobody ever wanted to do anything that would reduce the number of apps in their store.

00:04:00 ◼   ► That would be seen probably as a big PR risk or a big risk to growth or to the ecosystem

00:04:06 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:04:08 ◼   ► But we're long past that point now, long past that point.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And anybody who's ever searched in the App Store in the last few years for pretty much

00:04:16 ◼   ► anything has probably had a similar experience of getting lots and lots of results to your

00:04:23 ◼   ► search, very few of which were A, what you were looking for, or B, were of any real quality

00:04:30 ◼   ► level.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And so at the age of the number of apps in the App Store mattering is long over.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And I think this change is very good and honestly pretty overdue, but I'm at least glad they're

00:04:43 ◼   ► doing it now.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So from that point of view, shrinking the number of apps to better focus on quality

00:04:51 ◼   ► is good.

00:04:52 ◼   ► The other part of this that's kind of like a running theme throughout these changes they're

00:04:55 ◼   ► making is a lot of this change could be solved also and probably better by just making search

00:05:02 ◼   ► better.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And this is kind of a sticking point with the App Store and Apple services in general,

00:05:09 ◼   ► but especially with things related to the iTunes Music Store and the App Store.

00:05:13 ◼   ► The search is so relatively primitive and it always has been.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And we keep hearing year after year that they're making improvements to search here and there,

00:05:23 ◼   ► or they'll buy some company or they'll redesign something or we'll hear rumors instead of

00:05:27 ◼   ► actual facts saying that they're revamping the search, you know, give me a big improvement

00:05:30 ◼   ► now.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And now they're doing things that are heavily based on search and search type algorithms

00:05:36 ◼   ► like the new automatic keyword ads that I look forward to trying out this fall and stuff

00:05:42 ◼   ► like that.

00:05:43 ◼   ► But ultimately their search is still not very good.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And if their search was better, if it was as sophisticated as like a Google web search

00:05:51 ◼   ► or even half that sophisticated, I think we wouldn't see the need as much for these pruning

00:05:59 ◼   ► efforts or these new policies to lock down on title and stuff like that.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Because all those problems could be solved by better search, but it just seems like this

00:06:09 ◼   ► might even be Apple admitting that they're never going to have better search or they're

00:06:13 ◼   ► never going to have great search rather.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I'm sure it will get better than where it is now, but it seems like the kind of thing

00:06:19 ◼   ► that after eight years they're kind of just not capable or not willing to really take

00:06:26 ◼   ► on.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And instead they're, you know, modifying things that are easier.

00:06:32 ◼   ► They're enforcing rules saying, all right, now shorter titles, you know, no more irrelevant

00:06:36 ◼   ► words, stuff like that.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And that's all good, but I do wish they would have solved it either instead of or also with

00:06:42 ◼   ► just better search.

00:06:44 ◼   ► I slightly disagree with that perspective though, because I, while I do think search

00:06:49 ◼   ► could be a lot better, I see this as a more fundamental change in what the user's expectation

00:07:00 ◼   ► of going to the App Store should be.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Because even if you had the best search algorithm in the world, I mean, I guess you could say

00:07:07 ◼   ► if any app that they would have pulled because of these new quality requirements, which just

00:07:12 ◼   ► wouldn't show up in search, that would be making search better and solving the same

00:07:17 ◼   ► problem, even if it was technically still listed, which I guess could sort of do it,

00:07:22 ◼   ► but it's functionally would be the same thing.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Like I see this is, and this is what makes me so excited about it, is it's, it's a change

00:07:29 ◼   ► for saying that they're, they want to make sure that any app you download in the App

00:07:35 ◼   ► Store is going to meet a certain bar of user experience quality.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And they're making sure that that bar is constantly moving and improving, that it isn't fine to

00:07:50 ◼   ► just meet that bar once and then you're fine.

00:07:52 ◼   ► That the definition of having a, of being a quality app, of being a good user experience

00:07:58 ◼   ► is something like, it's almost the acknowledgement that it takes ongoing work.

