00:00:03 ◼ ► I'm Marco Arment and I'm David Smith under the radar is never longer than 30 minutes. So let's get started
00:00:19 ◼ ► and so now people outside of the developer program are you know able to go ahead and download iOS 11 which
00:00:27 ◼ ► Means two things the second of which will be discussing on today's show the first being that we now get the fun of
00:00:47 ◼ ► So the brand new App Store that you know is included in iOS 11 that is visually very different structurally very different
00:01:09 ◼ ► So it seems like a good thing to do a show about to kind of talk through a lot of these new
00:01:21 ◼ ► But in many ways that is now been deprecated and this is the you know the new way to do it
00:01:26 ◼ ► And it seems like a good thing to kind of think through because there's a lot of subtle changes
00:01:35 ◼ ► Layout and if I think apps that aren't updated at all are going to start to feel kind of left out
00:01:42 ◼ ► If they're a feel feel kind of old if they don't take advantage of all these new fields that we now have
00:01:51 ◼ ► You know certain things that they that they launched in the app store things like app preview videos
00:01:55 ◼ ► Which we'll get to those launched what two three years ago now that those aren't new and yet
00:02:01 ◼ ► Many apps still don't have it have them mine included, and it doesn't seem to matter that much
00:02:08 ◼ ► And and so like some of these things you know things like the the new formatting of the subtitle and things like pulling in-app purchases
00:02:16 ◼ ► And giving them like their own little entries there some of these things they might end up mattering
00:02:26 ◼ ► Back when we were doing a little bit of discussion about analytics. I think it might have been the same episode
00:02:31 ◼ ► We mentioned how like if you looked at the analytics that we recently got about you know App Store
00:02:37 ◼ ► Product page views versus conversions and all that stuff in the sources area of the analytics
00:02:43 ◼ ► It really did seem pretty clear that very few people were actually going to the product page before hitting that get button
00:02:54 ◼ ► For our apps at least most people were making the decision to to get or not get the app
00:03:00 ◼ ► mostly based on its search listing and not necessarily based on viewing the whole product page first, so
00:03:06 ◼ ► Some of these things might not actually matter as much as we think they do that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do them like some
00:03:13 ◼ ► Of them that are pretty low effort. We should probably just do anyway, but I think we it remains to be seen
00:03:18 ◼ ► Whether people will actually care about and even see some of these new things that we're doing
00:03:30 ◼ ► Stands out as something because I think you're right in the sense that the way your app shows up in the search listing is
00:03:42 ◼ ► And I think the biggest change there is now that you know it's like app previews are like a much bigger deal there
00:03:50 ◼ ► And they autoplay which yeah the auto planes a big time like you can play them directly from like you
00:03:58 ◼ ► And I mean it's like just from like a human nature perspective like if things start moving
00:04:04 ◼ ► You know like you have you know sort of you can immediately draw someone's eye to something by making it move and so
00:04:12 ◼ ► It's like the thing the biggest thing that I'm trying to think in terms of like I need to make sure I'm taking advantage of
00:04:21 ◼ ► You know someone is searching for that has just static screenshots. I think that is going to stand out more now
00:04:28 ◼ ► Than it did previously when it was just like the difference between a screenshot and a screenshot with a little triangle on it
00:04:37 ◼ ► That I think is going to be an interesting thing, but you're certainly right that we don't really know what?
00:04:44 ◼ ► But if anything like honestly the thing that I'm kind of most worried about going into this fall
00:04:52 ◼ ► But it is such a big change and all of the things that like I thought I knew about the app store are going to be
00:04:57 ◼ ► Turned around a little bit and so like every advantage I can possibly get to not have things
00:05:09 ◼ ► I will say it's kind of a strange thing just interested in a more general note as an independent that and these big
00:05:15 ◼ ► Structural changes like are always always bring with bring we know such this is sort of just latent anxiety to me
00:05:24 ◼ ► Maybe not who knows like you never know like something changes here that just really doesn't jive
00:05:30 ◼ ► well with the way that I do my business and then like well that could be you know pretty problematic, but
00:05:38 ◼ ► It's probably just we don't know if it's gonna matter, but it's one of those like it's not gonna hurt
00:05:43 ◼ ► I don't think to take advantage of the new stuff and so we may as well try and think through it all and you know take
00:06:04 ◼ ► Looks like and the first thing in it, and we're just kind of walk through these sequentially
00:06:13 ◼ ► And the kind of big key thing here that I think they're driving towards is that this is now
00:06:18 ◼ ► It's limited to 30 characters, and I think that's slightly shorter than it used to be before
00:06:26 ◼ ► Regime where I think it was 60 characters for a while, and I don't know if it's been if it's 30 now as well
00:06:35 ◼ ► The key thing that they seem to be driving towards and I would imagine that Apple will be more
00:06:50 ◼ ► Additional text you know sort of a subtitle with there's a whole new subtitle field so having a name where it's like
00:06:58 ◼ ► You know colon and then a whole bunch of keywords or those types of things are going to I?
