Becky Hansmeyer:

Apple could make this a heck of a lot easier on everyone by allowing for time-limited free trials. There could be a simple list in Settings of all the trial apps you’ve downloaded, and how much time you have remaining on each. When a trial expires, maybe you’d see a pop-up when you launched the app asking if you’d like to buy or delete it. If you chose to delete it and later returned to its App Store page, there would no longer be a trial option.

Developers could choose from some pre-set trial lengths, and trials in general would be completely optional. It would take a lot of work on Apple’s end to do this—to bolt this on to the App Store’s crusty old backend. But holy cow would it be helpful for folks like me!

Letting applications with subscription pricing offer free trials was a huge step forward for the platform, but I think the option should have been available for traditionally priced apps years ago. But based on the improvements we’ve seen since Phil Schiller took over the App Store, I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer.