> It's probably the biggest example I can think of where Apple really shows that they are unquestionably not Google.

I think you give Google too much credit. The Play store is about as abysmal, sans the OS-tied updates. (Search, lists, SEO, etc. are BAD).

I wasn't comparing them in terms of app stores per se but the fact they don't really seem to be aggressively optimizing the UX on the store the way Google does with most of its (other) products. If Apple were doing it right, after this much time and this much data had been collected the App Store should basically be fast as hell and reading my mind when I log in, like Amazon does.

I worked at Etsy for a number of years which has many similar attributes as the App Store, and lots of slow, steady progress was made by running many experiments and aggressively maintaining performance. I'd be licking my chops at the low hanging fruit if I were the one tasked with starting to hill-climb the App Store UX. There are so many things you could try, and with the type of traffic the App Store gets, 1% experiments could almost certainly get you sufficient data to really drive up conversion rates without negatively impacting many users along the way.

Eh, I just got an iPad for my mom, after owning several Android phones and tablets, and my sister used to use an iPod touch as well. We both agreed that the App Store is a piece of trash. It's slow, confusing to navigate around, and doesn't auto update your apps (I think I heard that's coming in iOS7?). It looks the same as it did on my sister's old 2G iPod touch.

Meanwhile, the Play Store search and navigation used to suck, but they've both improved a lot, and they keep the highlighted content fresh and relevant, which surprises me coming from Google (though not having used an iOS device extensively I don't know how often they update their featured content, but from this post it sounds like not often enough). They've fixed most of the stupid issues they had before and I actually like using it now.

I've found pretty much the opposite for the Play Store. I like that it's relatively fast and much more responsive than the App Store (which is quite frankly terrible), but finding anything I actually want is a pretty dismal experience as well (this is unrelated to the quality of the actual apps themselves).

All the navigation is counter-intuitive (What do you mean swiping to the left doesn't go back and instead takes me to categories or who knows where? Why doesn't the back button take me back to my search results? etc). The curated front screen rarely seems to have anything new and interesting on it (for apps anyway, I never look at the media part of it), whereas the App Store constantly has new featured apps which are actually good. The first six months I had my Nexus 7 the "here's stuff you might like for your tablet" section didn't change.

I quite like my Nexus 7 and am considering switching to Android for my next phone now that I've found a few apps that I can bear using (and some of them are actually well designed to boot), but apart from automatic updating, the Play Store is not one of the attractions.

Err, why would swiping to the left go back? This isn't a standard UI pattern in Android at all, and honestly I don't think it even makes any sense. The back button always takes you back to your search results in my experience, I don't know what else it would take you to.

Hrm, apologies. I was at work and didn't have my Nexus on me. With the back button description I was mixing up its behaviour with the other back button (the one at the top left with the 'back' arrow). That's the one that dumps you out of your search results and back to the main category. I'm not sure if it's because I'm primarily an iOS user that I expect the '<' indicator next to it to mean "go back to the last thing you looked at".

The swiping thing was referring to the category pop-out in the main sections (Apps etc) which makes it feel like it should do something else. In retrospect I probably should have waited until I had gotten home and double checked whether what I remembered was correct before commenting. Having a flip through it, the store is less awful than it was last time I paid it any serious attention - having a decent stable of usable apps I haven't had much cause to go looking for new stuff lately.

Plus they've now got that single sign-in feature which does make the installing process better. And you can download apps from the browser, rather than iTunes, meaning you can use any computer.

The Play Store has gotten a LOT better. There was a time when I routinely did a Google web search of:

<terms> site:play.google.com (or, earlier, site:market.android.com)

as opposed to using the store's own search interface. Now I only do that when I'm looking for something the store will filter out (wrong device type, wrong country, etc.). I suspect the web search is still a bit better, but closing to the point where it is usually not worth the hassle is still a big step.

That being said, I'm surprised this has been such an issue, for either store. I'd have thought making sure your search results are better than a blind web search would be a standard thing to look at.

I agree with your sentiment but be factually accurate if you've looked at the iOS 6 App Store on day one it would differ in a plethora of small details then the one we have now.

You might be right but until there is actual confirmation from Apple that they perform data-driven experiments to improve the App Store, based upon the many glaring problems that have been left unfixed for years I have to assume there isn't anybody at the switch performing legitimate experiments to drive these design changes.

This is part of the reason I'd started Sensor Tower, as the app store is very hard to succeed in from the developer's perspective.