That's the point of the article- those are known tradeoffs we made.
Search is important! That's why it's going to be in the first update. However, it's not core to the app. We can draw out 90% of peoples' searches in collections, categories, and authors. I know we have 90% coverage, because I have the stats from our iPhone app. We get blasted with a bunch of one stars from people who want search. We get a lot of five stars from people who like browsing normally. We ship an update, we get a lot of five stars from everyone.
The reason we spent 80% of the time designing the browsing interface interface is because it isn't the 20% interface. It is the 80% interface. Most people don't spend lots of time searching, they search a couple times for things they specifically want, then they browse the rest of the time.
This might not be the case for you- but, in the first version, I don't care if you like it. I don't care in the first version if anyone specifically likes it. I care that we build an app that satisfies 80% of people based on known priorities and known stats, and then and only then do we start building the features that everyone else wants.
Very well said. Now that you are #27 you can add the extra features needed to keep the app at the top. The important thing was getting it up there and on people's iPads in the first place.
Also for iPad and iPhone apps sometimes interface is more important than functionality. The majority of users want apps that look pretty.
Apologies, my review may have come off a little harsh. I'm not in the habit of giving 1 star to apps that are included launch day when I know the developer didn't have a physical iPad to test on.
In fact I haven't rated your app yet. What I usually do is wait a week or two until the first update before reviewing/rating.
Of course, not all customers know or even care how the software development lifecycle works.
No worries at all- you're right! As a user, there's a ton of problems with the app, so if you want to search it's totally a one star app right now. I'm was just trying to point out the reasoning from a business/product perspective, which is usually the context of HN conversations.
If you emailed our support email I'd apologize for not having book deletion, and that we know how dumb it is to not have it, but we wanted to be careful in our first update without iPads to test on. Here, I'll explain the actual reasoning behind not having stuff.
Definitely check out the app in another week or so, though, we'll be rocking through the problems in the app in short order. We already have the code written in our iPhone app, it's just a matter of creating the interfaces.
Search is important! That's why it's going to be in the first update. However, it's not core to the app. We can draw out 90% of peoples' searches in collections, categories, and authors. I know we have 90% coverage, because I have the stats from our iPhone app. We get blasted with a bunch of one stars from people who want search. We get a lot of five stars from people who like browsing normally. We ship an update, we get a lot of five stars from everyone.
The reason we spent 80% of the time designing the browsing interface interface is because it isn't the 20% interface. It is the 80% interface. Most people don't spend lots of time searching, they search a couple times for things they specifically want, then they browse the rest of the time.
This might not be the case for you- but, in the first version, I don't care if you like it. I don't care in the first version if anyone specifically likes it. I care that we build an app that satisfies 80% of people based on known priorities and known stats, and then and only then do we start building the features that everyone else wants.
In this case, that included search.