Edible Apple

Apple’s iTunes Store, everyone’s favorite repository for music, movies, TV shows, and mobile apps, is on track to get its first major re-design in over three years. 9to5Mac reported last week that a revamped version of iTunes is a top priority for Apple and is aimed at being more user-friendly and engaging than the current iteration.

Apple is working on ways to enhance the speed and efficiency of finding new content, such as songs, videos, and applications. The cornerstone element of Apple’s new iTunes Store is interactivity. As Apple vaguely explained to a number of music labels and entertainment partners, Apple is looking to make the iTunes Store a much more engaging experience.

Shortly thereafter, word broke via MG Siegler at TechCrunch that Apple had acquired Chomp, an app discovery company, as part of its efforts to give the iTunes Store a complete makeover. And rather than this being a simple ‘talent raid’, Apple is readily interested in incorporating Chomp’s technology as well. The total purchase price is estimated to be $50 million.

Clearly, Apple is keen on making the myriad of content available on iTunes much more searchable, and ever important objective as the amount of content continues to grow by leaps and bounds each and every single week. As it stands now, there are over 500,000 apps currently available on iTunes, and finding decent content is becoming more of a challenge. I myself have recently grown weary of the efforts involved in finding decent apps amongst the deluge of ad-riddled crap apps. Indeed, without recommendations from friends and app review websites, finding elegant, intuitive, cool, and helpful mobile apps strictly via iTunes seems like a fruitless proposition.

In light of Siegler’s scoop, 9to5Mac doubled back with their sources and added that Chomp CEO Ben Keighran is now on Apple’s iTunes marketing team while Chomp CTO Cathy Edwards is now a senior iTunes engineer.