00:08:02 ◼   ► That is, you know, it's a different thing than the other parts of the iTunes store or

00:08:07 ◼   ► things, which in some ways I wonder if some of these kind of, these structures are coming

00:08:10 ◼   ► from the way that the App Store was bolted onto the iTunes model where, you know, it's

00:08:16 ◼   ► not like, it's like Star Wars aside, you typically release a movie and then it stays that same

00:08:24 ◼   ► movie forever.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And it's not like it needs to be constantly worked on and updated and changed.

00:08:28 ◼   ► You know, software is this different, vibrant, dynamic thing that the software that is, you

00:08:33 ◼   ► know, that is left on the shelf for a year even kind of gets stale or gets broken or

00:08:40 ◼   ► is a less good user experience.

00:08:43 ◼   ► And while you could sort of say you could get, you could deal with it on the user-facing

00:08:48 ◼   ► side, I think it's a, what I see so powerfully here, or at least maybe this is just reading

00:08:53 ◼   ► into it, but I see it as Apple signaling a sort of a return to quality or a refocusing

00:09:00 ◼   ► on quality that they're saying, our hope is that every app in the App Store is going to

00:09:06 ◼   ► be good and we're going to do a lot of things to make that happen.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And while I wish the App Store app was better, you know, it's like this particular thing

00:09:16 ◼   ► was one of, like a few years ago I did a post, a series of blog posts called Towards a Better

00:09:21 ◼   ► App Store where I kind of went through and came up with like my 12 theses that I pinned

00:09:25 ◼   ► to the door and said like, these are the things that I wish the App Store would change.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And you know, over the last, I think two and a half years since that, since I wrote that,

00:09:34 ◼   ► about five of them have come to pass, but this, like this change of going through the

00:09:39 ◼   ► apps and making sure that, sort of on a regular basis, making sure that they still meet the

00:09:43 ◼   ► current review guidelines was my number one requirement.

00:09:47 ◼   ► And many of the other things I wish they do were improvements to the, you know, to App

00:09:51 ◼   ► Store search or other things to the actual app itself.

00:09:54 ◼   ► But I think what I love about this is it's that change in perspective that, you know,

00:09:59 ◼   ► I've gotten a lot of, I've had some conversations over the last week with developers about who

00:10:02 ◼   ► say like, well, if I keep paying my $100 a year, why shouldn't the app that I made be

00:10:10 ◼   ► allowed to be listed?

00:10:11 ◼   ► You know, it's up to the user if they think it's good.

00:10:15 ◼   ► If they want to download it, that's up to the, it could be so useful to somebody.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And the best analogy I could come up with for why that's like becomes problematic,

00:10:23 ◼   ► it's kind of like imagining if Walmart still sold like 2014 calendars.

00:10:31 ◼   ► When I thought of that analogy, it seemed so perfect because it's the same thing where

00:10:35 ◼   ► it's like the calendar still works.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Like that calendar, that 2014 calendar is completely still a calendar.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Like you can flip through it, you can look at the days, you can write on it, like it

00:10:46 ◼   ► works fine.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And that's the best case.

00:10:48 ◼   ► You've probably seen great pictures of puppies or cars on it.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Sure.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I mean, and puppies and cars, they don't go out of date, right?

00:10:54 ◼   ► But I think it would be absurd if you went into a store and they were still selling calendars

00:10:59 ◼   ► from 2014 because there's a freshness to it.

00:11:02 ◼   ► There's a, you know, if that relevance will fall off over time.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And so I think I'm glad that they're saying like, "No, we want the App Store to be better.

00:11:13 ◼   ► We want it to include better things."

00:11:16 ◼   ► And so now, if you're putting, in some ways I like too that it says that to, you know,

00:11:21 ◼   ► for customers and developers is that if you put an app on the App Store, in some ways

00:11:25 ◼   ► you're making a commitment to the future.

00:11:27 ◼   ► That that app is either going to have to be maintained and taken care of, or it's going

00:11:32 ◼   ► to be discontinued, you're not going to end up in the situation of sort of these like

00:11:36 ◼   ► long abandoned kind of slow deaths.