00:07:08 ◼ ► Hope now is that I mean 8 so 30 characters isn't all that many characters to start with
00:07:15 ◼ ► But I you know and if the goal I think now is to convince you know condense that down to be just the name of your
00:07:29 ◼ ► Yeah, so my app is overcast colon podcast player and and see this and like the reason that we all do that is
00:07:40 ◼ ► You know number one is that has always helped search ranking and the app store search algorithm is still really bad
00:07:50 ◼ ► It seems to have really weird ideas of what's relevant and what's not to certain terms or to certain apps
00:08:01 ◼ ► Where like you you have to stuff the meta field with the right keywords and everything to make the search actually show your app
00:08:07 ◼ ► We will have to see whether moving like if I change my name from overcast colon podcast player to just overcast
00:08:16 ◼ ► And then if I move podcast player into the subtitle field which is probably what I'm supposed to do
00:08:31 ◼ ► Having a rule and having a widely enforced rule or two different two very different things in the app store
00:08:42 ◼ ► and I'll probably play with it and see you know try to like do some testing and see if it actually changes things but
00:08:50 ◼ ► In order to make your app look the best and use these fields more semantically that you actually lose search relevance
00:08:57 ◼ ► Like that would that would be very very bad the other place that I think that helps to have those
00:09:02 ◼ ► Those little like, you know trails on your title is in listings and in search listings and everything
00:09:13 ◼ ► How much users actually read those little things with those little subtitles as they're skimming the list?
00:09:23 ◼ ► Half the things on the screen first of all are gonna be alarm clocks because the app store search is so bad
00:09:30 ◼ ► tools and Twitter spam bot tools and then about every third one's gonna be a podcast player and
00:09:48 ◼ ► They might go to another one that still has like - podcast player app, you know in its title
00:09:54 ◼ ► And they're doing some things to clamp down this like the the formatting of those titles on the phone
00:10:00 ◼ ► especially the the main title is getting cut off pretty soon like like I'm I like on my iPhone 7 Mike Mike my search listing
00:10:13 ◼ ► The effectiveness of that is kind of you know, not great and then the subtitle which because I haven't filled one in says music
00:10:29 ◼ ► Categories like entertainment utilities for some reason. I'm listening to music. So I'm gonna have to look at that
00:10:36 ◼ ► But so it seems like to some degree we're going to be kind of forced into using this new structure
00:10:46 ◼ ► Actually use the subtitle field and don't put a bunch of crap after a colon or a dash and their main title field
00:10:51 ◼ ► I hope they're not penalized in search ranking, but that's a lot to ask for the App Store search
00:10:58 ◼ ► Rewarded all this bad behavior with results and it forced to actually stop doing the kind of these kinds of things
00:11:08 ◼ ► and cuz I mean I think in movie if it makes sense to move on to the actual subtitle field and a couple of the
00:11:12 ◼ ► rules for that because the interesting thing there is in some ways the subtitle field is
00:11:23 ◼ ► Opportunity like in some ways that's what they want you to put there. Like the point of the subtitle is to
00:11:30 ◼ ► Briefly summarize your app, you know in a concise compelling way like that's their specific wording for what that should be
00:11:37 ◼ ► And in many ways that is the like that's where you would put all of the kind of the key
00:11:44 ◼ ► For your app and I mean the interesting thing too they say with the subtitle is they actually recommend
00:11:53 ◼ ► You know, you may have a different subtitle when you launch the app versus when you do have, you know
00:12:02 ◼ ► I would hope that they're you know, it would seem foolish if they're not incorporating subtitle into your search
00:12:07 ◼ ► Like ranking somehow but it's gonna be a really interesting thing to see how they balance the you know
00:12:24 ◼ ► It's user facing so you know, you can't just vera ideally wouldn't just be like, you know a string of space separated keywords
00:12:33 ◼ ► think in some ways the injury I think to your point the interesting thing is they may be
00:12:44 ◼ ► Everything is displayed bigger now it seems and so if things are getting more truncated the effectiveness
00:12:51 ◼ ► Is diminished but yeah, we'll see. I definitely hope that you're right and that it isn't you know
00:12:56 ◼ ► They're taking advantage of the subtitle field the way we would sort of hope them to so that
00:13:01 ◼ ► We can move away from the whole like the advantage of the title field being stuffed with keywords is a great tool
00:13:08 ◼ ► Good week in you know in the in this in this new version of that and they can just make search better
00:13:20 ◼ ► The other see the next field is the icon which doesn't really change. I mean, it's they have their
00:13:24 ◼ ► The same things the same general recommendations, you know, I mean the icon is the icon
00:13:34 ◼ ► But the next one that they talk through is serve as you're working your way down the page
