AppShopper

If you’ve been browsing through the offerings in the Mac App Store on AppShopper, you may have noticed that screenshots are not visible in the individual app listings. We obtain all of the app information shown on AppShopper directly from Apple and these screenshots are missing from the feed provided by Apple for some unknown reason.

We have reached out to Apple about this issue and a fix is on the way. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

A few months ago, we had to make some changes to the iOS app information shown on AppShopper to comply with Apple’s policy on pulling information from the App Store. At that time, Apple’s policy specified that certain information, including app ratings, could not be pulled from the App Store and this feature was removed from AppShopper. However, Apple has recently adjusted the App Store information available for public use and app ratings have returned to AppShopper!

Average rating information is now shown in search results and in each individual app listing near the bottom of the page:

• FreeBuy Now
  Utilities
  

  AppShopper

  Last Changed:

  12 weeks ago

  Rating:

  4.50 (159)

  Version:

  1.4.3

  iOS Universal

  The official AppShopper.com app from the creators of TouchArcade.com AppShopper keeps you up to date on the newest App Store apps, sales and freebies. Organize apps in your own customized Wish List...

The rating reflects the actual App Store user ratings for the current version of each app.

A few months ago, we had to make some changes to the iOS app information shown on AppShopper to comply with Apple’s policy on pulling information from the App Store. A side effect of that effort was the loss of the “What’s New” data indicating the changes in the last update in each app listing. We expected that this information would return to AppShopper and we’re happy to announce today that it has!

When you view an individual app listing on AppShopper, you’ll see information provided by the developer under What’s New beneath the general description. This information already appears for many of the apps updated within the past few days but is still propagating across the site for the more than 300,000 apps in the App Store shown on AppShopper and will take a day or so to complete.

The What’s New information will also be visible in the official AppShopper app.

If you need support or have any suggestions for AppShopper, please email us at support@appshopper.com.

• FreeBuy Now
  Utilities
  

  AppShopper

  Last Changed:

  12 weeks ago

  Rating:

  4.50 (159)

  Version:

  1.4.3

  iOS Universal

  The official AppShopper.com app from the creators of TouchArcade.com AppShopper keeps you up to date on the newest App Store apps, sales and freebies. Organize apps in your own customized Wish List...

We’re happy to announce that Mac OS applications in the Mac App Store that launched earlier this month are now included on AppShopper. As with iOS apps, you can now browse and track Mac apps on AppShopper, including adding them to your Wish List and receiving email notifications of price drops and updates.

A new toggle in the upper left hand corner lets you switch between iOS and Mac apps, and all Mac apps are clearly labeled “Mac OS” next to the version number.

A toggle to select Mac, iOS, and All apps will be added soon to sort searches and the My Apps and Wish List tabs.

RSS feeds for Mac apps will be added shortly to the sidebar on the right on the What’s New tab though these will only represent some of the RSS feeds available. Any combination of the filters in What’s New can be chosen, and the corresponding RSS feed link is displayed in the upper right corner.

The Mac App Store is still quite new and doesn’t have nearly as many apps as the iOS App Store. As of this post, there are just over 1,300 apps in the Mac App Store compared to more than 300,000 iPhone and iPad apps in the iOS App Store. While we don’t expect the Mac App Store to experience the same kind of massive growth that the iOS App Store has in the past 2 1/2 years, we’re sure there will soon be no shortage of Mac apps to suit a wide range of needs in the Mac App Store.

If you use our official AppShopper iOS app, note that Mac Apps will not be visible within the app. Also, our importer tools for the Mac and Windows will only import iOS app information from your computer to your AppShopper account at this time.

Apple launched the Mac App Store last week. It seeks to replicate the massive success of the iOS App Store with Apple’s desktop machines. The Mac App Store carries a very similar structure to the iOS App Store, so it should come as no surprise that we are planning on supporting it here on AppShopper.

The Mac App Store is at its infancy right now, so the volume is significantly less. In fact, here’s a list of all new apps launched on the Mac App Store yesterday:

New Mac Apps on 1/11/2011

- Playwatch
- FileMyFiles
- Foodurama
- RightClickMP3
- Vault
- FaceTop – Facebook Photo Downloader
- Clemenza’s Notepad for Mac
- Fireplace (Yule Log) HD
- Witch
- Big Mountain Snowboarding
- Tiles
- Cleopatra: a Queen’s Destiny
- GrowlVoice
- Acupoints Ultimate
- Braid
- Chickens vs. Weasils
- uBoot – submarine game
- Aa Match Preschool Alphabet (Free)
- Postbox
- Ohm’s Law Calculator
- GeekBench 2
- QuickPick
- DocScanner
- Backdrop (Free)
- FolderWatch
- Dracula Series : La Voie du Dragon – Episode 1
- Battle Bears – 1 Mac
- Let’s Golf HD

In contrast, about 600 new apps in the iOS App Store over the same time period. Regardless, even with the lower volume, we still find it hard to discover new apps or app changes through the App Store interface. That’s why we created AppShopper, and we hope Mac support to be implemented very soon.