00:11:39 ◼   ► It seems like it'll be a much quicker, more straightforward process, which I think is

00:11:43 ◼   ► ultimately a better user experience than kind of something where it's this very ambiguous,

00:11:48 ◼   ► is it supported, is it not supported, is it, you know, is this ever going to get there?

00:11:53 ◼   ► Like after whatever, who knows what Apple's rules are going to be, but say it's like after

00:11:56 ◼   ► a year and a half, you know, after 18 months of no updates, the app may disappear from

00:12:00 ◼   ► the App Store.

00:12:01 ◼   ► And you know, users can always re-update.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Like the way the policy works is you get 30 days, I think, they'll send you an email and

00:12:09 ◼   ► say, "Hey, your app seems to be abandoned or problematic.

00:12:12 ◼   ► You have 30 days to fix it."

00:12:13 ◼   ► And if you do, you know, it goes through modern app review, it gets approved, hooray, you're

00:12:18 ◼   ► all set.

00:12:19 ◼   ► It's not like if you leave it for too long, it just gets, you know, shut down and never

00:12:24 ◼   ► able to be resolved again.

00:12:25 ◼   ► But I love the way that Apple is reframing that to the store.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I mean, I think I'm reading a bit too much into it, but not way, way too much into it.

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00:13:18 ◼   ► For me, I think there is certainly a balance that, like, you can kind of see both sides

00:13:23 ◼   ► of the argument here, where if I'm searching for an app that does something really esoteric,

00:13:28 ◼   ► like, there are still a few apps on my phone that aren't supporting, like, the iPhone

00:13:34 ◼   ► 6, 6S screen sizes.

00:13:36 ◼   ► They aren't supporting, I don't know if, I might still have one that doesn't even

00:13:39 ◼   ► support the iOS 7 keyboard yet, I'm not sure.

00:13:42 ◼   ► But either way, like, I do still have occasional need for an app on my phone that is old and

00:13:48 ◼   ► that might not pass whatever standards they set, depending on how high they set them.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So there is some argument, like, you know, something really esoteric, dealing with audio

00:13:54 ◼   ► processing or something like that.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So there is something to be said for just leaving them there because they're not really

00:14:00 ◼   ► doing any harm.

00:14:01 ◼   ► And I think the amount of harm they're not doing is minimized by how good the search

00:14:08 ◼   ► is.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Like, if I'm searching for some kind of crazy, like, IceCast 2, Shoutcast broadcast

00:14:14 ◼   ► app, and there's, like, three of those in the App Store and two of them are ancient,

00:14:18 ◼   ► like, if that's what I'm looking for and the only one or the best one happens to be

00:14:24 ◼   ► non-retina and written for the iPhone 4 screen or whatever, like, I guess that's probably,

00:14:30 ◼   ► is that better than not having one at all?

00:14:32 ◼   ► I mean, that's kind of debatable.

00:14:34 ◼   ► But I think ultimately there isn't actually a lot of harm done by leaving them there if

00:14:41 ◼   ► the search doesn't let those kind of old, unmaintained apps clutter up searches for

00:14:47 ◼   ► which there are newer, better apps available.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I mean, and I see, I definitely see that side of it because, but it's a tricky thing of,

00:14:54 ◼   ► like, and obviously that app that you downloaded before, Apple isn't reaching into your phone

00:14:58 ◼   ► and taking away from you.

00:14:59 ◼   ► That's true.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:01 ◼   ► So if you're a certain customer of an app that is abandoned, as best I understand the

00:15:05 ◼   ► rules, you'll still be able to download it just the way you would now.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Like, you'd go into your purchased area, find it in there, and download it.

00:15:13 ◼   ► It's, the thing where that situation gets really tricky, though, is if you go to the

00:15:18 ◼   ► App Store to download that Shoutcast app, you see there's only three of them, and say,

00:15:24 ◼   ► for argument's sake, they're paid.

