Tag: App Store

Apple Announces 1.5 Billion Downloads In App Store

Apple announced yesterday that they have had a total of 1.5 billion app downloads on just over 65,000 apps. There App Storeare currently 40 million iPhones and iPod Touches that are able to run the App Store, and over 100,000 developers registered in the iPhone Developer program making all these apps.

Apple today announced that customers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications in just one year from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. The App Store is also growing at an incredible pace with more than 65,000 apps and more than 100,000 developers in the iPhone? Developer Program.

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

Apple Removes BeautyMeter

After all the complaints that have been directed towards the photo rating app, BeautyMeter, Apple have finally pulled it down.

BeautyMeter

The app is photo sharing platform where you rate others pictures based on appearance, however the company does not directly check each picture and so pictures of underage girls were found on the app and caused a huge uproar against Apple’s approval process, once again.

Developers Continue To Fight Piracy

As the iPhone user-base increases, so does the piracy user-base of iDevices. Many developers have been or are now implementing features to stop piracy of their apps. You will have read how BeejiveIM stopped working for pirated copies, now Spokko, the makers of Light Wars have also implemented a feature that stops pirated copies from working.

Spokko Pirate Version

This has only been implemented into the new update but from what I know the original 1.0 release will not stop pirates using it, it’s interesting to see how developers are taking different methods to stop piracy.

Stack v3 Alpha Review Coming Soon

If your an iPhone owner you will of most likely have heard of, or used one of Steve Troughton-Smith’s app’s at some point or at least heard of them. He was the one who worked out how to tether the iPhone months ago.

He currently has 6 projects listed on his official website some of which are App Store approved, others are available via Cydia, however a project he’s been working on a lot recently is the Stack app, which gives the iPhone and dock like Stack feature. The new v3 has a lot of things to look forward to and the early alphas are promising, I’ve got hold of the alpha earlier and will be writing up a full review over the weekend.

Stack v3 Alpha

Palm Pre, iPhone Killer? Not Quite. Part 2

So you may have read the earlier post which compared the iPhone and the Palm Pre, but since so many of you Apple iPhone 3G WWDC 2009commented I’ve decided to make a follow up to that article, however now the iPhone 3GS has been announced it will take the 3G’s place in the comparison.

Some of you thought my points didn’t make much sense or didn’t agree with them so here’s a second go round with easier explanation.

Camera
iPhone 3GS – 3 Megapixel Camera with 30fps VGA Video w/ Auto-Focus & Auto-Macro.
Palm Pre – 3 Megapixel Camera with LED Flash and no video as of yet.

From a camera stand point the iPhone, is now ahead of the Pre, with the ability to record 30fps VGA Video. Also the iPhone 3GS comes with Auto-Focus & Auto-Macro.

Storage Capacity
iPhone 3GS – 16GB / 32GB non-expandable
Palm Pre – 8GB non-expandable

The iPhone now has more storage than the Pre and the current 3G has the same storage capacity.

Keyboard
iPhone 3GS – On-ScreenPalm Pre
Palm Pre – QWERTY Slide Out

Although some find it hard to type on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, many reviewers who have used a Palm Pre have said the keys are too small and hard for even small fingers and because there is no option for an on-screen keyboard it could be a problem.

Battery Life
iPhone 3GS – Up to 9 hours internet surfing, 10 hours of video, 30 hours of audio, 12 hours of 2G talk-time and 5 hours of 3G talk-time.
Palm Pre – Many report that the battery can wear down within a few hours so not good for business use.

Although the Pre’s battery issue’s could be changed currently at the length it lasts it’s not a contender for business users who need the battery to last all day.

App’s
iPhone 3GS – 500,000
Palm Pre – 12

As of current, also pointed out at WWDC yesterday, the Palm Pre only has 12 apps for the device, however an app store is in beta at this time so this might change. It’s not fair to compare the phones on app store at this time as the iPhone didn’t have one for a while and the Palm Pre’s just come out.

Screen
iPhone 3GS – 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen Multi-Touch display, 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi.
Palm Pre – 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display.

The iPhone screen is in fact larger than the Pre, but many say the Pre looks more vibrant.

Others
iPhone 3GS

  • Show off factor, Yes I know in the comments you’ve said how people shouldn’t be impressed by phones but in a lot of cases if you pull out an iPhone people around you want to play on it, not making it any better of a phone but just one of the things that come with the iPhone.
  • iTunes, Yes both devices can sync with iTunes, however the Pre needs a bit of hacking to get it to work, but it provides an instant place for iPhone users to rent and download movies and TV shows along with buying music wherever they go.

I’m not saying the Palm Pre isn’t going to challenge the iPhone, of that I’m sure it will but I think that until they sort out the problems at launch, video recording and the app store and it’s battery life, it can’t become a true iPhone competitor.

