Apple’s iTunes Store passed the 10 billion songs downloads milestone today, February 24, 2010, at approximately 4:43pm ET.

Somebody has won a US$10,000 iTunes Store Gift Card!

We’ll let you know who won as soon as Apple announces the winner.

“After four days of confusion and adolescent hand-wringing, Apple finally spoke out about the change of policy that has removed thousands of risqué applications from its iPhone App Store,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.

“The response came in an interview that senior vice president Phil Schiller gave Jenna Wortham of The New York Times,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “‘It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,’ Mr. Schiller said.”
[Read more →]

“Following last week’s revelation that Apple had reversed its policy on sexual content in the iPhone App Store, a new report claims more than 5,000 inappropriate applications have been removed from the download destination,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.

“Developer ChilliFresh, creator of the ‘Wobble iBoobs’ application removed from the App Store last week due to ‘numerous complaints’ from users, claimed that a discussion with Apple revealed the company removed more than 5,000 offending applications from the App Store,” Marsal reports. “The total number of removed applications is said to have amounted to roughly 3 percent of the entire App Store.”

Marsal reports, “ChilliFresh claimed that an Apple representative said images of both women and men in bikinis are inappropriate, as are words that have a sexual connotation. Apple allegedly is not allowing applications that can be ’sexually arousing,’ or that imply sexual content.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Apple has announced to iPhone OS devlopers that they can now distribute their apps to more customers with the addition of App Store support in 13 countries:

• Armenia

• Botswana

• Bulgaria

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A clever new infographic from gigaom.com shows how the App Store puts more than 100,000 apps at your fingertips — and generates millions of dollars for app developers worldwide.

“‘There’s never been anything like this experience for mobile software,’ Freeverse’s Ian Lynch Smith says of the App Store boom. ‘This is the future of digital distribution for everything: software, games, entertainment, all kinds of content,’” Jenna Wortham reports for The New York Times.

“As the App Store evolves from a kitschy catalog of novelty applications into what analysts and aficionados describe as a platform that is rapidly transforming mobile computing and telephony, it is changing the goals and testing the patience of developers, bolstering sales of the Apple motherships the applications ride upon — the iPhone and iPod Touch — and causing Apple’s competitors to overhaul their product lines and business models,” Wortham reports. “It even threatens to open chinks in Apple’s own corporate armor.”

“Thanks in large part to the iPhone, introduced in 2007, and the App Store, which opened its doors last year,smartphones have become the Swiss Army knives of the digital age,” Wortham reports. “They provide a staggering arsenal of functions and tools at the swipe of a finger: e-mail and text messaging, video and photography, maps and turn-by-turn navigation, media and books, music and games, mobile shopping, and even wireless keys that remotely unlock cars.”

Wortham reports, “‘Apple changed the view of what you can do with that small phone in your back pocket,’ says Katy Huberty, a Morgan Stanley analyst. ‘Applications make the smartphone trend a revolutionary trend — one we haven’t seen in consumer technology for many years… The iPhone is changing our behavior. The game that Apple is playing is to become the Microsoft of the smartphone market.’”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Apple has rejected an app advertising the Motorola Droid, according to reports,” MacNN reports.

“Called iDroid, the app has only one function, which is to imitate the glowing red eye of the Droid while linking to promotional material,” MacNN reports. “Unlike some other more prominent rejections, the iDroid case is believed to be clear-cut, since the app promotes” Verizon’s latest pretend iPhone.

MacNN theorizes that the app is just “a simple attempt at gaining publicity, much in the way that groups like PETA rely on controversy from banned TV ads.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews