Last week, Apple published changes to the App Store. There’s a really great article at AppleInsider which provides details about the changes.
One of the changes affects the way applications are listed in their category. There’s a good blogpost by Krishna Vegesna which describes the consequences of the previous ordering of the applications. With the latest changes to the App Store applications are sorted by the date they were first release now. However, the release date can be easily changed by the application developer via the iTunes Connect website. The related form field can be found on the “Pricing” tab when editing the application information. Changing the date almost immediately results in updates to the App Store.
To see if there is an actual loop hole I have set the release date for TimeTracker to October 7th this morning. And indeed there is a problem! So this could be easily exploited by developers who want to push the sales of their applications artificially.
However, the changes to the release date seems to affect only the sorting of the application in its primary category which is a little confusing, too.
I hope that Apple will offer a solution to this problem soon to provide the same chances to all developers and all the apps on the store!
Tags: App Store