Updates: Hearst shows a lack of App Store etiquette; American Airlines adds new features to mobile app, while British Airways show how to write an app description

The management team at Hearst magazines must be sadists, because they continue to appear to enjoy inflicting pain on their digital readers through double charging and releasing buggy apps. But then again, maybe their are masochists, because they seem to enjoy getting slammed by their readers inside the App Store, seemingly going out of their way to do things that bring on one-star reviews.

Late last week the media company updated its iOS app editions, but continue to insult their readers by failing to tell them what the app updates are for. Instead, the app descriptions contain this copy:

Thanks to our readers who have provided feedback on the Cosmo app! Based on your feedback, we have developed this new version to ensure you have the best reading experience. Please update now, and keep the comments coming.

No fear, their readers are happy to oblige.

"The update doesn't fix the problem. I paid 3.99$ for a magazine I can't view, it's just a black screen," wrote on of several irate readers inside the App Store.

For the most part, the Hearst magazine apps are the lowest rated inside the store. The main problem is that Hearst continues to charge all readers for the digital editions, even if the reader is already a print subscriber. But Hearst is not alone in this policy, so why are their apps so badly rated?

Well, bugs and crashes don't help. But I think it is the attitude the company has, as seen in its app description copy, that is at the root of the problem. The app description reads as if the company simply doesn't care, that it is oblivious to the problems their apps have. Honest copy writing would certainly help the situation – simply say what you are fixing, and explain your pricing policy. Not everyone will agree, and no doubt many of the one-star reviews will continue. But Hearst may be surprised to find that honesty will be enough to win over a few others, and most importantly, will prevent others from canceling their subscriptions.

American Airlines and British Airlines both issued late last week. The AA mobile app, simply called American Airlines, adds some interesting new features to an app that already has some pretty cool ones.

The app update now will re-direct the user for check-in on British Airways and Iberia, AA's two partners. The app will also show the customer's drink coupon if purchased at the time of their reservation. The update also fixed some important bugs concerning upgrades.

As for the British Airways app, its app description takes the polar opposite approach to app description writing than does Hearst. It's "What's New" copy is extensive, really extensive.

It, too, contains some marketing language, but it also contains important details about the changes in its app.

BA not only includes the changes seen in the latest update, but also includes the changes seen in the previous update. This allows them to review important additions and fixes seen in that update in order to encourage users to go ahead and press that "update" button.

And that, folks, is why you include details in app descriptions, to encourage downloads.

Apple updates iTunes to 11.0.1, locks in design changes that are making many small developers howl in protest

The development community that made the Apple App Store a huge success is voicing its disapproval of moves made by Apple that are designed to benefit larger developers and increase sales overall at the expense of small, independent developers – and developers are letting Apple know about it by complaining in the Apple developer forums.

Over the weekend Apple released a small update to its iTunes software, that some developers hoped would reverse a change that they believe is resulting in a sharp fall in their app sales.

As part of the app description, Apple mentioned its new store design:

• A New Store. The iTunes Store has been complete redesigned and now features a clean look that makes it simpler than ever to see what's hot and discover new favorite.

The change in question eliminates the "All" area, where new apps showed up and were seen first by shoppers. A new app would enter this area upon release and every app could be found here, sorted by release date.

Now, with the redesign, the "All" area was eliminated from every category and now Apple uses the entire App Store to promote apps its thinks buyers will want. Unless the buyer knows the name of the app, it is now impossible to find a new app unless Apple chooses to promote it.

And while the App Store may be "cleaner", it now wastes most of the space, so justifying the change based on aesthetics seems a bit dishonest.

"I don't mind Apple giving some special treat to the big guys," wrote one developer on the Apple developer forum. "If I spent a million on marketing my app and it didn't get some special attention by Apple, I'd be peed."

"But - I don't think that this approach necessarily has to exclude giving some attention to small indie devs. Why not have a category for New Releases in addition to those pushing big guys; or, heck, even a Random list of apps that picks 100 apps randomly or something like that."

