App Store tweaked to promote paid apps
But there's a backlog in the approvals system
Apple has tweaked the design of its desktop App Store, separating out paid and free apps and providing the ability to sort by release date.
Spotted by the AppleInsider blog, for games the changes mean that when you go to a genre category (for example Adventure or Sports), you now see charts of the most popular paid apps on the left, and the most popular free apps on the right.
In the middle, there's a listing of all games in that genre, sortable by release date, name or popularity:
Developers will welcome the move, which gives more priority to paid applications. That said, it won't change the downward pressure on prices caused by the many, many cheap (but not free) App Store games.
However, a separate story on VentureBeat suggests that Apple is also notifying developers that it's facing a backlog in its approval process, meaning that recently submitted apps may not be released before Christmas.
How big a problem is this? It depends how soon after Christmas the backlog clears.
A lot of people will be getting iPhones and iPod touchs for Christmas, and (hopefully) checking out the App Store in the following weeks, so that's really the crucial time for apps to go live, rather than pre-Christmas.