00:15:26 ◼   ► You know, you have to pay a couple dollars to find out, and you download it, and it is

00:15:31 ◼   ► really sort of old and isn't working quite well.

00:15:35 ◼   ► It sort of works, maybe, like, if you know what you're doing, but it's not a great user

00:15:40 ◼   ► experience.

00:15:41 ◼   ► And while it's kind of impressive that Apple has done such a good job on backwards compatibility

00:15:47 ◼   ► that it is possible to run apps that have been built for really old versions of iOS

00:15:52 ◼   ► on modern iOS, it strikes me as one of these things of, it weakens the customer's experience

00:16:00 ◼   ► of the App Store.

00:16:01 ◼   ► And what I always want, as an app developer, is for people to be really excited and have

00:16:08 ◼   ► good experiences in the App Store and want to be in there all the time and never have

00:16:12 ◼   ► experiences that could turn them off to it, that could have them be like, "Oof, the App

00:16:17 ◼   ► Store's full of junk."

00:16:18 ◼   ► Because in that case, even if search was amazing, if there's only three things, say, you'd still

00:16:26 ◼   ► find those three things, hopefully, if search was doing its job.

00:16:30 ◼   ► And so I'd still rather, for that new customer to make sure that when they download something,

00:16:35 ◼   ► they have confidence that it's going to be a good thing.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And maybe I would err on the side of saying, "I'd rather it not be there than an old, abandoned

00:16:44 ◼   ► version of that thing be hanging around there."

00:16:48 ◼   ► That's fair.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I think you're slowly convincing me to your side of this here.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And I guess you're right that the distinction of my old version of this app will still work,

00:16:59 ◼   ► just new people won't be able to buy it.

00:17:01 ◼   ► I think that's not, that handles a lot of the problem.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Not all of it, but a lot of it.

00:17:06 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:17:07 ◼   ► All right, well, moving on to the other major change they announced, which is the length

00:17:14 ◼   ► of titles being limited.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And they also, so there's two changes here.

00:17:18 ◼   ► They said that, so titles will now be limited to, you know, down, as you mentioned, from

00:17:22 ◼   ► 255 down to 50 characters.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Although 50 characters is still quite a bit.

00:17:28 ◼   ► But you know, you can't cram like a whole paragraph in there anymore.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And also now they're saying that like irrelevant words or keywords that are just, you know,

00:17:37 ◼   ► kind of describing your app are not allowed anymore.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And this is going to be really interesting to see, because first of all, I know many

00:17:43 ◼   ► people, myself included, use this in a way that we believe is totally legitimate.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And also a little bit pragmatic, which gets back to the earlier search issues.

00:17:52 ◼   ► So the name of my app in the App Store is not Overcast.

00:17:56 ◼   ► It's Overcast colon podcast player.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And this is for a number of reasons.

00:18:00 ◼   ► One of which is that the App Store has to date enforced global name uniqueness.

00:18:07 ◼   ► So that there is another app in the App Store named Overcast.

00:18:10 ◼   ► It's a weather app from years ago.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And I actually talked to the guy who ran it and tried to buy it from him just so I could

00:18:17 ◼   ► take the name.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And there were some problems and we couldn't make it work because of some various Apple

00:18:22 ◼   ► restrictions.

00:18:23 ◼   ► But like if I'm forced to remove the colon podcast player from the end of my title, I

00:18:32 ◼   ► can't because the name of my app is taken by another.

00:18:37 ◼   ► So it's like, how are they going to actually enforce that?

00:18:40 ◼   ► Are they going to lift that restriction?

00:18:42 ◼   ► Will they allow multiple apps for the same name?

00:18:44 ◼   ► Because that's how trademarks work.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I have a trademark on the name Overcast because I limited the trademark in scope to only apps

00:18:51 ◼   ► that were about media playback basically.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And so you're allowed to have trademarks that are the same word that are just in different

00:19:01 ◼   ► categories or don't step on each other's toes.

00:19:04 ◼   ► That's totally allowed because in practice that's just necessary because there's only

00:19:07 ◼   ► so many words and some of them get reused.

