iPad Apps Buzz

Another one bites the dust: The body count rises for poor iPad apps

Another rushed iPad app bit the dust today – the St George banking application was pulled from the iPad app store. While parts of it were good, looking at the core banking part, it’s not hard to see why.

The main app screen has an attractive coverflow-based selection of the services they offer and a Google Maps integrated store finder. Initially it’s not a bad app at all.

But when you click the button to do your banking, there’s no attractive in-app banking but rather, your browser opens to reveal the same site you could have manually navigated to.

Purpose of the app? We’re not sure either. And it’s possible St George agrees, with the app having just disappeared off the App Store.

It’s surprising to see such an oversight when the main competitor app NAB while flawed, has exactly this feature. What’s going on, St George?

You can see the offending feature here in the St George iPad commerical (yes, there’s a commercial):

And what was the first casualty of here today, gone tomorrow rush job apps? I was sitting on twitter last night to see @decryption (of Mactalk internet-fame) ranting about The Age’s iPad app. This decryption chap doesn’t mince words:

I declare The Age app the worst iPad app ever. Absolutely horrible user experience. You couldn’t have fucked it up any worse if you tried.

Really? That bad? Actually yes.

For those not in Melbourne, Australia, The Age is one of our major newspapers so this isn’t some shonky garage effort we’re talking about here. Purchasing a subscription doesn’t occur in-app as you’d expect. A similar ‘browser-will-fix-everything’ approach as with St George is taken, throwing you out to Safari just to pay them.

The Age app shares another point in common with the St George app. It is temporarily deceased having been pulled from the iPad App Store also last night. Again from @decryption:

It seems that The Age app has been pulled, hahah.

Well said. Another one bites the dust.

To play devil’s advocate briefly, we congratulate Fairfax and St George for having the sense to pull bad iPad user experiences before they spread too far. Learning from your mistakes is a good way to get customers and if you come out with a vastly improved in-app experience, we’ll certainly be first in line!

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