Appreciate Personal App Market – personalized Android app recommendations
by Paul Wilks
Sep 12, 2012 8:51 AM –
Install
Appreciate Personal App Market otherwise known as Appreciate: Apps with Friends is a gorgeously slick and easy-to-use app recommendation tool. Presented in a smooth user interface and lots of ways to find apps that are of interest to you, it also includes a strong social element which lets you add friends and follow their favourite apps and games.
Price: Free Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Impressive user interface!
- Really handy shopping cart features!
- Brilliant search tool!
- Ability to share and like favourite apps and games!
- Daily recommendations based on your downloads!
Cons
- Slight obsession with gender preferences.
Features:
Appreciate Personal App Market does exactly what is says on the tin. The service is very personal and makes recommendations based on the apps you’ve already downloaded. Additionally, while it isn’t a ‘market’ in the same way that Google Play Store and Amazon App Store is, it lets you add apps to a shopping cart which comes with a deliriously useful ‘Install All’ tab. This doesn’t actually install them for you, but lets each install run one after another, which is still easier. This all makes finding great apps and downloading them an effortless and intuitive experience.
The user interface is extremely polished and smooth. Featuring a nice dark background, a really well-implemented design and responsive navigation, it’s a pleasure to use. You get several headings to initially slide between: Daily for You, Daily New Games, Daily New Apps, Local, Guys, Girls, Kids, Tablet, Trending Games, Trending Apps, Top Games, Top Apps and Rooted. All you need to do is swipe your finger across to flick between them. When you enter an app info itself you can see more screens; Overview, Description, Community, Related and Comments.
One element I’m not sure about is how much fuss the app makes about gender preferences. Each app features a little gauge which indicates how popular an app is with women compared to men. I just can’t see why this seems to be important. If you like Bejewelled-style games which, according to the app, are preferred by women, does that then mean you won’t download it? What valuable insight does this actually give you? Same with news apps that are preferred by men- are women are less likely to enjoy a news app? I can’t compare myself, but I wonder if a female user’s recommendations are going to be customised to not show apps ‘for the guys’. People should just download whatever applications and games they like, regardless of their biology. Creating unnecessary gender-divisions in apps like this can only make this more problematic.
Even when you’ve scoured the various recommendations available to you, you can search for more apps and view them too. Each has this cool Relevance meter which tells you how good of a match the app is based on your own downloads. When you click on this for more info, it gives you a list of reasons why the app thinks you’ll like it, plus a few similar apps to try out too. You can see the full description of the app or game too, not just a few lines like with Playboard which we reviewed recently. These features and intuitive elements make it a real joy to use.
There is also a strong social element to the app which lets you add friends and share favourite apps simply and easily. You can create an account directly or just log in using your Facebook credentials, so it’s a simple process that is also extremely user-friendly.
Watch on Mobile
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Appreciate – My apps
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Appreciate – Straightforward search
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Appreciate – Daily for you
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Appreciate – App overview
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Appreciate – Description
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Appreciate – Screenshots
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Appreciate – Comments
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Appreciate – Preferred by women
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Appreciate – Shopping cart
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Appreciate – Splash page
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Appreciate – Log in
Usefulness:
For finding loads of cool new apps and games, Appreciate Personal App Market is quickly becoming one of my favourite services. It’s a very interactive app that constantly updates and I’ve yet to come away without something new. There’s even occasions where it has reminded me of a brilliant application I had previously forgotten about.
Ease of Use:
It’s extremely simple to use, really intuitive and very user-friendly. I do think the gender focus on app recommendations is a little nonconstructive, but this aside it’s an app built very much with the individual user in mind.
Frequently Used:
This might depend on the user, but with the app updated daily to provide new recommendations, it’s easily an app you can use regularly. Like I said, I always find something new whenever I use the app.
Interface:
OK, hands down it’s probably the nicest interface of all the recommendation apps out there, even Playboard which I lauded as being a bit of a looker. Here, the UI is remarkably slick and smooth to use. You have access to lots of information, but the UI is designed in such a way as to not overwhelm. This makes it fun to explore and great to use.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Appreciate,
Appreciate Personal App Market,
Appreciate: Apps with Friends,
Google Play Store,
Playboard,
Recommendations
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