00:19:10 ◼   ► So the app store doesn't have that kind of flexibility yet.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Will it add that kind of flexibility or will it just not enforce this rule very strictly

00:19:19 ◼   ► or is Overcast podcast player okay?

00:19:23 ◼   ► But Overcast podcast player lets you share to Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Is that then going too far in a title?

00:19:31 ◼   ► Because most of the abuse of title keyword spam I see is for things like that.

00:19:37 ◼   ► It's basically using the title as an excuse to name drop a bunch of other popular search

00:19:41 ◼   ► terms like Instagram or Twitter to make your app show up for searches for those kind of

00:19:45 ◼   ► apps.

00:19:46 ◼   ► So you can kind of BS your way and say well my photo editing app can crop and share things

00:19:50 ◼   ► to Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all these other things and you can shovel

00:19:54 ◼   ► that in the title.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And the reason why people did all this for all these years is the aforementioned search

00:19:59 ◼   ► being really primitive.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And so for years app store search has basically only searched the title and keywords fields.

00:20:08 ◼   ► It seemingly has completely ignored the entire description that you write.

00:20:12 ◼   ► That part seems to not be indexed for search purposes or at least to be extremely low priority

00:20:17 ◼   ► if it is indexed at all.

00:20:19 ◼   ► So for years we've basically only had title and the also problematic and often abused

00:20:24 ◼   ► keywords field which is hidden from the public which is part of the problem.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Again, all these restrictions and simplicities around the really primitive app store search

00:20:35 ◼   ► engine.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And so now they're having to enforce this rule or we'll see how they enforce it but

00:20:40 ◼   ► they've created this rule now that you can no longer spam your titles and they have to

00:20:43 ◼   ► be shorter.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Again all this should have probably been solved and maybe also should be solved by better

00:20:51 ◼   ► search but in the absence of better search, well I guess we're going to see how strictly

00:20:57 ◼   ► this is enforced and whether overcast podcast player is allowed or whether that's even

00:21:02 ◼   ► too much and then what happens about duplicate names.

00:21:04 ◼   ► So who knows?

00:21:05 ◼   ► >> Yeah, because I think there's certainly in this change there's the obvious change

00:21:12 ◼   ► of there's those apps that you see every now and then that are just a string of keywords.

00:21:17 ◼   ► And this last week actually I went and I pulled a list of all the really long app store names

00:21:22 ◼   ► and some of them are just absurd.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It's like everything you could imagine just stuck together for 255 characters.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And clearly Apple is saying no.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Like you can't put keywords in your description.

00:21:35 ◼   ► We have a keywords field which incidentally I think they specifically don't search the

00:21:41 ◼   ► description field and that's as a result of back in the day when the app store used

00:21:46 ◼   ► to search the description field you ended up with the bottom section of people's apps.

00:21:52 ◼   ► It was just one big stream of keywords and so they said no, no, no, no.

00:21:56 ◼   ► We're not going to search the description field.

00:21:57 ◼   ► We're not going to use it for keyword because that's too easy to spam.

00:22:00 ◼   ► And so instead we're going to have this keywords field that has to go through app review.

00:22:03 ◼   ► So if I put Instagram in my keywords field Apple I believe will review that in a way

00:22:12 ◼   ► that making sure that that is relevant, that's appropriate, that if I have a Flappy Bird

00:22:18 ◼   ► clone I can't say Instagram is a keyword for it because it's not relevant.

00:22:23 ◼   ► If I'm making a photo editing app that may be relevant so you may be allowed to do it.

00:22:28 ◼   ► But at the very least they're trying to get rid of the situation where people put these

00:22:32 ◼   ► just massive strings of things.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And to your point I think you will have to see where this actually goes in terms of app

00:22:39 ◼   ► review.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And I guess you have the fun excitement of the next time you go through app review this

00:22:43 ◼   ► is something that you can look forward to getting an email from Apple about potentially.

00:22:48 ◼   ► One of many things.

