App Store "Released Date" Lists Now Omitting Updates
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Apple, it appears, has changed the selection criteria for inclusion in the Release Date lists. Updated apps are no longer included.
Previously apparent policy changes to the App Store — e.g., the apparent disappearance of game sub-categories — turned out to be either bugs or experiments and were quickly rolled back.
Releasing regular updates to keep your near the top of the Release Date lists was a promotional staple for many developers. Whether this constituted gaming the system or simply an incentive to regularly improve an app this change of behavior has a large impact.
Lively discussions on same at Apple’s Developer Forums (login required) and the iPhone Dev SDK Forums.
Thanks to Zulfi Shah, author of the Contact Journal, O’Reilly’s “Top Pick” amongst contact managers, for putting this on our radar. Have a news tip? Send it to team at mobileorchard dot com.
Apparently, for most categories (except games?), new releases aren’t showing up either, or at least not in the correct (or any sensible) order. Depending on how you view them (iTunes or on-device), the 1.0 releases by “Release Date” may ‘appear’ to be sorted by release date, but if you actually look at the app description, some of these apps have *2008* release dates. Hopefully Apple fixes this soon, otherwise some *new* apps may never get any exposure at all. (And we are one of the unfortunate who have a newly released app that is affected.)
This seems like a bad move. I hope it’s a mistake or a bug. Is there any indication yet that it’s more than this?
If it was to curtail developers from making new updates simply to appear on the list (which did more good than harm in IMO), then it’s going to backfire.
…This is only going to make the app store more cluttered as the krapps developers will now be releasing app updates as NEW apps even if unjustified.
I can’t think of a great reason to have done this. It only hurts legitimate developers. Others with less scruples will simply work around it by making every release a new 1.0 app.
Obviously new releases and updates should show up. Even if some updates are slightly dubious, I think the majority of developers would be disappointed if updates weren’t recognised. They can often represent a serious investment and improvement over the version 1.0.
What is annoying is that it’s possible (I think by changing the Availability Date) to change the release date as many times as you like and that can be abused.
I see apps where the developers are not making any updates, yet their apps keep appearing as newly released because they are continually changing the release date on a daily basis.
That needs to be identified and stopped.
What annoys me is not knowing if my app will even appear in latest releases for 1.0. I’ve gone to the trouble of setting up an SMS to ensure i get notified when appreview email me if its approved or not. so i can go in and change the release date to todays date.
I understand that some put the release date as like 2010 but on my last submission i wasn’t gettin gapproved. as soon asi put the release date to todays date, it was reviewed 3 days from changing it.
The thing that really gets me (if the news is true) is why doesn’t Apple notify us developers when they are considering or planning to make a change. A little more transparency would be nice!
Quick update: We had an app that was re-released today and it is not showing up at the top of the release date sort as of 7:30PM on 11/12/09.