“Try before you buy” – Semantics on the App Store

A new section is born on the app store – Try Before You Buy – implying, in some commentators minds the ability to trial an application. This is a common offer model in software development. Think 30 day trial of all features of an application, before you have to purchase. This model is not available to developers on the iPhone OS.

This Try Before You Buy section houses current free versions of paid applications, no new apps here.

So why the section?

You can argue, that this is a semantic challenge to some developers frustration with the lack of trial ability when deploying applications to the iPhone OS. It remains to be seen if in a later version of the iPhone OS SDK, that trial ability will be included.  And that this Semantic step, was a small, first step towards that.

Where are the app trials? (ZDNET Article discussion)

Below is walk-through of getting to this section, through the app store on an iPod Touch.