This Market is a good news BUT it seems so much like an unfinish product. That another proof of the difference in the attention to details between iOS and Android.<p>This is a screenshot of the Market from France: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/lchpI.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/lchpI.jpg</a><p>Half the page is in the french, half the page is in english and IMO the worst is the "~" before the price (they convert $/€ so it's ROUGH price wtf! ). The website doesnt feel that it can be trust IMO if you look to it like a John Doe.<p>This is definitely a step in the good direction but please Google please polish a little more your android products so that they appeal the masses!!
Just happened to go to the Chrome Web Store, and suddenly thought, why didn't they just imitate this layout? Of course they had different teams, but their own Chrome Web Store's layout beats this Android one by a mile.<p>Link for comparison: <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore</a><p>Just a thought.
The bigger news from the announcement, to me, was that in-app purchases are promised "soon".<p>EDIT: docs here --- <a href="http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://developer.android.com/guide/market/billing/index.html</a>
Very clean and simple overall. The green and white make it feel a bit XBox to me, but that's neither here nor there.<p>The details page probably needs some tweaking. The Related column takes up way too much space and shouldn't be on the left side commanding so much immediate attention. That should come visually last in the flow of what the user is looking for on this page. The main column with details, images and reviews thus feels awkwardly scrunched, particularly with the thin About This App column seeming haphazardly floated right. The worst is the lightbox function when enlarging an image, which forces me to click the small X button to close the lightbox, rather than being able to click in any dead space.<p>But overall, I think it's fantastic this is finally available and a great first iteration.
Not only is the store 8 months late (announced at Google IO last May), it's buggy and I can't log in. I'm not quite sure what took Google so long to get the store up and running, but it's been really frustrating to wait this long for it.
I like it, and it's certainly about time. What's going to happen to AppBrain, etc now? They were definitely filling a niche and now will be forced to compete with the source.
Overall great marketplace.<p>One feature that would be nice would be the inability to hide applications that don't work on your device (as is done in the android market) I've gotten all excited for certain apps only to be told they can't be installed on my phone.<p>Also needs to discriminate better between 'install' and 'installed'; perhaps with colors or just outright hiding installed apps
A big problem I see is the focus on popular apps, instead of a mix of new apps, curated lists, etc. The home page solely focuses on top and popular apps, just like category pages. This might not be good for new apps to enter the system and get discovered through the market
First thoughts.
Seems neat.
Cannot login.
Some useful details listed - last update date, minimum android version.
much easier to browse the reviews than on the mobile version.
search has spell-corrector.
related apps listed on details screen. useful.
Quality is definitely lacking compared to the App Store in a number of ways.<p>I wonder if the poor quality stems from the fact that Android is probably not even paying for itself internally at google and they don't properly account for all the mobile web traffic it brings to google.com, so the team size is really small right now. This is certainly not the place for using the whole "beta for 5 years" concept because the competition is already polished.
Is it just me or do the product "posters" look really pixelated? Like they were done at 3/4 the resolution and then scaled up to what they're at on the screen (64x64?).
Google has kept a record of all of the apps that you have downloaded over the life of your Google account. What does that mean?
If you loose your phone and need to re-populate it you know what you had. Nice, paid apps as of now will re-download after a few clicks. I have not found a easy way to re-populate my android with the unpaid apps, hopefully that is coming soon.<p>Update; You can remotely updated apps from your computer: Awesome.
We should take a breath and mark this day as when Google fully jumped into the mobile app business. Apart from giving Android apps the visibility they deserve, this site will be a great boon for the in-market app rankings, since Google can now use their magical web ranking algorithms to rank apps using the rankings of their corresponding pages. Brilliant.
So, is this meant to be accessed from only Android devices? Is there a use for using it through Chrome on a desktop? Would I be able to purchase an app from my desktop, at which point my Android phone would (potentially) automatically download and install the app?
A rather big problem in my browser: on any given page of apps, the entire bottom row shows only icons; the "buy" buttons are cut off no matter what font size or zoom I use.<p>So basically, they make 4 apps per page impossible to purchase due to shoddy web design.
The lot of icons are pixelated (upscaled maybe) and not very good to see. Take a look at the Angry Bird one for example:<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15741404/ab-as.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15741404/ab-as.jpg</a>
I also got the invalid request error. I just watched the Honeycomb event, and am boggled that Google can't be bothered to hire decent graphic designers. The icons and general feeling on Android looks unpolished compared to my iOS devices. The app prices on Android market seem to be x2 what they are on iOS. I've probably spent 100 bucks on apps on my iPad/iPod touch. Money spent on apps for my Nexus One (shitty phone) and Nexus S so far: $0.<p>I also don't understand why they need a web store. I buy apps on my iOS devices all the time. Is the point that general usability on Android devices is so bad that you need to use a desktop to purchase apps that will then get transferred to your mobile device??