In the wake of recent criticism of the App Store, Apple has adjusted the way free and paid applications are listed in iTunes. AppleInsider:
TouchMeme’s Krishna Vegesna tipped AppleInsider off to the overnight design tweaks, which “accomplished three important things,” according to the iPhone app developer. First, he said, Apple now highlights the most popular applications on each category page.
As part of this new grouping, the Cupertino-based company has also separated the most popular Free Apps – which previously dominated the most popular listings – from most popular Paid Apps, breaking each out into separate sidebar modules that flank the general listings for each category. In addition, the new layout is more consistent in design with the AppStore application on the iPhone, Vegesna noted.
Hopefully, this will put good, paid apps on level ground with good (and perhaps not-so-good) free ones. This type of response from Apple is encouraging to see.