Nov 16

I’ve spent the last week throughly enjoying my new Droid, and while I’ve come across some problems, most of my issues have simply been with the fact that Android does things differently than the iPhone — the transition just takes some getting used to. But there’s one big issue that needs far more than a UI tweak: Android Market. If there was a theme common to nearly every Droid review, it was that Android’s app selection just doesn’t cut it compared to the iPhone. I think that consensus is only half the story. These reviewers are finding that Android has a weaker selection of applications than the iPhone not just because some of their favorite apps aren’t there, but because actually browsing the Market just isn’t as enjoyable as what Apple’s iTunes offers. If Android’s Market’s perception as a poor man’s App Store is going to change, this experience needs to improve. Currently, all Android Market browsing and transactions are done through an application that comes with the phone.

This mobile application used to be pretty bad (it didn’t even offer screenshots of the apps), but was finally overhauled in September to be more competitive with the iPhone’s mobile version of the App Store. The new version is a big improvement, but browsing the store from the phone isn’t exactly a good time — you can only see a few apps at once, so scrolling through various lists gets tedious. Contrast that with the App Store that’s integrated into Apple’s iTunes. Using iTunes to download new applications isn’t just something people do when they need an app to accomplish a certain task. It’s something they do for fun. Clicking through various top apps exposes plenty of high quality games, apps from popular sites like Yelp, and even the occasional productivity tool. It’s all very fast too — you can easily download fifteen new apps in a single browsing session without breaking a sweat. Android doesn’t have anything close to that.

The official Android Market website (pictured below) is a total joke. It shows a list of some of the top apps from its Paid and Free sections, along with a handful of screenshots. It doesn’t even have a full listing of the apps available, or any kind of search feature (as an aside, the entire Android site looks terrible — type in “Android” into Google, and this homepage is the first result). Yes, there are more comprehensive third-party listings, but there’s no way to download apps to your device without looking them up from your phone.

Nov 3

Nearly two weeks after submitting the app to Apple, Facebook’s totally revamped 3.0 application is finally live on the App Store, according to the app’s developer Joe Hewitt . You can download it now here . The store currently shows that the app is version 2.5, but if you click the Download button anyway you’ll get the new version. The new application brings a slew of new features, making it what may be the most useful app on the App Store (be sure to read this post) for our full review. Among the additions are Events, which have frustratingly been omitted from previous versions. Now you’ll be able to look up where your Events are, and you can also respond to them and see which of your friends are attending (for anyone who has ever had to boot up the web version of the site just to look up an Event address, this is a big deal). You can also post video directly to the site if you have an iPhone 3GS — a feature that will likely see the number of videos on Facebook increase dramatically. Smaller changes include a News Feed that more closely reflects the feed you’ll find on the main Facebook site, as well as the ability to “Like” items your friends have created. One feature that users will be missing is Push Notifications, which we suspect will be rolled out in version 3.1, which Hewitt is already working on. There will also be support for landscape mode in the upcoming release, and we may also see support for the ability to watch Facebook videos from the phone (right now you can only upload them). It’s worth noting that the 11 day wait since Facebook originally submitted the application was enough to raise Hewitt’s ire (and justifiably so), leading him to condemn the App Store approval process and call for its removal entirely. I couldn’t agree with him more.