Apple.com's Downloads page being updated again

There are signs of life at Apple's Download page. If you look at the list on the right Hot Plan 1.5.1, Screenflick 1.6.13, and Volumetrix 2.0.1 were all added on May 4th. Before that, Pasteboard Recorder was updated on March 26th.

If you look at the All Categories: Most Recent list, you will see almost two pages of apps were updated yesterday.

Apple redesigned the Apple.com website in early March, which included the removal of the downloads link from the home page. At first this seemed like just a redesign issue, but then Apple stopped updating the downloads page altogether.

Many developers wrote in to say that traffic had dropped off significantly after this happened. Others commented that they had always used the Apple download page to find new software.

So what happened during the hiatus? My guess is that even a company with Apple's financial resources occasionally hits limits. Given that Apple links to the downloads page on every Mac via the Apple Menu » Mac OS X Software... link in the menu bar, I couldn't imagine them abandoning it altogether. Glad to see it's back.

Thanks to TUAW reader Wayne Beyea for sending this in.