App Store freeze has ended

Most of the country still has lots of winter to go through, but one thing has already thawed: the Apple App Store. Every year, Apple freezes changes on iOS apps during the holiday, in part to give the team that does updates a little break, and because sales tend to be quite volatile as people unwrap iPhones, iPod touches and (this year for the first time) iPads on Christmas. But today marks the un-freezing of the store, so top paid and free charts will go back to changing at the whims of App Store shoppers, and app developers are free to submit updates and change app prices and descriptions again for the first time since last Thursday.

So far, not much has changed. We'll probably see a few of those holiday sales end this week, though EA still hasn't ended its big sale (as of this writing, anyway -- the rumor was that as soon as it could, the company would jack up its prices on popular apps, but that hasn't happened yet). It's possible that some games have done so well at their 99 cent sale prices that they'll just stay there, and/or the developers will find other ways to make them a little more profitable.

And I don't think we'll see any big new apps this week (most developers probably made sure to get their apps out before the holiday rush), but you never know -- with so many people making apps for iOS, there's usually always something ready to go.