All Articles Tagged app store

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

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Update: TiPb contacted Sirius XM regarding the omission of some of their most popular content within the application, they had no comment.

If you’ve been waiting for this application I’m sure you are well aware of the history leading up to it’s release. Well, TiPb is here to tell you that you can finally wave hello to the long awaited Sirius XM streaming application. [iTunes Link] The application is free to download and there are a few monthly payment options available to you:

Streaming to iPhone and iPod Touch is FREE with a paid Premium SIRIUS Internet Radio or Premium XM Radio Online subscription. You can also sample great SIRIUS & XM content with a FREE TRIAL. Visit siriusxm.com/oniphone for more details.

Now the bad news for all of the Stern fans out there, you can not listen to the Stern show on the go! If that is not a kick below the belt I don’t know what is…

Some select programming, including MLB® Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play, SIRIUS NASCAR® Radio, and Howard Stern, will not be available on the iPhone and iPod touch. Listeners will continue to be able to access that programming through the platforms they are currently offered on.

I don’t know about you, but I’m keeping my $2.99 a month.

[Ed: If by some stretch you're still interested, check out Jeff Scott's write up over at 148Apps]

UPDATE: AppAdvice spoke to an Apple dev at WWDC and found out:

all of this was just a simple bug in the system. We decided to not just take their word for it, we tested all the possible scenerios we could think of and in all cases we were presented with the pleasant “You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK” message. We can confirm that repurchase option no longer appears in any instance.

Um, yeah, no. Although it’s great that the restriction on re-downloading directly to the iPhone appears to be completely removed from iPhone 3.0 GM, the mere presence of the new dialog disallows anyone from playing the “bug” card. In any event, end users are now saved a good deal of confusion, so kudos.

ORIGINAL: Just over a week ago, TiPb reported that Apple had made a change to their re-download policy for iPhone 3.0 Beta 5. Previously, if you’d already bought a paid app, going to the App Store and hitting the Buy button again popped up a text alert saying you could download it for free.

With iPhone 3.0 Beta 5, which allowed for multiple iTunes account login, that message changed to “You can redownload it for free on your computer, or tap Buy to buy it again.”

We guessed this was to prevent app-sharing. If you logged in to 2 or more accounts, Apple didn’t want you to be able to download your buddies apps free of charge as well. Not the best trade-off, but understandable.

Now AppAdvice has figured out more of what’s going on:

In the final release of iTunes 8.2 last week, Apple included some logic that tells a device what iTunes accounts are authorized on the computer. Many users that were using the beta releases of iTunes were not prompted with an available update and found no reason to upgrade. Those users’ devices were never getting the authorization information to pass on to the App Store when they tried re-downloading apps.

So bottom line: if you have more than one legit iTunes account, authorize them all on iTunes 8.2 on your computer, then sync with your iPhone (running 3.0) and you should be good to go.

SInce we here at TiPb expect our buddies to buy their own apps anyway (and support developers so we get even more great apps!), that’s just dandy with us.

(Thanks to Jay and Trevor for the tips!)

BusinessWeek has an article up on Apple and Google considering app-sharing tools and — hold on, let’s deconstruct:

People like apps. “Tell a friend” buttons or, you know, actually physically showing someone a great app is difficult and far too real-world-contract requiring. However, Apple has iPhone 3.0 on the way, and with it — someone thinks they could enable something that might somehow enable and incentivize app sharing. And Google is considering enabling the same type of “recommendations”. Maybe.

Okay. Rewind.

Apps make a lot of money. Apps could make more money if not just the store or developers were selling them, but if users could push them to (at?) each other as well. Sound familiar? To the 5 of you reading who once owned Zunes, it probably does. Welcome to the Social. Just please don’t use the term “squirt”.

The theory is this. I love me some Peggle. I use a variation on iPhone 3.0’s P2P (peer-to-peer) connection technology to “share” Peggle with Leanna and Chris, who will then gobble it up, have tons of fun, and curse me for their loss of sleep time, likely in that order.

It’s not a crazy idea, even if Microsoft was already on to it years ago. iPhone 3.0 will already let you invite friends to join in multiplayer games. That could, theoretically, be extended to offer purchases for the game if they don’t already have it. Likewise, the BT-range limit could be extended to WiFi network or even cell provider (Oh, hi, AT&T infrastructure!)

To further promote the recommendations/sharing, Apple could — again theoretically — offer referral fees if/when the recommended/shared app is eventually converted into a sale. (Of course, the App Store, even under 3.0, doesn’t offer demos, so that would likely need to change first).

It’s an interesting idea at re-intermediating software sales. Microsoft is already “squirting” among Zune users, which makes sense given their very different, subscription-focused model. But the question is, with Apple being Apple, is it something they would do? Is it something they should?

And don’t be squirting no fart apps in our general directions! (Sorry, had to be said!)

[Thanks to the Reptile for the tip!]

Adam Jackson (via MacRumors) caught the first shot of WWDC 2009’s first banner and it’s one near and dear to TiPb’s heart. Check out the hero shot above, and Adam’s Flickr page for more Moscone center goodness.

Obviously, the App Store, with 45,000+ apps and over 1 billion downloads, was the mobile success story of 2008 — if not one of the great software platform success stories of all time. That Apple is keeping it front and center might also just mean we ain’t seen nothing yet.

We won’t quibble about the date (App Store launched July 11, 2008 while WWDC 2009 launches June 8 with Phil Schiller at the helm), and we won’t bring up those still stupefying rejections — this time.

