Today, the Apple App Store surpassed 1,000,000,000 app downloads. It reached this milestone after a little more than nine months in existence. It is significant, auspicious, and whatever other hyperbolic adjectives you’d care to stick into this sentence. It bears reflection, discussion, and outlook onto what this means for the mobile device space.

The iPhone app store came into being following the clamor for applications by the iPhone/iPod touch community. Weeks after the iPhone was released, developers found ways to crack into the firmware of the device, access APIs and create hardware driven apps for the device. Demand for a sanctioned SDK supported by Apple built up to near impossible levels. Finally, Apple relented and released an SDK, and announced the opening of the App Store with the release of the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software update.

The App Store was met with a skeptical eye by many, including yours truly. After all, with no background applications allowed, and many Jailbroken apps doing at least what the Apple sanctioned apps could do, why would people go to the App Store? And, how could Apple’s method succeed where others (Palm, Nokia, the app distribution methods created by the carriers) had failed? Well, people went to the App Store, and they went in droves.

The App Store took something which is patently not an original concept - applications built for a mobile device - and made them easy to access and purchase. Rather than going to a developers site, downloading a package, hooking your device up to your computer, transferring the files, setting up the package on your phone, configuring the settings and finally using the app, the App Store stripped out all of the processes and made it dead simple to use an app. Open the App Store, find the app you want, hit install, confirm your password, and the app installs and configures itself right there on your phone. Seamless, fast and easy. Better yet, in many cases the applications were reasonably cheap, making it trivial to pile up pages and pages (and pages and pages…) of apps. Apple succeeded by doing what they do best: taking an idea floating around there, refining it down to the simplest and most effective form.

Now that Apple has sold the billionth application from the App Store, what is in store for the future of the platform? Well, using the past nine months as an indicator, plenty of smooth times ahead. Apple has managed to capture the majority of the developer share for the mobile market, despite the sizable headstarts which Windows Mobile and Blackberry held over the App Store. With the release of iPhone OS 3.0, there are more API and tools available for developers to tool around with, and with the install base of the iPhone and iPod touch growing every day, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the massive success of the App Store.

Kudos, Apple, for taking my money. I look forward to paying you for an app to monitor my liver while racing 3D go karts against my friends.

CommentsArticles app store, Apple, applications, apps, iPhone, iPod touch, microtransactions, mobile, money, one billion, steve jobs

One of the main problems with Apple’s App store is the fact that it is tied to the iTunes client. Which, of course, as we have noted several times on our podcast, is slow, and tedious to slog through when trying to find a specific app (or anything, really). So imagine my delight at finding App Store, a website which takes the interface of the App Store, but places it onto the web in a much speedier method of finding apps.

While we’re on the topic of the app store, another problem with the app store is not knowing the way an app will look before you buy it. Apps cost money (a lot of them, anyway), and until APple enacts some sort of demo model, we’ll all have to rely on App Theater for our app previewing needs. App Theater is effectively the YouTube of iPhone Apps, taking user generated reviews of various reviews. It’s extremely useful, especially for game apps, which obviously place a demand upon usability and screen real estate.

Other useful iPhone/iPod touch review/preview/search sites: AppBeacon, AppShopper and Apptism.

[some links via Gizmodo]

CommentsArticles app store, Apple, applications, apps, iPhone, iPod touch, recommendation, review

OK, perhaps I’m being a little too melodramatic with that title. But, it has be said, the Palm Pre has generated the kind of buzz Palm probably wanted for CES. In a year when big tech advancements have stagnated, Palm came in and reasserated themselves as a force in the mobile world. Now, I’ll admit, I possess a certain bias against the Pre. This is based on the fact that I haven’t gotten the chance to get my grubby little mits on the device.

Now, before the cries of “of course! You crazy iPhone users will do anything to trash this device!” Hold your horses, nellie. I was just as jazzed by the iPhone when I first saw as I was by the Pre. There are some extremely interesting and innovative concepts to be considered from the early demonstrations of the Pre. The whole deck of cards concept is a very intuitive way to handle app switching and management. The universal search throughout the device is a brilliant idea from the limited use which was demonstrated. But, that’s the point that I’m trying to get across: everything we’ve seen with the Pre has been LIMITED. LOCKED DOWN to the extreme. Let me do that again. Ahem…EXTREME!!!%

My decision to purchase an iPhone came after 7 intensive months of using the iPod touch. 7 months of exploring every UI tweak and quirk, learning ways to manage battery life, becoming acclimated to the environment. By the time I got my hands on the iPhone this past summer, I had clearly determined that the iPhone was the best mobile experience for me. That’s the issue which Palm faces with the Pre and their new webOS: everything looks nice and smooth during a keynote presentation in the hands of a man who has spent the better part of two years with the device and operating system. The situation will change dramatically in the hands of an everyday user running multiple applications who has their own concept of how actions on their phone should operate.

