[sokoloff]

Really? You believe that, just because it was cheap for indies, that ranking an app more highly in the app store based on non-human downloads was beneficial to the human users of the app store?

I'm no Apple fanboy generally, but this seems like they're making a choice based on what's good for their human users, and that choice benefits some the developers at the expense of others. (IMO, it benefits the ones who are competing "fairly", but that doesn't even matter compared to "is it good for users?")

[alexlin]

You're twisting my words. Are you really so naive to believe that if you make a great app that you're automatically going to climb to the Top 25?

Try navigating the app store. Tell me how you discover apps. A great app that was released is never going to get anywhere unless a marketing budget has been allocated beforehand (unless you somehow win the lottery and create the next angry birds.)

And lets talk about the "expense" of others. Did you feel like you lost anything when bots and incent PPI were allowed? Did you even know about it? The app store functions in a way that it's sort of like the survival of the fittest. If the people don't like an app, it's going to drop back down as fast as it climbed up.

If Apple wants to create an ecosystem where indie developers can thrive, they need to change their ranking algorithm, solve discoverability for their developers, or stop banning the solutions people have been coming up with (incent PPI, bots.)