Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

One thing missing, deeply missing is priced updates. This would enable developers to earn continuously by maintaining and improve their apps. It would also reduce the incentive to produce throw-away apps. Lately it would it make less needed to shoehorn subscriptions into apps.

I welcome the 15% change but it's more PR than actually helping. More helpful would also be better tools to increase visibility in the App Store.

It's better to leave basic updates for OS changes, security, etc free but charge for new features as in-app purchases. Unfortunately most users expect free upgrades for life for their $2 purchase so this makes life very hard for non-game developers.

That is exactly what I mean. If a developer increases the major version with a serious update on features, redesign, ... It would be nice to be able to offer these for an update-price, cheaper for existing customers but normal prices for new users. With the current model for app updates you risk to loose and disenfranchise your loyal customer base if you create a whole new app that users can't simply update to or you have to maintain support for users that paid $2 once.