“Faced with criticism over the way it’s been grouping applications on the digital shelves of the App Store, Apple this week is making some changes to the store’s layout aimed at showcasing a broader range of top offerings in each category,” Sam Oliver reports for AppleInsider.

“TouchMeme’s Krishna Vegesna tipped AppleInsider off to the overnight design tweak… Apple now highlights the most popular applications on each category page,” Oliver reports.

“As part of this new grouping, the Cupertino-based company has also separated the most popular Free Apps — which previously dominated the most popular listings — from most popular Paid Apps, breaking each out into separate sidebar modules that flank the general listings for each category,” Oliver reports.

Oliver reports, “While Friday’s changes may not solve all of developers’ problems, Vegesna said he believes Apple ‘now truly understands the software as a service model and is enhancing the [App Store] every week (in some cases, multiple times a week).”

More in the full article here.