Apple App Store surprises and delights

If you don’t have an iPhone, you’re going to want one real soon. I say this not because of peer pressure or because of the Apple marketing machine. Or even because of the iPhone 3G. I say it because the App Store, which launched today enabling users to install 3rd party developer applications, is simply amazing. Seriously, many have been blinded by all this talk of the new iPhone — the real story is the App Store. It can run on your old iPhone (as it’s running on mine right now) and it can run on your iPod Touch. And it makes them so much better ... more amazing is how easy it is to install the apps ... I did it all from the phone in a few easy steps. Just imagine doing that on a Motorola RAZR or Nokia N95. I’ve used both extensively, there is no comparison. more

Get these applications first ... Twitteriffic ... adds location-aware tweeting ... Remote ... pretty much negates the need for something like the Sonos music system ... AIM ... a solid first entry ... Loopt ... A location-aware mobile service that ties into Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms ... Super Monkey Ball ... bright, pretty, and immediately accessible ... Exposure ... the best mobile interface to Flickr I've ever seen ... . more

More than 550 new applications arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch this morning in iTunes' brand new App Store and more than 130 of them are available for free ... Evernote ... makes your iPhone a serious universal capture device ... Zenbe Lists ... Anyone you share with can then edit and update your list and sync them back to you—a kind of nifty no-real-computer-required list wiki ... Yelp ... A great app for traveling, or just seeing what the hive says about your home town ... Save Benjis ... seriously convenient to compare prices on online purchases, or the gadget that's sitting right in front of you at the store ... Talking Phrasebook ... offers phrases you'll want to know translated from English to Spanish, French, German, and Italian. more

Tucked away on the iPhone 2.0 version of Apple’s Application Store is a counter for the number of times that each application has been purchased . When this information is combined with an application’s price, and the uniform 30% that Apple pockets on each download, it is possible to know how much Apple is making from the App Store. As of 4PM (PST), that number hovers around $55,000. This is pretty incredible ... If sales of applications stay at the current pace, which they won’t, because they are going to speed up dramatically, the Application Store would still provide Apple with an additional twenty million dollars of revenue per year. more

Investment bank Piper Jaffray estimated last month that the iPhone App Store could be a billion-dollar business by 2009, and that nearly 90 million people worldwide could own compatible iPhone and iPod Touch devices by the end of that year ... Charging five bucks for an application could bring in some real dollars ... Apple's new mini marketplace means that for the first time since the social-application craze started more than a year ago, the hottest new trend has nothing to do with Web-based networks ... The implication for Facebook, as well as open-source social network platform OpenSocial, is that if developers see more compelling reasons to build software for the iPhone instead, they could jump ship. more

The new iPhone OS 2.0 software has been unlocked and jailbroken. It was released just hours ago and it has already been cracked by the iPhone Dev Team. The first one took a couple of months, but this one was actually unlocked before Apple released it to the public ... It may not be as interesting as before—since most countries now have the iPhone and it will be impossible to buy without doing a contract first—but people looking to install unsigned applications and buy pay-as-you-go cards while traveling—instead of roaming—will find it very useful. more

• Guide Bowja the ninja through this puzzling adventure type game

Buffer overflow:

• Deal Architect : A threat to clouds?
• Emil Protalinski: Bill Gates to receive the first Einstein Award in December
• Layer 8: Department of Defense gets zippy IBM supercomputer
• Todd Hoff: Can cloud computing smite down evil zombie botnet armies?
• Jeremy Zawodny: Congrats to Yahoo! on the BOSS Launch
• Techdirt: Connecticut Still Wants To Try Julie Amero
• Nate Anderson: Sprint to use 1.6Gbps wireless backhaul for Xohm WiMAX

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Angela Gunn: Lose some... win some?
• Preston Gralla: Where are the iPhone 3G get-a-lifers?
• SJVN: Why openSUSE 11 is the Linux for me
• Michael R. Farnum: Economy and Security
• Mark Hall: Engine Yard runs Ruby on Rails apps
• Preston Gralla: Vista compatability: Still dead on arrival
• Shark Tank: Oops!
• Shark Bait: Do I have the right helpdesk?

Like this stuff? Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 21 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Microsoft helps users downgrade to WinXP???
• Drop everything and patch your DNS: like, NOW
• The Yahoo! story spins out of control! (alt! delete!)

[More at Techmeme]