Yesterday we noted some recent changes to the AppShopper site and we wanted to highlight a free tool to help you keep track of your current apps. Importer applications for both Mac and Windows users are available – the Importer will pull the complete list of apps you already own from iTunes on your computer into your AppShopper profile.

You can download the Importer tool from the following links:

- AppShopper Importer 1.0.3 (Mac)
- AppShopper Importer 1.0.3 (Windows)

The Importer will pull only the names of apps from your iTunes library and nothing else. The application will ask you to log in to your AppShopper account to get started. If you don’t already have an account, you can create one here (accounts are free).

As we also mentioned yesterday, you can rate the apps you own in the My Apps tab by clicking on the star that best represents your opinion of the app as shown in the screenshot below:

We’ll be working to aggregate this rating data and make it accessible to all AppShopper users.

Regular users of the site may have noticed some changes to the site over the past day or so. Unfortunately, we’ve have to remove a couple of features from the site.

- App listings presently have no App Store “rating” associated with them.
- “What’s New” text is no longer available for updates.

The lack of the official App Store rating is due to our effort to stay in compliance with Apple’s policy on pulling data from the App Store. At their request, we will no longer be pulling the official App Store ratings for AppShopper. A side effect has been that we’ve also lost the “What’s New” data for now. That data, however, we still hope will return in the near future.

Readers should note that we do have plans to replace that rating data in useful and interesting ways. AppShopper users have long been able to rate owned apps under the MyApps tab. It’s a feature we’ve had for some time, but one we haven’t promoted. We will be making it easier for you to rate your own apps, and aggregating that data for everyone’s benefit.

As a first step to make that easier, here are links to importer tools that allow you to seed your MyApps list automatically from your home computer:

Download Links for AppShopper Importer

- AppShopper Importer 1.0.3 (Mac)
- AppShopper Importer 1.0.3 (Windows)

Finally, we are also working on integrating 3rd party review site ratings and review links into our listings to provide additional perspectives on Apps.

All in all, there’s a lot of work being done behind the scenes here at AppShopper, and over the next few weeks to months, there should be some nice improvements seen.

The official AppShopper app has been updated with a several new features, including the ability to remove ads via an in-app purchase, iOS 4.2 compatbility and more. Our official app was first released in September and received its last update adding push notifications just last month.

The universal app allows you to browse all of our current AppShopper filters (Categories, All/Popular, Paid/Free, New/Price Drops/Updates) and also gives you access to your own personal Wish List and Own List. You can choose to receive push notifications when there are updates or price changes in both lists.

The full list of new features and changes in version 1.3 is as follows:

• In app purchase option to remove ads (iPhone/iPod touch only)
• Added settings to block specific categories, select a specific country/currency, and block non-Western language apps
• Popular and What’s New filters are now independent of each other
• Improved warnings and dialogs when device is in airplane mode
• iOS 4.2 tested
• Various bug fixes and improvements

Removing ads via in-app purchase costs $.99. The AppShopper app itself is free to download and use.

In case you missed it, the AppShopper.com Importer is available and will import the complete list of apps you already own from iTunes on your computer to your AppShopper profile. AppShopper Importer is for the Mac only though a Windows version is in beta testing. You can download the Mac version of the application here. The importer will pull only the app names from your iTunes library and nothing else. The application will ask you to log in to your AppShopper account to get started. If you don’t already have an account, you can create one here (accounts are free).

• FreeBuy Now
  Utilities
  

  AppShopper

  Last Changed:

  12 weeks ago

  Rating:

  4.50 (159)

  Version:

  1.4.3

  iOS Universal

  The official AppShopper.com app from the creators of TouchArcade.com AppShopper keeps you up to date on the newest App Store apps, sales and freebies. Organize apps in your own customized Wish List...

Apple is hosting a media event today at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time / 1:00 p.m. Eastern time at its Cupertino, California headquarters. The event is titled “Back to the Mac” and mulitple product announcements are expected, including the introduction of the next version of the Mac OS, a significantly revised MacBook Air, an updated iLife software suite, and possibly an entirely new product.

Apple will be streaming video of the event live over the internet and has posted an Events page here. The company notes the following requirements to view the video:

Streaming video requires Safari 4 or 5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Safari on iOS 3 or later.

MacRumors.com will be providing coverage of the live event (a spoiler-free page is available here). While we don’t expect any news about iOS or iOS devices, we’ll summarize today’s news for you here at AppShopper as well.

The App Store is a massive international phenomenon, and attracts Apps from all different languages. While Apple provides regional App Stores for different countries, the U.S. store still attracts a wide range of languages.

One frequent request we have received is the ability to block specific languages from the AppShopper lists. Language detection can be tricky, but we’ve now included a preference in your user profile that allows you to block Apps in non-western languages. This includes Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Russian, and a few others.

This feature is only available on the website at the moment, but will trickle into the App in the next major version. We are also working on other features to be more usable in countries outside the U.S.