Palm Pre, iPhone Killer? Not Quite.

So with the upcoming release of the Palm Pre and the rumoured release of a new iPhone following WWDC. People are saying that the Palm Pre, is the iPhone killer.Palm Pre

Over the last few years touchscreen devices has become very mainstream and most brands have their touchscreen phone, however none of them have come close to what the iPhone has done to the market.

However even with the Palms quicker CPU and sleek design with a physical QWERTY keyboard, here are the reasons that the Palm Pre will not kill the iPhone.

  • The App Store, with over 1 Billion downloads since it’s launch there has never been a mobile software store like it.
  • Games, you may not think it but the iPhone is considered a gaming platform as well as a Phone, due to the App Store and the works of the likes of Electronic Arts, the iPhone have some high quality games. However at current standing the Palm Pre has no games and unless Palm allow deeper access to their SDK, developers will struggle.
  • Show off factor, Yes it may seem a strange thing to compare but if you pull an iPhone out people are drawn to it, they want to see the Apps they’ve seen on TV and heard everyone talk about, but with the Palm Pre people will just assume it’s just another touchscreen phone.
  • The Palm Pre does come with a 3 Megapixel camera with LED flash but for most people who own an iPhone 2 Megapixels works fine.
  • Easy typing, this is only true for some people but I now find it a lot easier to type on an iPhone keyboard than a normal mobile phone, however with a QWERTY keyboard it may be easier but the keys look small and aren’t as adaptable as the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard.
  • iTunes, Yes some love it and some hate it, but it gives users an easy well to purchase new music on the go and a central place for all their media.

Those are just a few reasons that I believe the Palm Pre will not kill the Apple iPhone, it may give a bit of a go at it, but overall the iPhone will remain at the head of it’s market, majority because of the App Store and the 1000’s of Apps.

Developers Continue to Fight Piracy!

As I have said in preview posts, I believe that we should as users get to try before you buy on Apps from Apple’s App Store, so as a result I do use the cracked method to try out Apps; however I test them for a few days and if I like them and think they work well, then I will purchase them. As a student I don’t have much money to be spending on loads of Apps such as the amount as I do now so I buy what I like and delete what I don’t.

However as I wrote before Beejive IM began to stop pirates using there App, but today I tried the Camera Zoom App from KendiTech and got a trial expired screen:

Camera Zoom Trial Screen

As you can see the developer has now implemented a system so that it can tell if the App has been pirated.
Now I agree that developers should do this seeing as this App is very cheap to buy from the store and obviously it’s supporting these hard working developers. But it brings an interesting note, developers should allow full versions with trial periods of say a week or a few days so that the user’s can get a taste of the App before spending there money and leaving bad reviews.

EA Mobile iPhone Game Lineup 2009

On Tuesday at GDC, EA Mobile discussed their plans for 2009 for the iPhone & iPod Touch platform.EA Logo

Tiger Woods PGA Tour has been been announced prior to this event but other games announced were:
Wolfenstein RPG
FIFA Soccer
Madden NFL
NBA Live
Spore Creatures
Mystery Mania
American Idol
Command & Conquer
SSX
Need for Speed
The Sims 3
Connect 4
Battleship
Risk
Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit
Clue

EA Mobile indicated that Trivial Pursuit and Tigher Woods PGA Tour, will be coming in Spring.

iPhone Idea: Memory

The iPhone and iPod Touch are an amazing platform for App’s. From twitter clients to full feature games. Most of these work perfectly without a hitch but when it comes to some App’s, especially Photography App’s then it’s a different story.
Photo App’s usually use a lot more memory than other App’s and frequently go over the limit of RAM it’s allowed to use causing the iPhone to close it.

Using App’s such as System we can clean up the memory and free up a lot of free space, which some people achieve via re-booting. What would be a lot better is if you have an App that needs a lot of memory clean it up before you start the App. Maybe Apple should implement a memory cleaner which works in the background when it realises a certain amount of memory is being used that cleans it up.

Here’s a screenshot of System, an App for the iPhone/iPod Touch that free’s up memory.

System_1
System_2
As you can see System freed up about 39MB of RAM making App’s which are memory intensive work a lot better.
For a better user experience either the developers or Apple should implement this feature.

iPhone Idea: Cubefield

One of my favourite flash games is Cubefield, the objective of the game is to get you through a field of cubes that are dynamically created as you play the game. I’ve thought for a long time now how good this would be as an iPhone app using the in-built accelerometers and put together a mock-up to demonstrate what it would look like.

Cubefield iPhone Mockup

As you can see it would work perfectly on iPhone and iPod Touch using the in-built accelerometers.

Update: It seems it already exsists in the App Store under Cube Runner.