With over 125,000 iPhone apps available in the App Store, you happen to miss out on pretty amazing apps quite often.
To help us out in this, Apple introduced the 'Genius' app recommedation tool back in September of this year. While it did make discovery of iPhone app easier, it is still far from perfect.
Here is where a newly released iPhone app, Appsaurus comes into picture. The app claims to run on a superior algorithm over Apple's Genius, which helps the software to make more relevant app recommendations. Users installing the app are initially provided a list moderately popular iPhone apps. You then let your likes and dislikes known by either tapping or swiping the apps on the list. When you tap on an app that you like, you are shown a new list of iPhone apps that are relevant to the original app that you indicated to have liked. Similarly, when you swipe on apps to indicate your dislike, these are noted and other similar apps do not make it to your recommendation list henceforth.
In case you do not have a clue about an iPhone app being recommended, you can tap on the arrow sign beside the app name on the list to be provided with app description and screenshots. Also, for users looking for specific kinds of apps, Appsaurus provides a custom search tool to find apps based on price, keyword and category. You may then browse through other similar apps using the same like/dislike method.
Our test with the app offered extremely satisfying results. However, the precision of its recommendations have been hindered due to Apple's decision to not let App Store reviews and ratings be used within third party apps. According to Luke Iannini, the Co-founder of the company that developed Appsaurus, the developers were forced to modify their original code that used App store ratings in their recommendation algorithm after the app was rejected by Apple.
Nevertheless, at $0.99, it still appears very promising. It is good to see the developer going ahead with their plans to complete development of their iPhone app even though Apple beat them to it with the Genius recommendation tool for iPhone apps. If you are interested to check it out yourself, click here (iTunes link) to purchase the app. As always, please do tell us your feedback about the app in the comments section below.
[via Wired]
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