Others pointed out that the move does not help buyers either, as it now makes it harder for buyers to find new apps, those that have been recently been released and would be of interest.

"The appstore is going die a natural death because the average customer is going to get tired seeing the same "Big Apps" in their faces all the time vs having the option to see new innovative item releases like good ole days!" wrote a developer.

Not everyone is upset with the changes, explaining that the only way a developer could make an app a success was to market the app outside the store. But all seem to agree that the move by Apple may force shoppers to go elsewhere to find apps. If the Apple App Store redesign makes it nearly impossible to actually find what you are looking for – unless Apple itself promotes the app – then buyers will be forced to look at third party sites in order to understand what is actually in the App Store.

"If the innovative new apps start regularly marketing themselves outside the App store somewhere, that's where the users who need a novelty fix will start looking for them," wrote a developer. "There's still too much money in the long tail to completely kill the App Store, unless some other platform steps up significantly."

But ultimately the problem here for Apple is that in one big move they have destroyed the loyalty and trust of many small and independent developers. Possibly worse is the fact that while a simple change in the store would satisfy the complaints of developers, the idea that Apple would intentional inflict a harmful change to the developers that made the store a success, all in the name of promoting the big developers, has many small developers questioning their loyalty to the platform.

Note: Many developers and vendors even today remain unaware of the changes to the App Store that will effect new apps. One person at a major digital publishing platform company said he did not know of the changes, and in fact did not see them on his machine because he had not updated his software. Upon seeing the changes he became concerned because he felt the changes would discourage some clients from launching new apps.

A multi-platform approach to digital publishing always made sense; but thanks to the redesigned app stores, it is now absolutely essential

When it was announced that The Daily would fold a lot of poorly thought out  commentaries hit the web that tried to explain why the tablet-only newspaper failed. One of the theories was that tablet-only publications simply can not succeed.

Since I've never been an advocate of anything-only publishing, the idea that a publication would only reside inside a tablet app never had much appeal to me. But the changes to the Apple App Store, and the way both Google Play and Amazon.com work, makes me even more sure that to succeed on a tablet one better try and succeed online, as well.

The accountants are taking over

But before we move on to tablet strategy and online publishing, let me make a comment on what may be happening in the big app stores.

Have you gone to Target or another big retailer and wondered why there are 100 boxes of the same brand of toothpaste on the shelf when it would make sense to you if the retailer put half that number of the same product on the shelf and left the rest of the space for something else? Well, if so, you're not thinking like a retailer.

For big retailers, limiting the number of products reduces costs. But the real key is that the retailer knows, through their own research, that if they put 100 of the same brand's product on the shelf they will do sell more in that category than if they had far less of that brand and had more space dedicated to other brands.

There are limits to how much of this you can get away with. But you can see the thinking behind Apple getting rid of space dedicated to new apps, and handing that space over to big brands like People Magazine or Time. Apple knows it will sell more People subscriptions over time than that start-up tablet-only magazine. (But really, couldn't Apple at least put a button on the page that links to "All" apps in a category?)

But we are now in a world where the big tech companies have become like the big retailers, letting the number crunchers rule the roost. The result is that it is becoming harder and harder for new products to get noticed. Rather than redesigning their stores to make it easier to find something, they've made it hard – on purpose.

That means it will be harder for tablet magazine like Project Magazine (the app icon seen at the top of this story) to be found in the App Store in the future.

But it also means that those tablet magazine start-ups that are supported by a robust website - like TNW's tablet edition – will have a big advantage.

The problem, as any print circulation manager can tell you, is that browsing titles has been eliminated or greatly reduced in the app stores.

On a physical newsstand there are two battles to be fought. The first is getting on the newsstand to begin with, this is the hard part. Later, there is the fight to get positioned better on that newsstand. The first part means you can have some sales (since not being on the newsstand precludes any single copy sales). But better positioning will greatly increase those single copy sales.

Now, start-ups will have to depend exclusively on their own marketing of their tablet editions until they can get the attention of Apple or Google – then they can get a little space on the shelf of the app store. Until then their apps are in the storage room hoping someone searches for it.

