I write a lot of app and game reviews and round-ups. My work covers iOS, tvOS, watchOS, Android and the Mac, and my various app store accounts have many hundreds of apps lurking within. When I write about a product for a ‘best of’ list, it’s because I’ve tried something that I want to recommend to people — a fairly simple concept that was for a long while the cornerstone of reviews-based journalism.

Today, something really hit home that’s been nagging at me for a long time. I was browsing my RSS feeds and chanced across a recommendation for a watchOS app that sounded really amazing. It was extremely simple, but had a use-case that would benefit a large range of people. The website reviewing it in a round-up was glowing.

I installed the app. On the iPhone, it worked well, but on Apple Watch, it was essentially broken. It didn’t do what it was supposed to do, was fundamentally flawed in terms of concept and execution, and even continued wittering away in the background to the point I had to force-close the app.

My question was how much — if at all — the app was tested before someone penned the write-up I read. And this is far from an isolated case. I now so often see apps and especially games recommended despite being objectively mediocre. But in also receiving the press releases for said products, I unlike the vast majority of readers see a flow from marketing agency to readers’ eyes.

When I mentioned this on Twitter earlier, I had a couple of quick replies. One person noted that the difference between someone rewriting a press release and providing an opinion based on testing is the difference between a bad and good writer. But the current market for journalism makes things complicated. As someone else remarked, there’s diminishing incentive to put the work in any more, and so people don’t.

That in itself is of course a big generalisation, but I’ve spent the past few years watching publications close, including two of my absolute favourites I ever got to work on: Tap! and Adam Banks’s superbly revamped MacUser. Elsewhere, belts are tightened every year, resulting in print magazine page counts falling, and rates everywhere being squeezed, leading to lower pay per item or fewer commissions for writers. But simultaneously, readers are usually unwilling to pay. Magazine circulation figures almost never rise, and ad-blockers have cut one of the remaining sources of funding for many publications.

Some magazines and sites are, naturally, still fighting the good fight, and affordable subscriptions and patron-based models offer some hope for the future; but even when asked for direct support from a publication they love, it seems a great many readers will hope someone else will plug the financial hole, and anyway there’s plenty of other stuff to read online, for free.

A couple of years back, I wrote for Stuff that we should pay for the things we love, or we’ll be left with garbage. I still believe that. But, worse, it now increasingly appears what will be left is a slew of content driven primarily by marketing rather than a writer’s experiences with it, and how will readers know any different if this is all that remains?

Given that Apple doesn’t comment on rumours, take Bloomberg’s story Apple Pursues New Search Features for a Crowded App Store with a pinch of salt. The claim is that Apple has

constructed a secret team to explore changes to the App Store, including a new strategy for charging developers to have their apps more prominently displayed

For me, the key paragraph in the story is this:

If Apple goes through with the idea, “it’s going to be huge,” said Krishna Subramanian, the co-founder of Captiv8, which helps brands market using social media. “Anything that you can do to help drive more awareness to your app, to get organic downloads, is critical.”

Subramanian is right in one sense: if Apple does this, it will be huge. It’ll be huge in eradicating any sense that the App Store is a meritocracy when it comes to app visibility.

Right now, search remains a mess, in part due to its lack of granularity regarding fields to search within. It has improved — a search for ‘Twitter’ now first returns a selection of Twitter clients rather than random apps with teams who were very good at App Store SEO — but it could be better.

My bigger concern, though, is paid placement permeating throughout the store, such as on to the entry pages a great many people use to find new apps and games. There, Apple’s ‘curation’ is uneven. I’ve been told by various American friends that ‘Editor’s Choice’ in the US is closer in meaning to ‘this is interesting’ than ‘this is amazing’, but even so, that slot is often filled with garbage, albeit garbage released by companies important to Apple from a revenue standpoint.

However, it would be hyperbole to suggest this is ubiquitous. In both apps and games, prominent positions in the App Store are very regularly given to top-notch products, many of which are by indies; Apple’s selections are on the whole pretty good. A case in point: today’s App Store highlights for games include Warbits, PKTBALL, and Chameleon Run, all of which are very much worth playing. And the first couple of entries in the smaller ‘What We’re Playing’ zone are Looty Dungeon and Shadow Bug — both of which I’d also recommend.

So should Apple veer down a paid route for search, I hope it won’t spread further. Things are hard enough for developers now, without them worrying that they’ll need the deepest of pockets, in order to even have a shot of visibility on the App Store.

I recently kicked up a fuss about Game Center:

• Game Center is still broken after six months — and that’s not good enough, Apple
• Broken Game Center issue will be resolved soon — honest, guv
• I made a video about iOS 9’s broken Game Center and you’ll never guess what happened next

If you follow the Apple or mobile gaming press, you might have heard Game Center is working again, as of the current iOS 9 beta.

I don’t usually install beta software on iOS devices, because you can’t dual-boot, and betas often have bugs and conflicts that render much of my work (testing apps and games) problematic. However, I made an exception in this case and installed iOS 9.3.2 beta 1 on my iPad Air 2.

Post-install, I immediately fired up Game Center, and although it was slow (and initially seemingly trolled me with a white screen for about five seconds), it fired into life for the first time in weeks. For the first time since last autumn, I can switch tabs within the Game Center app and access Game Center in Settings. You can see it working in a new video I uploaded to YouTube.

Now looking at the Games tab in Game Center is interesting. The system itself was clearly working in some capacity, since it lists all Game Center compatible games I’ve downloaded. However, I estimate that only one in ten has been populated with any data, and even then that only happened only sporadically. Most flatly state I have zero points and no high scores. Perhaps Game Center morphed into an ancient dial-up emulator without telling anyone.

