Five quick ways to make the Apple App Store better

Yes, people are still lining up for the iPhone. And yes, the App store holds wonders for them once they get home with those shiny new phones. The App Store isn't perfect though. Here's our look at five seemingly simple/quick changes Apple could make to make the experience even better:

1. Require an actual support contact. While every listed application has a support link, in doing a thorough check of all the apps, quite frequently the support link either points to "coming soon" page, a bad url, or a page that gives you no means of contacting the developers. How about a required support email on the application info page?

2. Disclose if an app requires/is a subscription. The Major League Baseball app has gotten a lot of attention. Less noticed is the fact that the app is good for this year, making it more or less, a subscription service, that needs to be re-purchased each year. Other apps that are free, are tied to subscription services, and there's no uniform way of knowing this before downloading.

3. Ability to gift/try Apps. Our hunch is app gifting will be coming to the store soon. It would be great though to make it easy for developers to give us a 7-day trial of their apps. Just because the average price of the titles is low, is no reason to buy blind.

4.Uniform handling of preferences.Some apps place preferences in the application. Some place new prefs in the system preferences screen. How about a more consistent way of dealing with this. And speaking of preferences, here's a bonus improvement for the 2.0 software: Let me select "Always allow" for the location information for the camera. I don't want to press two buttons each time to take a picture.

5. Developers describe data retention.Some of these apps allow amazing amounts of personal info on the phone. Everything from medical records, to credit card passwords and banking info. What isn't always clear is exactly where this information is stored: Are passwords on the phone, or somewhere in the internet cloud? Does the app have it's own passcode to access the info?

These simple fixes can build on the potential of the App store, and frankly make the experience more Apple-like.