00:22:49 ◼   ► We'll get to that later.

00:22:51 ◼   ► But it's going to be interesting to see because my guess is in your case it's like if you

00:22:56 ◼   ► have a name that is a sort of a single phrase that my guess is that you'll be fine.

00:23:02 ◼   ► So in your case you may actually just need to get rid of the colon for example.

00:23:06 ◼   ► It would be something I could see Apple saying that if the title of your app became Overcast

00:23:13 ◼   ► Podcast Player that is a single phrase that is a reasonable name for the app.

00:23:20 ◼   ► When you put the colon there is when it starts to feel like it's not part of the same thing.

00:23:27 ◼   ► And so my guess is that's the kind of thing that we're going to see Apple heading toward

00:23:30 ◼   ► where you can have descriptive names of your app but you can't add it to the end.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It needs to be part of the name of the app.

00:23:40 ◼   ► The name of the app needs to be a cohesive solid thing.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And reasonably too I think Apple makes the point even in their email that long names

00:23:47 ◼   ► aren't displayable in the app store.

00:23:51 ◼   ► The app store can only display probably the first 20 to 30 characters of a name in the

00:23:56 ◼   ► app store itself.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Anything beyond that no one will ever see.

00:24:00 ◼   ► This is like for many reasons.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I'm honestly surprised and I think everybody was honestly surprised that these kind of

00:24:06 ◼   ► long names full of paragraphs and descriptions were ever allowed.

00:24:11 ◼   ► That applies to a lot of this.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Why was keyword spamming ever allowed?

00:24:15 ◼   ► Why were these long titles ever allowed?

00:24:18 ◼   ► Really the app store policies they're very picky about certain things they want to be

00:24:24 ◼   ► picky about but they really do allow quite a lot of things that I think many people would

00:24:29 ◼   ► consider abuse or scamming the system a little bit and they seem to have no problem with

00:24:34 ◼   ► those.

00:24:36 ◼   ► I think it's weird where they draw those lines and in some ways I'm actually kind of happy

00:24:40 ◼   ► to see them start cracking down in some of these areas that I think always should have

00:24:43 ◼   ► been enforced but just never have been.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I think that's probably a good point too.

00:24:48 ◼   ► My suspicion is what we're going to run into is the like I'm so glad that these things

00:24:53 ◼   ► are being pulled back on and inevitably there will be the edge cases that cause problems

00:24:59 ◼   ► that people who are sort of like the innocent victim of chance or like they were doing something

00:25:06 ◼   ► that maybe they shouldn't have maybe they should be but like they're on that line and

00:25:10 ◼   ► this is going to be weird and you know maybe the Apple app review will correct too far

00:25:14 ◼   ► and then have to back off a little bit as they work out where those lines are and it's

00:25:18 ◼   ► if you are one of those developers who is on that line you know I've been in the situation

00:25:23 ◼   ► where like I made an app that I thought was perfect and then ended up discovered that

00:25:29 ◼   ► I was on that line where app review had to work out which side of the line I was on and

00:25:34 ◼   ► that's a really awkward place to be but ultimately like that's the way that this

00:25:39 ◼   ► system works and generally speaking at the very least we may not like the outcome but

00:25:44 ◼   ► I feel like app review is very reasonable in that process that it's not great sometimes

00:25:49 ◼   ► in terms of the way they communicate or things but I can usually look back and say they're

00:25:55 ◼   ► what they ended up deciding is reasonable.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Yeah and I mean the vast majority of time they do decide correctly I mean we do occasionally

00:26:01 ◼   ► see a time where they didn't it becomes a big controversy that everyone gets mad about

00:26:07 ◼   ► myself included but you know if you look at like how many apps there are in the store

00:26:11 ◼   ► I think it's very clear like the vast majority of time they do get it right.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Yeah and that I think is like that difference of saying like this is the thing that in all

00:26:20 ◼   ► of this makes me so excited it's the there's going to be there's going to be little issues

00:26:25 ◼   ► and problems as they sort of take this big sort of it's like you know it's the old