There’s less than a week to go, after all…

It was only one day ago that TiPb asked, where is the official Sirius XM iPhone application? Well it seems like our question has, for the most part, been answered.

“The SIRIUS XM app will deliver an expanded programming lineup that includes SIRIUS XM’s exclusive sports talk, news, comedy, and 100% commercial free music channel, as well as new talk, comedy, and music showcase channels.”

Turns out the application will be free but — and that’s a big but — there will be subscription fees. You can either have a stand alone streaming subscription which is $13.00 a month or have a normal subscription with an additional $3.00 a month fee tacked onto what you are already paying. There is still no word on when the application will be released but our guess is you will see it around the time iPhone OS 3.0 drops this summer.

So there you have it folks… Excited? Disappointed? Let us know what you are thinking in the comments!

[Via BusinessInsider]

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything regarding the rumored official Sirius XM application for the iPhone. (If you are not familiar with the situation be sure to check out TiPb’s complete Sirius XM coverage!) Now a report from SeekingAlpha has pointed us to a App Store app called ReachMD. [iTunes Link]

What makes this application interesting is that it streams, with no subscription needed, Sirius XM’s channel 160 - MedicalRadio - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

So with that being said, TiPb poses this question to all of our readers: if ReachMD is providing their content to Sirius XM for satellite but separately licensing digital streaming rights via an App Store app, does this mean we will start to see other Sirius XM channels pop up in iTunes? Or are you still holding out for a full-fledged subscription based application? Some kind of major content deal between Sirius XM itself and iTunes?

[Via SeekingAlpha]

In today’s Apps For Less we found a few very worthy deals that you should definitely take advantage of.

First up we have a gem of a game from Gameloft — you might have heard it? — Assassin’s Creed - Altaïr’s Chronicles [iTunes Link]. You should know that it is one to pick up, especially at it’s new low price of $5.99 (down from $9.99!) Not a bad deal at all.

The fate of the Holy Land depends on you… Plunge into this direct prequel to the critically acclaimed game title, Assassin’s Creed™, offering rich gameplay and a well-balanced mix of stealth, chaotic action, and riddle-solving exploration in the midst of fully 3D-rendered historical environments of the Crusades’ Middle East

This next game also comes to us from Gameloft, Siberian Strike. [iTunes Link] You can now pick this one up for $.99! Great deal for an action packed, quality game!

Renewing the retro genre, Siberian Strike offers tons of enemies to destroy in many different ways thanks to the wild array of dangerous weapons at your disposal. Explosive missions make this game one of a kind with gameplay mixing shooting and riveting piloting assignments. Made for shoot’em up fans and casual players thanks to intuitive gameplay that makes it fun and within reach for everyone.

Last but not least we have an application that is actually not a game! The unit conversion app, Convertbot, [iTunes Link] is now on sale for a very limited time for the low price of $.99!

Convert currency, length, mass, time and much more in an exciting new way! Converting numbers will never again be a mundane task. In addition to its innovative interface, our robot is smart enough to convert to and from mixed units. Are you 5 foot 9 inches tall? Other converters require you to convert that to 5.75 ft in your head before being able to enter it. Convertbot allows mixed units like Foot + Inches, Pounds + Ounces, and more!

If you are a developer and are planning on a sale for your application feel free to contact us to be included in the next Apps for Less!

A billion apps. Developers getting rich. Apple making a bit of money. Or is it all just a house of cards ready to come tumbling down, with only one sneaky developer and a rule-breaking easter egg to blame?

See, the App Store has rules. You can’t, for example, include porn in an application and expect it to get approved and hosted by Apple in the App Store. But lets say your app looks all sweet and interesting, gets approved by Apple, and then lets slip that with one little gesture or secret code — porn. Or worse, malware or other malicious code.

Sound crazy? Wired (via Ars) tells us it’s already happened, albeit with language in an app called Lyrics.

Seems the app had some language that caused Apple to reject it, so the dev applied a language filter to clean that **** up, but added in a stealthy way to swipe the About screen to re-enable it. Said developer Jelle Prins:

“It’s almost impossible for Apple to see if there’s an Easter egg because they can’t really see the source code. In theory a developer could make a simple Easter egg in their app and provide a user with whatever content they want.”

Until Apple reads that quote, begins scouring apps even more closely, maybe asking developers to submit the actual code base, and making current app approval delays look like the blink of an eye.

Geniuses the lot of you.

Venture Partners guestimated, based on a survey from O’Reilly, that Apple has made “only” $20-$45 million from their 30% cut of App Store revenue since the service launched in July 2008.

To quickly recap, App Store developers can charge whatever they’d like for apps — including free as in $0 — and Apple will take 30% off the top, from which they pay storage, bandwidth, infrastructure, transactional processing fees, etc. Obviously 30% of free is nothing, but for $9.99 apps, they’d gross almost $3, and net… well, that’s anyone’s guess. (see above).

Techcrunch (via Daring Fireball) provides some interesting analysis on that point, and the larger point on just what Apple may be netting in total:

I think Liew’s numbers are well below the actual revenue numbers, but no matter if its $50 million, $100 million or $200 million, that’s not a huge amount of money for a company that has nearly $30 billion in cash in the bank. But going forward, that number is only going to increase both as the platform expands and as in-app purchases come into play. That’s not bad for a company that just wanted to make enough money to keep the App Store running.

Parallels to the iTunes Music Store, and what it did for iPod sales, are thus as plentiful as they are well founded.