So they trim non-alphanumeric chars - how long before we see AAAJirbo Break. They should disable alphanumeric sorting and instead sort by date (newest), rating (popular) etc. Good faceted navigation would likely remove the desire to sort by name.

Amazon does exactly that and so do many other web stores. Alphanumeric listing will probably be taken out of AppStore.

You're right, little reason to sort by name. I can use search to locate an app if I know the name, and when I'm just browsing sorting by popularity or reviews would be more helpful.

On the other hand when I see "!! asdfasdf" and "AAAasdfasdf" I know it's likely a terrible app so I don't even have to bother checking it out.

Reminds me of game companies that distributed their shareware games with similar tactics via BBSs. You can even see vestigial evidence of this today. Check out the Apogee / 3D Realms download page (http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html), and note the non-insignificant number of filenames that start with the number 1. This caused the files to sort first on most BBSs.

Pretty shady company... no about us page, no corporate info, no address on the contact page, no privacy policy, no terms of service and their WHOIS entry is anonymized by Domains by Proxy.

It's time for Apple to exercise their proprietary software/benevolent dictator/gatekeeper abilities and drop all this shit like a bad habit.

I'd sink them to the bottom of the list, no less. As well as fixing the problem, of course.

Is that the fantastic marketing Apple promised for iPhone applications - show them in an alphabetically sorted list?

By the way, can I sign up and make an iPhone app now, or is there still a waiting list and approval process?

there's still an approval process for most steps, but it seems now most people who've applied are getting acceptance into the program itself.

now, getting your app into the app store and upgrading your apps is a slightly different process, and it looks like there's a huge backlog there :(

If I just want to write a program for my own iPhone, do I still have to get them to put it in the store, just for me to be able to install it on my phone?

no, there's something called ad hoc distribution that lets you run your app on up to 100 phones on the standard program...I think more if you purchase enterprise.

It doesn't have to be on the store for you to install it on your phone. But you do indeed need to be part of the program.

Amazon does the same thing with Mechanical Turk Qualification Tests (Only has A-Z sorting):

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/findquals?requestable=false&e...

This has been a problem in every online game with a serverlist that I know of.. It's quite funny as it's gotten extreme enough that some of the names are just spaces.

Does anyone know if this was a problem for Facebook when the apps were released, or did it not matter because everything was recommended by your friends anyway?

I think it's been fixed, at least with respect to spaces. I checked, and many of their applications don't come up as having spaces anymore.

Apple will fix this.

appName.trim() or equivalent.

I say Apple has done a wonderful job doing input validation on their AppStore data right here.

I wonder if you can name your Application as a SQL injection as well.