Distimo reports that there 4,870 iPad apps available in the App Store: 1,433 are Universal applications and 3,437 are iPad-only apps. The report also shows the good growth these apps went under the past weeks, and there are also other interesting stats about price points and categories. You can download the report for free here.
Too bad most of these apps are still crap, and the great ones are still to be released. (with a very few exceptions, of course)
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You know, there must be something wrong about some people. And when it comes to money, fake reviews on iTunes and scams, you can bet MacStories is going to talk about it.
Originally discovered by Techcrunch last night, Lala is shutting down on May 31: subscriptions are closed, and current users will be refunded with iTunes Store credit.
Well, knew that this was gonna happen - but it’s interesting to see it happening one week before the start of the WWDC: every sign is pointing to Apple warming up iTunes.com (which is still being redirected) as their online music streaming service, set to become the most important competitor for services like Spotify, Groovershark and Pandora.
Anyway, we think that there will be so much more about iTunes.com rather than just music streaming. Hopefully we’ll know more at the WWDC.
Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer project at Microsoft, confirmed (again) their support for open web standards and HTML5 as the technology of the future.
In a blog post:
“The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.”
Pretty self explanatory, and it’s good to see Microsoft trying to do things good for IE9.
On the other hand, it’s Adobe that’s moving forward. They don’t seem to have a proper answer to Steve Jobs’ letter, for this reason they’ve stated (one again) that Apple is blocking their “widely used runtimes”, and so they’re moving forward - to other platforms.
Adobe cares about quantity (number of people who use Flash) more than quality (of Flash).
I think this is standing still, rather than moving forward.
Valve has just announced that a first public version of Steam for Mac will be available in 2 weeks, on May 12. No other details have been released.
In the meantime, be sure to check out screenshots and video here.
Right after Apple announced the WWDC dates for this year and the Apple Design Awards categories, many users and developers started complaining that Apple was indeed dropping support for Mac OS X, considering that there won’t Mac ADAs.
As usual, someone decided to email Steve and got another response.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this morning that Apple plans to spend over $1 Million buckaroos on advertisements (iAds) this year. Advertisers are gonna have to pay top dollar to even think about delivering content to Apple’s users, plus create Apple approved experiences that aren’t (putting it lightly) garbage. But what does this mean for App Store customers and developers?
Found on Fastcompany, this is simply genius. We haven’t posted that much about the Gizmodo “thing”, but this one is seriously worth it. Check it out after the break.
The man has spoken. Steve Jobs himself has in fact posted his thoughts about the Flash platform in a pretty long “open letter to the community”, available here.
The post is interesting and worth checking out in its entirety, but just to sum up Steve’s thoughts:
“Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”
Steve’s main concern is that Flash is a closed platform, with crappy performances on mobile devices and that can seriously cut the battery life of Apple’s devices. Overall, it seems like the whole letter is focused on mobile devices rather than desktop computers:
“New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
and
“Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.”
Now the situation gets very interesting. We’ll wait for a response from Adobe now.
