Just a few days ago, Apple announced that the App Store has reached a new milestone with over 85,000 apps available for download.  With so many apps to choose from, Apple really needs to focus on helping iPhone owners discover quality app that they need.  Apple has recently launched the Genius list for the App Store.  That adds a new breadth to the App Store, delivering app customization for each individual.   Now, to further aid users in integrating their iPhones and iPod Touch to everyday life, Apple has introduced an “Apps for Everything” section on their website.

“Apps for Everything” is similar to the “There’s an App for That” TV commercials for the iPhone.  However, instead of introducing 1 app for each function, “apps for everything” introduces  around 10 apps for each subject.  Currently, featured subjects and categories include apps for cooks, keeping current, the great outdoors, music, work, students, moms and dads, working out, going out, managing money, traveling, and the fun and games.

Looking at these categories, the “Apps for Everything” section seem to focus on the general demographics with their everyday lives.  It is a good start for folks just getting started on the iPhone.  But for the technophiles like you and me who dig twitter, IM, and social media, there’s a entire blogosphere that provide advanced app introduction and discovery.

It’s good to see that Apple is trying different ways to help iPhone and Touch users discovering apps that they may need to enhance their lives.  Hopefully the App Store app discovery process  will get easier as time passes.

This is a post from the App Machine

Microsoft may have finally beaten Apple, in Apple’s own department of iPhone app browsing.  Powered by Microsoft Silverlight technology, Bing’s new Visual Search engine allows users to search a category via images.  Silverlight technology, when applied to visual search, provides a visually entertaining, and interactive experience. Included with Bing’s visual search launch is a category for top iPhone apps.  Bing Visual Search for iPhone apps provides an experience that may make iTune’s App Store users wonder, “hey, why isn’t our App Store more like that?”

Indeed, compared to the bland App Store on iTunes, Bing Visual Search for iPhone Apps has arguably a better and more engaging user interface for exploring the thousands of iPhone apps.  Bing Visual Search users can visually browse through the top 500 apps, sorting them by popularity, price, release date, and by name.  When the cursor is pointed to an icon, the price, category, rank, and release date for the app will be shown.  However, don’t expect Bing to take you to the App Store when clicking on the icon.  Clicking on it will take users to Bing’s search result on that app.  Users can further narrow the displaying app  to publisher, price range, and app category in Bing’s visual search menu.  However, currently it is only categorizing the apps from the top 500 apps.  Thus, only 2 apps are displayed when selecting the business app category.  Furthermore, the Bing top iPhone apps visual search page does not seem to be regularly updating their app  rankings.  Current popularity rankings reflect those of past week.

Despite the lack of depth with Bing’s iPhone app visual search, Microsoft has demonstrated to Apple on how the App Store should have been done.  Perhaps Apple will learn from Microsoft, and bring a Bing Visual Search-like experience to the App Store in the near future.

Via The App Machine under Bing App Browsing