Genius for the app store is, well, genius

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I have never been a fan of the Genius feature in iTunes for several different reasons. One is that the Genius panel on the right of the iTunes window is just an advert. It's little more than an attempt to get me to buy more music at the store. Sometimes the recommendations bear no relation to the track I've selected in my library and sometimes among the tracks it recommends are tracks that I already have.  It doesn't take a genius to check whether I already have a track before showing an advert to buy it. Genius playlists also seem uncannily like a Smart Playlists. Create a Smart Playlist by selecting tracks at random within a genre and then compare it to the playlist created by the Genius feature. If I choose a rock song and click Genius then I get 25 random rock songs with a couple of pop thrown in - there's always a couple of wildcards. I can do that with the Smart Playlist feature. Genius in the app store on the iPhone and iPod Touch is great though and I love it. Genius is actually useful at last.

There are several reasons why it works in the app store and one important one is that many apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch are free. So Genius isn't just trying to part me from my hard-earned money. Free apps are included in the Genius recommendations along with the paid apps. (There's a Genius tab when you go to the Featured section of the apps store on the iPhone/iPod Touch and it's a slight irritation that it's not also in iTunes on the computer, but browsing on the mobile is fine.)

It's interesting that Genius shows what each recommendation is based on and sometimes the link is obvious, for example, if you have a news app then it will recommend another news app. However, sometimes it recommends a completely random app and there's no link at all. I've got Dropbox and it recommended Digits Calculator based on this. What's the link between cloud based online storage and a pocket calculator? I've got Dictionary.com and it recommended Alphabet Tracing, which is a kids app that teaches them to draw the letters of the alphabet on the screen. Apart from them both containing letters, where's the link?

I actually don't mind these random recommendations. There are 200,000+ apps in the app store and many people probably don't browse beyond the featured, top selling, top grossing, top free and other top lists. A few hundred at most. Genius often picks apps at random and you'll get to see apps you probably wouldn't normally see. What's more, they might even be free. Genius in the app store is great. Forget Genius though, just give me a Random button or an I'm Feeling Lucky button.