Apple App Store design changes may result in new publication app launches coming to a screeching halt

Apple just can't seem to stop shooting itself in the foot, and maybe this time the wound will be fatal. Over the past few days, maybe weeks, Apple has slowly been rolling out a redesign of the App Store that eliminates the area where a consumer would find "All" the apps in that category, sorted by release date. Instead, the consumer would continue to find the "New and Noteworthy" area, which has never been where the newest apps could be found, but is simply an area where Apple features apps it likes and that are somewhat new.

Category by category the "All" area was eliminated. By yesterday it still existed in Newsstand, but this morning it was gone from Newsstand, as well.

At first I thought this was simply a design mistake, surely Apple isn't telling developers of new apps to take a hike, are they? But with the elimination of the "All" area of Newsstand it looks like this was a strategic decision – Apple will tell its customers what is available, and new apps will have to be marketed aggressively outside the App Store so that they eventually gain the attention of Apple so that they are included in their featured areas.

I've been working on this issue all week, simply too disbelieving that Apple would be so stupid. The iOS platform has succeeded because of developer support, how could it continue to dominate without the developer community? I think we'll soon find out.

So how did I find these two recently released apps for Filmmaker Magazine and Direct Selling Insider, two new Newsstand apps released in the last 48 hours? I went into the Canadian App Store, where the changes have not yet been rolled out.

For someone like me, who writes about the newest tablet editions and mobile apps, this is a major inconvenience, but one I can probably find work-arounds for. There are RSS feeds for new apps, and monitoring services.

But for someone thinking of launching a new tablet edition, for all the vendors out there trying to sell their services to both commercial publishers and would-be publishers, this is Armageddon. If the App Store is essentially shutting itself off to new apps and new developers, at least those without the financial muscle to market their apps, there is no market for new digital magazine inside the Apple ecosystem.

"When I noticed the change I found it pretty aggravating," a person who works at a digital publishing company told me this morning. "I used to use the app store for prospecting to find new customers, if you see a new app then maybe they are looking for a new platform, something that will work before for them."

This is a problem that also exists with Android with Google Play, but it hasn't come to the forefront because Android tablets have not yet reached any level of market penetration that would make this an issue.

But the Kindle Fire is growing in popularity so at Amazon this is far more important. Amazon's online store is more friendly to finding new apps and new magazines than Google Play (and now the Apple App Store), but only somewhat. There is a sort mechanism labelled "New and Popular" but this is pretty worthless for finding the newest entries – after all, something released just recently simply can't be "popular" and "new" at the same time. Because of this the first magazine app listed is People, which was released over a month ago.

But there is a way to pull up the apps released in the past 30 days, this is somewhat helpful for finding newish apps, but it is a crap shoot.

The problem with developing for Amazon products, however, is that their developer program is not good, and they are becoming very restrictive in what they are accepting into the store.

If Apple insists on its new policy I can not think of a single policy decision that would influence a developer's thinking about how to launch a new digital magazine. Prior to today a media app developer knew that their app would be hard to find, but at least for a few days, maybe a week, their app would show up under New. Now that one place where all apps are created equal has been eliminated from the U.S. App Store.

Southwest Airlines updates its iPhone app but skips on Passbook integration

Southwest Airlines this afternoon issued an update to its iOS mobile app that features quite a number of new features or tweaks. But it is what is missing that some early reviews inside the App Store are noticing: the update does not include integration of Passbook.

In some ways this may become the norm, as many companies are beginning to wonder if Apple is serious about Passbook, or like the Apple TV, this kind of function is just a hobby, something launched because people expected Apple to come up with something if it wasn't going to include NFC.

In the past, Apple would generally launch its own app that would showcase a new function, but that is a little hard with Passbook.

