Today Appricot released Appidemia, an application guide for iOS that helps you find new software to play with, and keep track of what your friends are using. It has the added quality of being one of the prettiest applications I’ve used on any phone.
Once a platform expands past a certain size, the sheer scale of its app catalog can become ponderous. How the heck do you find what you need? iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and so forth all struggle with this issue. I’d say that anything more than 10,000 applications becomes messy. Messy in the best possible sense, of course, given that more choice is not a bad thing in this case. You do, however, need a way to cut through the chaff.
Appidemia is an attempt at solving that problem. It’s designed for someone who takes their phone experience seriously, so if you merely dabble, you won’t have a use for it. But, if you want to dig past Instagram, Facebook, and Lyft, you might find something worth using.
Appidemia depends on your social connections to bring you some recommendations; what your friends use could be a strong signal as to what you might like to use, as well. Inside Appidemia, you can click that you use one app or the next. Your set of apps sits in your profile, so if we link up in the app itself, I can check out what you use.
When you first join the service, it suggests that you follow a few people who work at the company. This gives you a feed of activity to dig through when you get started. Given how new Appidemia is, I doubt you will have a friend who also uses the service if you give it a spin.
However, as I’m not looking for another social network to tinker with — my love affair with Twitter persists — I found Appidemia’s search function to be the most compelling part of it service. Its search feature is far superior to what Apple offers inside of the App Store on-phone tool. Here’s a shot of how it works:
Appidemia caught my eye precisely because it’s not something that I would have thought of using. When it comes to mobile applications, I am the opposite of a connoisseur. So, I wanted to better understand the application marketplace, and the way to do that is to dig through it.
Appidemia’s search technology and its user interface are its strong points. I would argue that the social component of the service could be de-emphasized, at least until it has more market penetration. And, frankly, I don’t care what apps you use. I just want to filter through the most popular book apps to make sure that I’ve heard of them all. Turns out there are more comic-book-related apps than I knew. Now you know, too.
Give Appidemia a spin if you want to get your hands dirty and find some new apps to use. But if you don’t want to see another damn app on your phone, close your laptop screen and slowly walk away.
Top Image Credit: Market Manager
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