App Store Comparison Shopping
Hot on the heels of my previous blog post My collected App Store critiques, I have yet another critique. It’s undoubtedly old news to many people, my critique coming years too late, but in my defense, I almost never shop for apps in the App Store. Rather, I merely download apps in the App Store that I already discovered outside the App Store, the old-fashioned way: recommendations from trusted friends, associates, and experts.
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When I shop in physical retail stores, all of the products are upfront paid and have listed prices that I can compare. The same is mostly true of online retail stores too.
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One thing that drives me nuts about the In-App Purchase business model is that it creates massive customer confusion. How do you know in advance exactly how much the app costs, what exactly you’re getting for the price, and what functionality, if any, is free? And if you’re confused about any of these things, then how can you possibly comparison shop between various apps in the App Store?
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I can’t make much sense of the list of In-App Purchases, which appears to include multiple conflicting prices for the same thing, and doesn’t explain what SnoreLab Premium gives you.
Even on the Mac, you can’t open multiple windows to compare two apps side-by-side. Nor can you select text to copy and paste it as you collect notes about your app research.
In my opinion, the App Store has the opposite design: not to protect users but to perplex them, making the otherwise simple process of purchasing a product an unholy mess, reducing Apple users to helpless and hapless victims of greedy developers—including Apple, a financial beneficiary of all App Store IAP—who deliberately misdirect and mislead with cunning bait-and-switch schemes to pump the maximum amount of money out of consumers. The goal is to get you hooked first, invested in the app with your time and effort before you realize how much money you have to invest.
Apple utterly buries this information on individual app listings. To get even a vague idea of how much an app is going to cost, a user must scroll all the way past screenshots, the app’s description, ratings and reviews, the changelog, the privacy card, and the accessibility features — all the way down to a boring-looking table that contains the seller, the app’s size, the category, the compatibility, supported languages, the age rating, and only then is there a listing for “In-App Purchases”. And, if they exist, a user must still tap on the cell to find the list of options and their associated cost.
You mention the lack of app reviews on the web - that is also partially Apple’s fault. They shut down their affiliate link program in 2018, which was a reliable way to make money reviewing apps.
I assume it hit editorial coverage of non-game software the same way. The Sweet Setup had Wirecutter-style roundups/reviews for apps, and now it’s selling productivity courses.
I really miss app reviews. Really miss them. It was enjoyable to discover new software by reading reviews that popped up in my RSS.
In fact that is how most of us actually found apps before social media days. That applies to Mac apps but also iOS apps.
We really, really need good trusted software reviews. That should also make life harder for the fly by night and scam apps…
These multiple prices are a huge pet peeve of mine. I believe if you ever put your app on sale - AppStoreConnect keeps every price and what you called it forever. Also if you use a name longer than 26 characters it’s going to truncate and the differentiating text may never be seen by customers.🤦♂️
I understand people who defend the CONCEPT of a vendor-locked software platform.
The problem is that Apple’s IMPLEMENTATION of a vendor-locked software platform is deplorable, the worst in so many ways, not only for developers but also for users.
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In 2026, more than 17 years since the App Store opened, you cannot claim with any plausibility or honesty that Apple is even TRYING to improve or put forth a good-faith, reasonable effort in maintaining the App Store.
Previously:
- Mac App Store Search Not Showing Mac Apps
- Mac App Store Design in Tahoe
- Web Version of the App Store
- Apple Removes Apps From Their Affiliate Program
- TouchArcade Is Shutting Down
- Deluge of Fake Mac App Store Reviews
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I remember when the app store was first announced and Apple was still at its peak, I figured that they were the ones to pull off having a walled garden store with a curated selection of apps, providing a customer-first experience that would be the opposite of what the experience was like on Windows at the time, where any particular app might be spyware or even straight up be malware. How sweetly naive I was.
As an indie developer I really miss app reviews. It’s hard getting the word out when you’re building something new, and the influencer model is more motivated to talk about what’s already popular, sell courses, or paid sponsorships.
Before I even considered writing code, I discovered so much great software from people and journalists passionate about sharing the cool new apps they found.
>Nor can you select text to copy and paste it as you collect notes about your app research.
You can screen capture the screen, and then New Image with Clipboard in Preview and then you can select the text.
Keyboard Maestro users can create a macro that lets them select an area of the screen and OCRs the text onto the clipboard which is great for getting around such stupidity (including annoying web pages that don't allow copying text).
