New In The App Store- AmaSearch (An Amazon.com Search App)

I do most of my shopping these days via Amazon (and Apple, of course) so anything that makes the experience easier and more convenient is more than appreciated. So the release of AmaSearch this afternoon caught my eye. According to the developer,

AmaSearch is a simple application that allows you to quickly search Amazon.com’s store content. Choose your search category, enter the keywords you wish to search for, and click Search. Preview details from your search results and also be conveniently linked to the appropriate detail page online.

I downloaded AmaSearch and did a few test searches for products I already own through Amazon. As promised it did indeed search Amazon’s database of store content. So why is already off my iPhone?

AmaSearch is a good example of a resident app which falls so far short of the web app that it is all but worthless. Here is an example of a search for a 24 inch iMac using AmaSearch and Amazon’s fantastic web app.

First up: AmaSearch-

That is all the information AmaSearch provides. If you want more all you neeed to do is click the "Click Here To View Online" button. That does an excellent job of taking you right to… the Amazon Site.

It works but… why not just go straight to Amazon’s iPhone optimized site. That search looks like this…

Amazon’s site is pretty amazing when it comes to searching for a product quickly. That, however, is only the start since the web app is chock full of useful information like a FULL despcription of the product, editorial and customer reviews and more.Basically it is the ful Amazon site in an easy to use format.

Pretty impressive, huh? Sure, AmaSearch is free but compared to the Amazon Web App it is anemic (at best).

Our recommendation– AmaSearch isn’t worth the time it takes to download. Use the Amazon Web App by going to www.amazon.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch instead.