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Apple Launches ITunes App Store With 500+ Apps
L. Miriam writes "Apple launched the iTunes App store for the iPhone and iPod Touch today, following the earlier launch of iTunes 7.7. There are over 500 applications available for download, with prices ranging from free to around $35. Both MySpace and Facebook apps are there, as well as a mix of games, utilities and ebooks. You can download applications now, but you can't do anything with them until the iPhone/iPod 2.0 firmware is released. The App Store can't be accessed directly through iTunes, but Mobile Computer explains how to get to it, and has a few screenshots, too."
Often by digging through Akamai's (who are Apple's infrastructure provider) servers, using common strings and hoping to strike it rich.
What do you do with your spare time at work? :p
The Mothership
The first three things I decided I wanted to find (and even purchase if there wasn't a free version available were:
Now, to my knowledge there is an ssh client available for first gen iPhones (jailbreaked) but despite this no one has bothered putting together a simple SSH client for the 3G iPhone?
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
It is very frustrating. Some of the developers I know have been waiting for months. I have personally been waiting for about a month. From what everyone can tell the process is completely random who gets in but most people aren't talking about it because of the NDA Apple makes you sign to get in the program. Some people have been coding for Macs for years professionally (which is extremely similar to coding for the iPhone) and have been part of the ADC for years and haven't gotten the cert while people who have been coding for a week have signed up and received the cert almost immediately. General consensus among devs is also that this is the reason why many of the Apps in the App store look bad: because they are being done by people who have little experience writing Apple applications. I'm not saying they are all bad, I'm just saying that its not like Apple is only letting in the best. Many good developers are still waiting to get approved and I think we will see many more good apps as more of the developers are allowed in.
I looked at the various applications being offered and not surprisingly, there were quite a few tip calculators, to-do lists and fitness logs. Just about every straightforward "enter some data and save it or do rudimentary calculations on it" application was well represented. And yes, there were a few cases where you'd have a free to-do list competing with a $9.99USD to-do list.
I don't speak for Apple and can't guess at some of their rationales but I would hope that Apple realized that it's better to reject applications once a certain threshold was been met. The very first thing I coded with the SDK was a calculator. (The second thing I coded was a tip calculator.) I'd imagine the very first thing most of those 25k developers coded was a calculator too. Do we really need 25k different calculators? No, once the first five got in through the door, that's it. Everyone else has to come up with something more clever than a calculator.
I didn't sit down and quantify the offerings but I got the impression that all 500+ applications could be divided into roughly six... algorithmic buckets; calculate something, look something up, play sound clips, save and display arrays of data, send and receive messages, and play games. I didn't see any iPhone exclusive killer apps that would convince my friends to abandon their crackberries, Androids and OpenMokos.
Now if you had a killer app and you were one of the 20k developers rejected from this initial round of offerings, then yes, Apple has much to apologize for. I personally think that's unlikely because if you had such a killer app, you'd be up on stage with Steve Jobs demonstrating it.
There are a lot of people buying iPhones who aren't "Apple fanboys", and these people will start spending actual money on apps. On many phones you'll have some random ringtones and free Java games and such, but you tend not to have a large catalog of apps you paid for. On the iPhone, if you consider moving to another phone after spending a lot of money on apps you'll have to throw it away and re-purchase everything.
Look, I'm not actually complaining. I own an iPod Touch and plan on paying the $10 for the upgrade and buying some of the really cool stuff I've seen. I'm just saying... it's an interesting market trend. It also makes me think Jobs' allergic reaction to Java won't dissipate anytime soon...
E pluribus unum
Which is why I'm sure that the list of developers 'let in' included all the groups that Apple felt they needed to kiss up to. Lets face it, Apple needs Adobe, Apple doesn't need Garage Developer #253221. At least not till #253221 comes up with something that takes over the platform, in which case Apple figures "No harm, no foul".
Not that I agree with their take on the situation, and if I ever actually got an iTouch/Phone, I'd probably jailbreak it out of principle. But they really haven't shot themselves in the foot here.
Because edgesuite.net is part of Akamai, which hosts Apple content. Almost half of the iTunes Store links are on edgesuite servers.
On the iPhone, if you consider moving to another phone after spending a lot of money on apps you'll have to throw it away and re-purchase everything.
I have thrown away commercial platforms after spending considerable amounts of money when I realized that they were turning into bottomless pits for money. I think people sooner or later just naturally get fed up with DRM and Apple Stores and all that crap, in particular when they get an alternative.
Good point, that I seem to keep forgetting. I don't actually have an iphone, though I was thinking about making the switch with the 3G. However, I wouldn't want to do a lot of editing on such a small screen anyways. It would be nice to simply log in run a couple commands to check server status, iostat, sar, take a look at log files and run commands.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You know, people keep telling me this, but I haven't seen any actual proof that an SSH client would be prevented. But I may well have missed it in the SDK license. Can you point me to where Apple legally prohibits this?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
erger rgeger