Apple levels the playing field on the App Store

Apple now only allows customers that have downloaded/purchased an app to review it. Previously, this loophole was easily exploited by developers with an agenda who could submit positive reviews of their own apps and negative reviews of competing apps. No word on whether Apple plans to remove or reset all the current ratings, but I doubt it.

The second major change to the App Store this morning is that Apple no longer moves updated applications to the first page of their respective category page. Apple still lists applications by their "release date" but no longer considers incremental updates as a new release. The previous system resulted in a large bump in sales every time an application got updated because of its higher visibility on its category page.

Now Apple needs to allow customers to download trial/demo versions of all paid applications.

(Tip: AppleInsider)