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Apple's iTunes App Store turns 1
The iTunes App Store is 1 year old this week, and Apple is celebrating by promoting some of its favorite apps and games. The company's promotion isn't modest:
Light a candle and cue the music. OK, forgive us for sounding like doting parents, but we're just so proud--having watched the App Store go from promising newcomer to full-fledged revolutionary. To celebrate its first birthday, we've gathered some of our favorite games and apps. Part fun. Part function. Entirely amazing.
Apple has plenty to brag about. In one year, the App Store's virtual shelves have stocked more than 50,000 apps, hosted more than 1 billion app downloads, and changed the way cell phone owners use their handsets. But the store has generated plenty of controversy, too. Developers have had their apps rejected for obscure reasons and for no discernible reason whatsoever. And plenty of developers have complained loudly about what they say is mistreatment by Apple.
We'd like to know your experiences. Are you an iPhone developer with iTunes App Store experiences good or bad? Can you share your take on the iPhone app approval process or iPhone OS SDK limitations? Got comments you'd like to make about your experience with the iTunes App Store during its first year of operation? Please send an e-mail to iphoneatlas@cnet.com or leave a message in the TalkBack section below.
(Credit:
Apple)
I kid, I kid. I've brought at least a hundred Apps and one of them I highly recommend for reading is MyComics.
All was going well until I tried to create to an Apple's iTunes App Store account to download all those wonderful apps.
Horror to find because of my location I cannot create account and therefore unable to download any apps, music, movies etc available at the store.
Apart from emigrating, is there another way to access the Apple's iTunes App Store from this distant, alien country?
Thanks from the Republic of Azerbaijan?
PS - it's just South of Russia :-)
I have 144 of them and no sign of a fart app among them :-) You would be surprised how useful these apps are to me as a professional artist and educator.
"The demands of a physician's day necessitate their periodic absence from labor and delivery and other acute care environments," Dr. Powell said. "As a result, doctors need easy-to-use, standards-based, intuitive mobile applications that can be quickly downloaded with the necessary security and configuration files in place, and with hospital perinatal systems up and running live. AirStrip OB on the iPhone meets these demands."
The hospital purchases the AirStrip system, which works in tandem with the hospital's existing patient monitoring system, and doctors can then install the AirStrip OB application on their iPhone.
You see you learned something new today- now you know.
The approval process has not been an issue for any of my clients applications. SDK limitations are hard to work around such as multi-processing but are the reality of technology targeted at enhancing user experience.
App store approval process has improved greatly since the early days. You can pretty much get through in 2 weeks for most of our apps and is much more reliable.
And I rarely bash Apple I bash the fanboys I have no issue with Apple I have issues with their users.
And before you go and tell me that my comments put Apple in a bad light why don't you look at your own? Your always bashing Microsoft and its users. So how is this better?
You took Monkeyfun14's comments out of context and misunderstood them. Don't get so worked up over it. It's just a phone, not a religion.
You did say that medical accessories could be a possibility- and I would heartily agree with Monkeyfun14 that professionals would be loathe to use such an accessory on a device that has no security whatsoever on it. Will Apple be willing to put themselves up to the legal challenge that qualified medical tool makers now are at? I seriously doubt Apple will want to be in the legal line of fire because of an accessory made by a third party crashed or had some compromised data due to an OS update or patch. It's a nice idea, but it just isn't a reality that can be reached at this point in technology for the iPhone.
Plus there is the whole issue of confidentiality. Those records that get accessed on the iPhone- there is no security. If the device goes missing, so does that data. Anyone can access it easily. There is no security on the device when every app runs as root. Do you want your personal medical information in a PDA that is easily lost or stolen? I certainly do not.
And yes, you do troll in the Microsoft stories and toss off comments intended only to disrupt and cause trouble. Anyone can see that for themselves when they read your comments.
@Monkeyfun14: You're baiting an Apple troll. Stop wasting your time on them. You're guilty of causing trouble here too as a result.
I also love that this article hasn't been flooded with comment from fanboys =) They're growing up!
Now if I can just get someone to buy my app...
Granted, this was an earlier version of iTunes and hopefully they don't do that anymore but somehow I doubt it. Took me a good 2 weeks to weed out all of the offenders hiding in my system.
From Wiki:
Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is an anti-piracy system created by Microsoft that enforces online validation of the licensing of several recent Microsoft Windows operating systems when accessing several services, such as Windows Update, and downloading Windows components from the Microsoft Download Center. WGA consists of two components; an installable component called WGA Notifications that hooks into Winlogon and validates the Windows license upon each logon and an ActiveX control that checks the validity of the Windows license when downloading certain updates from the Microsoft Download Center or Windows Update.
Here's a good one for you....
Install Quicktime on a Windows system. Just the quicktime player. Nothing else.
Now go look at the running processes. In there you're going to find ipodservices and iTuneshelper. Both are using up resources and were installed *without your knowledge*. Oh, you agreed to it in the download, but why are those processes running? Apple has them there to make connecting an iPod to your Windows system even easier. That's a great idea, right?
What if you don't own an iPod. What if you never intended to get one. Well, too bad, those services are still going to be running on your system as long as you have Quicktime installed. Go ahead and delete Quicktime. It keeps getting reinstalled. The Apple software update will keep reinstalling it even after you delete it. Why look at that- you also now have Safari and iTunes on your system... that you didn't want or ask for.
Yes, Apple has a lot of history in this area. Before you get too hign upon your horse, be sure that you know exactly what you're sitting on.
Good luck.
1. It's curious that, from iTunes, you can access the App Store only by clicking on a small link in a list of things; it deserves a separate button at least.
2. There need to be improved means of organizing apps. The use of maybe a dozen or so categories for 50,000+ apps makes finding useful apps a daunting process. I would expect each category to be broken up into subcategories, and further broken down as necessary.
3. I don't understand why I need to receive a receipt for free apps I've downloaded, but I'm sure lawyers were involved.
4. Sometimes there's just not enough information on apps to judge whether or not they are worth downloading. Video demonstrations (developed and supplied by the developer, of course), would be useful.
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by MongooseProXC
July 13, 2009 8:03 AM PDT
- What's an iTune?
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