My first impressions, based on the Palm keynote, will probably end up sounding pretty similar to the first impressions I had in early 2007 about the iPhone, and in late 2008 about the G1: the hardware is nice, the software looks pretty enough, but until it gets out into the real world, everything is moot. What we can say about the Pre is that the first impression is better than what we initially got from the G1 and Android, but perhaps slightly worse than the iPhone. A lot of what I saw in the Palm keynote echoed a lot of what Apple did, from the UI tweaks (the “rubberbanding” bounce when scrolling through contacts, multi-touch zooming, accelerometer movement, etc.) are things basically lifted from the iPhone. Which abolutely makes sense, since John Rubenstein came from Apple, and a cadre of Apple developers who worked on the iPhone now are at Palm developing the webOS.

The unique things which the Pre does, which I have to give Palm above anyone else out there, is intuitively merging and sorting through contact information from multiple sources and organzing it in a well thought out, easy to navigate manner. Taking information from Outlook, Gmail and Facebook, combining it into one contact card and letting you view data from all of them together? Genius. I lust after this for my phone. The iPhone kicked down the door for devices and operating systems which Palm is putting out, and the company is taking full advantage of the opportunity and pushing the market even further forward. As a moble geek, and someone who’s always looking for the next best phone to put in his pocket, I have to admit, I’m really excited by what the future holds.

CommentsArticles Apple, CES, cloud, device, iPhone, John Rubenstein, keynote, mobile, multitouch, palm, palmpre, pre, sprint, touchscreen, webOS

Coming from that wonderful news reporting site known as TechCrunch *cough*rumormongerers*cough*, is a little rumor that Apple is building a search engine. The arguement which TechCrunch presents is that Apple, which currently sits at 7% market share with Safari, a ton of iPhones and iPod Touches floating around, and MobileMe users cataloging their content online, there exists an oppotunity to monetize all of that content in some way. Michael Arrington speculates that if Apple is attempting to enter into the search (and by extension, online advertising space), it would be to optimize the experience for their mobile devices. This point makes sense, since one of the new priimary focuses of Apple over the lasy year or so has been entering (and, admit it, dominating) the mobile space.

The Boy Genius Report speculates that Apple denizens would be all over a search product introduced by the company, and it wouldn’t be the same type of failure, that, say, Cuil has been. While I suspect this is true, there are plenty of Microsoft users out there who actively use Google (and by extension, ignore Live search).

My take on all of this is a simple question: Why? Sure, Apple has a ton of content that would benefit from a search funciton, but really, only a function is required. Apple has a demonstrated strong relationship with Google (though as Arrington points out, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google who also sits on the board for Apple is close to leaving), I would give more credence to Google developing a specialized function to sort through Apple’s content more quickly.

As Microsoft languishes in the search space, it behooves Apple to try and eke away at marketshare, focus on expanding their ever increasing product lines, and optimizing what they have already. Or, you know, introducing LCD TVs with Apple TV built in. If you believe rumor mongerers.

CommentsArticles Apple, google, search, search engine, steve jobs

This is absolutely awesome.  Microsoft is putting guerilla marketing to pretty darn good use!  They’re putting small kiosks where you can record your own “I’m a PC” advert outside of Apple stores.  Priceless.

I haven’t been a very big fan of the Apple advertising campaign using John Hodgman and Justin Long.  I see the humor in them and they do make me chuckle from time to time, but I’ve also found them to be inaccurate, pithy, obnoxious, and pretentious.  Everytime I’d like to buy a new Apple product and I happen to see one of those adverts, I become very discouraged and no longer want to purchase that product.  I’ve feel although the Seinfeld adverts were a bit baffling that Microsoft’s adverts have been much classier thus far.  You can say what you’d like about whether they’re “good” or “effective,” but they are definitely of a different calibre than the Apple adverts.

Apple has spent a long time trying to convince me that it is hip and chic and so totally now.  But I still cling to the stereotype that Apple users are obnoxious twats who use their laptops as a fashion accessory rather than a computing tool.

This interesting use of guerilla marketing by Microsoft is not obnoxious, if you ask me.  It’s clever and the correct use of competitive advertisement.  You’re supposed to place your adverts next to your competitor’s.  That gas station has gas for $2.15?  Well, MY gas station has it for $2.05!  That’s the great part of advertising, coming up with new, interesting and engaging ways to attract your customer.  Apple has done that with adverts that can really irritate and annoy a lot of possible customers.  Microsoft has done that with adverts that may not truly articulate its point to the customer.  They’re both flawed, but so far I’m siding with Microsoft in this marketing war*.

*There really is no war happening.  It’s just regular ole marketing.  Let’s not hyperbolize everything.

CommentsFeature Article advertisement, Apple, I'm a PC, marketing, Microsoft