Apple unveils redesigned App Store with new Today, Games, and Apps tabs; the Today page will feature App of the Day and Game of the Day picks
Context & Ripple Effects
This redesign extends a curation push Apple began earlier: the 2015 revamp of the Games section already swapped algorithmic lists for editor-chosen recommendations, and the Shopping category followed the same logic of humans picking what gets surfaced. What changes now is scale — curation moves from one category to the storefront's front door, with a daily Today page built around App of the Day and Game of the Day slots.
The move lands in a competitive window: days later, Google answered with its own Android Excellence curated collections on Google Play, making editorial merchandising table stakes for both major app stores rather than an Apple experiment.
First-order effects
- Developers' discovery strategy shifts overnight: a single App of the Day or Game of the Day slot becomes the highest-leverage placement on the store, so pitching Apple's editorial team joins ASO and paid search as core user-acquisition work.
- Apple takes on an ongoing publishing operation — daily features, tips, and developer interviews — turning the App Store from a searchable catalog into a media property it must staff and refresh.
Second-order effects
- Featured placement becomes measurable marketing: Apptopia later found the App of the Day section lifted downloads by 1,747% on average (792% for games), which pushes studios to time launches and exclusives around editorial calendars.
- Browse stops being a rounding error next to search — Sensor Tower's follow-up analysis showed browse-driven downloads climbing past 15% of all downloads after the redesign, pressuring Apple to keep investing in editorial real estate.
Third-order effects
- If curation keeps driving installs, gatekeeping power concentrates in Apple's editorial staff, and 'getting featured' hardens into a formal channel that shapes which apps win — with the transparency questions that come with any gatekeeper role.
- The pattern points toward app stores converging on a magazine-like model where both Apple and Google compete on taste and storytelling rather than raw catalog size.
The trend: App-store discovery is shifting from algorithmic lists and search toward human editorial curation, with Apple's Today tab and Google's Android Excellence marking the turn on both platforms.