More shenanigans in the AppStore?
Saturday, November 07, 2009
I’ve been meaning to get a few tecchy posts up, but the ongoing shenanigans in the AppStore keep diverting me. Briefly, the lastest rumour mill is that any updates to an app now won’t get shown in the newly released section in iTunes.
For anybody who doesn’t know, having your app appear in that section is one of the major ways that a new or updated application gets air time and free marketing on the AppStore. Since a large proportion of people find apps by browsing in the AppStore, this is a big deal.
Of course, devs have been gaming this like crazy and many release frequent updates to their apps which contain little or no new functionality, just to keep getting the publicity. Not that I blame anybody for this – for an indie developer, getting any publicity for an iPhone app can be an uphill task without an advertising budget.
I’m more concerned about what this says about Apple. Again.
CAVEAT – At this point this is all still rumour, and it may be part of the ongoing issues with the AppStore at the moment.
That said, if this does mark a policy shift by Apple, it sucks. It sucks root.
Why? Because it’s just another example of Apple having a hidden set of policies which developers then plan their entire release lifecycle around, only to have the rug yanked from under them once again because Cupertino decides to switch things around.
More on this as we find out more, but I really hope this is just another glitch.