This is clearly a follow up to the marketing push to developers that began at WWDC. An unsurprising addition given the fact that there's really no solution to the iOS 7 UI revamp without making Apps iOS 7 only.
It was my impression from the sessions that applications which use mostly system UI can be done in a way that works (and looks nice) on both OSes by relying on AutoLayout. And if you made a completely custom UI, it'll look as foreign to iOS7 as it looks to iOS6 now.
The trouble is the people in the middle. They used system UI where possible, but then rolled their own where Apple didn't have a good solution. If you recompile those apps against iOS 7 SDK, your app looks like junk, and it's a lot of work to fix it. If it's not a super-profitable app, are you really going to go back and get new art done, or are you just going to keep it the same, by using old XCode or something.
The other trouble is that a lot of devs don't use AutoLayout, because it's historically been very hard to get working right. And transitioning your app to it hasn't had many benefits in the past.
I agree with your sentiment but be factually accurate if you've looked at the iOS 6 App Store on day one it would differ in a plethora of small details then the one we have now.
You might be right but until there is actual confirmation from Apple that they perform data-driven experiments to improve the App Store, based upon the many glaring problems that have been left unfixed for years I have to assume there isn't anybody at the switch performing legitimate experiments to drive these design changes.
I agree Apple shouldn't have total exposure control.
That doesn't mean that Top Charts is not intrinsically broken. Third parties game the top charts just as much (Or even more) then Apple does. In fact Apple is working towards a system that doesn't have any third party or first party control, Apps Near Me.
Interesting that Sergey Brin called Glass basically done when something as major as a mirrored version is in the works. That doesn't bode well for the project.
A mirrored version is relatively trivial. It does not introduce any new technical challenges. From a technical point of view, the hardware is done and that's what google[x] focuses on.
