Apple overhauls iTunes App Store

So far, the iTunes App Store has been more of a mad house than a real ESD. However, Cupertinians apparently do have some understanding of software sales after all – AppleInsider reports the following changes:

Reviews now require product ownership
So far, posting reviews about applications didn’t require you to own the product. This has led to an inflation of bogus reviews from application developers – think increasing their own and lowering their competitor’s ratings.

Now, people wishing to post a review must own the product: while this will not distract anybody from spending 50$ on “marketing”, it makes the whole thing a lot easier to track down as Apple demands a credit card for every iTunes account.

Applications now sorted by v1 release date
Developers have abused the “updated programs” list of ESDs for ages (TamsPalm report here). Apple has now taken a draconian approach to limit this, and has decided that all applications will be sorted by their initial release date from now onwards.

I am not sure if this was a wise choice, as it discourages developers from updating their apps. Limiting the maximum update frequency would probably have worked better here…

The changes above show that Apple does want to help its developers out – the problem is that ESD business isn’t child’s play. Other platforms have established ESD houses which have years and years of experience and still manage to bork up…the Cupertinians unfortunately still need quite a bit of trial-and-error games…