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Last month it was two billion downloads; this month it's over 100,000 applications available: is the Apple App Store really just a headline generator? No, obviously not, it's a software marketplace for the iPhone and iPod touch, but as the figures show it's certainly the most popular mobile apps store out there right now.
TomTom have confirmed that their Car Kit – the optional accessory to accompany the TomTom iPhone app – will only fully work with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, thanks to a limitation in the TomTom application. The app’s limitation means that owners of the first-gen iPhone, together with iPod touch users, won’t be able to take advantage of the Car Kit’s integrated GPS receiver and speakerphone.
Apple have announced their fiscal Q4 2009 financial results, and it’s been another successful three months for the company. Anybody suggesting that Apple’s tactics of selling relatively few expensive devices (rather than many cheap ones) will have some explaining to do in the face of these latest figures: Mac sales are up around 17-percent from the same period one year ago, while gross margin is up 36.6-percent. That’s helped the company reach $9.87bn in revenue, of which $1.67bn is profit (compared to $1.14bn profit in Q4 2008).
After the cut, slumping iPod sales and the promise of “really great new products” by Steve Jobs
Adobe have released Photoshop Mobile for iPhone, and as you’d expect from the title it offers straightforward on-device image editing for iPhone and iPod touch owners. As well as basic crop, rotate and flip tools, there’s also saturation and tint control, exposure and vibrancy tweaking and various filters and effects.
When you’ve got 85,000 titles to choose from, having some way of cutting through the selection and finding the right app goes from being a luxury to a necessity, and so Apple have cranked up their “there’s an app for that” offensive with “Apps For Everything“. The new category system aims to further slice up the code-bloated App Store, introducing thirteen new sections.
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Apple have just announced that there have been an impressive two billion downloads from the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch. The breakthrough comes roughly two and a half months after Apple notched up the 1.5bn mark back in July, a year after the App Store opened its virtual doors for the first time. There are currently in excess of 85,000 applications on offer, with Apple boasting 125,000 developers in their iPhone Developer Program.
Apple surprised many people at their recent iPod launch event by focusing on the iPod nano rather than their flagship touchscreen PMP, the iPod touch. Still, they saved a little magic for the third-generation model, including a lower starting price and some games-focused speed boosts higher up in the range. Does the iPod touch 3G stay ahead of the pack, or did Apple miss a trick by not tweaking further? Check out our review after the cut.
Video head-to-head with iPhone 3GS after the cut
There’s a compact band of loyal headphone-amp users who swear by the audio-tastic qualities of some external amplification, so it comes as no great surprise that manufacturer Fiio are attempting to jump onto the iPod gravy-train. The Fiio E1 plugs directly into the docking connector of an iPod or iPhone and not only offers in-line remote controls but the sort of headphone boost that can drive high-end cans or simply help more mainstream models shine.
Apple’s iPod touch 3G may be “the funnest iPod ever” now that Steve & Co have decided it’s a hardcore gaming machine, but it looks like they may have some competition from Nokia. One of the N900’s less publicized features is its TV output, which can be used to play the preinstalled games – Global Race and Bounce – on a bigger display. Maemo-Guru shot some footage of the N900 doing its gaming thing, and it certainly looks promising.
Video demo after the cut
Consider us surprised that, while we expected the most interest out of the iPod nano 5G teardown, in actual fact it’s Apple’s updated third-gen iPod touch the guts of which that are prompting the most intrigue. iFixit have been doing their usual job of stripping the new PMP down to its constituent parts, and in the process they’ve discovered not only a space where a nano-style video camera would fit perfectly, but signs of faster networking too.
JP
