Although most Apple iDevice and Mac users know about the AppStores, very few actually look for good deals on the same. Looking for good deals on the AppStore is actually quite simple…there are apps for the job. Most of the better such apps will cover both, the AppStore as well as the Mac AppStore.
There are quite a few “App Discovery” apps on the Apple AppStore that will help you in getting good deals. These apps allow you to look at all the apps that are on sale, apps that have gone free for a brief time, set watches on the apps you want to purchase as and when they are on sale and more. Most of these apps will also allow you to look at the top of the lists like the top liked, sold etc etc.
Although I have tried quite a few of these apps in the past, I have settled on two such apps for now. Both these apps have paid and free versions. I got the paid versions of both these apps for free from similar App Discovery apps. The first one is AppTicker and the second is AppZapp. Personally, I prefer AppTicker, but, sometimes it does not list some of the apps that come into the AppZapp lists. AppZapp also has a user community with a live feed which can be interesting to look at.
I have used these apps to watch and buy some apps that I wanted when they went on sale. The other aspect that I use is the “Now Free” apps. These are paid applications that have gone free for a brief time. If you keep a watch on these “Now Free” lists on occasions (Christmas, New Year etc), then, you can really get some very neat apps for free.
For example, when Flickr recently announced the free terabyte space for all, I was able to get some of the best Flickr related apps like FlickStackr for Flickr and Flickr Studio for free since they were listed in the “Now Free” section of these apps.
Of course, none of this comes without Apple stepping in with their own whims and fancies. They randomly come up with arcane reasons, to remove apps from the AppStore. A recent example being a similar “App Discovery” app called AppGratis. For those of you who are interested in the AppGratis story, a simple Google search will come up with all the details.
An interesting consequence of Apple’s action, in this case, was to speed up the AppGratis release for the Android platform. AppGratis launched it’s Android app a month after the app was removed from the Apple AppStore.
The reason for mentioning the AppGratis story is that you never know what apps might be removed by Apple for what arcane reasons. Don’t be surprised if the “App Discovery” app you really like vanishes from the AppStore…
Nitin Chandra's Blog 