[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] christophocles:
I've been using Android since 2009 and since the very beginning I have wondered why Google has done such a poor job developing their Marketplace store (since renamed to Google Play -- ridiculous name but that's a different topic). Specifically, the User Interface of the marketplace. The market HAS undergone a couple of changes to its appearance and has had the addition of music, movies, etc. But the basic user interface components for App Installation have seen practically no change at all.

Here's my incomplete list of severe shortcomings of Google Play:

1. There is NO WAY to see a short concise list of all the apps you have already purchased. You can choose between two tabs -- "Installed" and "All". The "Installed" list is just that -- apps already installed. The "All" list shows everything -- already installed, purchased but not installed, free and recently installed on a different device, etc. And this is big jumbled mess is listed in the order of apps most recently installed, which leads to:

2. There Is NO WAY to sort the list in the "All" tab by any criterion. It is what it is, you are stuck with the order everything is listed in and you cannot change it.

3. When you want to install an app, you first have to tap on the app name and then it jumps to the detailed page for that app, where you then press "Install" and then another screen to confirm. There is NO WAY to install the app directly from the app listing without jumping through multiple screens every time for every individual app. This wouldn't be so terrible, except:

4. The listing does not REMEMBER YOUR POSITION when you press back. I find myself scrolling down through the UNSORTABLE list on the "All" page, finding the app I want, which may be 150+ apps down, going to that app's detailed page and pressing install/confirm, then pressing back twice, and it returns me back to the TOP of the list again. So if I wanted to then install the next app that was right below the previous one, I have to SCROLL DOWN AGAIN.

5. Ultimately, what I WANT and NEED is a batch installer directly from the marketplace. Put some freaking CHECKBOXES next to every app on the main list and then put a big "Install All Checked" button at the top. What's so difficult about this concept?

6. You may say "Just use titanium backup, it will solve all your problems." Well I DO use Titanium backup where appropriate. But sometimes I just want to do a CLEAN install of every app, directly downloading from the marketplace again. App backups do get screwed up over time, and reinstalling from marketplace fixes those issues. Not to mention, TiBackup requires ROOT, which not everyone has/wants/needs/knows how to obtain. Or I might be installing all my required apps on a totally new device and I don't want to import incompatible data from some other device.

In my opinion this is a MAJOR shortcoming in Android. There absolutely NEEDS to be a way to easily batch-install many apps directly from the marketplace. Especially for people like me who have 100+ apps installed and regularly wipe my phone to install the latest ROM. And #1 is just insulting in my opinion. I can't see a list of only the apps I OWN? I might forget that I purchased something a long time ago and just forgot to reinstall it. And nobody has come up with a third party tool to batch-install from the market (or have they?)

Can someone please help me understand why Google has failed to improve their storefront for so long? Where is the suggestion box for me to voice all of these concerns?