The App Store is at once infinitely large and impossibly small. As a digital storefront, the App Store can accommodate an endless number of apps on its virtual shelves. However, at the same time, the App Store has to contend with screens as small as the iPhone SE’s 4.7” display. That poses interesting editorial challenges.

The App Store has always faced discovery challenges. From the day it opened for business 15 years ago, the App Store had more apps than it could easily display on the iPhone.

That problem only worsened with the App Store’s iOS 11 redesign. That update brought the welcome addition of editorial, curated content from the App Store’s editorial team. However, it also necessitated greater reliance on search because stories featuring individual apps and themed collections took up more space than simple lists and top charts. The result poses a difficult, ongoing balancing act between providing meaningful editorial recommendations and promoting as many apps and games as possible.

The Best in Games This Week.

There are several different recurring featured stories that the App Store editorial team produces, including the App and Game of the Day, Developer Spotlights, and Featured Apps. However, a new one caught my eye recently thanks to Vidit Bhargava, the creator of LookUp and Zones.

Earlier this month, Vidit posted on Mastodon about a new App Store feature called The Best in Apps This Week. The weekly story includes notable new and updated apps, along with app events picked by the App Store editorial team. It turns out that another recurring story called The Best in Games This Week was added in early July that follows a similar format, with a mix of new, updated, and popular games, along with editorial team favorites and ongoing events.

Both of these new features are a nice way to spotlight what’s new on the App Store in one place. The short descriptions of each app and game allow more to be covered in one story but provide just enough detail to provide readers with a sense of why each is unique. I’d love to see more of this style of story on the App Store, which still relies on lists more than I’d like.

Fifteen years ago, the App Store opened its doors with 500 apps. Today, the number of apps has swelled to exceed more than 1.5 million.

OmniFocus for iPhone.

Of those first-day apps, a few are still around, including OmniFocus. Today, Ken Case, The Omni Group’s founder and CEO, shared what that first day was like on the company’s blog:

Imagine our amazement to see OmniFocus at #7 on the list—the only productivity app in the top ten! By 9am, more of our team were in the office and by 10am we’d accidentally sent a few more copies of our press release. (Can you tell we’d been pulling all-nighters?)

At 10:25am, I received congratulatory email asking if I’d noticed that OmniFocus was the 3rd most popular paid app in the App Store. I thanked them for letting me know, and noted there were a lot of smiles around Omni that day!

That weekend saw the launch of the iPhone 3G with the App Store, and 11,000 people bought OmniFocus that first weekend alone.

PCalc for iPhone 1.0.

Other apps, like James Thomson’s PCalc, turned 15 today, too.

Twitterrific was there on day one as well but didn’t quite make it to 15 unfortunately.

For other notable first-day apps, be sure to check out Craig Grannell’s story on 15 notable first-day apps for Stuff.tv.

If today’s anniversary puts you in a nostalgic mood, we had extensive coverage of the App Store’s 10th anniversary in 2018, all of which is available here.