With the back-to-school and holiday shopping season coming sooner than you think, Apple is preparing an update to its Apple Store iOS app. According to Bloomberg, the Apple Store app will take a more active role in recommending products to you.
The update to the app will using your buying history in order to recommend products more products it thinks will interest you. Bloomberg reports that the app could showcase these recommendations in a new For You tab, and that the new app will be universal; currently, the Apple Store apps for the iPhone and iPad are two separate apps.
According to Bloomberg, the new Apple Store app could be available in the next two weeks.
Why this matters: Apple has long touted its stance on the customer data it collects and maintaining the privacy of its customers. This demonstrates that Apple is willing to at least use the data for its own marketing purposes. It’s different from Apple Music and the iOS News app, where users define their interests up front at the initial use of the app, and can refine the criteria as a user’s taste changes. This new use of user data is similar to that of Amazon and Google, who generate profiles based on a record of purchases.
Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor
Roman has covered technology since the early 1990s. His career started at MacUser, and he's worked for MacAddict, Mac|Life, and TechTV.