Apple updates App Store review policy and removes “All iPhone Apps” links

Apple has taken a crucial step in improving the overall quality of the ratings in the iTunes App Store. Since the store opened in July users have been able to write reviews for products whether they have purchased them or not. As you can imagine, this has lead to many reviews such as “This App should be free…one star!” or “This App Sux….I didn’t buy it but I can tell.”

That kind of thing has littered the store. Its one of the things that developers have complained the mos about, because it makes it very hard for the stars which many people look at to judge whether or not they want to try an app, to be accurate.

Thankfully this is now changed. Now, if you want to review an application, you have to have purchased it. That’s not going to stop bad reviews – of course – but it will make it so that people that are reviewing the apps have at least downloaded them.

While that’s great news – Apple made another change over the weekend that I just don’t get. They removed the “All iPhone Apps”, “All iPod Touch Apps”, and “All Free iPhone Apps” links from the main page of the store.

I checked “All iPhone Apps” daily to get an idea of what was new in the store. I hope this is an over sight, and that it will be fixed. Those links are very useful, and help expose audiences to a wide variety of applications. I hope to see them back in the store soon.