00:13:38 ◼ ► I'm gonna try worth saying that on the page. There's also some new stuff that we don't really directly control
00:13:48 ◼ ► Directly on your app store page. So even if you came to it not from a chart you would still see how well you chart
00:13:58 ◼ ► Like I kind of see why you wanted to put it put that there and like if you're highly ranked
00:14:07 ◼ ► 345 and utilities or whatever had like and especially because the categories are so broad for else
00:14:14 ◼ ► There's so many apps where you know saying that you are ranked like you could rank lowly in like productivity
00:14:38 ◼ ► Is it really going to show you that you're you know, you are the you're you're not you're at your app number
00:14:48 ◼ ► But anyway, the big big thing in the key thing that I think is the big change is app previews
00:15:03 ◼ ► so it needs to be sort of a screen cast of your app rather than being like, you know a a
00:15:09 ◼ ► Promote a production video of like, you know someone walking down the street pulling out their iPhone and looking at it
00:15:30 ◼ ► You know before they autoplay the poster frame will be shown there and you can also now localize them which in some ways
00:15:40 ◼ ► Like you can do a lot of potentially interesting things there sort of like app previews makes so much sense for something like a game
00:15:52 ◼ ► Like I feel like these get really hard to do like I've struggled a lot with kind of coming up with an interesting thing
00:16:02 ◼ ► But you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do with three of these and trying to localize them
00:16:08 ◼ ► certainly also from an effort perspective sounds like a huge pain because you and it's presumably I'm going into final cut and
00:16:20 ◼ ► Project and changing the text inside of it each time and like it is going to be really hard
00:16:29 ◼ ► it's there because they're auto playing like they are important now in a way that they weren't necessarily before because
00:16:39 ◼ ► Like I don't I don't think I like it from a user perspective just thumbing through the store on you know
00:16:50 ◼ ► it gets your attention for sure as you as you move around the page to have all the and it's like as soon as you
00:16:59 ◼ ► And so having it coming up with a compelling version of an app preview is you know going to be a pretty significant thing
00:17:10 ◼ ► Relatively static unchanging thing and there was only so much you could do to make your app look good and professional in the App Store
00:17:22 ◼ ► So now like there's there's more ways that you can make your app stand out make it look professional
00:17:36 ◼ ► Prominent and auto playing didn't seem to matter that much from people that I spoke with
00:17:44 ◼ ► But now it seems like they're you know, they're having a lot more emphasis plates on there
00:17:51 ◼ ► So this is all you know, like kind of you're saying earlier like this is all kind of ways that
00:17:57 ◼ ► The bars being raised if you want your app to look like complete and professional and polished in its App Store listing
00:18:11 ◼ ► and so I too I've never made one and I've been I've a Twitter and with ideas in my head about like what I might do and
00:18:17 ◼ ► It's it's never been that compelling or fleshed out, but I'm gonna have to now but you know again
00:18:22 ◼ ► It's it's it's like getting a getting a nice icon made for your app or making sure you take nice screenshots with like clean status
00:18:38 ◼ ► But you you might suffer from having fewer downloads or fewer purchases as a result because you won't look as good as everyone else
00:18:46 ◼ ► I mean in ostensibly like I'm sure the reason why they're emphasizing at previews now is that
00:18:59 ◼ ► Rather than someone downloading the app or downloading an app and it turns out it's not what they want
00:19:04 ◼ ► Like at least they can get you a sense of what the app is going to be like to use so like I ostensibly
00:19:12 ◼ ► What we have net, you know, like just say screenshots. But yeah, like it is gonna be a lot of work
00:19:20 ◼ ► You know spending this, you know, probably a week this summer just in Final Cut Pro trying to
00:19:26 ◼ ► Put you know put something together like because I mean I love in some ways this like learning the new skill of that
00:19:31 ◼ ► But it is going to be interesting. I mean, I'm sure too like it's gonna be coming up with
00:19:42 ◼ ► I think a significant thing in so far as like the first three or four seconds of that video
00:19:54 ◼ ► It's like this is you you have this you have a few seconds to just grab the users attention before they scroll on
00:20:00 ◼ ► You know as they're scrolling through the search listing like you need to do like jump out at them and be like, hey check me out
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00:21:40 ◼ ► Area and what's interesting here is the it sounds like much and I think this is new the description field
00:21:48 ◼ ► Or maybe this has been this way for a while. I can't remember the description field is going to be locked
00:21:53 ◼ ► To a submission which so essentially app review is going to be looking at your description
00:22:17 ◼ ► And I've just noticed now that when I added auto renewing subscriptions about ten months ago
