Hasta La Gadget!

If you fire up the App Store on your iPad today, you’ll find it just got a whole lot more useful. Instead of flipping through pages of junk to find the app you want, or wondering if you already bought something, you can now navigate with ease.

Two simple additions change the shopping experience completely. First, any app you have previously bought, and subsequently removed from your iPad, will show up with the word “Install” in place of the “Buy” button. You have always been able to re-download previously payed-for apps without paying again, but it took a leap of faith to do it. You had to tap on the price, and then on the “Buy” button. Try telling that to Aunt Flo.

Second, and way more useful, is the addition of filters to the store. Now, when performing a search, drop-down menus let you filter by category, release date, customer rating, price (free or paid), and device type (iPad, iPhone). These can be combined, and reset by either hitting the “Clear All” button or just entering a new search term. Thus you can search for five-star clock apps on the iPad and see all the results (in this case,there are none).

The filters only apply to searches, so you can’t sort the category lists by star rating, sadly, but it means an end to the endless paging, and makes third-party app aggregators like App Advice a little less essential.

And don’t look for a Mac App Store-style list of purchases. You won’t find it. On the other hand, if you never delete apps from iTunes on your computer, you have that list right there.

See Also:

• A Call for Transparency in Apple's App Store
• App Store is Like a Sweet, Sweet Drug: Five IPhone Applications …
• iPad Apps Begin Appearing in iTunes App Store
• Samsung Joins the App Store Party