Nonetheless, it is still strange to see an airline pass on Passbook, it was one of the most obvious uses for Passbook. The other is movie tickets, but as I've seen in my own use, a lot of movie theaters have not yet adopted scannable tickets at all, so Passbook is just one more scannable solution they have not invested in. Even Starbucks, another obvious example of a use for Passbook, did not adopt Passbook until a short while ago – but then again, they just recently updated their app to add support for iPhone 5, as well. Not everyone, it seems, jumps whenever Apple does an iOS update!

Back to the subject of the post: the updated Southwest Airlines iPhone app does come with quite a number of changes. Here is what the app description has to say:

What's New in Version 1.11

Rapid Rewards Customers can now log into their accounts to book flights using points, make Companion Pass bookings, access saved trips & much more. See complete list of new enhancements included in this release below:

1.Book & modify flights using Rapid Rewards points
2.Modify search during air booking process
3.View & book flights using saved trips
4.Book flights using promo certificates
5.Make Companion Pass bookings & add Companion Pass passengers to existing bookings
6.View all eligible Rapid Rewards promotions

Within the Upcoming Trips section of the Rapid Rewards account, you can now also do the following:

•Save frequent trips
•Check flight status & set up notifications
•Add a car
•Add Companion Pass passengers to bookings
•View existing car & hotel reservations
•Change & cancel existing air reservations
•Add EarlyBird Check-In to existing air reservations

'Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays' brings theatre lovers six decades of British theatre history

The theatre, the theatre, what's happened to the theatre? (Hey, it's Christmas season so why not start a post with a quote from White Christmas?)

Well, if you want to know what's happened to the theatre* in the U.K. you now have a brilliant new app thanks to The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays is one of those tablet apps that makes you wonder exactly what those tech writers are talking about when they dismiss tablet publishing. Are they downloading apps like this one? Probably not.

Built using the Mag+ digital publishing platform, this iPad app presents six decades of British theatre history – from 1945 to 2010 – and is filled with a ton of photography, audio and video content. The free app lets you sample the material, but a theatre lover will want to download the complete app, which when loaded on your iPad will take up a bit over 800 MB of spacer. The cost is $11.99 and is an in-app purchase. That price might seem steep by app standards, but have you gone to the theatre lately?

The app is introduced by Simon Callow – American audiences will recognize him immediately from the films Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love, though he has long and distinguished career in the theatre having been appointed a 'Commander of the Order of the British Empire' for his services to acting in 1999.

"The app gives the V&A an opportunity not only to expand our audience, but to bring together our vast collections of photographic stills, audio-visual material and production photographs. All this is viewable in extraordinary detail, and in just a few simple swipes," said Malcolm Sutherland, responsible for digital projects and apps at the V&A.

The press announcement for the app from Mag+ gives an idea of what you will find inside:

• over 600 images, including the work of acclaimed theatre photographer Douglas H Jeffery
• embedded videos
• audio clips and narration by the plays’ original cast members and other actors
• click-through web browsing critic interviews
• unique essays written by V&A experts
• original first night reviews from the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers
• original cast lists and interviews with cast members
• long-form pages dedicated to each play

"We want to encourage more heritage organizations to capture new opportunities and new audiences through digital publishing," said Gregg Hano, CEO of Mag+. "The V&A has discovered that experimenting with Mag+ to create iPad apps not only produce beautiful results to be proud of, but gives more freedom, without the burden of costly resources."

The app is to be found in the Education category, but it would feel comfortable in Books (and Entertainment, too, I would think).

* For the sake of consistency, I chosen the British spelling of theatre. I thought about spelling it both ways randomly in this post just to mess with TNM readers, but then thought better of it.

---

This walk-through video is a bit different. Because so much material is contained this app, a description of what you will find seemed insufficient, and a standard two minute video would not do, either.

So, instead, what you'll see here is the promotional video from Mag+ that quickly tours the app, followed by a closer look at just a small – tiny, really – portion of the app.

Played in Britain is one of those app, like Above & Beyond: George Steinmetz or The History of Jazz, which showcases what the tablet platform can do.

For those looking into the Mag+ platform for use themselves, this is an app that will make an art director's jaw drop and ask "you can do that?"