Former Apple executive, "father of the iPod" and Nest CEO Tony Fadell has denied being the buyer of two high-priced but one-off Apple items designed by Sir Jonathan Ive for a Global Fund charity auction. "To be clear, Im not the owner of either" the
red new Mac Pro or the gold EarPods, Fadell tweeted, which together
sold for over $1.4 million. Photographs of Fadell with the items taken by Kevin Abosch and
posted on Twitter earlier this week suggest, however, that Fadell knows the winning bidder. "The real owner will reveal themselves if they so choose." Fadell's wording hints that both items do indeed belong to a single buyer.
Apple tweaks App Store algorithms, plays havoc with rankings
Beginning on Thursday, Apple's iOS App Store ranking system
was changed, causing much more dramatic shifts in chart movement than is normally seen. On a typical day, an app that isn't one of the top sellers might move an average of five places one way or another per day. The new algorithm caused apps to move about 40 places on average. The search algorithm, which determines what the results will be when users type in queries, is
heavily relied-on by developers to help users discover apps that are not at the top of the charts.
AppleInsider reports that even top-five apps were affected by the change, with 31 percent of the apps affected by the alteration. Normally, the margin of change in a given day would be about eight percent. The presumed reason for the change was to help apps that didn't have a keyword in their title do better in searches.
As seen in the chart below, the Wells Fargo Mobile app jumped 144 positions following the change, moving considerably higher in the "banking" category. The streaming music app "Rdio," likewise, moved up considerably in the "music" category. The factors that go into Apple's search algorithms haven't been revealed. The company often refines its search systems to help users discover apps in their chosen areas of interest.
source: MobileDevHQ
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