We’ve been saying it for years. You’ve been saying it for years. 9 out of 10 dentists have been saying it for years. The App Store needs a redesign. Like a loveable inventor, it’s full of exciting things to see, but seems to have no understanding of how to organize them. With over 500,000 apps, simple search and generic categories isn’t enough. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m excited when I say: change might be on the way!
We’ve been saying it for years. You’ve been saying it for years. 9 out of 10 dentists have been saying it for years. The App Store needs a redesign. Like a loveable inventor, it’s full of exciting things to see, but seems to have no understanding of how to organize them. With over 500,000 apps, simple search and generic categories isn’t enough. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m excited when I say: change might be on the way!
Spotted in the wild by the Gamezebo team while doing our daily browse of the App Store yesterday are a couple of new features that seem to hint at bigger changes to come. Foremost among them is something you’ll definitely enjoy: Free App of the Week. Likely looking to wrest control away from hugely popular services like Free App a Day and Free App King and make the “charting” process more regulated, Apple has taken it upon themselves to push one app into the spotlight each week, and drop its price to the affordable zero dollar range. This week it’s ZeptoLab’s awesome Cut the Rope: Experiments – which you should already have, of course. From the looks of it, the free app each week will be located right under the “New & Noteworthy” section.
And yet it’s the next change – while arguably more minor – that has me most excited. In order to prevent confusion between the “App of the Week” and their prominent featured content, Apple has changed the name of its weekly featured apps to “Editor’s Choice.” Subtle, perhaps, but far more streamlined. And as our friends at Inside Mobile Apps point out, “streamlined” is Chomp’s MO. The company – recently purchased by Apple for $50M – may very well be giving the App Store a facelift from its new position on the Apple team.
Let’s hope that this summer’s WWDC conference in San Francisco brings with it news that iTunes as we know it is headed the way of the dinosaur. Viva la App Store revolution!