00:26:29 ◼   ► thing of it's like if you can't you can't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime like it's

00:26:33 ◼   ► going to be the kind of a messy awkward process of kind of shifting the app store around of

00:26:37 ◼   ► increasing the quality requirements changing the way that we do metadata changing the way

00:26:42 ◼   ► search works with ads like there's lots of stuff that's kind of awkward potentially for

00:26:47 ◼   ► the next six months but my hope is that you know come WWDC next year like we're going

00:26:53 ◼   ► to be looking back at a very different app store and as you know someone who makes my

00:26:59 ◼   ► living in this store like I'm excited about that I'm excited that it doesn't feel like

00:27:03 ◼   ► the app store is one of those apps that's problematic and abandoned like you know in

00:27:09 ◼   ► some ways I think about in that way where the app store hadn't changed in you know so

00:27:12 ◼   ► many years that if you know under these new rules maybe the app store wouldn't have been

00:27:17 ◼   ► allowed on people's phones like well that's definitely the Mac App Store that's fair

00:27:23 ◼   ► but I'm glad that it's saying like no no this is something that we're working on that we're

00:27:27 ◼   ► making changes and hopefully maybe even like it would seem kind of fit Apple's MO in a

00:27:32 ◼   ► lot of ways where they tend to kind of do these they set the groundwork changes and

00:27:36 ◼   ► then they improve upon it from there and like maybe this year is the we're going to make

00:27:41 ◼   ► a bunch of changes that are kind of like the shake it all up changes and then you know

00:27:46 ◼   ► next next year WWDC hey look the actual app itself and search and the way that we do this

00:27:51 ◼   ► has gotten a lot better because now we have clean metadata we have a a better quality

00:27:56 ◼   ► set of apps we have a lot of these other tools and things available to developers and now

00:28:02 ◼   ► we can do something with it you know which would seem consistent with the way that Apple

00:28:06 ◼   ► often rolls right rather than trying to just sort of come in and flip everything around

00:28:10 ◼   ► at once they say we're going to do this incrementally we're going to change a lot of these things

00:28:13 ◼   ► and then in a year you look back and be like oh yeah of course that's why they did this

00:28:17 ◼   ► change and that's my hope anyway yeah and and honestly I mean you know looking back

00:28:22 ◼   ► at just the last I mean when did Phil Schiller officially take over the app store like six

00:28:26 ◼   ► months ago it was not very long ago yeah I believe it was the beginning of the year yeah

00:28:30 ◼   ► and and just since then in less than a year there have been some major improvements here

00:28:35 ◼   ► and you know for the amount for the very short time it's been and compared to you know the

00:28:40 ◼   ► seven years preceding that where there was really really quite small change for it for

00:28:44 ◼   ► that amount of time it's I'm incredibly happy to see improvement and effort and experimentation

00:28:52 ◼   ► and trying new you know just I'm incredibly happy to see that in the app store because

00:28:56 ◼   ► I really didn't think we were we ever were going to it just seemed like Apple didn't

00:28:59 ◼   ► care at all about really making meaningful change and now they do with now you know now

00:29:04 ◼   ► that Phil is running it I think he's doing a fantastic job with it and I really am just

00:29:08 ◼   ► incredibly happy to see that yep exactly and so we'll see where this goes I'm sure we'll

00:29:12 ◼   ► have an interesting fall like as a student of the app store like I am really excited

00:29:17 ◼   ► to see what this how this all shakes out just because it's exciting and different but you

00:29:21 ◼   ► know I'm sure it'll be a bit of a bumpy road but I guess as developers we can just try

00:29:24 ◼   ► to try our best to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and just hope that you know in

00:29:28 ◼   ► the end it'll all work out give yourself some credit you're at least a PhD of the app store

00:29:32 ◼   ► PhD not a student quite this point I've graduated a little bit I'm in grad school a little bit

00:29:38 ◼   ► at least the very least all right thanks a lot for listening everybody and we will talk

00:29:42 ◼   ► to you next week. Bye.