Finding an app in a haystack

As of July 11th, the iPhone/iPod touch App Store housed 56,081 different apps according to Jeff Scott of 148apps.com.

Taking a quick look, I found over 400 different fart apps. This alone is pretty scary and would lead me to believe that any app that might be either useful or funny, or even totally pointless, has so many variations that without knowing an app name, searching for something that interests me would soon become a Herculean task.

Apple hasn't made this easy since using the iTunes store search is pretty rough and usually brings up many choices that don't seem to contain what you want. i really hope that Apple addresses this in the future since the current method just isn't nearly good enough.

As is often the case, intrepid app aficionados have jumped into the fray and given us some help in finding just the right app:

Freeappalert.com prints a listing, updated daily, of apps that have just gone from paid to free. This is a great place to start a search because more than once have I run into the situation where I bought an app and later found that a free one did just as good if not better. To give you an example, the site has listed fifteen apps that just went free today, July 13th. They also provide a listing of apps that became free over the last few days.
Appshopper.com lets you search by topics such as: what's new, what's free, what has been updated, and what has changed in price. The site mentions that it's still in testing and more features will be forthcoming. Recent additions to the site include buttons for "Want it" and "Have it."
148apps.com, along with listing what's new and free, relates their favorite 148 apps along with tracking 148 games, both free and paid, as well as 148 general apps, again both free and paid.
Iviewer.com is in the midst of collecting apps from readers. They are looking for apps that haven't appeared in any top 10 lists. This doesn't seem as if would provide as broad a field of information as the other sites.
Macworld's App Guide is the best-organized and most functional site I've found. Apps are categorized by type, which alone saves a lot of time. Price reductions are noted as well as groups of popular apps featured. The nicest part of the site is a really functional search box that puts the one found in the iTunes store to shame. Type in a phrase and you will get nicely sorted, useful results. I've found this to be less than complete, but as someone once said: 'in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King.'

Try some of these out and see if it helps you successfully navigate through the quickly increasing mountain of apps.

I know that I haven't scratched the surface of sites that can help with app searching, so please tell us what you have found and what makes your site discovery unique and especially helpful in marketing iPhone/iTouch apps.

View Tags

Source: http://www.macworld.com/appguide/index.html

Categories

Software iPhone App Store iPod touch

As of July 11th, the iPhone/iPod touch App Store housed 56,081 different apps according to Jeff Scott of 148apps.com.Taking a quick look,...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

47 Comments

Filter by:

dnsjc60

Faketext is a hot new app that allow you to hide your real text messages on your iPhone. Check it out at faketext.com, you can go there straight from your iPhone since it is a webapp and is free.

June 15 2010 at 10:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

dnsjc60

Faketext is a hot new app that allow you to hide your real text messages on your iPhone. Check it out at faketext.com, you can go there straight from your iPhone since it is a webapp and is free.

June 15 2010 at 9:59 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

HydroJohn

Cool list of app sites there for more free iphone apps visit:

http://www.bestfreeiphoneapplications.com/

Hope this helps.

December 18 2009 at 8:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rich R

and there is also the pure search site

http://appexplorer.com/

September 27 2009 at 1:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jungulist

One of those links is for a site with top 10 lists...93....hardly covers all apps...
I've just been a fan of the above site because they've reviewed more apps than I can find on any other site...most with video reviews. Just seeing a site like AppShopper is worthless - it just relists the data that is already on iTunes, what's the use?
I want to see a real review. I want a place to tell me out of those 60k apps which ones are actually worth taking a look at...

July 15 2009 at 10:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jungulist

How was http://www.AppVee.com overlooked? Its probably the largest app review site out there

July 14 2009 at 4:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Jungulist's comment

David Winograd

Not overlooked, just not known about.
After looking at it, it seems that they do a good job of covering apps in depth but they list under 900 apps which doesn't make it one stop shopping.

July 14 2009 at 8:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paul

Hi David - just out of interest what do you mean when you say that the Macworld's App Guide search is "less than complete" - are there searches that don't produce the results you expect?

July 14 2009 at 1:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Paul's comment

David Winograd

Not often.
What I was noting is that Macworlds' info doesn't get updated as quickly as the store.

Right now Apple is claiming 65,000 and Macworld shows 59,683 apps.
I would imagine that this has to be a number of days difference.

July 14 2009 at 1:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

icepod

Aside from reviews from TUAW, my only other app reference is http://appadvice.com

Their section http://appadvice.com/applists has some very practical categories to find interesting stuff.

Also, they are currently doing hosting a "App award contest" for best apps in various categories: http://appadvice.com/appawards/vote

Very good site, with posts as good as TUAW

July 14 2009 at 11:04 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

prall

FYI: Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536) is the someone who said "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king"

July 14 2009 at 10:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to prall's comment

David Winograd

Thank You!!!
Erasmus! I've been looking for the attribution for a long time.

July 14 2009 at 1:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

d3isme

I also check macupdate pretty much every day

http://m.macupdate.com/iphone.php

I don't mind the app store so much, I just wish there was a way to bookmark in it.

July 14 2009 at 10:05 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply