Faster review times, subscription pricing, and search ads — all of which would be huge news on their own — are all coming to the App Store. I think these changes will be good overall. The faster review times give developers a little more assurance that bug fixes will go live in a timely manner and search ads will help developers find a steady stream of new customers. I’m still a little lukewarm on the subscription pricing change, though.

My biggest fear is that developers will ask too much for their apps and I’ll be forced to pay an unreasonable monthly fee in order to continue using them. In an ideal world, for me at least, developers of high-quality productivity apps will charge a yearly fee at a price point similar to what they charge to purchase the app today.

I’m excited to see how these changes play out, but I expect they’ll result in a more healthy ecosystem for developers and users alike. And with announcements like this coming the week before WWDC, it feels like we’re in for one hell of a keynote. Phil Schiller even referenced this at the beginning of his call with John Gruber:

We’ve got a bunch of App Store/developer-related announcements for WWDC next week, but frankly, we’ve got a busy enough keynote that we decided we’re not going to cover those in the keynote. And rather, just cover them in the afternoon and throughout the week.

I’m really glad Phil Schiller was put in charge of the App Store.