Apple’s iPad ecosystem hit another app milestone today as the number of dedicated iPad apps available in the App Store passed the 80,000 mark earlier this morning. Previously, Apple hit the 70,000 app mark in March shortly after they unveiled the iPad 2.
Several media outlets are reporting that Apple is likely working on a “cloud-based TV service” that would be compatible with its strong line of products – iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Macs.
The Business Insider (SAI) has reported that analyst Peter Misek claims Apple will soon launch a “new far reaching cloud-based service” focused on video. Ticonderoga Securities’ analyst, Brian White, says that the company now seems to be “moving down this pace at a faster pace than the market expected.”
Video streaming companies continue their big push into your living room. A few weeks ago, Boxee added Netflix and Vudu movies to its catalog, and also announced an iPad app that will allow its users to stream content directly to the iPad and iPad 2 via a Boxee Box.
Vudu has seen how broadband users have welcomed the video streaming experience, and the company has now hinted its movie streaming service might come to Apple devices.
Whether you like the game, or hate it, it’s hard not to be impressed by Angry Birds’ popularity: the latest sequel of the franchise, Angry Birds Rio, was downloaded a whopping 10 million times in just 10 days.
Rovio, the development shop behind the app, broke the news yesterday via a somewhat cryptic tweet, “10 in 10.”
Pixelocity’s Disc Drivin’ has been a popular asynchronous multi-player racing game for the iPhone and iPod touch for a while. It’s an addictive game that will have you taking turns with your friends to flick a small disc around a track to determine who crosses the finish line first. The game will make you sweat and force you to use awesome powers and avoid hazards on beautiful tracks with full 3D physics.
The game is now available with optimized graphics for the iPad.
Frustrated that it’s almost impossible to find and buy and iPad 2? Thinking about buying an Android 3 (Honeycomb) tablet instead? Before you take the Android plunge there something you should know, there’s less than 100 native Android 3 Tablet apps.
Nearly a month after the Motorola Xoom was released, the first Honeycomb tablet, the number of Android tablet apps available in Google’s Android Market has hardly budged. According to Electronista, developer Justin Williams looked through the Android Market and found there were fewer than 100 Android 3 native apps. Electronista reports approximately ”14 core apps are still truly native, while a total of 50 include both the native apps as well as those phone apps with basic resizing for the larger screen.” Williams says there actually may be more native apps available, but Google’s Android Market doesn’t currently provide an easy way to search or filter tablet specific apps.
Apple’s Smart Covers have been a popular accessory since the iPad 2 was released two weeks ago. I’ve seen plenty of iPad 2 owners showing off how their Smart Covers automatically wake up the iPad 2 when opened, and put the iPad 2 to sleep when closed.
However, Apple’s covers do not protect the iPad 2 completely. The Smart Covers leave the entire back, edges and your iPad 2 mostly exposed. That is what XGear is attempting to fix with their new accessory.
The pricing plans for online iPad editions of newspaper and magazines have been criticized heavily by consumers.
We previously talked about Apple’s App Store subscriptions and how the company plans to leverage your iTunes account for buying new content. But, that has also forced publishers to establish a closer relationship with you, which is what The New York Times (NYT) is trying to do with their new FREE one-year subscription offer.
Earlier today, Amazon took the wraps off of their highly anticipated Appsstore for Android. The new store is a clearing house for Andorid smartphone and tablet applications and gives users an easy way to discover, find, purchase and test Andorid based apps.
The store is the first to offer customers the ability to test applications directly from a web browser before making a purchase. This feature is unique among app stores and gives customers the opportunity to try before having to spend money on an app. Apple currently does not offer a “try” option, customers must instead rely on customer reviews, third-party website reviews or simply download free “lite” versions of an app before they buy the full version.
An infographics released by instantShift and Wix reveals a few interesting facts about iOS developers and their apps. The average price iOS apps sell for on the App Store is about $2.45, which translates into $1.72 for developers, after Apple takes its 30 percent cut.
Based on this average profit per app of $1.72, a typical developer must therefore sell 581,395 apps to become a millionaire – something only a handful of iOS developers managed to achieve thus far.
A few months ago, we talked about the Smurfs Village application, which created quite the spectacle. The FREE app has been highly ranked for quite a while, and it quickly became one of the highest grossing apps in the App Store. You might be asking yourself how a FREE app could become one of the highest grossing? Simple, in-app purchases!
While many free apps for kids seem perfectly harmless at first glance, beware, as many of them could lead to surprising unexpected fees. That is one of the areas that iOS 4.3 is trying to fix with the latest software update.
Stories about outrageously high iTunes charges made by kids taking advantage of the in-app purchasing “loop hole” continue to pop up across the web on a regular basis. Pocketgamer reports this week that, “Apple has told Capcom in no uncertain terms that its freemium children’s game has been causing problems with an increasingly significant number of parents who have complained that their children have been racking up large amounts of in-app purchases without their knowledge.”
Today’s policy requires users to enter a password to complete an app purchase in iTunes, then any subsequent purchases made during the next 15 minutes are automatically completed without a password request. Now rumor has it Apple is considering reducing the current 15 minute time period to something closer to five minutes in an attempt to limit the number of accidental purchases.
While Apple sells iPhones and iPads in more than eighty countries worldwide, the company does not necessarily offers music and movies via iTunes in all these countries, as only twenty-five countries have access to this type of content (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States).
For the other countries, only apps are available to iPhone and iPad owners, but the situation is changing though, as entertainment giants such as Warner Bros. recently started to release movies embedded within apps, sold via the App Store.
A new iPad app called ‘The Matrix’ now allows you to create custom video walls with iPads. The app can be used to create animations that can be played across as many iPads as you can gather, as if they were one large screen.
The app was built to quickly put together animations using custom text and/or images, without an internet connection, as the app uses WiFi or Bluetooth to transfer information from an iPad to the other.
If you’ve got a toddler at home, you probably sit in awe from time to time amazed at just how proficient your little genius is when it comes to technology. I know quite a few toddlers who, after only a short period of instruction, are tapping and swiping their way through any number of the children’s apps now available in the App Store. Now, with all these little kiddos using expensive gadgets like iPhones, iPods and iPads for education and entertainment, parents find themselves in need of rugged cases to protect them.
Fisher Price will showcase a new product at this year’s New York International Toy Fair that should help many parents with this very need. The Laugh & Learn Baby iCan Play Case is a fun and colorful way to let toddlers enjoy their apps while also protecting the iPhone or iPod Touch from “dribbles and drool.”
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