00:22:22 ◼ ► You know that big blurb that you are required to add for auto renewing subscriptions about like here's how it's priced it will automatically renew
00:22:34 ◼ ► He's he called he calls his subscription season pass because it's it's a snowboarding app
00:22:40 ◼ ► And I just spotted in my description that I had neglected to change the word season pass in my disclaimer so that I've been calling
00:22:47 ◼ ► My in-app purchase by the wrong name in a disclaimer that Apple allegedly reviews for almost a year
00:22:59 ◼ ► From a user perspective I mean I think the reality is like the way that Apple displays descriptions the bottom part of it is of
00:23:05 ◼ ► Your description is so hard to get to and I think in this design is even more so like it's so truncated
00:23:21 ◼ ► Which is the promotional text area so that you now have like 170 characters to say something
00:23:27 ◼ ► Really super like awesome about your app and we can change that as many times as we want
00:23:32 ◼ ► but like but even that is buried in this new layout like you have you have what's new above everything else and
00:23:40 ◼ ► And then you have to go below all the screenshots and the what's new to get to the little blob of text
00:23:53 ◼ ► Loosely read minimally read by people and this seems like it's going to make them even less
00:23:59 ◼ ► Frequently read because they're really just buried in this interface. Maybe yeah, the first two sentences matter
00:24:05 ◼ ► I don't think anything I mean, I mean as you could tell by my non caring about my disclaimer enough to change with the name
00:24:17 ◼ ► I've edited it maybe twice and only like to to add like a major new feature like oh now
00:24:26 ◼ ► But I've almost never changed it because I really have seen no evidence ever that the description matters at all
00:24:33 ◼ ► I mean, I think the description at least and I guess the new promotional text field as well
00:24:44 ◼ ► But it's like it may be important to some people like I don't I certainly know if like, you know
00:24:49 ◼ ► I've talked to people who that's where they go first like as they go and read the description
00:24:56 ◼ ► I'll have a nice big long like bulleted list of all the features of the app and you know
00:25:00 ◼ ► Try and make it sound compelling and I guess I'll make my promotional like text field for that be
00:25:09 ◼ ► It's like trying to take your app and boil it down into like a tweet essentially like that kind of a length
00:25:36 ◼ ► Like that it's only 170 characters and like to just like that's what I need to come up with like as the core description and
00:25:42 ◼ ► the long one I think is much more there as like it's just big junk drawer to put a lot of all the features to
00:25:55 ◼ ► Maybe it'll convince a few people and there's not much harm in it because it doesn't really clutter the interface at all
00:26:17 ◼ ► The App Store page itself and most significant you can promote up to 20 in-app purchases
00:26:23 ◼ ► On this page or this section of the page and most significantly I think is that you can now theoretically buy that in-app purchase
00:26:56 ◼ ► It seems an odd thing for the purse for someone to be going to the App Store to start that purchase
00:27:16 ◼ ► The SDK where you were supposed to put your settings in the settings app with the settings bundle
00:27:21 ◼ ► I don't think anyone is going to think to look in the App Store when they want to buy new levels for the game
00:27:38 ◼ ► Yeah within an application because like right now I mean this is something I remember harping on years ago
00:27:44 ◼ ► But that like it's kind of it used to be you know that the button says used to say free now
00:27:49 ◼ ► It says get but like back in the day it would say free and it's like it isn't acting like no
00:27:53 ◼ ► It's not actually free at all. It actually is expensive which is why it now says get yeah, you know
00:27:59 ◼ ► And but the European Union had feelings about that. Yes, and and from rightly so I think and so in some ways
00:28:11 ◼ ► But promoting it a little bit in the way that is shown in the UI. Maybe it's just trying to make that a bit clearer
00:28:17 ◼ ► but I don't know it's like I'll probably promote a couple of my in-app purchases because
00:28:36 ◼ ► Yeah, it's like I don't expect that to be a high traffic area for in-app purchases though
00:28:41 ◼ ► I suppose we will know how where they came from because I think it's we get a different transaction type in store kit
00:28:47 ◼ ► So if it turns out to be a huge deal, we'll actually be able to measure that which is kind of nice, too
00:28:57 ◼ ► And yeah, the rest of the stuff is all kind of pretty small stuff. Like we still have it. We still have keywords great
00:29:06 ◼ ► I'm just looking forward to actually just seeing how the stuff actually works in practice how it performs
00:29:15 ◼ ► yeah, and I think it's also I'm kind of looking forward to the opportunity to go through my app and
00:29:21 ◼ ► Go through all my apps and reread their other descriptions and look at their screenshots and just kind of
00:29:26 ◼ ► Give them a once-over to make them better because I honestly don't look at them a lot after the fact