Judging by the now 75-page Touch Arcade thread, other people seem to be finding this beta sorts the problem, across multiple devices. Only one person has so far reported an issue, and that vanished upon a restart.

So it looks like Game Center’s finally fixed. And, yes, this one does deserve a ‘finally’, given how long it’s been broken. I just hope the many devs caught in the fallout have not been hit too hard in the pocket, and also that Apple either starts being honest with itself. The company should either admit it wants nothing to do with gaming, and drop Game Center entirely (which, given Android’s rapidly improving equivalent, wouldn’t look good), or ensure from this point on the team keeps Game Center working.

Mini-G has been faffing about with an iPod touch and — whenever possible — her parents’ iPhones for some months now. If ever you need a reminder about your generation’s looming obsolescence, stick a toddler in front of a high-tech device and see them master it before they’ve even figured out how to talk. Anyway, since we’re at the point where mini-G can use apps alone (albeit supervised), I’ve made some observations.

First, I’m broadly positive about the whole screens thing. I don’t believe a kid should be glued to any kind of screen for long periods of the day, but mini-G learned how to attempt to say ‘mouth’ from Metamorphabet, and has apps that have boosted aspects of empathy and dexterity. After a session has gone on for perhaps 20 minutes, an iPhone is — typically without prompting — turned to sleep mode and returned to the relevant parent. (Elsewhere, books are read, Lego is played with, puzzles are completed, telly is watched, and wheeled walkers are driven around the kitchen as if it’s the Indy 500. So: balance.)

Secondly, however, it’s clear some developers of apps for children either haven’t tested them all that much on actual children using them on their own, or fundamentally don’t care about the user experience as it relates to said children. Here are some things developers should avoid when making apps for kids:

Ratings screens. These aren’t exactly loved in apps for adults, but it’s reasonable to include them — reviews and ratings can be important for an app’s success. But throwing up a screen along these lines on an app being used by a 20-month-old child? At best, a parent will be there and grumpily turn off the app. If not, the child will get frustrated and bounce out to the App Store. (And developers who reason very young kids do not remember their favourite apps — as in, apps that don’t annoy them — let me tell you: you are wrong.)

Long launch animations. Yes, we know you’re probably very proud of that lengthy animation you had commissioned, your company logo bouncing around like a cartoon character hopped up on sugar. But here’s the thing: no kid cares a jot. In fact, mini-G exits apps with remarkable speed if they don’t ‘do’ anything interactive. You’ve probably got two or three seconds. By all means include your intro, but make it immediately skippable with a single tap. Otherwise, you’re just this tech generation’s DVD producer.

Visible IAP. I’m not against IAP in general, not even in apps for children. Developers just need to ensure apps aren’t exploitative. However, in apps designed for children, the IAP needs to be hidden behind some kind of settings screen. I’ve seen too many apps now where you get the first bit for free, and then a kid taps on something that flings up an IAP window. Sure, they’re not going to purchase anything at that moment (well, unless they’re very tech savvy and you are asleep); but the child will get frustrated at not being able to easily exit that screen and get back to the fun parts, or when they inevitably end up back on that screen on a fairly regular basis.

Fiddly navigation. It takes time for the dexterity of young children to improve, and yet children’s apps are full of fiddly navigation elements. So make interfaces chunky. Ensure that if a kid accidentally exits to the main screen, they can continue by tapping a suitably massive button (it turns out a big Play symbol is a good one to use). If you don’t, you may find kids simply exit the app and don’t go back.

I recently wrote about Game Center — twice, in fact — and even made a video about it. But there are other areas in gaming that I feel Apple’s neglecting or overlooking, for whatever reason. The first is MFi controllers — third-party console-style gamepads that can be used with iOS devices and now also Apple TV.

The original MFi controller release was a mess. Apple seemingly didn’t understand that it was splitting the iOS ecosystem into two camps — games with or without support — and then fragmenting it further, due to offering alternate controller specs. The ‘standard’ controller has a D-pad, four face buttons, and two shoulder buttons. The ‘extended’ controller adds two more shoulder buttons and analogue sticks.

Oddly, the industry standard Start and Select buttons were omitted entirely (in favour of Pause, recently itself replaced by Menu on controllers designed for Apple TV), which I have on good authority very much annoyed several developers. (Update: Matthew Bolton adds that the “omission of click buttons on sticks” is “[a]nother pain for some ports,” while developer Filip Radelic complains that iOS lacks the means to assign controllers to specific players.)

Presumably, someone was trying to do an ‘Apple’ with controllers, particularly with the standard layout, in simplifying everything. But as far as I recall, only one company (Logitech) ever released a standard controller, everyone else plumping for the more complex option. I imagine this was confusing for consumers, even more so if they bought the Logitech, grabbed a game boasting controller support, and found they couldn’t actually control it, since the MFi controller was expecting extended controls.

That’s assuming anyone could find a compatible game in the first place, because Apple oddly broadly ignored controllers in the iTunes Store. You’d think the company would at least flag controller support on game pages (something it does on Apple TV), and also automate an App Store page listing compatible games. Instead, it’s left to third-party sites like Afterpad to pick up the slack, which is baffling.

Today, the MFi ecosystem is fairly mature, with a reasonable range of controllers. (My personal recommendation is the Nimbus, unless you’re desperate for a form-hugging option, in which case grab a Gamevice, in the knowledge it may not fit the next device you buy.) But Apple needs to do more to help.

So my first piece of low-hanging fruit for Apple and gaming is:

1. Add a section on all App Stores that lists games that are MFi controller compatible, which is automatically updated and, preferably, that itself can be searched and/or filtered by genre.

And speaking of genres, that’ll be the next bugbear I’ll be addressing in this series.