That’s it. That’s it. iPhone App Store – you are great. You have lots of cool and fun stuff! Games! Torches! That free unit conversion app I never used but hope I might someday! But your password policy is stupid.
If it’s free, I don’t ever want to have to enter my password to download it. It’s really, really annoying.
This goes for free apps.
This goes even more for free app updates.
I understand you’re worried about security. You don’t want anyone downloading something onto my phone without my permission, or for my children, if I weren’t alone and impotent, to download something inappropriate. But presumably, because of your sorta-kinda-completely-puritanical screening policies, shouldn’t this be moot? Isn’t one of your major draws that you block out malware and, to a lesser extent, porn? What’s on there that could so horribly offend me?
At the very least, offer me an option to switch off mandatory password typing—let me tack it on as an extra security precaution if I’m so paranoid, or have some masochistic bend for passwords. But I don’t. I hate it. And so do other people. You’re praised for your good design, and good design is not.
Note: That picture is not me. I’m not a woman, and if I were, I probably wouldn’t have her bone structure. But that’s how I feel on the inside every time I have to enter my password without reason in the App Store. That photo is my heart.
Shutterstock/konstantynov